I remember those Cargo B737's vividly as on night of the hurricane in Oct 87 was it I was on my third consecutive night flight out of EMA and was due to take this -9 Cargo to Malaga.
We did not have computerised flight plan in those days.As Captain I looked at the charts and had an inspired guess that the headwind all the way to AGP was around 80/100kts!!
Because of this there was no way I could make it without stopping and refuelling somewhere. Chose Gatwick as engineers there to do refuelling etc. There was horrible turbulence thanks to the hangars on left side on approach and a huge crosswind but nothing like what happened later on in the night.
Then to compound matters engineers put on 800kgs too much fuel and we were overweight for take off!!
Whilst trying to see if we could de fuel pressure dropped like a stone and temperature rose by a huge amount so only option was to take off the bars and catering which took time to arrange. All of this was eating up time and eventually we got airborne and the first 10000 ft were horrendous.
On the way back to EMA I listened to the actual at Gatwick and the wind was around 90kts.
My summer house in garden in E Sussex ended up in field next door.
That is my memory of NA and NB