Full power had been applied the moment I pulled out of the attack, so all I could do was aim for the crest and pray. After an agonisingly slow climb, the mountain face was cleared by no more than ten feet and my FB9 was very close to stalling. Having passed the crest in a fifty-degree climb, I was able to allow the aircraft to pitch down to twenty degrees nose-down to regain flying speed. This was achieved very close to the ground on the plateau beyond the ridge, but I was able to breathe normally again. Varky was miles ahead of me turning starboard for base. By turning inside him I caught up quickly enough, but said nothing to Varky about my close shave with the mountain until we were back on the ground.
In the crew-room I learned that when firing all four cannons the usual speed build-up was severely curtailed, necessitating 7,500 rpm to be set to ensure adequate acceleration throughout the dive, particularly where such a steep climb-out was necessary. I had nearly lost my life for want of such simple yet vital information that I should have been given during my OCU. Immediately the other junior pilots were briefed on this matter.
The very next day I returned to Wadi Adzzh on a routine armed patrol, this time with Randy du Rand. I ran my eye along the path I had flown the previous day, then along the wadi’s passage south then east to where it broke out onto the desert floor. At this point I saw two camels standing close to a crude single-floor mud building on the desert floor tight up against the base of the mountain. Immediately I turned in to attack the building knowing that terrorists alone were in this area. Four Squash-head rockets were launched and I pulled up really hard to clear the mountain under which the target was sited. When I looked back, I saw the camels running south into the desert but could see nothing of the house because of the dust from the explosions. After one orbit the dust had drifted away and I could see that the house had been flattened but, in almost childish enthusiasm, I turned in again to attack the immediate surrounds with cannon fire. This time I had set the appropriate power and cleared the mountain with ease. So far as I recall, someone on the flat desert had shot at Randy and whilst I was doing my thing he was trying to find the man to give him a ‘snot squirt’.
When we returned to base I reported my strikes to the operations staff. The RAF Squadron Leader in charge of the Operations Room consulted the map and told me that I had taken on a target just outside the ‘Prescribed Area’. For some reason the area’s eastern boundary had been extended along the wadi’s south leg straight out into the desert. In consequence the final east leg of the wadi opening to the desert plus the eastern corner of the mountain range lay outside of the official ‘no go area’.
I was really worried that I had made this error but the Squadron Leader, who was not a particularly friendly type, told me not to be concerned. He had no doubts that the target was legitimate. But he gave me hell for not killing the camels with my cannons instead of wasting ammunition on a worthless piece of real estate. He emphasised the need to have taken out these animals because they constituted vital transportation for terrorists. The thought of killing animals with cannon fire appalled me, but this requirement had not been spelled out strongly enough in earlier briefings.
Set in the old extinct volcanic crater of Shamsham mountain was the Arab town called Crater. We were all advised not to visit this potentially dangerous place that was strictly off limits to all servicemen during the hours of darkness. Nevertheless, Eric Cary and I were keen to make a visit to Crater town and went there by taxi one Thursday afternoon.
Once through the mountain tunnel leading into the crater, we entered a world of strange sights, sounds and smells. We walked around the narrow streets that bustled with folk moving to-and-fro into open-sided shops and amongst hundreds of street vendors selling an amazing assortment of herbal drugs, vegetables and cooked food. The smells were very inviting but the swarms of flies crawling over prepared food and vendors’ faces dissuaded us from trying anything.
It was late afternoon when we turned back for the tunnel where the taxi rank was sited. Soon enough we realised that we were lost but unable to communicate with those around us. Panicking somewhat in fast fading light, we eventually picked up our bearings quite close to the taxi rank. It was then that I spotted a man following a short distance behind wearing a thick belt in which was tucked a superb ghambia (curved Arabian fighting knife) with a magnificent jewel-studded black handle showing prominently above the belt-line.
When I drew Eric’s attention to the weapon, the man slowed to a crawl, his face twisting noticeably into a menacing expression. He continued to move towards us as Eric dived into an open-sided shop urging me, under his breath, to get off the street but I remained mesmerised. Next moment the shopkeeper was calling even more urgently saying I must not, under any circumstances, look at the weapon again. Feeling rather foolish I went in and pretended to be interested in a stack of rubber mats.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the man walking slowly by. When he had gone, the shopkeeper who spoke good English told us that there were problems with that specific individual and his bejewelled ghambia. Firstly he was a renowned terrorist who was in town because it was ‘market day’ and secondly, it would have been incumbent upon the man, by custom, to give me his knife had I continued to admire it. In return however, I would be compelled to give him something of equal worth; but I was in no position to do this. Failure to produce a reciprocal gift simply meant forfeiture of one’s life. Having been given such sobering information, Eric and I were escorted by the shopkeeper to a taxi, but not before he pressurised us into buying unwanted items from his shop.
These experiences lead us to ask questions about what the shopkeeper had said concerning ‘market day’. We were told that, in the strange world of British and Arab relations, Thursday was a day when fighting stopped to allow friend and foe to go to market in safety. A recurring Ceasefire existed from midnight Wednesday to midnight Thursday. Whether this very strange arrangement was true, or not, I still cannot say. Nevertheless, my impression of Arabs, developed from stories I had heard before and during the visit to Aden, was not good at all. Any doubts I had then had been totally removed by the goings-on at the RAF’s crude air-weapons range which lay about ten kilometres to the north of RAF Kormaksar. This range was nothing like ours at Kutanga with its beautiful trees and wild game. It was just an area of desert sand set against the beach.
During weapons training Arabs ran about in the danger area where spent cartridge casings fell from the aircraft. The RAF Range Safety Officers were not too concerned because no amount of effort had succeeded in stopping those people from collecting spent cartridge cases that they sold over the border to Yemeni gun-makers.
The kinetic energy of a spent 20mm cartridge case reaching ground at speed was lethal. The Arab collectors knew this only too well, but it did not put them off. RAF officers said that when a collector was killed, others would rush to grab the dead man’s bag, dig out the spent cartridge from head or body, and continue collecting as if nothing had happened.
On any air weapons range there is need for clearly visible targets for pilots to aim at and to measure their accuracy. Old vehicles make good targets because non-explosive practice weapons pass through a vehicle leaving it intact and reusable. Hundreds of hits could be taken before a vehicle fell to bits. But in Aden such a target would be stolen the first night it appeared. Laying down white lime as a marker was a waste of time because the mark disappeared under sand thrown up by just a few strikes. In fact a single 60-pound rocket falling short could totally obliterate a freshly laid lime marker. So, the RAF armourers decided to overcome the problem by building a huge pyramid using old forty-four-gallon drums encased in concrete. This target took a week to build and was guarded day and night for another week to ensure that the concrete had set. However, it only took the first unguarded night for Arab thieves to destroy the entire arrangement and abscond with every single drum. The remaining concrete rubble, rejected as worthless by thieves, was then bulldozed into a heap and used for a while as a viable target.