RAF Gan 1958 and later
I joined 205 Squadron at Changi in August 1958. The Sunderlands at Seletar were being phased out but were still landing in the lagoon at Gan. Aircraft going to the Far East were transiting through RAF Katanayaka, north of Colombo.
In August 1959 there was an "incursion" on Gan from the North Maldivians and things got a bit heated. I went with my boss to Katanayaka. When we arrived there we were told that there was reported a Russian cruiser in Male. We were sent to check, low level, but when we got there the harbour was empty. We carried on and landed at Gan. At that time it was not really open and the HQ and control was an atap hut. We stopped for lunch but the food was awful. We decided that we would bring fresh food in our Shack from Ceylon.
Now started Operation Gay, not what it means nowadays!
This consisted of carrying out a reconnaissance of all the islands every other day from Male down to Gan reporting any signs of military activity and strange ships, landing at Gan and returning direct to Katanayaka. A nice gesture was when we landed at Kat we were met by a pretty Ceylonese girl with a tray of tea! Rack trip to Gan we would take fresh eggs, vegetables etc, and this continued when we eventually moved in and brought food from Singapore.
We carried out these patrols with one aircraft until Gan was opened for business and we kept two Shackletons for S and R at the end ofNovember1959 for two weeks at a time, the relieved Shack waiting until the relief was airborne from Changi.. we still carried out our reconnaissance up the islands, but in the end it died the death. When we moved in to Gan we were given the air conditioned transport command rooms, but we all decided that going in and out of the different temperatures was a bind so we opted for non air conditioned ones. One of the medical officers wanted to specialise in tropical medicine. Elephantiasis was endemic on the islands and he would go over to Hittadu in the evenings as that is when the insects were active. I did take the Sqn leader Admin up to Katanaike one night as he had to have an operation for appendicitis. Poor chap had to climb up the ladder as we couldn't turn a stretcher in the fuselage. He recovered! There was a visit of RAF Javelins, and we positioned off Karachi to escort them to Gan and next day over the Bay of Bengal en route to Singapore. One Shack went on a Jolly to Mauritius, so when I was there we did a lot of flying. My crew did SAR over Christmas 1959. The chieftain gave the OM a turtle as a gift but nobody had the heart to kill it so we returned it to the lagoon at midnight. When I was there our biggest worry was that if a SAA or Qantas a/c went in half way from Perth to Mauritius we would only have two hours on task. The Queen Mum diverted to Gan, not when I was there, saw a Shackleton and said "that is one of ours" but was dissuaded from using it to get home. With only eight aircraft and two at Gan, one on SAR at Changi, we never had a full complement at Changi. Gan did eventually have more facilities, but we left them in the lurch, and I hope they succeed with a Resort.