Page 62 - Demo

58every 2 hours. In Sharjah as it was so hot you often went down the back and put your arms out into the airflow from the open beam windows to cool down a bit after your stint piloting. The engineers usually put a modified Very cartridge into the Very gun port in the roof and this put 160 knot wind down the fuselage which also helped with cooling. There was a large water urn strapped to the main spar and the navigators used to constantly pass drinks up to the front. They had little else to do as we generally just flew down the gulf a bit out to sea. As a pilot before take-off we used to have to get in and do a few pre-flight checks. We just wore a flying suit over underpants but were soon dripping with sweat. After doing the checks you would get out for a bit and wring your flying gloves out as they would be soaked. Any way that first sortie was medium level bombing from 5000ft onto the range. This was not something taught on the course but each nav in turn went down to the bomb aimers position in the nose and using a bombsite he was not at all familiar with would drop his bombs. This was only done as part of our colonial policing role and so was never practiced in the UK. I remember on one such trip that the nav released his bomb and the tail said it had landed by a road outside of the range. The first nav dived down the front and discovered that the second nav had forgotten to uncage the giro on the sight. Anyway, at the end of my first sortie we were diverted onto Search and Rescue for some reason then back to Sharjah for my landing. I flew downwind but having turned finals could not see the runway at all. It was very hazy. Also, the runway at St Mawgan was 300 ft wide, the normal runway width including that at Kinloss was 150ft but the runway at Sharjah was only 100ft wide. I overshot and tried again. Carl said you had to look for and aim at 3 palm trees and then you would be lined up. I tried a couple more times but saw nothing, so we changed seats and Carl found his trees and landed. Not a very good start to my Squadron life.