Sat in the borrowed crewroom at Muharraq International Airport on 27 Aug 1990 with the rest of the combined Bruggen/Marham wing after deploying the day before. DetCO (Rocky Goodall) walks in and gives us a decent speech about why we were there etc.
This was the (end of) the Cold War which had been our raison d'etre for so many years, driving all our extensive training and yet here we are in the Middle East. wtf???
Spent the next 3 months with no min height limit!
Then Afghanistan. Mostly flew the night shift and saw some beautiful sights, especially when the moon was out and reflected off the snow-capped peaks. Then having to fly a low-level search for a downed helo, bouncing between VMC & IMC and the jet just coped so well and it felt really.....not easy but comfortable as this was what she was designed to do. Oh, and the low-level was on a 15000ft high plain with surrounding mountain peaks over 20000ft!
edit: Oh, and the FAC was 100+miles away so no comms with anyone!
Many, many others.
Good thread.
