Cookery and camouflage at Royal Air Force Wittering as No 3 Mobile Catering Squadron prepares the next generation of RAF Chefs for operations and exercises.
Image By: SAC Daniel Smither
Brisk temperatures, winds and cold rain met trainee Royal Air Force chefs as they learned how to cook for large numbers in a deployed setting. The Deployed Skills Course gives newly qualified Royal Air Force Chefs hands on experience of catering in field conditions.
Flight Sergeant Michael Liu from 3MCS said: “This course is not easy. Firstly, there’s hygiene standards in a tented kitchen, just because you’re outdoors there can’t be any let up in cleanliness. Secondly, you must work with what you’ve got in the ration packs, there are no recipes, but we still have a requirement to create interesting, nutritious and tasty food.”
Image By: SAC Daniel Smither
RAF Chefs and Air Ground Stewards form Trade Group (TG) 19, a key element of the wider RAF Logistics Profession. Recruits who join TG 19 must first complete basic military training at RAF Halton and then begin their trade training at Worthy Down Barracks. This intake of trainees has successfully completed their trade training and spent six weeks working in the kitchens at their own Stations before starting the course.
Image By: SAC Daniel Smither
Leading Aircraftman Charles Sapin (19) is from Cambridgeshire. He said: “It’s a real challenge thinking about the different recipes that you could make with the rations, but learning to use the equipment and seeing how different it is from working in a permanent kitchen has been great.”
Initially formed in 1975 as the RAF Mobile Catering Support Unit, 3MCS has been supporting exercises and operations for over forty years. The Squadron regularly supports fast jet deployments and can offer immediate support to aircraft crash situations.
Basic military skills were also on the menu for the trainee chefs. Aside from working in the kitchen, 3MCS Corporals Mike Salmon and Sean Bunday taught the students how to camouflage and disrupt the outline of tented kitchen. Unless camouflage netting is correctly installed, it will provide no tactical advantage.
Image By: SAC Daniel Smither
The course lasts for ten days; six days of classroom-based learning and four days of work in a tented kitchen. A ten-man operational ration pack is the basis for most of the recipes cooked by the trainee chefs, although it is supplemented by a few basic fresh rations. The aim is to get the chefs to think on their feet and use their culinary skills to come up with their own recipes.
Flight Sergeant Liu said: “What you’ve got to understand is the relationship between food and morale when you are on an operation or an exercise. Personnel are working very hard over long hours; they need something familiar and nourishing. So today we’ve got spicy pulled pork, chicken pie and sponge pudding with peaches for dessert.”
Image By: SAC Daniel Smither
3MCS is part of the A4 Force Elements, the specialist deployable engineering and logistics squadrons which ensure that the RAF has everything it needs on the ground in order to project air power.
Group Captain Nick Huntley commands the A4 Force Elements. He said: “Keeping those basic military skills up to scratch is essential in delivering our core role. The chefs could be cooking in a field kitchen one day and find themselves on duty at a checkpoint the very next, both are equally important skills to maintain. The instructors at 3MCS have brought deployed catering and operations to life for these trainees, it’s a valuable lesson and they’ve learned it well.”
