E30 - Personal Stories: Operations Over Iraq!

During both my first command tour as a flight commander on Number 54 (Fighter) Squadron (covered in Episode 27), and subsequently during my squadron command tour as the Officer Commanding Number 6 Squadron, I spent a good deal of time flying on operational reconnaissance missions in the No-Fly Zone north of the 36th parallel in Iraq.

This episode is very much a personal account of that operational flying and consequently contains rather less leadership tips than many of my previous episodes.  However, I hope it is of interest to many, as the flying we did over that time was without any doubt the most exhilarating and challenging that I did during my whole career.

I cover a lot of ground in the episode and so it is a little longer than all of my previous individual podcasts, but I make no apology as I don't think making it shorter would have done justice to the task!  I seek to cover some of the training we did to prepare for operations as well as giving a fair amount of detail about the nature and the flying missions, and providing some background to life at Incirlik Air Force Base where we were all based.  I really hope you enjoy it!