From the East End to the Skies
Trevor grew up in what he calls “a pretty tough housing estate, but I attended Grammar School in Dartford and worked hard”. At university, Trevor attended a recruitment fair and was persuaded to join the RAF as an officer.
Initially he joined the RAF Regiment, but during an exercise he suffered frostbite on his toes which had to be amputated. After his rehabilitation, he applied to become a pilot. Beginning his flying training in 1987, Trevor received his ‘wings’ at RAF Valley the following year. After coming top of the Tactical Weapons course, he became a fighter pilot flying Jaguars. Eventually he joined 54 Squadron at RAF Coltishall.
“The first time I flew the Jaguar with 1000lb bombs and guns fully armed with high explosive bullets, I could not believe that a lad from east London was authorised to bomb and strafe a deserted island in a multi-million-pound single-seat fighter aircraft.”
Flight Lieutenant Trevor Edwards
Deployment over Iraq
As part of 54 Squadron, Trevor was deployed several times to Turkey to fly missions in his Jaguar GR.1 over the ‘no-fly zone’ in North Iraq.
“The missions in Iraq were two and a half, three hours. You'd get airborne, and would always go to the tanker [to refuel], because it was quite a long transit to get into Northern Iraq from Turkey… Most of the time we were doing reconnaissance, surveillance type stuff, so we would monitor where their army was, what they were doing. You keep very close track of where their SAM sites were, their anti aircraft sites.”
“Our mission was at low level. So: 250 foot - didn't bat an eyelid. But 100 foot is a little bit more tricky, and you got used to it very quickly.”
As well as reconnaissance and managing the photography, Trevor would monitor the systems to have warning of being detected by radar, or if a missile was launched at him.
“You can hear it on the system when they've launched a missile at you… So now you're very busy. You have to try and manoeuvre the airplane to break the radar lock or get out of its line of sight. So I was up at a fairly medium level, and I've now had to go down very low, to try to jam and decoy them. But that whole process - off the top of my head - it's about 50 seconds.”
While flying hazardous manoeuvres, Trevor was monitoring the data being received. “It took a while for those older systems to go through their whole sequence… It was quite exciting, yeah. But I’d happily not to do that every day of the week, put it that way! It gave me a much more of an insight and appreciation of the guys in the Second World War.”
After returning to base Trevor was able to wind down. “You decompress, this is where you need your mates. You are young, you're invincible: you have to have that sort of attitude. I remember getting back and saying to the guy I was flying with, 'Unbelievable! Can you believe this happened!’… and then next day you go off and do it again.”
Trevor reflects on these defining experiences, 35 years later: “I very much appreciated my Squadron mates. Much more so than you would do normally. You get very close bonds with the people that you're flying with, because you have to trust them implicitly. They are still some of my best mates today… also, I’d say that I don't get too bothered by trivia. Because if you've been challenged in an extreme sort of way, then the everyday, mundane is, well, it's not worth getting too excited about.”