That last lot of pictures bring back some interesting memories, I remember all those things going on, the hangar flood was particularly exciting! The reason I was involved in the heater inspection, was due to my ability to fit between the shelves in the Avionics compartment - something that would be very unlikely nowadays!
The Dan Air 748 is a rather interesting story. I had been playing squash with Victor Smith after work, and was walking home to Tolob in the dark -no car in those days. With the usual stealthy Sumburgh technique, I took the shortcut across the grass and over the end of the runway. The traffic lights started flashing and the barriers came down as I was still on the grass, so I decided to keep going toward the end of the runway as I walked across it. I could see the aircraft on finals so I sped up a little to make sure I was across the runway before any lights would be shining on me. With the aircraft on the ground and coming toward me, I was now on the road at the end of the runway.
The machine was still coming pretty fast down the runway when they decided to put her in the grass because she wasn't slowing down on that icy runway. The nose gear collapsed, there wasn't really much noise from the props hitting the deck and then it all went very quiet and very dark - it was all very abrupt and sudden. I really didn't know what to do (I mean what can you do?) as all this was going on about less than 100 yards from me. I was quite shocked (as you can probably imagine) and I thought about running to see if I could help, but thought better about it because I might get run over by the fire crew, as the last thing they would be expecting was some kid carrying his squash gear to be standing on the runway.
It seemed like ages for the fire engines to show up, I wonder today how long it actually was, no-one made any attempt to get out of the aircraft. I decided to watch from a further distance so I wouldn't get into any trouble for being on the runway. I called the tower the next day to see if they were interested in what I had observed, and they weren't - it was all rather a non event. No-one injured, the aircraft a bit bent and some real work for the firemen.
Still, it kept Jack Inkster busy at his new job for a couple of weeks!