It all started when…
As the UK Chinook Force looked to return home from Operation TORAL, a very busy Squadron found itself rapidly approaching its 100th anniversary, as it concluded years of operations in Afghanistan during 2015. In the wake of the 18(B) Squadron centenary aircraft came a desire from other Squadrons to celebrate in the same way.
This project was completed within the Ministry of Defence and not under Dynamic Vectors. It serves only as an illustration of what some of our designers can do.
This project was being run by a very proactive and talented Weapon Systems Operator (WSOp) on 27 Squadron, more colloquially known as a ‘crewman’ in the RAF helicopter world. Initially a number of designs were sketched by the team involved, with the leading contender being a series of yellow, red and green stripes across the rear of the aircraft. The Squadron boss considered this a little garish however, and hoped for something more striking and original. The superb Serco team within the paint facilities at RAF Odiham were on-side in principal, yet the project lacked not only a design but also knowledge of how to satisfy the engineering practices in order to achieve it.
A request for assistance originated at a fairly late stage, as when the timeline was established for what it would take to produce something in time for 27 Squadron’s centenary it was clear that only one week was left to deliver a design and compile all of the supporting documentation. For 27 Squadron, the focus had - quite rightly - been on recovering their Chinooks and personnel from operations overseas after the most demanding conflict of a generation. When asked, it was a ‘no brainer’ to support a Squadron which had proved itself to be one of the most vital in the RAF for almost a decade and a half, so acceptance of the request for assistance was fairly immediate!
Some wonderful work from the RAF’s engineering and surface finish experts helped the process of designing the aircraft over the course of a weekend and then pulling together the documentation which mirrored the 18(B) Squadron format the following week. Members of the Serco team were instrumental, as the various masking products designed for the aircraft were kindly printed by equivalent teams at RAF Marham, who had facilities for working on a large scale. With so little time to deliver, we had to form a plan which used minimal colours and so a background of just yellow and green was selected, with ‘Nellie’ forming out of a set of four, masked in incremental stages. These masks were driven to Odiham by the home-based team in the days prior to the selected airframe (ZA683) rolling into the paint bay.
Over the next two weeks a duo of paint professionals applied the markings designed for ZA683. The talents of Serco surface finish specialists James Littlejohn and Laura Middleton came to the fore and the aircraft made it just in time to form the backdrop for centenary proceedings in November of 2015.
Sadly, as the project reached conclusion the Chinook Force received some awful news. A Puma helicopter from RAF Benson crashed in Kabul, Afghanistan, on 11 October 2015, whilst committed to Operation TORAL - taking the lives of two of its crew. One was former 27 Squadron crewmen, Flight Lieutenant Geraint ‘Roly’ Roberts. As part of the mourning process the livery was dedicated to his memory and his name was applied beneath the cabin door on the right-hand side. Years later when ‘Nellie’ had been returned to the standard green camouflage, his name remained as a lasting memory of his huge contribution to the Service.
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