Hello Jerry - I'm afraid I don't know you, nor to my knowledge have we ever met, so I'm afraid I can't make any assessments as to your character or aviation abilities.
Of course, you are entitled to your opinion about me, regardless of your lack of knowledge. When one puts one's head above the media parapet, you expect to take a few pot shots!
You are correct to say that JP and I never got around to releasing any ordinance - not a huge new story as I wrote about it 17 years ago - and as I have said on countless occasions, my feeling is that it was probably my fault. But as you say, many of us make mistakes so I'm not too sure that it truly merits abuse like: "the switch pigs f**k up monkey. Sue me if you dare you three chimps" . A curious turn of phrase to say the least!
You criticise me for speaking in public about my experiences, yet you have made some 170 posts on this public outlet, many about your own personal experiences, and some abusive about people I suspect you have little real knowledge of. Your profile suggests you enjoy "Keeping up to date with the RAF" and "enjoying your retirement" - you seem to have a most curious way of doing both.
You are at pains to condemn me for writing about my experiences - well, again you are entitled to your opinions, however wide of the mark. I have now written 11 books, subjects ranging from WW2 to the present day operations, and as there are around 1,000,000 copies around, some might disagree with you.
Finally - "I and a lot of others thought that what you did by overtly publicising and profiting from your experiences was not on and it was not appropriate". That is an interesting point - you are totally correct, I did profit from writing a book about my experiences and also the next 10. I have also been paid for the journalistic and commentary work I do. Without blowing smoke up my own jacksie, I think I've worked fairly hard to achieve my limited success outside the RAF - in much the same way that many others have done, using the experiences and skills they learned in the military.
I guess we will never agree, and that's truly fine as far as I'm concerned - I will however thank you for coming out from behind the dubious cloak of pprune anonymity which many other people use for their cowardly attacks.
best wishes to you and yours,
John Nichol