Page 81 - Demo

77would like a fried egg sandwich. A long time later we finally left. Actually, Flora was lovely, and I think that she enjoyed mothering us. My Shackleton flying came to an end in August 1970. We decided to take some photos of our last trip. Inevitably the aircraft was unserviceable The Shackleton was not very reliable and so the photo shows us sitting around waiting for something to be fixed. Operating them had been quite an experience but I was looking forward to our next aircraft. Twocrews each month went down to St Mawgan to convert onto the Nimrod. The conversion lasted about 3 months. All postings were frozen at that point and as part of the conversion Steve and I were sent to Derby to do the Rolls Royce Spey engine course. It was a good course and Rolls Royce looked after us well. Later courses would be taught about the engines in house at St Mawgan. The whole crew had to go to RAF North Luffenham to do an explosive decompression and oxygen training course. For the Nimrod we had to go from 8000ft to 45,000 ft in 14 seconds. It was pretty horrible. A doctor was always in the chamber with us but I believe that one of them committed suicide by holding his breath during an explosive decompression. This exploded his lungs. We also had to do pressure breathing. You firmly clamped the mask firmly to your face and then as the oxygen came in at some pressure you had to push to breath out rather than pull to breath in. I had to do anoxia runs and decompression runs several times in my career. They were always at North Luffenham apart from our first one at Cranwell, and despite being told not to drink too much the night before because all the gas in your body blows out during it and can be painful, we always did. Ruddles County was too good to miss in those days. The smell at the end of a run was pretty awful. The Officers also went to RAF Witttering to do the Special Weapons course. This involved learning about the new American Nuclear depth bomb that we were going to be equipped with. And so, it was quite a surprise to arrive at St Mawgan after some leave