DESERT STORM
I thought I would tell you how our people and our rather elderly aircraft performed in what was then, a very modern war.
I will follow these headings.
Deployment
Operations
The Aircraft
The Aircrews
The Groundcrew
Humour
Achievement
DEPLOYMENT
At 4am on the 26th of January
the first 2 Buccaneers left Lossiemouth to rendezvous with a TriStar tanker over southern England, and then fly together, non-stop, to Muharraq Airport in Bahrain (1). 8.30hrs later we landed in Bahrain. Another 4 aircraft followed us over the next few days.
Our arrival in Muharraq was uneventful, actually it was very uneventful! I was quite surprised when no-one from the base came out to meet us, just our own Groundcrew. If we had expected a welcome for bringing a much-needed additional capability to the RAF element in-theatre, we were to be disappointed.
We were required to operate with RAF Tornadoes from 3 bases; Muharraq in Bahrain, and Tabuk and Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. I assigned one Sqn Ldr to liaise with each base, to ensure standardisation of Buccaneer/Tornado procedures, and to ensure prompt dissemination of good ideas.
