25 years ago...mmm. That would have been about 7 or 8 years or so after the RN binned the Sea Prince in favour of the Jetstream for Observer training in '79, which they got on the cheap from the crabs* and in which the crew flew in shirtsleeves. The back of the Sea Prince on the other hand was a dead ringer for the black hole occupied by the Observer in the ASW Wx I,III, and SK. ISTR there was another stupidly expensive study about that time trying to establish why, of the 7000 observers interviewed, only 22 had wanted to be Observers when they applied.
As an aside, I still haven't worked out the value to RN Observers of low level over land nav in their curriculum, and also continental landaways involving a stupidly high instructor/student ratio
*that's another story involving the venerable Pig (Varsity), RAF Oakington, the mid 70's defence cuts and of course BEagle will remember that debacle fondly!