My mate the Duke......

The Duke of Edinburgh (DofE) has been in the news quite a bit recently, we were once on first name terms; he'd call me Sgt. And I'd call him Sir.
This image was taken during February 1978 by a BBC news crew, the whole of North Devon and Dartmoor had been hit very hard by about 9 feet of snow. The rest of the Squadron (3 Commando Brigade Air Sqn) was in Norway, so the few of us left kicking our heels suddenly had our work cut out. There's a tiny hamlet in the middle of the moor called Two Bridges, I went in to locate a lady who was having delivery problems with her first baby and safely brought her to the then Plymouth hospital at Freedom Fields, so somewhere out there is a person, soon to be 34 who owes me a beer, is it Emy of 'Larry legs' fame? I have never been able to locate the family. She must have been in pain, I could hear her over the jet engine and through my helmet, perhaps putting her on the intercom wasn't such a good idea.

Navigation was interesting, with falling snow and whiteout conditions the only visible items were the tops of road signs. We went over telephone lines, but under power cables, interesting times. One of the lads had to beg the BBC not to show their film of what he did one day, he would have been grounded. :-) I took yeast to Dartmoor Prison at Princetown, the prison kept the village fed during this bleak period, I now know one of the ex-warders who worked there, a former Bootneck, he remembers us going in with the yeast, Dartmoor was a different jail then, feared and rightfully so. On the way there we discovered a man in an overcoat, suit and shoes, wading through about six feet of snow with two suitcases. He had to make it to a business meeting, or so he thought. We turned him around when we told him he would be dead in an hour if he didn't go back.

Flying power line inspections wasn't funny in such weather. I promise you, anti-perspirants aren't. We got a call from a desperate chap who was about to die from a heart attack. Having located his house on a map I made enquiries of the local doctor if I should take a crash crew from the ambulance service with me. He just laughed then told me the bloke was a walking hypochondriac who was as fit as a fiddle and not to bother.

On the 20th of Feb I was tasked to take two water board engineers to see if they could reopen water supplies to the north of Devon at Shortacombe, just SW of Okehampton. I took an air gunner as navigator as it was going to be tricky. We found the pumping station and landed in a farm field next to a bungalow. Only it wasn't a bungalow, it was a two storey house and farmyard. The elderly couple inside were shining torches at me from their bedroom to attract help. As we walked around to the farmyard I was shocked when the snow heaved up and a monster appeared. It was a pony, near death's door under many feet of snow. We dug it out, and asked for a gun. Unusually they didn't have one, neither did I, well you don't normally need them in Devon. So Tom and I rolled the partially frozen animal onto a tarpaulin, dragged it under a lean to and started to rub it with hay, then fed it hay and water we melted from snow. By sheer brute force we made it get onto it's feet and move around, then tied the tarp around it. We had done as much as we could.

The next day Tom spotted the pony as he flew over and commented on it, BUT, in the rear seat was an RSPCA inspector checking on the condition of livestock. He decided we merited an award, which is where we get back to the DofE. 42 Commando were having a medal presentation a few weeks later, the DofE came to the end of the line and discovered his old mate Rob. There were all these guys getting medals for feats of heroism, and us. He choked back tears of laughter and asked a few questions about the weather conditions. My replies didn't satisfy him, so he banged on a bit, so I banged back. The CO was giving me "cut throat" motions from behind the DofE. When Phil decided he'd pissed me off enough he wandered off chuckling; the CO approached my left ear and enquired, "What do you think you were doing?" Being a bit of a numb nuts I replied, "Well he started it!"


Lots of people wonder what happens when an engine fails in a helicopter. Have a look here, both in the hover and from altitude. The second clip is from one of the craziest demonstration flights I've ever seen.

Gazelle engine failures - Autorotations.



Bolkow 105 Demo