RAF's Oldest Chinook Retires

[Flying10uk]

the Bristol Belvedere

[Gil Boyd]

The beauty of the Belvedere helicopter was, like the Wessex, the pilot can actually cast his head and eyes out of the cockpit and look down at abseilers or picking up loads. Sadly the Chinook and Merlin don't achieve that sightline for the pilot. Here's a link of Guards PARA abseiling in Malaya in 1968 on our Paradata system at the museum:

Belvedere helicopter dropping soldiers from Guards Para Coy into a patrol area, Malaya, 1968 | ParaData

[Peter Laidler]

Malaya/Malaysia was a strange scenario when I was there in the 60's. The Malayan government called it Malaysia, supposedly to encompass the whole of Malaya, Sarawak and Borneo - or whatever, to placate the people into the 'one country' ideal'. While we, the UK Aust and NZ were still their protective armies. To us it was Malaya and we were not allowed to call it Malaysia in any correspondence or conversation. Even our mail/letters were sent to Malaya!!!!! Malaysia was a political name according to the powers that be. That was the gospel according to the times. So Malaya it remained. To be honest, it was a bit farcical because the Police remained The Royal Federation of Malaya Police (or FMP in our operational paperwork) while the different Infantry Battalions of the Malay Infantry remained Malay too. Such as our nearby regiment, 4th Royal Malay (or Malayan) Regiment which was 4RMR and never Royal Malaysian Regt. They remained MALAY or MALAYAN

After we left and the Malayan Army got a grip of the jungles and insurgents in Malaya, Sarawak and North Borneo they could call it whatever they like. Even though at times, especially on ops or military training days under military training ogres like Muffer here, Malaya felt like a steaming dank sxxxthole, they were good, stirring times for a 20 year old.....

I have to say that if you needed reinforcements, supplies or evacuations and the weather was monsoon like or howling a gale - or at the weekend when the RAF/RAAF were not available, the very best helicopter crews were the RN or RAN air crews. To then crap weather and weekend working were the norm!

[Gil Boyd]

Peter,
Spot on it was odd. We lived at RAF Seletar 1960-1963 and dad spent his whole time abseiling out of Wessex's to recover RAF aircrew where planes like the Hastings kept piling in, into remote jungle areas. Something to do with a major pin failure in the tail section well known about apparently. The same issue Peter, if you remember as the fatal crash near Abingdon I think it was called Little Bawden in 1965 killed 40 PARA's and RAF crew.
I went back in 1973 with 2 PARA on a Jungle Warfare course based at Pulada Malayan Army Barracks north of Jahore Bahru. We were issued live rounds as insurgents were pushing south at the time of our course, so we were really on live ops and not training. Really strange, and you know its going to be hairy when the Malays let you take the lead