Warmtoast: Now that would have been a nice route! When I travelled (October 1967), we had upset the Arab states, with allegations the RAF had bombed Cairo during the 6 day war a couple of months earlier. This resulted in the RAF being banned from overflying Arab states so our track went:
Aden sort of easterly toward Oman, left turn up the Gulf to Bahrain
When we arrived in Bahrain, I remember thinking "how are they going to deal with this now we have Arab countries all around us?" We left Bahrain and crossed the Gulf, headed toward Iran in a generally northerly direction.
From Iran, we avoided Turkey and flew over Armenia and Georgia. Bearing in mind this was the height of the Cold War, that surprised me. The Captain very helpfully sent a chart for us to see. The chart was covered in a heavy polythene and the route was marked with a good old chinagraph and he had highlighted the 2 Soviet territories.
We skirted Turkey until we hit the Black Sea and swung around in a big curve, flying over (I think) Bulgaria and Greece and headed for Cyprus.
From Cyprus, we flew to Malta and finally to Lyneham.
The in flight catering consisted of thin cheese sandwiches and lemon squash on every sector. Departing Aden, the crew apologised for the catering and said we would get a hot meal in Bahrain. We got coffee" Departing Bahrain, more cheese sandwiches and another apology with a promise of a hot meal at Akrotiri. At Akrotiri, we got coffee and Keo brandy which we bought ourselves.
Departing Akrotiri, guess what; more apologies and a promise of a hot meal at Luqa. We picked up a few forces families in Malta (a couple of wives and kids) and set off for Lyneham.
As we were about to cross the Channel, the crew came round with a hot English breakfast along with customs and immigration forms. Lovely breakfast but a bugger to eat while filling in the forms and watching the UK coast getting ever closer!
The flight made it into the news the day after we arrived. When the aircraft parked, the ground people placed a big wooden ramp alongside the aircraft and an ambulance began backing up toward the ramp. Along came HM Customs and shooed the ambulance away. According to some of the casualties the Customs people boarded and went through the CASEVAC section like a dose of salts. One told me later that they used thin dowels to poke into bandages and casts to check if anything was hidden there! We walking passengers were given a real 3rd degree in the terminal and everybody paid customs duty on every bloody item. My return was 4 days short of a year since departure and I had bought a new watch while away and despite it being very close to a year (that was the threshold for duty payable), I was hit with the full import duty. Someone (whether passenger or crew, I don't know) told the newspapers. I heard later that HM Customs didn't attend inbound CASEVAC flights over the following days.
So, quite a trip! One abiding memory I have was during the flight over Iran, I noticed a large ring bolt in the bulkhead/deckhead and during this part of the journey I watched the amount of frost and ice that grew on this bolt. I presumed this bolt must have been through the fuselage and it was extremely cold outside!
Thanks for the photo. In all those 20 hours, I never did get to see that part of the aircraft.
Aah! Looking closely at your photo, I can see the ring bolts, holding the vertical supports for the stretchers. We were curtained off in the front. The first time I ever sat in seat 1A!