The Political Resident, His Excellency Sir Geoffrey Arthur, took the Royal Salute as a diamond nine of Hunters lead by Fg Off Rod Dean flew over. Shortly thereafter the Squadron Standard and silver were returned to the UK and taken to RAF Cranwell awaiting the unit’s reformation.
The Hunters left Muharraq for Sharjah where they operated whilst awaiting orders to return to the UK. We flew frequent recce sorties/flag waves over the islands of Greater and Lesser Tunbs belonging to Ras al-
So this was where we spent our last few weeks before returning home. I had a lucky escape at the end of October; during takeoff for a solo sortie, I was just starting to raise the undercarriage after I had lifted off, when the fire warning light
illuminated in the cockpit. Luckily, I was able to put the aircraft back down on the last few feet of runway remaining, I missed the runway approach lights by pure chance, sunk into the sand and rapidly came to halt! I moved the switch to electrically roll the canopy open, unstrapped and went to jump out of what could have been a burning aircraft; unfortunately, the automatic crash switches had operated and as I got to my feet I banged my helmet into the cockpit canopy which hadn’t moved as a result! I manually opened the hood and went to jump down to the ground, only to find myself still connected to the ejection seat by the emergency dinghy lanyard. By this time, a fire truck had arrived and a Landrover ambulance – it was clear the aircraft was not in flames, and I was bundled off to the medical centre by some of the more senior squadron pilots who wanted to help me get my story straight before the inevitable investigation! It seems there had been a small fuel leak towards the rear of the aircraft, where fuel had collected at the bottom of the fuselage because a drain hole had become blocked. The fuel had ignited and caused sufficient heat to activate the fire warning system. Although the aircraft had suffered quite a bit of damage, there was no way it was going to be left at Sharjah when we left for home so, despite the lack of a deep servicing facility, the engineers did wonders sorting out most of the issues, although the aircraft did demonstrate one or two ‘unusual’ traits on the final trip back home later.
Throughout the last 10 weeks at Sharjah, there were rumours and counter rumours about the date we would depart, the Squadron finally set off a week or two before Christmas via Tehran, Diyarbakir in Turkey, Cyprus and Malta – and that is another story in itself!
-
Muharraq Memories 2 -
