A BBC barbecue and engine tests - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

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I kept discreetly out of the way and let Pete Hogg do the explaining. On the same transport that had brought the new engine, a couple of airframe fitters had arrived from the UK to start patching the wing. When they got to work I didn’t watch them for long because I was surprised, and not a little alarmed, to note that the patch they applied to the 64 square inches of hole on the wing was made of nothing stronger than canvas and some sort of glue. It hardly seemed strong enough for the job but I had to assume they knew what they were doing – they said they did!

One evening was spent very agreeably at a barbecue hosted by BBC engineers who operated two powerful World Service medium wave transmitters located in the far corner of the airfield. They were used to transmit the BBC Eastern Service to the Gulf region and Pakistan. An invitation to the BBC site was always popular with RAF personnel because it had pure, clean water to wash and shower in, whereas on the RAF base itself the taps dispensed salt water straight out of the sea. Sea water had to be desalinated before it could be used for cooling the enormous thermionic valves used in the transmitters. I was given an inside tour of one of the transmitters after I had casually mentioned that I had once nearly electrocuted myself whilst servicing an RAF transmitter (see here for that story). After doing its primary job circulating around the BBC transmitters, the water was fed to the shower taps. A great and valued luxury. Incidentally the BBC compound had the only bright green lawns on the island!

At some time during our stay at Masirah we received a signal from our squadron to say that, much to our surprise and pleasure, we were to continue our Lone Ranger to Singapore as soon as the aircraft was serviceable. That was the only message we ever received from our own station or squadron throughout this Lone Ranger.

It really did take longer to install the new engine than it had taken us to remove the damaged one but on 20 June engine ground runs were carried out successfully by the engineers and I was advised that XH667 was now fit to fly. Normally following an engine change, a flight test would be required. The flight test would include shutting down and then re-starting the engine in flight and testing spool up times and other parameters to make sure everything was operating to specification. The chief engineer on the fitting party assured me that there was no need to do that on this occasion. In effect he said that we should set off for Gan and if we found something not right with the engine all we had to do was return to Masirah! As captain, I began to understand what is meant by "the loneliness of command"! I decided that we would depart early the next morning.

The planned time for the flight to Gan in the Maldives was 3 hours 40 minutes and we would cross the Equator about 5 minutes before touching down on that beautiful coral island. Because Gan was subject to frequent tropical storms and because, there was no other suitable landing strip within about 500 miles, we had to make sure we arrived in the vicinity of the island with enough fuel to hold off for up to an hour - long enough for any tropical storms to pass by and clear the airfield. This fuel was known as "island holding" fuel.

Masirah runway in the early 70s was only 7,500 feet long. This created quite a serious problem for the under-powered Mark 1 Victors. The hotter the outside temperature, the less thrust is produced by a jet engine. Every additional degree of temperature would require about 500 feet to be added to our take-off run. To take off safely with sufficient fuel for the journey meant that we had to depart when the air temperature was no more than 28 degrees.

Our departure was scheduled for 08.00 hrs. The Met Forecaster told us that the surface wind was light and variable and we could expect the temperature to be just about 28 degrees at that time, but rising rapidly. When we got to the take-off point at about 07.55 hrs the temperature had already reached 29 degrees. There was quite a crowd of residents out to watch; it was always exciting watching a heavily-laden Victor tanker take off - especially one that had been serviced by the aircrew!

I lined up on runway 18, the south-pointing runway, and ran all four engines at high rpm in an effort to burn off some fuel rapidly. It was a bit of a race to see whether we could burn off fuel faster than the temperature was rising. At about two minutes to eight, the co-pilot and I having independently checked the take-off performance figures again, I decided that it was safe to go. Any further delay would have meant that the outside temperature was rising faster than we could burn off fuel to compensate and in any case, any further fuel consumption would have reduced the safety margin required for island holding.

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