lsh, Indeed, a good weekend, sorry to have left you behind that time!
However, on my return to base I was called to explain to the Staish why my Puma, not on SAR standby, appeared on the 9 o'clock news, apparently in that capacity. I was asked what on earth I thought I was doing...... Words failed me, really.
A good story came afterwards. A certain ex-RAF female air trafficker, now with the AAC, trying to be friendly, naively asked a pilot in a blue flying suit at her hotel, if he'd had a good day. After drawing hard on his cigarette, he forced a smile through thin lips and said slowly, in a heavy Russian accent: "Not Ecksackly.....!"
He was now without his Mig!
There was a great set of pics, taken with a motor drive, of the vertically falling and nose-less Mig, just before it took the tailplane off a Belgian C-130. In one of the pics, there were three aircrew standing on the fuselage, below the fireball. In the next pic there were only two, then one, then none, as they all jumped off! One of them, a female crewmember, was later rescued as she was hanging off the HF aerial cable on the side of the Herc!
I spoke to a shaken RAF engineering officer as we surveyed the debris in the aircraft park. He told me what a narrow escape he'd just had. Watching the crash from below, he'd been chased along the concrete by the complete canopy of the first Mig. He jumped high in the air just before it hit him. It shot underneath him and embedded itself up the jetpipe of a Patrouille de France Alpha jet (Vive la France!).