Page 84 - Demo

82Herc starts to go down towards the ground. If that continues unchecked we%u2019ll damage the underside of the aircraft, and it won%u2019t be able to leave as scheduled. End of promising young officer%u2019s career.Help was at hand from an unlikely source. A Shackleton had landed a few minutes earlier, after a 12 hour sortie, and was being worked on by a post-flight team led by a Chief Technician who was, shall we say, struggling to maintain the lithe profile of his youth. Here were 20+ stone on the hoof, with another half-a-dozen chaps who would weigh in at about 12-14 stone each %u2013 getting on for 1500 lbs of fully-mobile, ballast weight. Said team was easily persuaded to climb into the Hercules cockpit, thereby counter-balancing the weight of the engine stand by just enough to stop the Hercules sitting on its a**e, as we lifted the ramp and eased the engine into the freight compartment.In the slang of the day, we hacked it. The Hercules load was completed, and the trim sheet was closed off. Very early next morning, the crew returned from their evening%u2019s entertainment in Madame Chabaud%u2019s %u201cleisure complex%u201d, over which it is best, dear reader, to draw a veil. Passengers were loaded, aircraft and trim were accepted by the crew, tyres were kicked, and off they soared to Muharraq. Fortunately for this young officer, in the early 1970s much less attention was devoted to ensuring personnel were fit and kept their weight under control. Had Weight-Watchers and the like held sway as they now do, that Chief Technician would not have come to my notice, and I would not have thought of using him and his team as %u201cmake-weights%u201d. That Hercules would have been damaged or that Shackleton engine would not have left %u2013 and then who knows? The inability of the Shackletons to fly their patrols might have left Ian Smith%u2019s regime in place, and Robert Mugabe might be coming up to a well-deserved retirement as a lecturer in Economics at the LSE.Mugabe and I both owe our careers to an overweight Chief Technician.1 SNCO %u2013 Senior Non-Commissioned Officer