Hunter Detachments (8/208) to Masirah and the mention of oxygen has got my memory going.
I have often wondered if our young trained killers ever gave any thought as to where their oxygen came from?
The answer is that it came from a Mobile LOX (Liquid Oxygen) Plant which was magically transported from Bahrain in an Argosy.
The Royal Air Force was in love with liquid oxygen in those days (allegedly because it saved weight). The problem was that LOX could be pretty evil stuff unless very carefully managed. No doubt many of you have heard the horror stories of dipping a lump hammer or a banana into a beaker of LOX and then watching it shatter when tapped on a work bench? Can you just imagine what would happen to the floor of your aircraft if a mobile LOX plant were to start leaking in flight? I can well remember visiting the Gas Plant at Muharraq and having a quick course about what could possibly go wrong by a very erudite Flt Sgt.
So what we did was to mount the Mobile LOX Plant on top of an MSP (Medium Stressed Platform) which was the normal way of delivering Land Rovers and trailers etc by parachute.
This worked by having a large extractor parachute on the upper clam shell door which, when activated, would then yank the MSP out of the back of the aircraft and hopefully, after a decent interval, half a dozen other chutes would open to lower what was left of it down to the ground.
Now we did have a vent valve connection on the port side of the fuselage to atmosphere but we carried a chap from the Gas Plant with us and if he decided that things were getting out of control, then the whole lot went out the back regardless of where we were within seconds.
I never welcomed carrying Mobile LOX Plants but I have to say that all went well.