Hi Davran
You are correct in that the meeting in May suffered in attendence. The first problem was that we sent an open invitation to as many former air force pilots as possible to try to increase the attendance, which included some serving officers, and the knowledge reached higher levels and it was made know to those planning to attend that their visit to the UK wouldn't been seen through favourable eyes, and their UK embassy (which with the current ambassador having a very aggressive policy regarding the islands) starting to ask for lists of attendees for a meeting which was meant to be "private". Needless to say, cold feet all round.
As far as the GADA 601 chap, he didn't arrive in the UK on the saturday as planned, and we only got an email from him saying he wasn't coming on the Sunday. It turned out that he'd gone to Argentina to attend to a sick relative and sort out a residential home for her. Quite why he didn't tell either myself or the Argentine historian who was organising them is beyond me. As the GADA 601 chap was the instigator of this "meeting", it was somewhat unfortunate. He does travel to Europe once a year, and if you guys do want to meet him, I suggest contacting him through his PPrune username and sorting something out directly with him. He's a really nice chap and has reasonable English.
So, from having a good range of people coming over, we ended up with just a couple, which was a real shame.
However, one of those that turned up, who was head of maintenance of the Dagger squadron at one of the mainland bases, confirmed that they had prior warning of the Vulcan attack on the 1st May, and indeed had flown their daggers away from the base that night. They did not know the destination of the mission to be flown. How did they know this - for me there is only one credible answer, and the same one that provided satellite intel on the movements of the fleet that enable planning of the exocet raids.
Recently we have had more success with connecting veterans. a few weeks ago meeting took place in Buenos Aires between a COAN naval pilot who discovered the landing fleet on the 21st May and the Lynx pilot who he nearly shot down before he saw the ships and went for them instead. That meeting would not have been possible without this forum, through which I tracked down the Lynx chap. Thanks Pprune.
Cheers
Andy