WH779 13 Sqn
I first flew 779 6th Jan 1960 when it came out of the hangar after a Minor Service on arrival at Akrotiri. First two flights were 20 minute airtests for, from very rusty memory, trim in the event of stab runaway. It obviouly failed the first one.
It was one of our four aircraft so flew it regularly until 18th Nov 1960 when I took it to Cambridge via Luqa. Left it with Marshalls for night photo mods.
Picked it up again 27 Mar 1961 and returned to Akrotiri.
We never flew with tip tanks as the loss of climb performance and added drag for 6 hours would offset the extra fuel. The added weight would have made hot and high takeoffs even more interesting than they already were.
Some of the figures on your website are in error.
MTOW 55,000lbs
Max IAS 450ktsto 15000ft
.79M 15000- 25000ft
About .84M limited by by nose up trim change, aileron snatching and loss of control.
At low level it would easily exceed 450kts
Range was about 2400nms, we would do Nairobi-Akrotiri in just over 6hours at M.72 at 50,000ft.