RAF Veterans meet for the first time in 40 years in Harrogate this weekend
Ex-servicemen are reuniting thanks to your favorite people-finding website, which helped organisers track missing wing-men.
Colin Blakelock, ex-Assistant Air Traffic Control officer at RAF Masirah in Oman, organised the reunion after an ex-colleagues found him on Facebook.
“192.com has greatly assisted in finding old colleagues. I put my old RAF mate Mel Crackle’s name into 192.com and where I thought he lived, and wham bam his contact details came up, it was an instant find.”
Mr Crackle, another former air traffic controller will meet up again with Colin at the reunion on Saturday, which is for ex-air traffic controllers and Flight Operations officers as well as other tradesmen based at RAF Masirah between 1971 and 1973.
Mr Blakelock, now living in Canada said:
“We were all 19 or 20 years old then. We lived for nine months in metal huts in the desert with no women around at all, but it was a good laugh.
“Shifts were up to eight hours in length and we would relay weather and air traffic information to military aircraft flying to and from the Far East.
“We’re now grandparents. This should be a fantastic reunion. A few of us have stayed in touch but the great majority have not seen one another since those days.”
Dominic Blackburn, Product Director of 192.com said: “192.com reunites thousands of families and friends a year, and we’re also proud of our track record of reuniting servicemen.”
The reunion will take place from lunchtime on Friday October 7 at the Cairn Hall Hotel, Ripon Road in Harrogate and will feature a dinner on Saturday, October 8.