Originally Posted by Beagle
PDR1, we were there on detachment from Wattisham for EX BOLD GAUNTLET, together with some F-15s, Mirage 3, C-160 and a C-130.
Originally Posted by
wiggy
PDR
Just to back Beagle up - it was as he says, detached Ops - there was an (?) annual exercise based at least in part at Gutersloh that involved various NATO Air Defenders, (and others). Looking at the logbook I've got a few F-4 sorties flown out of there in '81.
Abject apologies, chaps! I read that the wrong way entirely. I was at Gutesloh for a couple of weeks in 1976, but as an ATC cadet. Spent time with 18sqn (including a Wessex flight along the border) and did visits to the border itself, the Paderborn viaduct and the Mohne Dam. They warned us that a previous group of cadets had been thrown off the damn for marching up and down singing the dambusters theme, and then left us there for two hours. Well after spending 20 mins looking down the valley (where all the water went) and up the valley (how did they get such a big aeroplane in there!) there wasn't that much more to do.
We found that at one end you could get down to a small pebbley beach next to the dam, so some of us went paddling. And of course we started skimming stones - for some reason this really upset them...
Mind you, I thought they were rather selective in their outrage, because the gift-shop/cafe on the dam itself sold the old Revel plastic kit of the Lancaster Type 464 as a souvenir.
PDR