Top rumour
 

I got this earlier today from a reliable source:

Bristol fighters dropping bombs on annoying Arab villages used to be pretty effective. Which is probably why it won't happen.

Pity.

'Goolie Chit'? I'll have one of those! And I'd be off to Soho quicker than Harry pinching Pippa's arse on the balcony!

60 Sqn learnt in Afghanistan during the '20's that gold is better than a gay little Walther when you're standing alone in the desert next to the wreck of your burning aeroplane.

An old FAA Albacore / Stringbag driver told me that throwing a few empty beer bottles out at night over a bedouin encampment was pretty effective....

The trick was to throttle back and glide down on the outbound trip, then throw out the bottles which whistled to earth causing bedouins and goats to scatter in alarm in every direction. The resulting mayhem of chasing goats back to the bedouin camp kept them busy for hours....whereupon the trick was repeated on the way home again!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

What it was to have a properly equiped airforce of wotever colour blue.

Idyllic scene...
 

...on the SE coast of the Arabian peninsula heading towards Masirah at about 1000ft.

Sitting in the guns position in a MK3 Shackledrone nodding off slightly in the warm sunshine. Then there is a sort of "eeh aw eeh aw eeh aw" sound from our french P1 in the left seat, and we start to descend. Looking ahead I see a camel train with its driver leading the line of, oh quite a lot of camels, dabbling their toes in the small surf.
" You barsteward Jaques " says I "you wouldn't would you?"

Down we go to about 50 ft, from quite a long way back and sneak up on the line. As we cross the tail end camel Jaques firewalls the throttles and pulls up back to 1000ft in a sort of wing-over-y thing to look back.

Lead camel with driver still hanging for dear life is high tailing it along the beach, the rest are scattering to the desert.

P1 is giggling fit to bust.

We had not seen any signs of human habitation for about 70 miles and didn't see any more until we got fairly close to Masirah.

The theory of "hearts and minds" hadn't reallly taken root in those days. Allah knows how long it took the poor chap to round up all his beasts again.

The Ancient Mariner

PS It was a different time and a different world, far less a different air force

Not an aviator thing, but my late father told me of a trick with which he and the other young subalterns of the Royal Bombay Sappers and Miners used to amuse themselves during WW2....

It seems that many Indian bullock carts (bayl gari) would plod along a road at dead of night, all following the leader. Which was frequently 'driven' by an elderly Indian gentleman who would often be fast asleep...as would all the other drivers...whilst the bayl dutifully trudged along in long line astern. So the RBS&M sublaterns would quietly sneak up to the lead bayl and gently lead it by the halter through a half-circle. All the others would then dutifully follow it back the way it had come.

A few minutes later there would be much Urdu shouting, yelling and cursing, despairing mooing noises from the bayl and all-round chaos as all the drivers woke up and manoeuvred their garis, backing into each other whilst attempting to turn round again. Usually in the pitch dark...

Hearts and minds, eh?

Rossain, we did the same in Libya when flying the Libyan low levels. Hundreds of miles of sand and the GFA when we would suddenly come across the camel train. The aim was to see how close we could get the nose probe to the bullseye.

At 240 kts the Vulcan's approach would be virtually soundless :E

So we don't need to occupy, or kill 'em; we just need to be a Monumental Pain in the Arse (MPA) if they do anything we don't like.
Can't be that hard to clear a Preditor to drop beer bottles.The pongoes can be reassigned to beer-bottle-emptying duties.

Hmm, wonder if that's how MPA in the Falklands got named.....certainly fits my memories of it.

"MPA" twice without mentioning "Nimrod" once. Good skills :ok:

Whilst not airborne we did have a useful trick which was used to piss off Welsh sheep and their farmers when out on Expedition Training.

L a n d r o v e r s would build up a might head of steam if allowed to coast with the ignition off. Once the ignition was switched back on there would be an almighty back fire and the aforesaid sheep would scatter to the four ends of the earth.

Great fun.

Until the day we (I) coasted a bit too long and the resulting back fire blew the silencer apart. There then followed an almighty embarrassing journey back to V bomber land through town centres and suburbia sounding like a squadron of Tiger tanks.

I learnt about L a n d r o v e r driving from that

(the spacing in the word l a n d ....etc is to stop the 'management' automatically inserting the word Trabant in its place :yuk:)

Yozzer. Whilst ex-pointy jet myself, I have deep respect for the kipper fleet. My first QFI was ex-Nimrod. Flew in one to see Affil from the other side. Always remember 13 crew looking out the windows calling 'tally's. And when one Sgt said "There's another one in the 9 oclock high as well now, what do we do?". The Captain replied "we're f#cked, we die".

Anyway,back on thread, do we not now have a new use for the Nimrod? You could get a lot of beer bottles in that bomb bay

Perhaps Spitfire Ale empties?

Anyway, whatever kind, happy to volunteer to empty a few.

Dropping beer bottles which once contained alcoholic beverages on people who are forbidden alcohol would probably be deemed an infringement of their rights in these "enlightened" times.

Following the glass trail across the desert was a primary navigation method for Albert crews during the '91 excursion.