OK. So you’re finishing a 6-hour trog around the Shetlands for a JMC bore-ex in your contra-rotating air defender. Lossie is being Tacevaled. On the way back you call up approach to be told that an air raid is inbound. Do you:
a. Charge back at 180 kts to beat the Fencers (aka Jags), deliver the aircraft for a quick turn-around and hope you’ll make the sqn NBC shelter (part of the crewroom covered in black polythene) in time to spend the next 10 hours kipping on the floor.
b. Get back as best you can, put on your S6s at the far end of the runway like good boys and then spend 4 hours trying to shout a debrief to the ginger beers who have been in and out of NBC for the last 2 days and who are frankly ”not ‘appy sir”.
c. Hold off, wait for the raid to pass, the airfield to be declared clean then land and wait for the next raid.
d. Hold off – whilst declaring a PLE of about 6 hours, wait for the raid to pass, let a wave of holding-off Buccs land whilst you have lunch, hold off for another wave of Buccs to land, do a PD to Wick, sort out the remaining nosh in the galley, declare a PLE of 1 hour in time for the next raid then immediately divert to Kinloss which isn’t playing and is where the radar team have MQs, land, go out of hours and let all singlies then piss off to a surprisingly empty Thunderton.