Thanks so much for everyone's patience.

To answer your question Jeff, I am not using a recovery catalog.

I have a pretty good idea as to what is going on.

My backup is running as follows:

connect target /;
configure controlfile autobackup off;
configure snapshot controlfile name to '/backup/${1}/[email protected]';
configure channel device type disk maxpiecesize 1g format = '/backup/${1}/bkup_%U';
configure retention policy to redundancy 1;
crosscheck backup;
crosscheck archivelog all;
backup full database plus archivelog;
delete noprompt obsolete;
list backup of database;
exit;

Because the autobackup is off the control file which is backed up with datafile 1 is done at a point in time where the control file cannot possibly contain the recovery information for this backup.
Thus the errors when trying to restore.

My question is now, what is the appropriate method of backing up. My understanding of the snapshot is it allows the backup to maintain a consistent view of the instance as the backup is taking place, but again serves no purpose as an aid when doing a full restore, same reason as above. So is it best to run a snapshot and turn autobackup to on. I must confess, the backup was written by a formerly employeed dba and I am coming into this with very little experience. So any advice on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Once Again, thanks so much for your patience and willingness to help.