Tales

Say Old Chap … ?

By mid 1966 ‘Confrontation’ was over, but the Beverleys of No 34 Squadron, RAF, continued to grace (?) the skies of SE Asia from their base at RAF Seletar in Singapore. Even though the UK studiously avoided military involvement with the growing imbroglio that was South Vietnam, there was an occasional British presence in that area. One of these fleeting visits was for two weeks in August 1967, when a Bev was flying relief supplies for OXFAM and the Catholic Relief Agency out of Saigon into some of the remoter in-country strips. Your scribe, (by then risen to the dizzy heights of Flying Officer) was the Team Leader on the FEAF Mobile Air Movements (MAMS) Team that accompanied this deployment.

The first load was for delivery to a Catholic mission church at Loe Ninh, in the ‘Parrot’s Beak’ area close to the Laotian border. The Loe Ninh airstrip was very short, and required fistfuls of reverse pitch from even USAF C-123 Providers and US Army Caribous on landing. Under this strain, true to form in the worst possible place at the worst possible time, Beverley XL150 blew an engine in a BIG way just after touchdown.

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