Page 106 - Demo

102well. The powers that be decided other aircraft could do the work and so Hercules aircraft were roped in. I went as %u201can 18 Group advisor%u201d, basically to tell them what was required and a couple of siggies came along to take photos and to talk to 18 Group. However, our radio systems were incompatible. The siggies were not all that comfortable at taking photos through an open doorway and as the Hercules flew past contacts at about half the speed of a Nimrod they took far too many photos on each run. We often took press people with us who always wanted photos of ships ramming each other. We pointed out that we could not engineer that. We took a photographer from the Financial Times with us on several occasions. When we landed, he rushed off to Inverness to get his print developed and then came back and joined us in our Scruffs Bar. This bar worked on an honour system and was open all the time. On one occasion he came in with still damp prints of some trawlers. They were really good and one of the crowd said %u201cWow, that is like something you see in Amateur Photographer magazine%u201d. Thank you very much was his reply. After a quick beer he would just get on the next Nimrod and did so many sorties that he became expert in the galley, bringing round drinks and so forth between anything interesting happening. He finally got the shots he was after and that was that.In an amongst these Fishop sorties we were called out on SAR to a coaster that had sunk. The crew were in a dinghy and so we just kept an eye on them until a tug picked them up. We also went down to Wattisham again to take part in an Air Warfare demonstration. We had to be there for 3 days. The Monday was for a full practise then Tuesday was to clean the aircraft, I don%u2019t think we bothered and then on Wednesday was the real thing before going home. We had to stand by the aircraft and explain what it was for and to show anyone interested around. There was also a full military display thing which included attacking a mocked-up fort on the airfield and we watched the practice and were impressed. However, on the day the airfield was covered in fog and so