Page 132 - Demo

132the roof of the BATT house. Creak%u2019s aircraft was hit seven times on this first pass by enemy machine gun fire. With the high probability of an even greater emergency situation developing (fire, fuel leak, engine failure, hydraulic leak) Creak was forced to return to Salalah leaving Milne8Smith to continue the attacks alone. Milne8Smith managed to expend all his 16 SURA rockets and most of his gun ammunition on the enemy before landing back at Salalah after a 1 hour 15 minute sortie with, miraculously, no bullet strikes on his jet On landing, Milne8Smith was met by the Squadron Commander, Sqn Ldr Bill Stoker, and they briefed for the next sortie. Milne8Smith led Stoker back to the battle at around 0915 hours.10 The cloud base had improved only slightly, so, again, no bombs were dropped. In fact, no bombs were dropped on any these sorties, contrary to some published eye8witness reports which, in the heat of the action, probably confused the rocket explosions with bombs. The two pilots arrived in the area and set up a race track pattern, turning right after individual weapons release. With calls of %u2018inbound%u2019 and %u2018outbound%u2019, they managed to avoid a mid8air collision. After their third or fourth pass firing rockets and guns, Stoker%u2019s aircraft was hit badly and began losing fuel rapidly from his wing tank. He steered west towards Salalah above the cloud. Milne8Smith carried out a visual inspection and flew in formation with Stoker throughout the recovery and the subsequent precautionary forced landing pattern (ie with the engine fully throttled back). They emerged from cloud at only 800ft and Stoker landed without further damage. Miraculously, Milne8Smith%u2019s aircraft had once again escaped being hit by any bullets. The damage sustained by Sqn Ldr Stoker%u2019s Strikemaster on 19 July 1972.