I recall the 1979 IAT (no R then I think) which was indeed the 25th Anniversary of the Herc. Although a display pilot, I was "staticking" only for that one - which meant no flying from Friday to Monday ...
Hercs from 25 different Air Forces, including Israel - who brought one of their Entebbe aircraft (complete with BDR!); RNZAF who won the
Concour d'Elegance (unsurprisingly - I've never seen polished brake pipes before or since) and a Middle Eastern country (Iran? Iraq?) whose crew and many families/hangers on/groupies - departed for London in a fleet of hire cars on Friday to return on Monday....
And then there was the midnight swimming in Hungerford with Harriet the barmaid (aka Mad Hattie) from the hotel we were in. Never did work out whether it was in the River (Kennet? Dun?) or the Canal (Kennet & Avon?) - but it was just behind the hotel .....
Happy days on the display circuit ......