Hi Dave, not sure how I landed here especially on a 2011 thread, but saw Dick's name and your own but it is probably buried by now.
I ended up staying for the whole of the War from 1970 to 1977, I think that I was the longest serving active service pilot in the end. There must be others on here that I was there with ie:- Old Duffer, as I was with John and Roger when they were shot down by the SAM 7. We were on a resupply run but were called away to provide top cover for the Strikies who were going Adoo bashing.
We flew at around 4,000ft AGL which was supposed to be out of missile range but they had just got the 7B which we did not know about. I saw John's 205 go up in smoke and flames and plummet down, and started down after him. This was when they fired the second missile but but the Company Commander down below saw it fired and had time to call out "Sam, Sam, Sam." Standard procedure was for any helicopter pilot that heard it to go into a vertical spiral at 6,000ft/min ROD, and fire off his decoy missiles. I broke the lock on it but it must have had a proximity fuse that detonated it and I lost part of my tail fin and rotor. I could not continue down to try and see if anybody survived, and had to limp back to base. Sadly it was one of Rogers first flights as he was still doing his conversion after leaving the RAF as a Wing Cdr.
Enough for now,
cheers
David Duncan