Ooh, I got to see the World by Fat Albert, you may even have been driving one I was cargo in.
Did you happen to go out to Malaysia in '97 for the joint Special Forces' exercise 'Elang Osprey'? The Herc I was in had a faulty cabin conditioning system so it rained inside the aircraft when we descended. We always felt that the Herc fleet just didn't
do maintenance. We also got diverted into Colombo right in the middle of the civil war, which was rather disconcerting.
All the Canberras I worked on were cartridge start while everything else was either electric start from a Houchin or pressure started from a Palouste, so I didn't suffer the delights of invisibly burning overalls experienced by those working with Avpin.
I did deal with a few start up and brake fires, and I also had an F16 dump Hydrazine all over the pan in Saudi while I was bombing up a nearby Tornado, though. Now that's really nasty stuff that eats anything organic, including people.
The Lightning went out of service in 1988 and I was in the Guard of Honour at the parade at Binbrook where 5 Squadron (Lightnings) handed over the colours to 5 Squadron (Tornado F3's).
There was a barrel afterwards and when I got on the bus back to Coningsby I found that a bunch of our lineys had 'borrowed' a drill Firestreak missile that they'd found just lying around, apparently, and had managed to load it on the bus as a 'gizzit'.
Anyway, with apologies to Mickey for the thread hijack, that's enough reminiscing for now.