MAXBURNER
It certainly was a beast, I was never lucky enough to fly in one but some of my mate's had jollies. Apparently it wouldn't go supersonic in level flight with a SUU-23 fitted, did you have to go into a shallow dive? I remember stude aircrew getting chopped, one day they are there, the next they're not. Mind you, some of them were bloody hopeless. There was one guy I remember who couldn't even taxi the thing. Then there was the hero who decided max mil was the way to get the beast rolling on the pan. I could go on but I don't know who's reading.........
GARETH
Bob Prest was the son of a Nigerian diplomat I believe, I read the book when it first came out. It is well written I must admit, but as a non operator, I couldn't vouch for the accuracy of it. More than anything I think it captures that period quite well. I don't know what official reaction to it was, don't forget I was a lowly erk and not privy to those sort of things! If you weren't in the RAF then you have to understand that it was very much an insular job, in that we didn't really know what the aircrew got up to, and I suspect they didn't know what we got up to. Not for any other reason than it's pretty intense being a fighter jock, it's also pretty intense fixing them, the Toom shed was nearly always a 24 hour operation, the radar guys in particular working very long hours. You were too knackered for any sort of interaction at the end of the day, although there were always plenty of beer calls where you could get to hear a few flying stories.
WEE JOCK
Talking about 104's, I was in Decci on Harriers when the 104's were there and there was a tale, whether apocryphal or not I don't know, of the Italian sentry (God those buggers were poorly paid, they used to hang around us for beers in the bar) who was bored early one morning guarding a flightline of 104's and took a swing on the pitot tube of one. Of course he bent it, and Italian logic being what it is, he decided that if he bent all of the other pitot probes then no one would notice.......