Page 70 - Demo

70instead. It seemed that the Puma had been judged not to be deck capable.How the French managed to operate Pumas from a deck perfectlysatisfactorily without Boscombe Down%u2019s approval remains a mystery. Atthe time, the decision was rumoured to have been made on the partisanadvice of a naval test pilot. More charitably, it may have rested on thelogistic complication of introducing another aircraft type into the TaskForce. It is, perhaps, instructive to recall the part played by an ArgentinePuma in the capture of South Georgia before its shooting down by theRoyal Marines of Naval Party 8901. It was operated from the flight deckof a support ship, with cavalier disregard of the hazards to which ourmasters in the UK had been alerted!On 31 May, I flew a Chinook to Aldergrove, as part of the move ofNo 33 Sqn to replace No 7 Sqn in Northern Ireland and brought a load oftheir tradesmen back to Benson. A day later there was a suggestion thatthe Puma game might be back on again %u2013 but that came to nothing.Instead came a signal, saying that all RAF Light Support Helicopterinvolvement in the campaign was off. The SH banner would be borne,proudly, by Tony Stables and the Chinooks of No 18 Sqn.Odiham%u2019s involvement in the Falklands Campaign inevitablyproduced numerous lessons. Two are especially instructive. First,command and control arrangements that have been cobbled together adhoc produce strains and tensions within the %u2018normal%u2019 chain of command.The generous and considerate actions of today%u2019s chairman went someway to mitigate the pressures that were placed on Odiham and its StationCommander in 1982. Secondly, I could not have been more wrong aboutthe culture and motivation of the people at Odiham. During OperationCORPORATE, when the chips were down, they were magnificent %u2013 aswere their families and our neighbours in Hampshire. But it took only aweek after the ceasefire for me to receive the first low-flying complaintin three months %u2013 and not much longer for the first grumbles aboutoverstretch to surface!