Belgian Tiger! Wow!

[RMR]

Or was that a marchetti  !!!

[Guinness]

John K.

The "I'll be back" tail is the last 23 SQN tail as the squadron is disbanned.
This was my last unit.
The squadrons ( unofficial ) moto was.........23 Sqn, Untill hell freezes over.
The sqn patch was a devil throwing bombs.

I'll try to dig up some cool a.t.a. pics and post them here.

Guinness

[John K]

Hi Guinness, back in '78-'79 when I was with Fighter sqn, Irish Air Corps working on the Fouga magisters one of our new sargeants had a brainstorm to put stickers of the muppets (remember that TV show?) on the nose of the Fougas, I think it was a reaction to the Allouette 111s having pink panthers on the nose (I don't remember why heli'sqn did that either!)
We put Fozzie bear on one and our CO passed by and went ballistic! so needless to say we didn't get to 'decorate' any other aircraft!
Tony Kearns, can you enlighten us as to why Heli's had the pink panthers? I transferred to heli's in 1980 and cut out the usual shape in dayglow, a couple of us had them on our 'bone domes' and our 'civvie' crash helmets, or on the back of cars.

[Tony Kearns]

Hi John,
The Pink Panther was the idea of John Manning. He is now on the S61's based at Waterford operated for the Coastguard. One nice fella!
Regards,
Tony K

[John K]

Thanks, Tony. John lived on the next road to me in Coolock before I went into the 'Don as an apprentice and I knew him and his family. Lo and behold when I was doing my basic training he was seconded down to TTS as a military instructor and he wasn't too cushy ! I did get to know him much better when I was posted to Heli's.
I'd like to get in touch with him, maybe next week! I've got to do a trip to Kilrush to get some furniture from my Father in law and I'll be driving back from there to Rosslare so I could make a detour!
I'll try to find out why he came up with the Pink Panther!

[John K]

Got to Waterford airport eventually (held up by cattle being walked along the road for milking, that's the main road to the airport!) but John wasn't on shift, maybe next time!