Page 88 - Demo

86photographs. This was also the era before the Hercules was fitted with GPS navigation equipment, but the navigator did have an inertial setup and, thanks to him, we hit the run-in track, and spotted 4 of the infra-red lights. Both the co-pilot and I were searching hard for the 2 far lights knowing that they would appear when suddenly I saw a blur close beneath the aircraft exactly as the co-pilot screamed \Pull Up\following my rapid control inputs. \co-pilot confirmed that it was. There was no way we were going to be able to make a suitable approach to the runway with those trees on the extended centreline. Of course the trees did not appear on the charts which were old and not detailed enough. The decision to abort the assault was quite an easy one to make, so we departed back to our mounting base, all ready and willing to have a beer and discuss the evening%u2019s events.However, this wasn't the end of the tale, as the following day we were informed that the advanced party had subsequently found out that the local troops had placed some large boulders on the runway, a little beyond the end strip markers. Had we managed to land and unload the vehicles, we would have run into these obstructions on the takeoff roll, making rather a mess of one of Her Majesty's aircraft and, more importantly, our crew!