I was a wireless operator on Dear Old 1987 way back in the early 1960s

I was a Wireless Operator in the Royal Air Force. In 1962, I spent 12 months in the desert of the Trucial Oman (now UAE) in temperatures well in excess of 120f. I returned home in November ’62 to be posted to RAF Marine Craft Unit 1104 (Air-Sea-Rescue) at Bridlington on the North Sea. I was proud to be a wireless operator on the rescue launch “1387”. I have many stories about my time in there but they are for another time.

The winter of 62/63 was one of the coldest & worst in recorded memory. On one three day patrol, the sea was freezing on the deck. What a change from the heat of the desert! However, I did enjoy my time at Bridlington. It was a town where I was bought up and my grandmother & many of my aunts & uncles lived there too. It was late 1963 that I left the RAF…

Then some years later, about 1982 I was visiting a small port Lyme Regis on the South coast. Moored a few hundred metres outside of the harbour was my old ‘ship’, dear old “1387”. Tears time. I managed to hail a passing yacht at the end of the pier and got a trip out to 1387 and gained permission to ‘climb aboard’. Wow it was quite an emotional time. 1387 was now in private hands & I was able to tell the owners a few stories about her. Including how and why she got a bent mast with an interesting coming together with a helicopter rotors and the mast while out at sea. More on that another time… The photos attached are scans from faded prints from 1982…