It makes you wonder how much a young pilot, graduating twenty or thirty years ago, would have paid to AVOID the co pilot's seat of a Shack!
40 years ago I fought to get on it (even with a posting to Vulcans). A true 'I learnt about flying' experience in every way and almost every day, and (initially) almost all at low level. Noisy - yes, 4 (most of the time) Griffons at ear level; hard work - yes, all manual and quite heavy controls (it was said you could tell a Shack pilot by his hairy wrists!); weapons - bombs (28 -1000lb 'ers), torpedoes, guns (20mm Hispanos), depth charges (a stick of six going off was a sight to behold) and if things got really bad there was even a bucket of sunshine (the only thing I DIDN'T drop!). But most of all the crew camaraderie. particularly in the maritime world, and I mean both air and ground crew in that.
I've flown a lot of aircraft and a lot of hours since then, both fixed wing and rotary, but the sense of satisfaction at the end of a Shack sortie has rarely been beaten