Yellow Tractors
The Fleet Air Arm of the 1980's used yellow tractors to carry out a variety of jobs on air bases, such as moving aircraft around, collecting parts and stores and towing the 'Houchin' used to start the aircraft to save the internal battery. Because there was a lot of responsibility when towing around large lumps of metal costing huge sums of money not everyone was able to do this job. On each squadron there would be several tractor drivers, at least one per watch. I was on my first squadron - 771 Search and Rescue at RNAS Culdrose when I was told I had to report to the Aircraft Handling section for tractor training. At the time I didn't drive a car, although I had done some driving with my Dad just before joining up so it was a little scary coming to terms with dual gears and big bouncy tyres. I spent a few days practicing driving in different conditions, round bollards and at different speeds before starting to use the towing arm which was then attached to an old Wes...