Dick Forsyth talks about being the first RAF Chinook pilot.......
How time flies, I still remember it turning up as one of those on the OCU at the start of it all. Happy days, building the Tea bar out of redundant Chinook packing cases.. and each Chinook arriving with a superb set of thin Snap-On Spanners in a tool kit that were removed never to be seen again, along with the centre seats.. and the true RAF tradition of let’s cobble it together with what we have and redundant Andover long range tanks being installed in the cabs to increase the range.
I remember a few incidents we had in those days, an escape hatch window falling out over Southampton on one delivery, and corrosion found in a couple of early cabs, caused it turned out by the delivery crews practice of taking a car with them on the trip to the docks so they could drive home. Snow and salt off the vehicles would melt, drop off, then sit in the aircraft for the weeks it took to deliver slowly starting to corrode.
https://www.forces.net/technology/ai...-years-chinook