1972. Sikorsky S67 Gunship tour of the UK, Germany, Iran and Greece. Started at Middle Wallop and next stop was some small heliport in the middle of London to provide demo rides to senior RAF staff. Weather was a problem with a solid overcast at 1000ft and we really needed more than that for the demo rides, as everyone was supposed to get to do a roll and split-S besides a dive to 200 KIAS.
But-no problem: the RAF officer in charge listened to what we needed made a phone call, came back gave me a frequency to call, told me that ATC was waiting for us, take-off on a given heading and they would take it from there. So, thats what we did. Overcast wsn’t that thick-we were clear above about 3K and everyone on the schedule got the standard demo then we called radar and they gave us a sort of surveillance approach back to this very small heliport. Only in the UK!!
There was one pilot I recall.One of the RAF officers would slap a piece of paper on my canopy saying who was flying in the front seat. This pilot was a famed Battle of Britain pilot. He could hardly make it to the ship-had a cane-walked very unsteady etc, but finally with a bunch of assistance got settled in the front seat. We got above the overcast and I did my short demo and handed the 67 to him. In 30 seconds it became evident why you all won the air war-this guy could fly. So after the demo was done and we were set to return to the heliport-we got under the overcast and he asked if i could set the VHF to a given frequency. ( He was still flying ) I did that and he told me he’d like to visit a friend of his at a local RAF site. Told him sure-have at it so off we go at 500 ft and within a few minutes ( we’re now down to 200 ft or so ) a runway is at 12 o’clock. Less than 1/2 mile and we proceeded down the runway at 50 ft 170 KIAS ( No advance call to the Tower )and he calls the tower and announces that the Tower should call XXX the base Commander and tell him that xxxx had visited. Wish I could recall the name of that RAF Battle of Britain hero.