208 Squadrons’ maritime attack Buccaneers
‘against’ NATO navies exercising around the
UK coast.
The squadron also had a limited search
and rescue capability, for which it kept ares
and the-air dropped Lindholme rescue gear in
the bomb bay, which included a dinghy, which
in ated on impact, and other life-saving kit.
David said: “It was always useful to have
when playing with ghters in case something
happened. I never needed to use it but was
reassuring for the ghters to know we had it.”BASING AND CREWING
According to David, there was a feeling that
because the Shackletons operated from
Lossiemouth in northern Scotland they were
rather ‘out of sight and out of mind’. “We ew
all hours of the day, often in the most appalling
weather, and felt no one really understood what
we were doing. Working for 11 Group we had
a new set of Air Staff Instructions to operate by
and which introduced new absurdities.
“We had to go through the wholeargument about wearing parachutes again.
For maritime work they were no real use as
we usually ew too low for them to be of any
value. But now we had an 11 Group Air Staff
Instruction to wear [them].
“While that was okay for a 40-minute
Lightning sortie, or perhaps a Phantom crew
airborne for up to two hours, we were up for
eight, ten, 12 hours.”
The parachute that the crews were made
to wear was in addition to the mandatory
rubber immersion suit on top of the one-piece
eecy ‘bunny’ suit and thick woolly socks for
over-water operations.Periodically during the summer HQ 11
Group would say the squadron was short
of night ying hours. During the summer at
Lossiemouth it doesn’t get fully dark making
accumulating night- yings hours difficult.
It wasn’t just the aircrews who had a difficult
time: “What really brought things home was
that our aircraft sat out in the open all year
round, and our ground crews were stunningly
good, outside in all the foulest weather,
including rain and snow. We could not have
operated without them. They were fantastic.”
The intention initially was for 8 Sqn to
rapidly build up experience by becoming a
joint RAF/Royal Navy unit to bene t from the
FAA operators’ considerable experience with
the AN/APS-20F radar.
“For a period after the squadron re-formed
we got to y joint RAF and FAA crews,”
recalled David. “We were able to use the
naval operators until they completed their
tours while we built up as a purely RAF
squadron.
“Initially we carried a crew of ten, but this30 Aviation News incorporating Jets September 2017Above left: An interesting photo of a
Shackleton with its Griffon engines removed
for maintenance. Key Collection
Above right: Four Shackletons positioned on
the other side of the air eld at Lossiemouth
in preparation for their ypast during the
8/8/88 event. This was organised by 8 Sqn
which invited units from all over the world
that had an eight in their designation. Andrew
ThomasLeft: 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 Ford28-33_shackletonDC.mfDC.mf.mfDC.mfDC.indd 30 04/08/2017 17:40