Rigger648

Interesting reading this one. Being a Liney from 85-90 and spending lots of time dodgy SWO's and Scuffers, remember the uniform for work being dark blue shirt, no tie, wooly pulley (round or V neck) heavy trousers (never the summer ones as they needed to be ironed daily) boots or shoes. About 88 we where allowed to wear DPM jackets over the top, and eventually Goretex DPM jackets. NI gloves replaced the blue woollen gloves. On the line dress was normally romper suit (coveralls) with lots of squadron badges, flying jacket and flying gloves, as the working gloves where useless, you could not even feel a hammer in them never mind a screw! Only the blunties (stores, admin, data analyst, GD etc.) ever wore the SD hat, if a liney had one on he was normally escorting his mate for a one way chat with the boss. The lads in the hangar where normally more tidy then us (just), the only thing that was uniform on the engineering front was the oil stain on the right thigh from constantly wiping dipsticks on the romper suit it seeped through and gave a permanent stain. As for the beret debate, the first thing you done with the beret was rip out the plastic in it and then mold, to be shrunk as tight and as small as possible. Normally you had 2 berets (tactically acquired) with one of the badges blacked out for exercise.