Chapter 12
When I said that I had nineteen Hawker Hunters, I lied (I am getting good at crossing my fingers); I had nineteen and a quarter, and early in September, after a consolation ‘Med’ cruise on the Lady S I stood with my pilots, ground crew and a smattering of other interested parties outside of ‘Yankee’ hangar. As we all gazed on, a lorry was escorted from the main gate, and the poor driver was terrified, ‘what ever had he done’ he thought. As he pulled up Topsy and a crew swept in and a crane lifted the container off the flatbed trailer and lowered it gently to the ground. Topsy then flung open the end doors and just inside we could make out the gleaming nose of a Mark 6D Hawker Hunter.
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Just before my cut short Caribbean cruise, I had been summoned by the Civil Aviation Authority to CAA House, Kingsway, in London – apparently I was a very naughty boy. I was blithely converting a shed load of different marks of Hunters to my own personal sub-specification, and as all my aircraft were to have UK registration this was not allowed, not without their permission anyway, enter their grey suits. After two days of haggling they finally created two new variants of Hawker Hunter, the Mark 6D for the single seaters (I couldn’t call them ‘F’ (for fighter) as they now had no guns), and the Mark 7D for the two seaters, as all the different variants that I had collected would be de-Navalised and/or converted back to the basic F6 and T7 specs, and as all my aircraft would have smoke generators fitted as standard we all agreed on ‘D’ for ‘Display’. I always knew that we would have to have serious ‘CAA’ input throughout the whole process of forming the team, but this had been a bit of a surprise, but as it turned out, a rather nice surprise, to date HHA have contracts to refurbish a further five aircraft to the Mk 6D standard for other people (including two for the RAF), after mine are finished of course, and finally, just as we were about to walk out of the door the senior ‘grey suit’ said ‘oh by the way, your request to fly with live ejection seats, it has been approved’, just like that.
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As the nose of the gleaming Mk6D slid out of its box, and into the bright Mediterranean sunshine its new British Racing Green paint scheme glistened (spookily it was actually Hunter Green, the same as the Lady S, as BRG covers a wide spectrum of colours), and the gold lines down either side gave off a lustrous sheen, but those lines finished just before the air intakes. Why, because my first aircraft had no intakes, or an engine, or wings, or even a tailplane; it was a sawn off static display nose section. It was the entire front end of an F6, sorry Mk6D, down to the last detail. The nose undercarriage was complete, and it would go up and down, sorry – retract, for the purists, but in reality the whole thing was really supported by a framework at the rear end. I had inherited the nose section with one of my aircraft and HHA had quickly realised that it could be very useful indeed. Whereas it was a bit dodgy to ‘willy nilly’ drill holes through the skin of a real aeroplane (for example when trial fitting the new glass cockpit), it was ok to do so on this one, any slip of the drill and a bit of poly filler soon made it as good as new. HHA also used it to proof fit all my new instrumentation and associated black boxes in the new equipment bay, where the gun packs had once been; apart of course for my aircraft, that still had it installed when it arrived at their factory, complete with cannon shells, oops! They made sure that everything was properly laid out and ventilated in the new ‘equipment’ bay, and that the new access panels worked as advertised before they even touched a ‘real’ aeroplane; although the four gun ports, complete with Sabrina’s (the four bulging link collectors on the aircrafts sides) would remain, just to make the aircraft look mean (I wonder why they call them Sabrina’s?).
When the trials had been successfully concluded I had HHA refurbish it to the Mk6D standard, finishing it as per the other aircraft, connect all the electrical bits up to a rather large computer and voila! I now had a flight simulator, not like the ‘proper’ ones, but good enough to train up my pilots on the new glass screen cockpit, and also to teach them how to respect an ejection seat. The bomb heads at HHA had rigged up a nasty fright for anyone who forgot the correct procedure, no blood but plenty of brown stuff, although the only person that I really felt sorry for was the sign writer, I had ‘assigned’ Inma as its pilot, and had insisted that her full name was on the side of the fuselage, with Topsy as her plane captain, hopefully it would be a nice surprise for her when she returned to El Campo. Chalky also wanted his share of it to, to train up his fire crews on ejection seat safety and aircrew rescue in the event of a crash; and I also wanted my share of it to - as a video game, and then two days later I was off with Natasha on a date, not that kind of date, she was young enough to be my daughter, it was to collect the first two modified aircraft, and they were definitely the bee’s knees. As we swept in over El Campo, Natasha glued to my wing tip, I just knew that this was the beginning of something very special.
As the new aircraft started arriving the unmodified ones were quickly sent back to England, but HHA had gained in experience and so we had the ‘shed’, full of aircraft by the 23rd of December, what a ‘crimbo prezzy’, and to make it even more special Inma broke a specially prepared bottle of ‘champers’ over the nose wheel of her very own ‘quarter of an aeroplane’ to celebrate. Inma had the sparkle back in her eyes when she returned to El Campo, but it was murder trying to stop her from working. First off I thought that as she was getting a car then she should first have a driving license - that should slow her down for a while. It took her ten days. Then she had to choose a car, but I had forgotten that I had already done that bit (after a chat with her), and it was sat waiting for her in the garage next to Russ’s Roller. I hope she doesn’t get them mixed up. Then suddenly she settled down, in between X and Y hangars - in the ground crew crewroom to be more precise; she voluntarily took over the coffee boat, not that I complained, she made an egg sarnie to die for.
After the Christmas break it was down to serious training for both the aircrew and ground crew alike. Our first public display was to be at the Farnborough International Air Show on my birthday, the twentieth of May (I don’t mind what presents I get, just as long as they are expensive), if we are going to start somewhere, it might as well be at the top. My converted BAe 146 arrived in February, and it was a bit of everything. It was a line shack to Topsy, it was a briefing room to Natasha, it was a passenger airliner to the ground crew, and it was an office to Teddy; what was it for me? I wondered, and why did Teddy want a flying office? So that he could terrify the aircrew of course. Zebedee (that was what we named her) had airborne radar and CCTV installed so that he could follow the formations around the sky, they were never very far from his beady eyes.
Early in May I had another visit from HRH and his extended family, I now seemed to be the only person that could get away with entertaining royalty as though they were the next door neighbours popping in for a cup of sugar, I certainly had a lot to thank Major Cummings for - I think. We all had a relaxing time cruising around the Greek Islands on board the Lady S (the floating one), and Inma never put a foot, sorry wheel wrong, but on the way back from the Islands we stopped off at a deserted beach, not too far from El Campo, and were treated to the first complete display routine of the Green Machines. Sally, one of the spare pilots was turning out to have the makings of a great commentator, and so she was our Master/Mistress of Ceremonies; and it was a spectacular display, both of them (?).
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