Wonder if the Mighty Hunter could have done the same as we did at Suez time ie. carrying 33 passengers and a reduced crew of 6, The only way to get down the back for a pee was to walk on slumbering bodies!
6 hours UK to Malta, refuel, 6 hrs to Nicosia no refuel (to save the Islands fuel resources), 12 hours off then take the next available aircraft back to the UK, 12 hours off then the same again. I was on 120 then and we were changing from Mk1s the Mk2s so took the next aircraft Mk1 or Mk2, by the end of the airlift out and back aircraft were all in the wrong places and as I remember it took until mid-January for each Squadron to get it's own aircraft back.
For "The Old Fat One" we used to do "fighter affil" as we still had the top turret---a corkscrew in a Shack was an arm wrenching experience and as for nearly drowning we had a siggie drown in Loch Neagh. There was a forward escape hatch in the nose floor and people had a habit of jumping down into the nose compartment onto the hatch, unfortunely one day it gave way and the said siggie dropped into the Loch. The captain was sitting up front in the nose cinema seat and had to stay there 'cos there was this bloody great space between him and the cockpit. After that a wooden cover was fitted to the escape hatch to prevent similar happenings.
John Elias was at Kinloss when I went through what was then the Shack OCU (I did the MRS at St.Mawgan on Lancasters) and when I went back to Kinloss as a QFI many years later he was still there. He used to drink a horrible red bitter concoction called as I remember Cinzano.
Happy days----------retires hurt.