Hercs flying without crew

[BEagle]

Back in the days when the RAF could afford fun, we were taking our mighty Vickers FunBus to the Bermuda Airshow, then on to Sacramento, then Hawaii before returning via the El Paso airshow. Honest!! I managed to talk the Bermuda airshow bloke into saying that we had to be there a day early, to allow all the pointy jets to be parked in front. He chuckled knowingly, but agreed.....

So there we were. All down at the Bermudiana with a complete 24 hours off the next day before the airshow. So, of course, we didn't exactly go to bed early after visiting the local churches... The next thing I knew it was oh-dark-hundred and that pratt 'Lord Peter of the Bogs' - the most useless AARC ever - was on the phone from Group saying "There's a hurricane coming your way, what are you going to do about it?" "Tell it to f*ck off!", quoth I, until the sensible brain cell clicked in. So I phoned the spams and ask WTF - we'd been told absolutely nothing about any adverse weather forecast. He advised that they hadn't known about it either, but all the USN P3s were cranking up and legging it; however, we could expect 60 knot winds with the odd gust to perhaps 80 very soon. I realised that it was too late to do anything, so asked him to keep an eye on the jet - and in any case, the police were refusing to let anyone leave the hotel as it was too dangerous to go outside.

Next day, just as a 101 knot wind gust hit the hotel and I watched horizontal palm trees flying past the window, we were told that the a/c had been 'damaged'. Fearing the worst, we summoned a taxi and set off for the aerodrome when the wind dropped. The scene of devastation around the island was quite impressive; when we arrived at the airport we discovered that the aeroplane had been for a little walk on its own after the chocks had been fire hosed out by the wind and rain. It had set off and ground-looped into those portable spectator seat things the spams call 'bleachers'. Damage was superficial - one bent pod impeller and a small scratch in a slat section. Trusty groundcrew soon fitted the dummy spinner and put some speed tape over the slat, then did the 'post flight through turbulence' and 'heavy landing' checks just to be 200% sure.

Best thing was that we had another day off - so grabbed a newspaper which said "Tropical storm will pass 200 miles south of the island, some increase in winds may be noticed" thus proving that everyone had been taken by surprise. On the way out to Sacramento, the other crew raised and lowered the landing gear a couple of times just to be absolutely sure - again, no snags. When we got home a few days and $1000+ in allowances each a few days later, no-one even mentioned it!

But the poor old Nimrod mates, stuck on base as was seemingly Kipper Fleet tradition (not for them the Ascoteers' Bermudiana Hotel - the Nimrod teenage NCOs would only annoy the other residents!), had been roused in the middle of the night and made to move their jet to the civvy side. Came the hurricane and it acquired 4 fodded engines and a damaged rudder - whereas our jet had been parked on the USN ramp which was shipshape and FOD-free....