I recall an occasion when we were heading for Macrihanish in the TriStar for a routine exercise when we were retasked by TANSOPS and given a Lat/Long for rendezvous with a couple of Phantoms. My skipper at the time was Bob (Bumps) Rowley, sadly no longer with us, who was an ex Phantom jockey and he immediately understood the situation... it was to be a 'Bear' intercept. He was determined to get there before the interceptors and he therefore asked for 'Max Continuous' to be set on our RB211s. Just prior to our breaking through the top cloud cover we could see two sets of contrails above us and set heading to give chase. As we broke cloud cover, there in front of us were two Bears at a range of about four miles. Bob eased our TriStar quite close in to the first aircrafts starboard echelon, whilst also giving us a running commentary about where not to go, because he described one occasion whereby the crew of the Bear dumped their trash overboard and almost 'took out' his Phantom. This occasion was quite friendly, possibly because the Bear had never been intercepted by such a large aeroplane before, but you could see the Russian crew taking 'photo's of us. The guy in the rear observation 'blister' took his pants down and gave us a 'moonie'! Bob eased the TriStar beneath the Bear to cross over to it's Port side and I can tell you that the noise from those big propellers was astonishing; not unlike someone showering us with pebbles!
What a huge disappointment it was to not have a camera with us for we would otherwise have had some great footage. The Phantom pair arrived on the scene some five minutes later and we broke off to give them a top-up of gas.
Great memories, which must have been around 1984 ish.
The TriStar remains, in my humble oppinion, the best wide bodied jet ever produced, which I went on to fly with in BA and Caledonian Airways.
Rest In Peace Bob; thanks for the memory.
TCF