First Deployment on Operations by a junior Air Operations Officer – Flying Officer Vicky Woodhead.

Are the diplomatic clearances valid? Can a C17 with Dangerous Air Cargo stay overnight? Do you have any more space? Is it delayed? Can we do an extra trip to Baghdad? Nine months on Initial Officer Training (IOT), 14 Weeks on Flight Ops Training, 8 months at a UK RAF station and then off to the Middle East for a 4 ½ month tour as a Flight Commander UK Air Ops. So was all this training worth it, am I more able to answer any of the questions regularly fired into 901 EAW Air Ops?

The new IOT course focuses on sending well-prepared Junior Officers out into ‘the real world’. IOT spends a tremendous amount of effort and energy into re-creating this real world into scenarios to test and develop our officer skills. However, no matter how good the training is it cannot substitute experience. Phase 2 training continues on from IOT and develops branch specific knowledge. ‘Cottam Ops’ in the Flight Ops Training Squadron Simulator, which must be the most unfortunate airfield in the UK, is the platform used to introduce ‘A3 Air Operations’. Surprisingly my job here bears a striking resemblance to Cottam; the boards are back, flight plans, ‘flight following’, all the skills taught in Phase 2 training. After training it is on to an RAF station where you are let loose! I think most fresh-faced junior officers would argue that this is where a large proportion of your training happens by learning through experience. However, this is where SNCOs play a really big part in guiding and mentoring junior officers in their early days.

Has the training worked well? Well yes, it has turned a bewildering mess on a map to a clear and logical picture. Fewer things faze me, I am able to deal with and come up with solutions to issues which would have totally confused me before.

Training behind us, what is it actually like outside the gates of RAF Cranwell and on operations in the Middle East? A large amount of time is spent dealing with outside agencies and this certainly keeps us on our toes, liaising with our Americans allies, arranging diplomatic clearances with various Gulf States and encouraging Flight Safety and Foreign Object Damage awareness. Responsibility is a ‘buzzword’ in training, but here if you make mistakes then it actually impacts on the operational effectiveness of both theatres – Operations TELIC and HERRICK; we are all small parts of a large chain. There are lots of interlinking chains of people doing their jobs, all of which need to be completed properly for the task to happen. The biggest lesson that I have learnt since leaving training is probably the simplest: that you cannot be taught everything. You are able to prepare yourself as best you can but will only learn by doing something yourself and by making your own mistakes, the key is not to make the same mistake over and over again!

And yes, we have even managed to exercise our tripod building skills, a vital tool in any junior officers’ repertoire, honed and perfected over numerous exercises on the North Airfield at Cranwell. Believe it or not, a superb specimen, a quadpod, was designed over the air conditioning unit to prevent it overheating!

Photographer: Cpl Paul Saxby

For more images view this weeks Operational Gallery