I well remember the event described by Chugalug2, for that date in 1963 was my 22nd birthday which is why my Hastings crew (I was a first tour co-pilot) was placed in reserve so that once the last aircraft became airborne we could drive down to Bath for a liquid celebration. My diary records that, "The weather that evening was dire - low cloud and thick, too - clearly not suitable for formation flying but the met forecast given by Command HQ was different, and so Hastings detailed for the exercise (from both 24 and 36 Squadrons resident at RAF Colerne) duly began to take off, one by one, and vanished into the gathering gloom". After the last aircraft had lifted off we went straight to the bar because as they began to return quite soon thereafter we sensed that there would some interesting stories to hear, and that which Chug has related took place in my hearing.
Tactical 38 Group formation exercises were never short of incidents. In mid-November of that year we flew down to Nicosia in Cyprus for another mass formation assault exercise (first Argosies, then Hastings, then Beverlys). This was to be a night formation dropping paratroops and stores after flying most of the way around the island. This was 'Exercise Solinus II' and turned out to be no less of a fiasco than most other such exercises. In the event, the weather was quite good, but corner-cutting by some aircraft and inability to maintain specified airspeeds meant rather fraught changes of engine power on the run in and much relief once the paratroops had left us. But it was the return to Nicosia that stays in my mind. It had been expected that all aeroplanes would land in the same order as they had departed and so, as planned, the first to depart duly landed first on Nicosia's runway. Unfortunately, someone in that aircraft left his mike on 'transmit' which meant that (a) we were all treated to a rather fruity description as to how that crew wished to describe the evening's entertainment and (b) nobody else, including air traffic control, could get a word in! What happened then was that the next Hastings to land was completely out of sequence, and this threw everyone else into a state of uncertainty as to what they should do - the poor controller in the tower must have been tearing his hair out! Like others, we simply waited for a gap to appear and then, finally, after the first to land had shut down and communications had returned, sought and obtained clearance to land. The bar stayed open quite late that night!
In January 1964 my crew took part in another night low-level cross-country exercise over Salisbury Plain, formating closely with another Hastings as the second pair in a stream, and in foul weather - sleet and snow as I recall. We trundled in at as slow an airspeed as we could manage without falling out of the sky so that the paras would not have too difficult an exit whilst we were no longer to see the weak formation lights of the aircraft ahead of us. With the green light on and the paras beginning to leave our aircraft I noticed, casually, that 'pretend flak' (anti-aircraft fire) - to add realism, perhaps? - was appearing just above and to the right of us, just off our starboard wing tip. (Our flight engineer confirmed shortly afterwards that he saw this phenomenon too, swiftly passing the little window that enabled him to view the wing.) It took me just a second to realise that there could be no such thing as 'pretend flak' and that what I was seeing was the opening out of parachutes supporting paratroops leaving the Hastings ahead of us - all much too close for comfort and with a distinct chance of wrapping themselves round the wing and engines. There was a nothing our flight engineer or I could do, so we just sat there and waited for the 'stick' to end, which it finally did without disaster. Goodness only knows what the paras thought about this little episode - I for one would not wish to ask them!