No way did 6 reduce to cadre status in 1969 - we suffered the great hardship of a trip to Cyprus whilst converting to the new Phantom as No 1 Course and took back with us to Coningsby the two Royal standards and all the silver. For the remainder of our conversion to the jet we were in every sense No 6 Squadron and proud to be so. In every way we were a squadron although, sadly, we had no groundcrew because some idiot in head shed thought that centralised servicing was the way to go - took a while to prove that he was wrong.