Big Tudor
Don't know about the stats for downed aircrew but always struck me as a little funny seeing as how Leuchars had access to almost the same serious terrain as Kinloss. Plus, a winter storm's a winter storm whether you're in the lakes, the brecons or the highlands. I don't know if it was ever official, but Kinloss always had an air of being the "senior" team, Leuchars No 2 by virtue of also being in Scotland, Valley and Saints next with Leeming & Stafford trailing in behind them. Certainly on the joint ex's with the English teams that seemed to be the case.
Story time :-
On weekend ex's one of the troops was always detailed as cook. It was taken in rotation and involved getting up early enought to get breakfast going. Once the parties were away the next duty was dinner some ten hours away. In between time there was the radio to monitor but it could be a long boring day depending where you were.
Once, the team were at their usual Skye base, Glen Brittle. Mostly Skye can be indifferent for weather, frequently howling with wind and rain but just occasionally the sun splits the skies and the day never seems to end. It was just one such day that this particular troop drew cook duty. For a keen rock climber the sight of acres of bone dry black gabbro under the azure sky was painful in the extreme. After breakfast cleanup he almost contemplated a little solo exped up onto the ridge, trusting there'd be no radio call up ("nothing serious could happen on a day like this," went the reasoning) but sense prevailed and he resigned himself to a day's sunbathing and watching the tourists go by.
Around lunchtime, as he dozed in the sun, an extremely Germanic "Hallo" broke the silence. Squinting from whence it came the troop saw this absolute vision of Scandinavian beauty strolling towards him. At the time it was just when ABBA were storming the charts. Readers of a certain vintage will recall fantasies of the blonde one (female!) and that is just what presented itself to this troop. Chatting ensued and the blonde one's breathing grew more heavy with each new testosterone laden story. The troop laid it on thick, the sight of the LWB with big red cross and stretcher strapped to the roof was the clincher and, to cut a long story short, they were soon racked out in the barn for a long, slow, warm afternoon of horizontal gymnastics following which, apparently, she left from whence she came. The troop never relayed the facts to the rest of the team, after all, who the hell would have believed him?!!
The fallout?
Sunday he was so shagged he struggled to get up a mere V. Diff when the previous weekend he'd led an impressive VS on the Ben. Had to claim he'd caught a summer cold sleeping in the barn.
On the subject of team cooking, tradition was that dissatisfaction with the evening meal earned a swim in the nearest water, "swim the cook," being the cry. The worst offence? One particularly inept cook had never even boiled spuds before, and proceeded to try to mash them without draining off the water!