With regard to my previous post about "fighter affil" I should explain the GPMG. Suffice to say that a month or so before the bombing phase of GW1, a 47SF team was busy trying to get air troop re qualified for HALO ops. Having been deployed for the month, and SF being SF, any spare time was eagerly filled in with " other stuff". We worked out of Abu Dhabi, and our "skipper" had managed to make contact with an RAF Sqd Ldr on exchange with the local militia. Now, from memory, we had several fighter affil sessions with the said Sqd Ldr, and he bested us every time, to the extent he posted a gunsight photograph of me in the RH para door, under my hotel room door one morning ( when I find it I will post it). My memory suggests he was flying a Macchi 399, but I wouldn't bet on it, he beat us every time, and that annoyed our skipper. So, we put a GPMG on the ramp, properly secured, and not loaded. And headed off on yet another fighter affil, this time our exchange Sqdn Ldr was flying a Hawk. For 20 minutes or so, it took its usual course of Fox this and Fox that, lots of G and unusual attitudes (not least among the crew) and eventually he decided to go for the 6 o clock (up your chuff) shot. As the bank went on, we knew where he was, my fellow GE in the LH door gave a running commentary, his proximity to the Ramp controls made the whole thing quite efficient. At around 200 yards behind us, our ramp lowered and pointing straight in his face was a GPMP, with our Loadmaster "ready for action" (his first time on the detachment)
now, our attacker told us in the party room later that he pulled around 7G to avoid the "threat", but our skipper had called "Fox something" ? Before he made his break. I rather suspect that had it been a real fighter, with real missiles that the joke would have been on us. It was a great experience though. Now, there's a sad end to this tale. The Sqd Ldr exchange pilot became a regular member of our party room during the month long detachment, and sadly received a call informing him that his father was in terminal decline. As we were departing the next day, we actually offered him the quickest return to UK, with a VC10 hook up at Akrotiri, and took pride in delivering him on time. The man, despite his putting me in his sight, remains a hero to me to this day.
On the subject of "fighter affil", I rather suspect that one on one was good sport for our pilots, I also rather expect that most would also accept that a two fighter on one Albert was curtains. Our usual tactic was something like 50 flap and max turn rate, wait till the fighter ran out of fuel. With two of the buggers, one could sit upstairs and drop a sidewinder on you, with no probs. I could well be wrong, I was only an AGE after all. Apologies for the long post.
Smudge
