Milt, thoroughly enjoy your memoirs, particularly the 'one armed paper hangar' antics during the race at Avalon! And would like to have seen your display. Can't think what your long suffering Nav was feeling. And thanks to you, and people like you, for ironing out most of the snags on the aircraft before people like me were let loose on it.
Vertico, I don't remember the cockpit ergonomics and instrumentation being that bad. But since I came from three years of driving a desk, with only the standard, and enjoyable, refresher at Strubby before clambering aboard the Canberra, any cockpit layout was very acceptable. Before which it was all Meteors and Vamp T11, which weren't all that good either. I do remember that my minimal experience of the F86 was like sitting in arm chair comfort in comparison, and that the Hunter fitted like a glove. And not having flown the Canberra from 1965, it was like coming home to an old friend when I next did in 74. In all I got about 1000 enjoyable hours in one of my favourite aeroplanes.
I mentioned earlier the multi role tasks of the Akrotiri Wing. I forgot to mention that just before I left, our squadron was given the French AS30 air to ground guided weapon to play with, and our crew was lucky enough to fire the second round at El Adem range; naturally the Boss had the first. The weapon was radio guided, much like a radio control model aircraft, from the nose position, by the nav observer, and since it needed to be eyeballed to the target, it certainly wasn't 'launch and forget'. Charlie, our backseat nav told us how to get to the range, Ray, in the nose achieved a direct hit on the two large drums simulating an oil depot or somesuch, and I did what I was told by those two. Very satisfactory. I don't know if the AS30 stayed in service, or was quickly superceded by Martel etc. It must have been one of the first, if not the first, A/G guided weapons in the RAF.
Reading through the entertaining, and sometimes tragic, items on this thread, particularly the hair raising bang seat stories, reminds me of an old mate of mine who banged out of a Harrier which misbehaved during the hover. He went out as it passed 90 degrees of bank, and was arrested by tree branches if I remember it right. He returned to flying, but not ejector seats, and in fact still flies some exotic executive jet at an age when most people have retired to the golf course, or in my case, to the good life in the Oz Blue Mountains.