Britannia 102 with Malayan Airways
 

Hello,

How are you?

I am Peter. I was a steward on the MAL Britannia 102. The EO I remember well is Peter Hicks.

Cheers:)

Crew
 

Hello,

Who was the Cpt.on that day? Do you have any photos of chrashed G-ANBB?

Regards, Ales

Airplane G-ANBB
 

We still have control stick of that airplane...
Btw I was always wondering why nothing was put on the place where aircraft chrashed. Not a single cross.
But after so many years vegetation is poor on chrash place. I think because of aircraft fuel.
Regards, Ales

Khormaksar
 

Bit off topic this, but I've only just come across it, and it was the Khormaksar Brit that led me to it...

Quote from Herod in post dated 2nd Jan 2009 "Yes, 78, right up until the final minute; midnight 30.11.67."

On the offchance that Herod might see this, we must have been together on Intrepid for a few days then. My very last flight on 78 was from that deck to Sharjah on 4.12.67.

And if Brakedwell sees it, I shared a room with a 105 Nav for a time - learned a little bit about engine out drift down and stabilising altitudes from him. And I well remember the guy who dropped the army underslung from his Wessex when he lost one engine - you could bend the tip of a 10th stage compressor blade on an eroded gnome with a flick of a fingernail.

Free-fall Beaver
 

deltahot, I was on the board of Inquiry into the incident and felt a real sense of relief when they opened up the Rolls Royce Gnome and found catastrophic sand erosion in the compressor. I suspected the other board members were out to get the pilot as the Army were looking for a scapegoat :ok:

Free-fall Beaver?
 

Glad you all reached the right conclusion on that B-o-I then brakedwell - I remember seeing a photo of Ron B's Wessex off the ridge just after he'd released the sling with the rotor disc coned up at a frightening angle from low rpm. He hit the button just in time. Was it a Beaver or a Scout??? Or even a Sioux? Definitely an AAC bird anyway.
Were you at Khormaksar when so many of us were laid low from contaminated jungle juice from the caterers? Even staying with the canned beer and avoiding water and salads back at base couldn't save us from relying on gallons of that juice up-country. I think it got some of your trucky mates staging through too.

I was at Muharraq waiting to board the Brit than pranged at Khormaksar. We were due to go to Cyprus and then on to Iran for Exercise Nejat (Mountain Rescue).

As a result of the crash we had to kick our heels in Bahrain for 10 days until seats could be found on an Argosy going back to Sharjah.

Jungle Juice
 

It was definitely a Beaver which had made a forced landing in a dried up waddi bed after an engine failure. The Beaver was undamaged before it was jettisoned from the Wessex. I never suffered from contaminated jungle juice during my tour on 105 from (Aug 64 - Aug 66). However we did use it to clean the grotty old bath in our Maalla hiring.:ok:

Beaver drop?
 

brakedwell I was there from May 66 to the end, so we just might be talking of two separate incidents - if so, we owe the AAC a bit more. And the contaminated jungle juice was definitely later, probably in '67.
I've just found this somewhere on the site:

[quote]
teeteringhead. 18th Jun 2012, 08:50
There was a good series of photographs in the 78 (Wessex) Sqn scrapbook which may still exist on 78 (Merlin).

They date from Aden (before my time!!) and seemed to have been printed from a cine film, as they were effectively a time-lapse sequence - of the lift (briefly) of a Scout.

Apparently the Wessex lost an engine in the transition with the Scout - overpitched and quite scary coning angle clearly visible - then Scout "pickled" and disappears from bottom of frame over 2 or 3 pictures as Wessex flies away. Cat 2 Scout becomes Cat 5 Scout!

Pilot alleged to be R****e B*****n?
[quote]

... which accords more closely with my memory, even the pilot's name.
(Beaver had it's fan on the front, Scout on top).

So we left a Brit off the end of Khormaksar's runway and a Bev at the end of Habilayn's. (My weak effort to get back on thread!)

Obviously there were close similarities in that the loads were jettisoned due to a loss of power after lift off. The engine I saw had a complete fore and aft line of compressor blade failures caused by sand erosion.

Back on topic

I slipped in Khormaksar a couple of days after the Brit accident and enjoyed a few beers in Merrifield House with the unfortunate crew who were on the same squadron as me. Both pilots were suffering from multiple lacerations on their faces and arms from flailing (perimeter) barbed wire which was caught in the slowly rotating props as they could not shut the engines down after the batteries had been ripped out by the departing nose gear!

Does anyone recall an incident with 9Q-CJH or EL-WXA (now known as XM496 in Cotswald) where chlorine gas cargo leaked and killed some of the pax???? This would have been around 1996 in Zaire or the DRC.