PAXboy
Been away on leave so just picked up your comment and had a look back to see if I could find photo - no success yet but did find old work diary(Filofax !) and aircraft were from Emery arranged through Kuhn & Nagel. My A/C Captain was called Jacobs or Jacobsen (its faded a bit so difficult to read) and he was ex USAF, and flew B52,s during Linebacker 2 operation over the then North Vietnam. From memory I think he said his A/C was called the "Mekong Express" and he was quite descriptive in his tales of attacking the North, describing the "Sam Song" they would hear when being tracked by guided weapons. It was interesting to compare with my own Fathers tales from his (very) limited experience over Germany in 1943, as though technology had changed, the human being had not, so tales of burning cities and A/C were in some ways not dissimilar, nor the terror of carrying out these raids for the aircrew involved.
As for the DC8 I flew in, I can only say they both had a few miles on the clock and were a little care worn but both behaved themselves, and indeed crossed the pond together a few miles a beam of one another, and were behind each other on approach.
One interesting thing was pointed out to me on the controls on approach in that the ground spoiler leaver is armed in flight, and above the leaver there is a sign saying "Not to be deployed in flight". My Captain said this sign came about from some accidental deployments in flight (with resultant crashes) as you have to pass the leaver pass the deploy position to arm them. He said they may well have put a sign saying "Do not crash this A/C", as it was the design of the system which caused this, not pilot error in his opinion. Other than that he quite liked them, though he was looking forward to flying some newer metal.
Regards
Mr Mac
Last edited by Mr Mac; 21st Feb 2016 at 17:11.