DON’T DRINK THE WATER

At RNAS Lossiemouth there was a Sea Hawk, painted black, connected with Station Flight.  It was kept for 'ad hoc' flying - particularly used by pilots who were no longer directly involved in flying, but who wished to keep their flying hours up, and hence their flying pay.  We had one former war time pilot, 'Tankey', who diligently kept up his flying hours, setting off for a little trip around the Scottish Highlands, usually of a one hour duration, and he would return to base, climb out of the cockpit, all well, and toddle off for lunch.  Duty done for the month, flying pay safe.

In the Control Tower, the regional radio control was done by Communications Wrens.  Amongst other tasks, they had to give every Lossie aircraft a radio check, every 20 minutes, to make sure that they had not fallen out of the sky!  A fairly frequent occurence.

One morning, on duty, I turned to the Controller and reported that Tankey had not sent in his radio check.  “Give him 5 minutes, it’s an old aircraft (and an old pilot) he could just be out of contact.  We won’t raise the alarm yet”.

Our control console had various buttons to connect to our headsets including a telephone line.  Buzz buzz went the phone line.  It was the main exchange, would we take a reverse charge call from a phone box.  Phone box?   Oh, go for it!

“Hello Pam, it’s Tankey here!”  
 
“Tankey, where are you? You are supposed to be flying”

“I’m not sure where I am, but I am in a phone box, the phone number is Affric 13.   Could you check on the map and arrange for the SAR helicopter to come and pick me up.  There’s absolutely nothing here, just the phone box”

“Are you all right?”

“Oh yes, the aircraft just had a total engine failure and I banged out!  It was my first time too, very exciting, and I am standing here in my goon suit with a parachute over my arm!”

“Where did the Sea Hawk crash?”

“No idea, but I think it landed in a little loch!”

Well, obviously we checked with the GPO the whereabouts of the phone box, and despatched an amused SAR helicopter crew to rescue Tankey.  Then came the more serious business of finding out WHO was the land, or do I mean loch, owner.

It turned out that the loch owners were big name whisky distillers and the loch was one of their main water supplies.  The air station was asked to be EXTREMELY discreet about where the aircraft had ended up.  We assume that that years “vintage” had an extra 'je ne sais quoi'

Pam Ayling								March 2013