I remember being subject to a minival recall one night during the 1980s. I had been to a function and had a couple of pints of beer inside me. I was ordered to fly a sortie - I was not even fit to drive and so I refused and was given a big b*ll*cking by my flight commander about Squadron loyalty!
Why did I make the decision? The only time that I flew with fresh beer inside me was during my first few months on the squadron - it was on a transit in a Shackleton from Benbecula to Lossie. We had delivered some rifles to Benbecula but with unforecast ice on the runway we had delayed landing and we needed a slurp of fuel to get back to Lossie. The Captain decreed that we would return minimum crew with the scopies as passengers - we could have a beer with lunch in the mess before the straight transit home. Needless to say, we lost an engine on the take-off run and had to make a fairly heavy landing on a rapidly icing runway. I wonder what the BOI would have made of it had we not had a successful landing, and I also wonder what the squadron's take on loyalty would have been.
