Chickenlover,
some interesting pics on that link. I have two pics of the crash site of XV 180 at Fairford. These were sent to me anonymously without any explanation. I do not think they have ever been seen before.
Going back to GW1, when it was brewing up I attended a conference at group.
One of the subjects discussed was the infil/exfil of troops etc when the a/c was not in the correct pax fit. Someone wanted to insist the we re-role the a/c to normal pax fits to comply with the extant rules. This, in the engine running offload/onloads on the strips we were to use was lunatic. I proposed we adopt the well tried USAF Vietnam method of just sitting them on the floor. After the usual argy bargy this was agreed provided they sat on their kit ! Have you ever tried sitting on a Bergen ? I told my ALMs to just do what seems sensible at the time.
The other subject was casevac. None of those at the meeting had ever seen a Herc with full casevac fit. If they had they would have had a fit. Everything was planned from diagrams. The problem was that due to extra kit in the 'hog's trough' and the 'silencer on the heating fan you could not fit the a/c out as per the diagrams.
I did one of the first casevac trials when we got the 'K' and the UK stretcher handles were too thick to fit into the locking devices on the stretcher straps.
They were all supposed to be modified. I was concerned that if we used war stocks we may end up with unmodded ones. This was a surprise to them.
They also wanted to casevac the casualties straight home on the Herc.
In the end sense prevailed and it was agreed the Herc would take them to Akro and the VC10/Tristar would take them home in rather more comfort.
Why is it we always have to fight a war on two fronts to get the job done, the enemy within and the enemy without ?