Originally Posted by
Minnie Burner
On a very wet and windy day in 1971 a 707, from Airtours I believe, appeared out of the gloom. I remember that the cabin crew were made particularly welcome. BomberH & co might remember more details.
Around the same time a Sea Vixen from 899 broke into the circuit with "a minor control problem". It had a sizeable amount of its starboard wing missing. The details of the incident, and the pilot most regrettably, are now part of FAA history.
A decade later I flew in the squadron's allocation of 8 missiles for MPC and the landing even by my standards was pretty awful. I was convinced that the sparrows, in particular, would never work. Fortunately, that was not the case.
It still seems remarkable to me that the Gnat used to operate virtually autonomously in IFR back in the day. Nowadays it's just virtually!
As Mog would say: "swing the lamp".
Funnily, i received an email a couple of days ago referring to 1.12.71 which saw a 'shed' load of diversions into Valley including a few Boeings! Possibly the same day? Will trawl to see if I can find a few more details of the Sea Vixen. Do you have the date/serial/type/unit of the visit regarding the 8 Missiles? The IFR bit reminds me of my time at Valley in '87, airborne solo but prior to the IRT Valley was covered in cloud on my return, having worked in ATC there i just called for a cloud break and landed, walked to the Sqn but no one was on the Auth desk, got to the Bar to be asked 'where the f**k have you been, on telling i was rewarded with a bollocking for disobeying rules!