How close can we get Paddy?

The rose is one of the loveliest in the boss’ collection, Chandos Beauty. The orange flower is a Gazinia. The rainbow is my newest venture!!!! Amazon had a special on 500 sheets of 80gm/s paper in various shades for £7. I’m going to use the paper as backdrops for macro images. There should be enough options there. 


For the past few days a RAF refuelling jet and a RAF AWAC Sentry aircraft have been flying around the area North of St Ives watching and waiting as the G7 suits do their thing. The refuelling aircraft was for the interceptor jets temporarily based at RNAS Culdrose. How times change.

This flushed out a memory of near death in the skies over Belfast. That may sound rather dramatic, it was.
On August 11th Her Majesty was visiting Belfast as part of her Silver Jubilee UK tour. The Royal Yacht Britannia (RYB) was her home for the couple of days she spent in Northern Ireland. The ship was moored in Belfast Lough, she had maritime security but in terms of air security it was rather sparse. I was tasked with top cover patrol of the ship on the 11th. My observer had his rifle and a magazine filled with Tracer bullets, these have a compound of magnesium in their base, showing to the person firing, and indeed, the person receiving, the ammunition direction. 

Mid-afternoon all was quiet, HMQ was at Hillsborough, meeting the usual limp handed and dare I say, two-faced,  dignitaries. Suddenly from the South a small civilian fixed wing aircraft appeared, it was headed directly for RYB and descending from about 3,000,’ about to enter the “No-Fly” zone. There was no radio communication with the Belfast Harbour approach or tower. I tried calling it to identify who was incoming, no replies on several frequencies. My orders from the boss; Intercept, divert or fire at the aircraft. Simples. We flew at it, got ahead but Seamus and Paddy were gawping at the yacht. I got closer, ahead on his starboard side and Trev aimed at him, I had told Trev to aim at the engine first. As he took aim Paddy saw him, turned hard left and flew back to wherever he had come from. Panic over, heart rate reduced and the yacht was safe. 

I have often wondered what would have occurred if we had opened fire. The Meeja would have had a field day. I simply did what I was told. 
I have only just realised that was 44 years ago, what happened, where did the years go?