OV6,
For what it's worth, I heard that the original of that story concerned Harry East and it was in the Gulf when Harry was on the Argosy.
For those who don't know, Harry died in Thailand about 4 years ago. Apparently, he retired there.
To get back to Pete Tyas......in all the talk of his practical jokes, it is sometimes forgotten that he was an excellent Loadie (I'm sure AA62 will confirm that).
I flew with him many times and was with him on the Volant Rodeo crew of 1982. The other Loadie was 'Dutch' H......d. I was an instructor at STS at the time and the Nav was another STS instructor, B...t H........K.
During the work-up Pete asked if there was anything extra he could do. B..t gave him a quick course on the Doppler so that, during the low-level flying, Pete sat in the Nav's seat allowing B..t to spend more time standing behind the Capt map reading.
During the competition the American umpires were amazed and it soon went around that the Brit ALMs were qualified in the Nav seat. We did nothing to dispel the rumour.
We came second overall that year.
As I look back on my time on Albert, I can't help remembering really good guys who fell by the wayside because of alcohol. We had a culture which almost encouraged excessive consumption. I don't know what it's like now (I've been out since '88) but I hope that common sense has prevailed.
Maybe Pete, and others like him, would still be around if the help had been there.