Chickenlover,
Your post on the trip to Kuwait, to refuel Al H, reminds me of a trip I experienced a few weeks later, and concerns the smoke from the oil fires around Kuwait. By then, four crews, each allocated a GE, with a small line Det were operating from Bahrain. Had you wrapped up Victor by then ? Most of the Lyneham team had already returned and picked up their medals (Note 1). Daily resupply flights around various locations were the norm, but, for the crew I was awarded to as a punishment, there was a problem. Our Air Eng was the chap who was the Eng on the collision with the RN chopper in the Falkland Islands. He had a bit of a thing about poor vis and helicopters, and who could blame him.
Anyway, well after your escapade with AH, we were tasked to take an armour plated jag to Kuwait for a top nebby to visit. On the day there was a southerly wind and thankfully (or maybe not) the USAF had installed a tactical ILS at the airport. As we descended in to the black murk that was our approach path, our Air Eng ordered me into the cupola, with the order, shout out if you see any sign of a helicopter. I could see his point, but bugger all else from the cupola! being on headset, all the way down the approach I could hear those "vibrating" call signs that just shout "rotary traffic". We landed OK and on shutdown I was left to clean the windscreens, my first attempt using some water sed I fuel (the windscreens were covered in oil). A 2 hour wait to offload due to movers equipment breakdown allowed us to borrow a land rover to drive a few miles up the "highway of death" made us all consider what an easy war we had had. Anyway, having been rained on, one of my yellow GE T shirts now remains as a permanent reminder of that visit. Despite attempts by Mrs Smudge, she was never able to remove the black spots from it, and it now resides in a draw I keep for treasured memories (unfortunately I failed to place my nav bag there
).
As an aside, we followed that trip with an evening trip to his Jag for the VIP, Lord Wakeham, who I had the pleasure of meeting and talking to during the flight to Kuwait. He particularly appreciated his tour of the burning oil wells, although the skipper decided he should not be on headset at the same time as N***y B*b our Air Eng
Cleaning the windscreens Bahrain February 91. XV297, Note Garfield doesn't have any wording yet. His finger may be indicating the similarity between my head and his beachball
Note 1. On my Return to Lyneham sometime in March I was told to report to a young lady Flt Lt in handbrake house, who proceeded to bend my ear about failing to collect my awards, sign here and threw a small brown folded envelope over her table to me. I did my best to be grateful, duly touched forelock (found to be missing) and departed. That medal still lies in its bent brown envelope, accepted in the spirit it was awarded.
Smudge
