I was an AD OCU instructor having just walked into the crewroom from a 2v1 ACT sortie to get a coke from the fridge. Some guys were watching the gogglebox and said 'hey, come and see this!'. As I wandered over I could see that an airliner had hit the WTC. My immediate thought was 'I wonder if that is anything to do with FM immunity and an ILS approach' (if I recall correctly the FM immune ILS recievers were mandated by 1 Jan 01?). Anyway, as I was thinking about it, a second airliner flew into the other tower. 'I guess not', I thought!
Halfway through debriefing my student I was summoned from the debrief as the only crypto borrower and custodian on the OCU staff that day. As I went to collect the crypto the engineers were collecting Skyflash and Sidewinder from the bomb dump. So began 'UK Southern Q' again without a Q shed and we slept on the floor in the 5(AC) Sqn crewroom (what no PS2 or XBox!
)
Having moaned about the Death Star in the Falklands, the Hotel Svevo in Gioia and the air conditioned splendour of the new-builds in Al's Garage, little did I know what luxury they were compared to the next 13 years!
It certainly changed my life and also the direction my career took following that day.
LJ