…... interestingly in 
the last Buccaneer ever built: XZ432. That morning, after a Hunter trip, we went off and flew the 6-ship. We hadn’t done this for 7 months or so, so, not surprisingly, it didn’t go too well and the debrief took about an hour. I remember one of the sort of pivotal comments I made was to a certain crew (and I shan’t name names here): “I knew I should have known better that to let 2 squadron leaders fly together.” – it was a sort of junta flight lieutenant-heavy formation. And I came out of that and somebody, I can’t remember who it was, said: “It’s a real shame that your last trip on the Squadron turned out to be a bit like that.” I said: “What do you mean – I have left the Squadron with something to really think about – we have tried to get back up on the step, we are trying to get back to where we were before the accident – I have left you something to think about, something to go ahead with.” I was very, very pleased that I had the opportunity to go and do that.
I then went off to ETPS, and it was everything that I had always wanted. I wanted to be a test pilot because I wanted to go and really understand the aeroplanes that I flew. I wanted to go and do things in aeroplanes that nobody had ever done before, and I wanted to go and fly as many types of aeroplanes that I could to gain knowledge. I had a fantastic time at ETPS, and then got a posting to ‘A’ Squadron at Boscombe Down. So, what’s the chances from age 18 / 19 at University Air Squadron of wanting to get to the one very specialised squadron there was, and actually getting there? Somebody has got to do it. Luck, fate, a lot of help (which I’ll return to in a minute) but I actually made it there.
Six months after joining the Squadron, I had a phone call one
night from my Boss (Colin Cruikshanks). He said: “Are you available to go to the States in 2 weeks’ time for about 4 weeks?” “Yeah, sure.” “Right, we are off to see the Chief of the Air Staff tomorrow” (and it was David Craig at the time). Colin and I got the train down to London. We had no idea: we thought it was going to be about flying MiGs or the vaunted F-19 at the time. We saw David Craig and, basically, it was the opportunity to go and do an assessment on the F-117 Stealth Fighter which, at the time, was completely in the black world: it ‘didn’t exist’, and we flew out there and we flew it from a base that also ‘didn’t exist’ at the time.
I was a 30-year-old flight lieutenant, six months out of test pilot school, having meetings with the Secretary of State for Defense (Kaspar Weinberger), and the Pentagon, and meetings in the White House. I knew at that time there was nothing professionally that I would ever do again that would top that, and there hasn’t been (not surprisingly) but that was a phenomenal opportunity.
