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On the 40th anniversary of the Falklands invasion, former Head Boy Stephen Brassington gives a brief summary of his career in the Royal Air Force (RAF) from joining the CCF at NULS.
Having joined NULS in September 1990, I could not wait to join the RAF CCF section at the first opportunity aged 13 and a half. I immediately got to experience flying in a Chipmunk at RAF Shawbury and loved it. Over the next 5 years, I visited bases such as RAF St Mawgan and Lyneham (a base that came to mean a lot to me in later life). On leaving NULS, I succeeded in gaining a university bursary from the RAF as a Navigator and proceeded to go to the University of Edinburgh, studying Geology, and as a member of East Lowlands University Air Squadron. As well as gaining my degree, I continued to fly in the Bulldog before going solo in the Grob Tutor.
My formal RAF career started in October 2001, with two years of Officer and Flying Training before finally arriving at RAF Lyneham to start flying operationally on the C-130K Hercules, visiting everywhere from Iraq and Afghanistan to Belize and Hawaii. There then followed a period on exchange with the Army Air Corps before entering the world of desk jobs firmly on the ground. However, desk jobs do not prevent travel and I again returned to Afghanistan as the RAF ISTAR advisor to the British Army as they withdrew from Helmand Province in 2014.
Moving forward, I have spent my last two tours involved in RAF equipment procurement before deploying to the Falklands Islands in November 2021 until late March this year.
Whilst in the Falklands, I was responsible for the RAF’s Voyager and A400M Atlas deployments; providing air to air refuelling, long range search and rescue, and reassurance to the UK population as far and wide as South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands and even coordinating C-130J resupply air-drop resupply to the British Antarctic Survey at one of their furthest south bases on the Antarctic continent.
Throughout all of this every element of NULS has stuck with me, including representing the RAF at Water Polo in every Inter Services (vs the Army and RN) match played since I joined in 2001. This is a sport I had never heard of until starting at NULS and being selected by Mrs Griffiths and then Parogon WPC. Even my cross country roots (c/o Harry Hartshorne) have stuck with me, as I completed my first half marathon whilst in the Falklands.
All in all, a very varied and enjoyable career, all started by those first Chipmunk flights as part of NULS CCF.
Louis Bond: “The site of the camp was much larger than I had ever expected. Much of the camp was destroyed, but there were the cabin like structures at the front of the complex which were tiny in comparison to the number of people who were forced to stay in them. At the rear of the
Mount Pleasant, Newcastle-Under-Lyme, Staffordshire, ST5 1DB
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