Thanks Beagle. the beauty of prune is there's always some b*gg*r around who can say 'No not quite like that'. I'll put it down to fading brain cells and anno domini. Do you remember the 54 Sqn aerobatic team from Odiham - Nov 3rd, 1955. I was flying a Meteor 8 back up to Leconfield on the PAI course.
There I was minding my own business, when I heard Dewdrop One and Two calling Mayday, no fuel, engine gone, pulling up, bailing out - just like that - dead nonchalant, hotly followed by Three. Four(Kurt Curtis) just made it into Tangers. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse I heard the photographic Meteor NF14 followed by a photographic Vamp T11(Pat Swaffer I believe) - doing the same thing!! They'd got caugt out by weather at Odiham after a photo session.
I carried on shakily to Lec and had to write out a 5ft report on what I'd heard. 5 aircraft gone in about 10 mins, 7 guys bailed out and no one hurt - ground or air. God we used to lose aeroplanes in those days, and it rarely featured more than a couple of paragraphs in the press. Back to the armchair!