Aircraft coding

[Larry]

My father who served as a pilot on many Squadrons in his 43 year service with the RAF, used to joke with me that the Sqn ORB was always completed by the 'thickest' person on the Sqn (ie the person with least intelligence)!!!

As for record books and ORBs they are as Bill says quite unreliable and sometimes having a 'visually complete record' was more important to the person than its accuracy. Even my Dad's log books have just the codes for Wellingtons he flew with 1 ANS and later some serials were made up. He even has the serial for the prototype Westland Wyvern in his log book which I don't think served on an RAF Transport Command unit!!!!

[Bill Walker]

To be fair Larry, I have seen a few ORBs and squadron diaries written by someone who was obviously just dying to become a great author. Not saying they deserved to be, but they wanted to be.

Also, I think ORB writing was never any one's full time job. They probably had something else waiting for them while typing up the daily log.