Page 102 - Demo

98disbanded although the last Shackleton course joined the rump of one of the Ballykelly Squadron and went to Sharjah for a year. Consequently, there were a number of ex Shackleton crews with nowhere to go. We had been flying Nimrods for 2 years and so in the normal course of events I would be due a captaincy or at least to become a first pilot with a nav captain. As some of our captains became tourex they were replaced by ex Shackleton captains from the disbanded squadrons. These chaps were given captaincies even though they were not very experienced flying the Nimrod, or indeed in our sonics tactics. I remember Mike Blee complaining that his captain had a worse instrument rating than him and so would not allow Mike to go down to 250ft in cloud on an approach but had to overshoot at 500ft which was his captains limit. Our new captain was Bill Mott who I had known at Ballykelly when I held there. He was a nice chap and experienced as a maritime operator but not in the Nimrod. Almost as soon as Bill had taken over we went to Keflavic. These trips were always popular even though it could be very cold. We could visit the PX and buy a few American things usually including a large tin of Folgers coffee. It may have been on that visit that we had problems taxying. The dispersal area was covered in a sheet of ice and was very slippery. We had nose wheel steering and so it should have been ok to taxy over but there was a very strong wind blowing and as soon as we started turning, the wind just weathercocked us back. In the end we gave up and left the aircraft, departing the next day. Once home, we were sent on search and rescue for a seaman who had been washed off the submarine HMS Courageous but we never found him. We then had an engine failure after take-off on the next trip, just dumped fuel and landed. In February we went to Malta for a few days. The Soviet Navy were busy in the Mediterranean and it was good training to go and look at them both visually and electronically. We also flew another SAR sortie looking for a dinghy from a sunken trawler. I can%u2019t remember