Harry Shepherd talked about earthquake relief in the Greek islands. I was with a Sunderland detachment from PD in Malta in 1953 when the Ionian earthquake occured and we had 4 aircraft, 4 more arrived quickly and the ground crew were quite busy until extra people arrived. We were the only means of getting supplies in quickly. On the trip I made to the islands the flight engineer forgot to turn of the pitot head heater and had his hand in water for the return trip.
One of the memories I have is of sleeping in the bomb bay over night for an early morning start and I decide at midnight to let a 'little' air into the 8 man dingy I was sleeping on, this is when I learnt about 'shear valves'. To give you some idea of the size of the bomb bay the dingy only just fits, I may also say that I was not popular as it took a lot longer to let it down. I had to fly on a sonobouy exercise and every time one of the receiver displays stopped working had to hit the right valve to get it working again,as the equipment was so new we had no spares. I survive the trip in a smoke filled darken ward room only to be sick out of a hatch at the mooring, just as the rest of the ground crew rowed up.
