Originally Posted by
4Greens
That guy had it easy. In the Vixen days there was no inflight refuelling and you couldn't land on with much fuel in the tropics as the wires couldn't take the weight.[
As an ex rotary wing pilot I hesitate to challenge the above but in 65/66 I know we had some Scimitar tankers on Ark Royal and they refuelled the Vixens. If memory serves me correctly, on 10 May 1966 when I and my crew picked up pilot Allan Tarver out of the sea off Beira when he ejected from his Vixen, sadly with the loss of his Observer John Stutchbury, to try and get the Vixen back to the ship there had been an unsuccessful attempt to refuel it from a Scimitar tanker to stem the fuel loss following the loss of one engine and damage to fuel systems of the other. Allan Tarver was awarded the George Medal for his efforts to save his Observer when his ejection seat malfunctioned after the aircraft ran out of fuel.
Edit: just found the citation in the London Gazette :
http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/44096/pages/9491