the good ole days
I was there in the mid 60's for a while with a Shackleton squadron doing anti-gun running patrols to try and discourage the Iranians - or was it Iraqis?- from sending guns and bullets to the Radfan rebels. We used to track them by radar and then vector one of three RN ships to intercept and search the vessels.If there was anything nasty on board, the crew would be invited to take to the lifeboat (????) and the offending vessel would be sunk........
The place was very primitive - salt-water showers, Seco huts for the crews, air-conditioning in the messes only, limited physical recreation of an open-air squash court- 6am to 7.30am and a concrete pond known as the Lido! But booze was very cheap - to keep the cost down, we all learnt to drink our spirits with water, the Cokes, Ginger ales and Tonics were more expensive than the liquor they would normally acompany !
There were also some world class Bridge, Twitch, and Uckers schools
The station was run with very little of the tiresome formality of a bigger unit. The CO was a squadron leader and everyone else was similarly downranked - the Senior Equipment Officer was a warrant officer (in the UK he was usually a wing-commander), and when I asked him how I could get my watch changed, (normally a task requiring many hours of getting a multitude of wingless wonders to authorise and sign various chits), he simply said he'd bring me a new one up to the mess after lunch - end of problem !
There was a story circulating that if the station was out of HF radio contact with Aden for more than a couple of hours, they would send up a handful of 8 squadron Hunters to make sure everything was OK.
Yep, I enjoyed my days in Sharjah.