The Longest Day

In the Summer of 1985 the cadets of 1145 Sqn Air Training Corps went for their annual camp to RAF Buchan. Unlike the usual cadet camp destinations Buchan wasn't a flying station but a radar base on Scotland's North East coast near Peterhead. Its role was to direct interceptors to their targets in time of war. Interesting but not that exciting to us teens. We were used to busy stations like Brize Norton or Lossiemouth. Buchan had nothing.

The leaders had just about exhausted their entertainment options. We'd been dinghy sailing off Peterhead and down in the pit (the bomb proof bunker) that housed the Fighter Controllers and their support staff. We'd had a tour of the radomes which were supremely uninteresting. That said, I was seventeen and I really did want to have a career as a Fighter Controller and these were the days before FACs and AWACS.

Now some bright spark had decided to bus us all to Peterhead Power Station. And now commenced the longest most boring day I have ever experienced. The sun was blazing down on this great industrial greenhouse whilst some apparatchik explained how it was powered by waste gas produced from the Brent Oil Field in the North Sea, how many generators there were producing however many megawatts of power for the national grid. Tedious hours walking along gantries into control rooms, generator rooms, mess rooms. We were hot, hungry, bored. I remember Debbie Marshall kept handing me little tokens which I misread as being just plain irritating (I was always a bit blind to others' affections).

We were given an airforce packed lunch; soggy cheese sandwich wrapped in cellophane, a kit-kat or penguin, piece of fruit (usually an apple) and a tin of cheap sparkling drink (of the Pola Cola variety). At least I'd had a decent breakfast. Then as we awaited the bus there were huge clouds rolling in and a sudden thunderstorm. It could only have lasted ten minutes but it was the most interesting thing that day. After the deluge we went out into the blazing sun to await our bus, coils of water vapour writhing around our knees like we were in some kind of alien landscape. Debbie had shifted her attentions to some other chap, Graeme Winsborough, and I got on with the important things in life like singing bawdy songs or macho posturing.

Not to say that the week in Buchan was a washout. The weather was glorious. We had great times heading into Peterhead either for organised activities or impromptu fun of an evening. There was a Tac Eval (tactical evaluation exercise) where the station is attacked by special forces. This happened at Lossiemouth the previous year and we were in lockdown for 36 hours. This one lasted about an hour. Accommodation and admin were taken in 20 minutes and the operational site (the Pit and radomes) lasted less than an hour. All over before the end of breakfast. I've stayed friends with the guys and gals from those days. A great crowd.