Stumbled on this thread and had forgotten my contribution of almost a year ago. The free take off from Hermes at anchorage in Langkawi (Jan 1969) was in fact not the COD but an AEW3 from 849B flight - I came across the b/w piccie in a montage of Hermes 68-69 commission- I'll have a go at uploading my piccie - haven't tried that on PPrune for a looooong time