Page 30 - Aviation News - September 2017

208 Squadrons’ maritime attack Buccaneers Above left: An interesting photo of a Periodically during the summer HQ 11
‘against’ NATO navies exercising around the Shackleton with its Griffon engines removed Group would say the squadron was short
UK coast. for maintenance. Key Collection of night ying hours. During the summer at
The squadron also had a limited search Above right: Four Shackletons positioned on Lossiemouth it doesn’t get fully dark making
and rescue capability, for which it kept ares the other side of the air eld at Lossiemouth accumulating night- yings hours difficult.
and the-air dropped Lindholme rescue gear in in preparation for their ypast during the It wasn’t just the aircrews who had a difficult
the bomb bay, which included a dinghy, which 8/8/88 event. This was organised by 8 Sqn time: “What really brought things home was
in ated on impact, and other life-saving kit. which invited units from all over the world that our aircraft sat out in the open all year
David said: “It was always useful to have that had an eight in their designation. Andrew round, and our ground crews were stunningly
Thomas
when playing with ghters in case something good, outside in all the foulest weather,
happened. I never needed to use it but was argument about wearing parachutes again. including rain and snow. We could not have
reassuring for the ghters to know we had it.” For maritime work they were no real use as operated without them. They were fantastic.”
we usually ew too low for them to be of any The intention initially was for 8 Sqn to
BASING AND CREWING value. But now we had an 11 Group Air Staff rapidly build up experience by becoming a
According to David, there was a feeling that Instruction to wear [them]. joint RAF/Royal Navy unit to bene t from the
because the Shackletons operated from “While that was okay for a 40-minute FAA operators’ considerable experience with
Lossiemouth in northern Scotland they were Lightning sortie, or perhaps a Phantom crew the AN/APS-20F radar.
rather ‘out of sight and out of mind’. “We ew airborne for up to two hours, we were up for “For a period after the squadron re-formed
all hours of the day, often in the most appalling eight, ten, 12 hours.” we got to y joint RAF and FAA crews,”
weather, and felt no one really understood what The parachute that the crews were made recalled David. “We were able to use the
we were doing. Working for 11 Group we had to wear was in addition to the mandatory naval operators until they completed their
a new set of Air Staff Instructions to operate by rubber immersion suit on top of the one-piece tours while we built up as a purely RAF
and which introduced new absurdities. eecy ‘bunny’ suit and thick woolly socks for squadron.
“We had to go through the whole over-water operations. “Initially we carried a crew of ten, but this

Left: A line-up of Shackletons at RAF
Lossiemouth. The 1981 Defence White
Paper reduced the AEW force to six aircraft.
Key Collection
Right: A Shackleton in landing con guration
seconds from touching down at RAF
Fairford in 1989. AirTeamImages/Carl Ford

30 Aviation News incorporating Jets September 2017

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