It occurs to me that some of the readership may be puzzled as to why we went to Andros. Modern weapons tend to travel so far that there are not adequate test ranges in the UK so we are forced to turn to the US and use their test ranges. However these ranges are very busy so it usually means booking years in advance. Most of this test range time is for the RN to test torpedoes. Sometimes we would fly torpedoes from Seattle to Florida which is a long way in a Herc.
The usual detachment, for two weeks, was to one of the Mil airfields in Florida from which the boffins would be flown out to Andros as and when they desired.
As the accommodation was in hotels on rates it was viewed by the 'K' crews as a VERY good trip.
During the hectic GW1 buildup one of these bookings of the test range was scheduled. If the RN cancelled it they would have to go to the back of a long queue so it was due to go ahead as normal.
On 30 I had two loadmasters I could not use on Granby tasks as they had chits excusing them from wearing aircrew NBC kit (no I am not going there ).
One time after landing from another very long Granby day I went to our squadron ops to check on things as I always did.
On the board the Andros det had appeared and the duty Flt Cdr had put one of the non Granby chaps on the trip. Made sense you may think but not to teddy throwing me. The morale of the troops would not be improved when they saw this. So I went and 'spoke' to the Flt Cdr. The result was that the non Granby chap came off the trip. I phoned round the loadmasters who I knew were back in the UK and the first one who answered the phone got the trip.
I made sure that there would be no repeat of this nonsense by getting my unuseables detached to Cyprus to reinforce the AT Ops Det. This was the closest to the'action' I was allowed to send them.