Some pages ago, AQAfive expressed that his fear was that:
the only people to be hosted will be the twin wing master race, as that's the only trade recognised by management, all the others having been made redundant. They will then be swayed by flashy flight deck displays and video, with the performance of the sensors left to chance.
The Japanese were scrupulous in not saying who they' d flown in the aircraft in their press conference later that day, despite being asked directly, and did a good job in not confirming whether RAF officers had been flown at all.
However, it is my understanding that a number of RAF personnel, including at least three Air Rank chaps who wear two-winged brevets, let's call them Gary, Jeff and 'Windy', were flown on the P-1 on Friday morning, on a reasonable length sortie from Fairford which went and did various things over the Castlemartin ranges (and quite probably elsewhere). We don't know who else was flown, nor do we know who was flown on the P-1 earlier this year in Japan - only that an RAF 'evaluation' of sorts was made in Japan about four months ago, where a very senior RAF officer was again among those flown.
KPax asked about crew composition. One of the TACCOs told me that the P-1 normally flies with an 11-man crew. Two pilots, a flight engineer, two TACCOs, four mission crew (the mix of acoustic/non-acoustic varying according to the mission) and two in-flight technicians/ordnancemen.
Looking at the aircraft in the flesh, I was struck (as I had been when seeing photos) by the sheer ugliness of the design, but also by the way in which it had clearly been optimised for the role from the ground up - with the big flight deck windows, the bubble observation windows, the wing, the four engines, and the MAD boom, and it certainly seems agile in flight. More interestingly, its crew all seemed to be really experienced operators of the P-3C, and were able to convincingly talk about the many ways in which both the aircraft and its sensors and systems marked a major improvement over the older type.