Rick Willey was a student on 79 Squadron when there was a 28-ship flown as part of Chivenor celebrating its Freedom of Barnstaple. When he and his wife were watching the landing, they saw the combination of some with brake chutes and some without. This led to one or two aircraft overtaking the aircraft ahead, in spite of what was clearly heavy braking. They both thought there was gong to be a pile-up on the runway. Interesting indeed!

Lastly on the photos I've received of big formations involving 208 and Hunters, Pete Sturt, 8 Squadron 1963-65, Doug Marr and many others have photos of a 55-ship on 17 May 1967.  This is 16 Sea Vixens leading 12 Buccaneers from HMS Hermes and HMS Victorious, followed by 27 Hunters of 1417 Flight and 8, 43 and 208 Squadrons. With whips and airborne spares, there were 60 aircraft in the air.

Doug has the press cutting from his exchange from 208 to 8 Squadron, to get some experience of their flying; at the time they were still flying operational sorties up country. For this big Air Power Demo 208 flew down to Khormaksar to join Strike Wing. He remembers spending an inordinate amount of time in the cockpit on the ground waiting to taxi out, in his case 45 minutes, which was unheard of in the heat. Indeed, I seem to remember that in my time at Muharraq if you weren't airborne within 15 minutes of strapping in, you were supposed to abort.  

Doug was near the back of the huge formation along with guys like Dai Heather Hays. All went well until it came to flying down Ma'ala Straight, because while the Navy at the front were flying at a reasonable height they might just have forgotten those at the back. Doug felt as though he was flying amongst the chimney pots, and afterwards some of the formations overflew the carriers. Great fun!

Pete Sturt was seconded in 1967 to 809 Squadron, flying Buccaneers from Hermes, and he says "We joined forces with Victorious, which was now on the way home,

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