One year, the theme at Greenham IAT was the Hunter. As we had several at Farnborough, one was detailed to go there. A Wessex was to take ground locks and engine blanks etc and I scrounged a ride along with some of the Farnborough aircrew.
On arrival, we were parked on a pan with other helicopters and one of the Farnborough pilots explained what our 'cargo' was to one of the USAF ground handlers; his reaction was to call out 'hey Hank, y'wanna take this pile of **** over to the green Hunter.'
I wandered around the parked aircraft with a couple of Farnborough pilots and we came across an S3 with a message written on the nose in felt tip 'make this aircraft nice and pretty for the limeys'. One of my companions had a felt tip, and he wrote 'this aircraft will never look pretty'.
PS. He later became OC Flying at Boscombe Down.
Last edited by chevvron; 1st Nov 2014 at 07:39.