I flew a Captain's Acceptance Check with Chris in XM 605 on 9 Apr 69 on 50 Sqn at Waddo. We went low level at Entry Point 24 (on the old round-Britain LL route) and frightened Wainfleet with 6 x 25 practice bombs. I notice that this was with my own crew with Chris presumably in the left hand seat and myself playing the Co-pilot role. I think it possible that Chris did the upgrade course from Copilot to Captain at Finnigilley and came to 50 without a crew as a supernumerary Captain. I flew night currency checks with Chris on 8 and 29 May 69. I believe the rule used to be that if you had not done a night landing for 28 days, you had to fly with the boss or the squadron QFI. This got very restrictive during the summer months when only one or two of the sorties generated by Eng wing would recover to Waddo between sunset + 1 hour and dawn - 1 hour. So when we were allocated a night-landing sortie, there would be a whole queue of captains waiting out by the runway to jump in and do their circuit and landing. I always thought it damn dangerous to have chaps clambering in and out of a bang- seat in a darkened cockpit downwind to have their quick shake of the stick, particularly when the weather was dodgy and a PAR or ILS had to be flown. And the boss sometimes hadn't had a decent kip for 48 hours. It was not until I had my B-52 ride at Castle in '72 that I met a real 24/7 operation. After a compressed ground school and simulator phase I had one 15 hour ride in the left hand seat of the "Buff". We took off at about noon and returned to the pattern at about 0100 the following morning to do the "circuits and bumps". SAC used to make no distinction between Day and Night flying and if you had to do your first bit of "circuit-bashing" at night, so be it!
Chris flew XM603 with me out to MOONFLOWER at Butterworth via Akrotiri, Muharraq and Gan 2 - 5 June 69 with my own rear crew. I think we swapped seats on each leg. The last leg involved a rendezvous with some RAAF Mirages who formed up in Balbo on us for the arrival at Butterworth. I seem to remember we were down to 2.5 alternators at that point! It was sometimes useful for a detachment commander to have a qualified captain as copilot. Protocol usually demanded a formal leave-taking of CO of the staging post, and it was good to be able to delegate the planning and pre-flight checks to someone competent and reliable. Sometimes I boarded the aircraft with engines running and after-starting checks complete.
When we returned to Waddo on 10 July (still in XM603) but with my own Co-pilot, he remarked when we broke out of the low clag that A Dispersal was empty. A Dispersal (the QRA dispersal) EMPTY??? when we got into Ops we were told that the cold war was over as far as the V-Force was concerned and that Polaris had taken over. At which point I handed over the squadron and was posted.
Chris was a top bloke and obviously on a fast track up the ladder. I believe he was commanding 50 Sqn when it was disbanded in the '80s
