PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - West is Best
Thread: West is Best
View Single Post
Old 8th Dec 2003, 23:38
  #17 (permalink)  
Fg Off Max Stout
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: The front end and about 50ft up
Posts: 510
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Gainesy,

Back on this green and pleasant land now. Hurrah.

In answer to your question, I believe that a Fury in reasonable condition was recovered from Shiabah, about 20 miles south of Basrah. I think this was an RAF airfield many years ago and is now a field hospital. Rumour has it that this a/c is now dismantled sitting in a few iso containers ready to come home. I think I saw its prop in a compound near my place of work. I don't know whether it would be sold, restored, or kept as a trophy.

Alledgedly, there was at least one more Fury at Shiabah, but in scrap metal condition. I also saw personally, a Halo helicopter nearby Shiabah with an LGB shaped hole in it and a MiG-21 on a pole gate guard that has taken a toppling and is now nose first into the dust, but otherwise in not too bad static condition.

Apparently trophies can only be claimed by fighting units during war. If claimed after the hostilities it is considered looting. So the redcaps and snowdrops won't let me bring home a few bits of shrapnel, yet the MoD is (maybe) bringing home an aircraft after the conflict, and I bet they sell it. Or am I being cynical.

And Iraqi ears were right out of the question.
Fg Off Max Stout is offline