While the lamp is still swinging
One Friday morning we were doing practice interceptions under the control of a Shackleton near Lundy Island when we got a message from 18 Group that a Russian submarine was being towed through the English Channel and they wanted photographs but couldn't locate it.
The Shackleton was retasked and repositioned to try and find it and the whole of 7 Sqn was tasked with getting photographs. We flew back to St Mawgan for lunch and refuel then launched to follow the others. Every aircraft we had was in the air, each equipped with any camera we could beg, borrow or steal and a pair of gyro stabilised binoculars. The sub was spotted and we all flew past taking our photos without compromising maritime distress signals by orbiting too many times.
On another occasion while having a few days in Gibraltar we were asked to stay on and shepherd 2 Hunters back to Brawdy, it was to be the end of the deployment for them. In the interim, four Russian Nanuchka fast patrol boats were transiting the straits and we were sent to find and photograph them. We launched seperately but met up with the Hunters and did a nice formation fly through the convoy. I got some good pictures of the Hunters up close and personal, I will have to see if I can find them.
For the transit to Brawdy there was a difference in our cruise speeds so the Hunters go airborne first and we chased them to Portugal, I flew at contrail level so they could see me and we joined and flew loose battle formation back to England using whichever Navigation equipment worked best for our location. We landed at Brawdy to drop off their luggage before returning to St Mawgan.
It seems that Gibraltar was different for me, on another occasion after a weekend on the rock we set off for home. As the Nav got a fix he asked me which way we were pointing and I read him the compass heading - which was as requested. After another 10 minutes he did another check and discovered that the compass was way out, I decided that we could not risk missing England on the way north using only the emergency compass. So we put out a Pan call, got no response, did it again and got an answer from a Hercules who relayed for me. Still no reponse so made a freecall warning all in the vicinity that I was turning south and descending to VFR below cloud. We didn't hit anything but when we did sight land it was Tunis airport in our 10 o'clock position, a quick left turn and a coastal crawl got us safely back to Gibraltar.
I spoke to the Sqn and they decided to send a shepherd aircraft out the next day, it arrived and was found to have a leaking nose oleo so a third aircraft was despatched with a spare oleo.
Now we had 3 aircraft I was in a TT18, there was a T4 and a T19.
The T19 didn't have tip tanks so was limited on fuel. There was low cloud at about 600 ft so we would leave as a 30 second stream with me sandwiched between the T19 in the lead and the T4 behind. I got airborne and had a noswheel red so kept the speed down and called the problem. The T19 said goodbye, he didn't have fuel to loiter, the T4 had overtaken me in cloud as I found out when we both burst into sunlight at 2000ft. We circled the rock while he checked if I was clean, which I was. We set off in trail of the T19 about 200 miles behind. Spanish air traffic would not accept that we were now 2 entities and insisted on giving clearances to the leader, we flew very carefully at intermediate levels throught he airways.
When we reached the UK the weather was poor with lots of cloud so the only way I could descend safely was in close formation with the T4. If I lost him I was in big trouble. We flew a pairs cloud penetration and he dropped me on short finals at St Mawgan, I was very grateful that the pilot in the T4 was one of the most experienced pilots on the Sqn. I didn't mention that I had never flown close formation in the Canberra before!!!
Now that reminds be about a trip to Cyprus...but maybe I'll save that for later.