I remember that Farnborough well, though I'm struck by how young Brian (the Screaming Skull) Sarginson looks there, when we young pilots thougfht of him as really ancient then. He was the CO of 705 Squadron when I went through, so it was a bit of a shock to find the man of whom I'd been in awe as a stude being my first operational CO. At that Farnborough (I think) the Basingstoke Canal burst its banks and we had to go and move the helicopters to higher ground. We were also given a lot of trials motorbikes - much more fun than the 'Dead Sparrers' MGBs and quite a few were badly damaged as we young hooligans wearing Denison Smocks and flying helmets zoomed around the Church Crookham area. I seem to remember that we went over to where the Dead Sparrers had their aircraft parked, stuck lots of Fly Navy stickers all over them and revved up our trials bikes on the soggy grass, covering their flashy cars with mud. I'm trying to remember if that was also the year where, sadly the Breguet Atlantique crashed when flying on one engine and turning in towards the 'dead' engine.
That was also the year we embarked in HMS Bulwark and set off for the first Exercise Arctic Express operating near the Bardufos area in Northern Norway. The Wessex nose doors were modified soon after that as they didn't take kindly to operating in a damp, cold climate and suffered from engine icing, so we had to remember numerous limits of so many Ng for so long, then so many for so long when descending in cloud. It was also around that time we were doing quite a lot of close night formation flying trials with Beta lights fitted in the blade caps and down the top of the tail cone, so they could only be seen from above. ll nav lights were extinguished and just the red cockpit instrument lights left on radiating light in the visible spectrum. It was quite exciting, to say the least, trying to get a formation together as we used to take off from the Rusty 'B' 4 at a time and tried to link up for a 16 aircraft close night assault formation. I thik it was decided that it took so long, it was just as easy to fly the aircraft in 2 at a time in a loose, 'tactical' formation. Ah, long ago, happy days.
Well done John; lovely to see that old photo again. Sadly, after many years of living away from home, house moves, divorce and all the usual pilot disasters, most of my photos from those days are long gone. One day I must get around to scanning and digitising my few remaining ones. If you have any more, keep them coming.