Page 103 - Demo

99whether we found anything or not. However, we were scrambled on SAR in March. In the Nimrod we had to be airborne within 1 hour of the call out. It had been 2 hours in the Shackleton. In fact, we would usually be airborne within about 30 minutes. Sometimes the Captain and Nav were called to operations and told what was happening while the rest of the crew went straight to the aircraft. Sometimes if it was a real scramble you were told where to go as you taxied out. On this occasion we were told to go to St Mawgan where we would be staying a few days. We were not allowed to get any overnight bags and so set off as we were. We dumped fuel as we approached St Mawgan wondering what it was all about. Once on the ground, the captain, first nav and AEO went to operations while the rest of us waited to take off again. Once airborne Bill told us that he could not tell us anything, but we were to go to South of Ireland and track all the various ships and trawlers down there. We were interested in one that was just making steady progress north. Later we were shown a picture of a small ship and told that it might have beacon on it that would help us identify it. There was a suggestion that there might be a submarine out there as well. We were not to fly near the suspect ship but carry out the search in a non-searching manner. The operation was so secret that only 2 or 3 crews would know anything about it. They did not know how long the search would go on but it was a very urgent task which was why the SAR crew had been sent. Our first sortie was at night but we flew another one during the day later. Although Bill was sworn to secrecy as to what we were doing it didn%u2019t take long to work out that we were looking for a ship gun running for the IRA. The need for secrecy was political in that we were in co-operation with the Southern Irish forces. Once we had done the first sortie we asked if we could have some clothes sent down as another Kinloss Nimrod was going to join us. Wives were informed and I received a complete set of clothes from Gabby. Perry Mason, the second