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40 years on, captain recalls flight which began oil revolution


Published on Friday 27 July 2007 00:05

THERE was no fanfare, no speeches and no cheering crowd. But a Westland Whirlwind helicopter flight carrying seven Texan oilmen which left Scotland 40 years ago yesterday was to completely transform Britain's economy and herald a new dawn of prosperity fuelled by "black gold".

The Bristow's aircraft, which was based at the Dyce airfield, then a quiet aerodrome on the outskirts of Aberdeen, picked up the men at RAF Kinloss in Moray before flying out to a drilling rig in the Moray Firth.

The short flight marked the beginning of the search for oil in the northern North Sea and the eventual discovery, two years later, of the first oil field in British waters. That oil strike paved for the way for the dramatic growth of an industry which has ploughed 232 billion in tax revenues into the Treasury over the last four decades and now employs 480,000 people across the UK.

But Captain Ernie Perrin, the pilot of the historic flight, yesterday admitted he hadn't realised the moment's significance.

"I had no idea at all of the history in the making," he said. "The general view at the time was that the whole idea that they could prospect for oil off Scotland was faintly ridiculous."

Capt Perrin, 66, who is now retired from the aviation industry and runs two convenience stores in Exeter, had worked in the offshore industry in Egypt and Nigeria before arriving in Scotland in 1967.

The former Army Air Corps helicopter pilot was sent by his employers, Bristow Helicopters, to work for the oil company Hamilton Brothers which had sent the drilling vessel, Glomar IV, to the Moray Firth to begin the search for oil and gas in Scottish waters.

Capt Perrin said: "I don't think people really expected to find anything - certainly not the vast reserves that we now know were out there. I think that all that the oil companies were just hoping to find a bit more of something somewhere."

The Labour government of the time, he explained, had intervened to force the RAF to allow the Moray air base to be used for the flights. They were hardly welcome guests with no facilities for the oilmen as they waited for their flight, and the helicopter banished to the remotest part of the airfield as it prepared for take off.

He recalled that there was a similar icy welcome at Dyce airfield, then a quiet backwater of Britain's airline industry, made up of a few wooden shacks.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the historic flight, two of Bristow's latest hi-tech helicopters staged a fly-past of Aberdeen Airport yesterday, "bowing" to the control tower at Dyce and the firm's Aberdeen headquarters.

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