Of couse! It was 204 that got caught stacking the so called sound insulation with over 10,000 cigarettes.
The local Customs boys were not very happy. We had always had a lovely relation with them. Putting on a 9 gallon keg in the crew room two hours before the squadron was due back from detachment seemed to do the trick.
I was amazed on returning from Malta, to see the first thing off the a/c was a cast iron RAF eagle, painted bright blue, with a wingspan of 9 feet. Amazed ‘cos I had cleaned all contraband out before start up at Luqa – I thought!!

Mo

Happy Birthday

Sixty years ago today, The Shack took its first very uneventful flight.

JohnB

Grapple et al

The mid upper was removed from Mark Ones prior to Grapple but with no connection to the task. Its removal eased the transit from nose to tail and its replacement was a very small table. The bunks were always there and were always full of parachutes and clothing – no rest area resulted.

The provision of Met observation facilities in the Mark One was easily achieved by giving the nose settee to the Met Obs with lots of dials to keep him occupied. Each Met sortie required at least one climb over 20,000 ft. The thickness of the floor of a Shack is in inverse proportion to altitude and at that height becomes the alloy equivalent of tissue paper. Crews took the opportunity to see how high we could go. All efforts were around 22,000 ft. Our Met Obs said the Shackleton had been designed primarily for Met work.

All Grapple aircraft were MkI and when 204 were involved in the tests, they borrowed a MkI from either 240 or 269. 269 was the atomic squadron, having taken part in all tests. WL795, being the first fitted with Autolycus might have probably featured on our initial sniffing expeditions for traces of other countries tests.

A few trips to Gib, John. Including the great weekend away from BK, when we flew down to Gib with great plans and were diverted from the circuit back to – yep, BK.

Escorting Connies On Three

I’ve never heard of airlines deliberately shutting down engines for economy reasons over the Atlantic before….are you sure about this…..there would have been plenty of opportunities for escorting unpremeditated shutdowns on propliners….longshot

Longshot
I am sure, ‘cos we had to do it according to standing orders. I had 3.5 years at Ballkelly on 269 and 210 and before I left the RAF in 66, my last 18 months were as an Operations Controller of that same ops room. By that time, the jets were well and truly established. But the rule was still there – that a multi shutting down an engine was treated as a Pan call.

Nice to join the forum and I’ll back up John Cooper re 205/209. In October 1959, My posting was to 205/209 Squadron – the Squadron number was changed to 205 Squadron in December 59.