At Kinloss in 1970 I was banned from speaking to visiting VIPs for expressing my opinion that instead of the Nimrod, we could have had twice as many purpose built Atlantiques to replace the Shack.
I tend to agree that the Nimrod was a leap of faith but at the end of the day the Atlantique was an Air Plan 4, Sectors 1 and 2 machine and even the Atl 2 was well behind the MR2 in capability. However I always felt that the P3 would have been a better option that the Nimrod.
In 1997 I was banned by the then Stn Cdr from speaking to anybody about expressing my views about Nimrod 2000 ("This project will end in tears") and I was not the only one.
Cannot help but agree with that, but we were a bit short of options that represented value for money. Buying into the P3 (P7) at that stage was probably not a good move and the P8 was still uncertain and too far away.
Whilst we castigate Cameron and Fox for finally wielding the axe I believe that, in the interests of fairness
, one should give Gordon Brown full credit for his part in the debacle. The reduction of the order from 16 to 9 airframes sounded the death knell. From any standpoint, the cost of supporting such a small, unique fleet was unsustainable. The unpalatable decision was moved to the right, wouldn't have been good to cancel before an election, and the incoming government was left with an impossible situation when committed to continue with the job creation project represented by the two carriers.
To be devoid of a maritime air capability is almost suicidally dangerous. Let's hope that this message gets across.
YS