…... and flew past Khormaksar with a mixture of Sea Vixens, Buccaneers and resident Hunters.  

"The flypast was nearly a disaster when the lead Sea Vixen crew thought that we were 30 seconds early and suddenly with little warning slowed down from 350kts to 300kts. The cumulative effect on the formations especially at the back end was interesting to say the least.”


James Heath, 43 Squadron, remembers that the roll-out to overfly one of the carriers didn't go exactly as planned, which led to some chatter with the FR10 doing the photography.  Suddenly, on the RT came “This is Mother here, would you like me to move?”  

Inter-service co-operation at its best. Here to the right is HMS Hermes at speed.


On inter-service co-operation, Tom Eeles was on secondment to HMS Victorious, and he was invited with the Fleet Air Arm crews to the Mess at RAF Khormaksar that evening. All assembled had a fine celebration - not quite the words he used.  

The Hunter pilots were invited back on Victorious the next night and Dai celebrated so well - again not an exact quote - that he found a cabin to sleep in, and nearly got taken back to the UK.
 

Luckily for him, a boat was found to take him ashore just before the ship pulled up the anchor and left Aden for Malta.


Back to Doug Marr and his TDY to 8 Squadron at Khormaksar: he says that these 'operational' boys gave him a great time, and his first trip was as No 15 in a Diamond-16 flypast to bid farewell to Sir Richard Turnbull, political OC for Aden. It wasn't often that pilots got the chance to fly in large formations and it was therefore an interesting experience and very hard work.

The photo on the right is a picture taken of the formation from above. The accompanying shot on the left is of the same formation taken from the side.

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