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73evident. Sandy Hunter has touched on the development of the ferrycapability and this in itself resulted in some hasty planning onoverland/oversea self deployment options to Ascension Island. RWRwas fitted although advice on missile countermeasures was largelyrestricted to the use of a red Very fired off the rear ramp! Fortunately wewere only locked up once and, in the event, the threat never materialised.These were long days and short nights. Indeed the voyage south was awelcome break!The eventual plan was to deploy four aircraft to the Falklands and oneto Ascension. You will recall, however, that we had no spares. Majorcomponents had to be robbed from other Chinooks, so the totalinvolvement was actually rather more than the notional five aircraft. TheAscension deployment was relatively straightforward %u2013 aircraft by seaand crews by air to an established operating base. The Falklanddeployment was more problematic, governed by the available messingand accommodation on the transporting ships. In the event I was limitedto a maximum of seventy-seven personnel, to include aircrew,groundcrew, caterers, RAF Regiment and JHSU staff (essentiallyhookers-up). It sounds a generous amount for four aircraft but, given thatwe were to establish an independent base ashore in a hostileenvironment, with a break down of twenty-eight aircrew, ten Regiment,eight-to-ten JHSU and a very inexperienced engineering team, it wasprobably about right.We had to take a lot on trust; after all we did not possess an off-baseoperating capability in terms of equipment. We had been formed as asquadron for six weeks with a new aircraft %u2013 not just a bigger Puma but awholly new concept. No one, anywhere, had any experience of triplehooking of underslung loads or of operations from ships. In the event,we quickly mastered both disciplines and a lot more besides. On 25April, we flew our aircraft to HMS Drake and onto the deck of theConveyor where the blades were removed and stowed inside thefuselage, and the aircraft sealed in custom-made zip-up bags %u2013 %u2018Driclad%u2019plastic covers. This was quite brilliant, which is probably more than I cansay for the rest of the plan.In essence, the Conveyor provided through-deck stowage with crewaccommodation for approximately thirty within the main island. I wasable to position two crews and a small engineering party (total twenty)on board for the journey south. The plan for the remainder, including