Upgently,
Once again you dangle the beauty of the Light Stone/Dark Earth finish, was Albert ever smarter ? Thanks for the gen on the LOX pot in Rhodesia. I offer this photograph, and a small story of "small arms" fire from my own experience.
The photograph(s) were taken on a trip during the Sarajevo Airlift, and feature a French Foreign Legion chap having a nose around, and a shot prior to take off outbound, from my station in the RH para door.
We approached Sarajevo, as normal, at a decent altitude, with the intention to do a Khe San approach to land. At the time, because of small arms fire, the approach was from one direction only, take off went out directly the way you came in. As the Captain pulled the power levers back and pushed the nose down, there was a flash from the ground. To this day I'm convinced I watched "something" go past about 15 feet away from the para door, followed by a clearly audible explosion and metallic rain hitting topside. We landed, in the process discharging several flare and chaff rounds, which set fire to the grass in the undershoot, and taxied in. In those days the RAF crews were the only ones to shut down for offloading, and, as the GE, I was required to do an external inspection whilst the offload was under way. The Captain prevented a topside check as it was known that snipers were active from directly across the runway. Having done as good a check as I could, and seeing no visible damage, I did note a large ring of red smoke, high above the approach end of the runway. I took the snap of the Foreign Legionnaire as we waited to restart and depart. He certainly looked a friendly chap. I think we all realised that on the way in someone had had a pot at us, and we now had to fly over them again, in the climb out. Sixpence/Halfcrown was the order of the day until we reached around 15K.
We were later told that we had been quite lucky. Someone had analysed what happened and decided that whoever took the shot was using a wire guided, anti tank weapon, As he launched, our Captain entered the Khe San approach, what prevented the hit was he could not make the missile track down as fast as Albert was descending. That's the story I got at the time, the truth of the matter always lay above my pay grade. I do know that the airlift was stopped for a week as a direct result and we took the first load in on the day it resumed.
I just read someone suggest "pull up a sandbag" is OK, thought I would relate one of my own experiences, as a non aircrew team member and hope it meets the criteria. Perhaps, relating the fact that Albert, and its crews, have certainly been in harms way, throughout its service in the RAF is an appropriate tribute to the Crews, and the aircraft. Keep posting the pictures Gentlemen, for those of us old enough, that paint scheme really does bring on some very, happy memories.
Smudge
