RAF firefighters demonstrate their skills FORMER Northern Echo employee Tony Marshall sent us some amazing pictures he took during a visit to the RAF Fire Fighting Service School training centre in Catterick in the mid to late 1980’s, before it moved in 1989 to RAF Manston.
The Handley Page Victor, a British jet-powered strategic bomber which was developed and produced by Handley Page, and which served during the Cold War. It was the third and final V bomber to be operated by the Royal Air Force As a fire school, it had a mock-up of a house to simulate search and rescue scenarios. It also had a burning area where ex-service aircraft were covered in fuel and set alight, including two Avro Vulcan Bomber’s.
A DAY out turned into more like as SAS mission for a group of York youngsters on Skipwith Common. The five workers, along with two mentors, came across an elderly man who had suffered a heart attack. So the group of heroes, from the group Ad Astra, including mentors Luke Dixon and Leigh Paul-Rientoul, Alex McKenna, Callum McKenzie and Tyler Nicholson sprang into action. Ad Astra director Sam Shaw said: “We’re an organisation that works with disengaged people across the north of England, and we have bases at Weldrake and Elvington in York. “That day, the small group were doing some work on Skipwith Common, as we do a lot of outward-bound educational work.