Page 84 - Demo

80speeches the bride and groom departed, and the guests did whatever they liked. Gabby and I went for a Chinese meal in Inverness, I think.The early days of Nimrod flying were interesting. Mike was the first pilot with Tom Wood the captain. As pilots we were both obviously new to the Nimrod and so often discussed problems or general things off intercom, perhaps with the air engineer. As a co-pilot I felt more important than on Shackletons and we were definitely better trained. We went into the simulator 2 or 3 times a month and took it in turns to be captain. We usually had a coffee halfway through and then changed seats. Obviously, we could talk to each other but the one in charge made all the decisions and so we both became competent. We also operated more with the RN and other NATO Navies. The RN was not that professional in those days and at times really annoyed us. It took the Falklands to sharpen them up. Until then their major weapon had been the cocktail party! (They sailed around the world and threw superb cocktail parties making friends). After about 3 months on the Nimrod one of the other co-pilots was not available for some reason and so I was programmed to fly with one of the old Specialist Aircrew captains. At some point Tom, who was of course the Flight Commander, took me to one side and said that if I thought that the captain was doing something silly, I was to take command. The captain had been a pathfinder during the war and the Nimrod was the first jet aircraft he had ever flown. Consequently, he was struggling somewhat. I was a bit upset by the instruction and privately thought that perhaps I should have been the captain or at least the first pilot. Anyway, at some point in the sortie it became obvious that the yaw dampers had failed. This was not uncommon and at height without them the aircraft would dutch roll. This was an unstable yawing and rolling movement. If you are interested,you will have to google it. The captain didn%u2019t notice but eventually went off for a pee leaving me to fly. When he came back, I said that they had failed and I had had this problem with Mike Black in the past and we