So, during the lunch, he received a tap on the shoulder and was escorted down to the bowels of this French aircraft carrier where a Frenchman came up and said: "You wanna know what happened?" He replied: "I wanna know what happened." The Frenchman said: "Nothing." He said "What do you mean, nothing?" The Frenchman said: "We were in cloud. We couldn't see a thing, and because we had live weapons on board, we could not come back to the carrier. So, we jettisoned them, we know not where." Ben retorted: "But the Press was full of the fact that you had destroyed a gun mount of some sort." The Frenchman said: "Well, that was the Press."


When Ben retuned upstairs, he mentioned this exchange to the American Generals, and they said: "When's this Lunch gonna finish son, we've gotta get back to our own ship again, we know what we gonna do." This aggressive attitude left Ben with the distinct impression that the biggest worry that the Buccaneers would have when launching from Akrotiri would not be the bad guys waiting for them in Beirut, but would be the Dwight D Eisenhower about to shoot them out of the air on the way in. So a compromise was reached that the Buccaneers would always fly well below 500 feet, and there would be no problem, and that is the way it went.


Read Ben's full account of the 208 Squadron deployment in the Buccaneer Chapter HERE:


The President then took over the microphone and, in a short digression from his planned speech, he recounted a similar occurrence when he had been in Sarajevo in 1997, when he was quizzed in a Press interview about the air sorties that the RAF had flown over Serbia during the Balkans War. They asked: "Is it true that the French flew more sorties than you?" He replied: "Yes, but we hit more targets." He felt it reflected the same story.


He noted that the Dinner would be the Association's 'Last Supper' and doubted regretfully that there would be a 'Second Coming.' However, should there be one, he would look forward to it, given that this event had been a marvellous evening and a true reflection of the Squadron spirit that the Chairman had talked about.


He reflected that, in the early days of his Presidency, he had lobbied the Air Force Board for the restoration of the Squadron, even to the point of giving them a gift of Graham Pitchfork's book 'Forever Vigilant.' Disappointingly, although they accepted the book, there was no forthcoming new Squadron. He had very much hoped that because Naval Eight / 208 had provided some 56% of aircrews on the UK's previous fixed-wing carriers, and that the Squadron under Neil Meadows' and Eugene Moriarty's command had trained RAF and RN fast-jet pilots for many years, it would be an ideal choice for 208 to be the F-35 OCU.

2024 Reunion - 04

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