Page 78 - Demo

74had the Station Commander on board for this flight. He had to do a certain amount of flying but was very busy with administration. His solution was to fly on some night sorties where he would spend much of the time asleep but could log the hours and perhaps do the landing. Once everything had settled down and we were diverting to Ballykelly he came up the front and I went down the back for the rest of the trip. We landed safely at Ballykelly but the wing was just black with engine oil and was a real mess. We went to bed but before all that long the ground crew had fixed the pipe and we were ready to go back to Kinloss. However, 18 Group made us go and check out the anchorages in the Shetlands on our way home so that was a 4 hour trip. The Soviet Navy kept some Electronic Intelligence trawlers on station around the Shetlands to keep an eye on what we were doing and obviously we kept an eye on them. You knew they were not real trawlers as there were no seagulls around them and they had lots of aerials. The ground crew at Ballykelly told us not to use the vipers until the oil was cleaned off, but Steve said that as we had used it for a couple of hours already, he would carry on doing so. The Station Commander had been taken back to Kinloss in another Shackleton by the time I woke up and so just Steve and I flew our black wing Shack home. I wonder what the Russians thought about it when we photographed them as they would also photograph us.In June we were tasked to take some local people for a flight for some reason. This was unusual but they were probably local bigwigs. I mention it as I remember that Gabby came with us that day and Steve went down the back leaving her in the right-hand seat whilst I flew. We were obviously getting together somewhat. At some point Steve went on leave on his own. Normally the whole crew had leave together as we were constituted crews, but Steve must have had something special organised and was allowed to go. Wg Cdr