Does anyone else remember the year that Fairford were celebrating a Hercules anniversary and were trying to get that number of aircraft on static. As I recall, they found that they were going to be several short so the duty working crew spent a couple of days ferrying frames over to be part of the static......only for a last minute push (Mogadishu?) to arise whereupon we had to retrieve said airframes!!
If it was Mogadishu, I remember being crew 2 or 3 - paxing with 100 odd other crew members as far as Dar ex Salaam and picking up the first airframe as it came out of Mogadishu to return it to Cyprus......only thing was by then the Americans had offered a C5 which took the entire slip pattern of freight in one!!!
I think one crew who ate out in Dar Es Salaam ended up in Wroughton on their return...
I'm sure someone can add more detail!!!M