Ferrari Mailing List: Re: Some clown just bid $68k

[Doug & Terri (dnt]

Very interesting Grahame and I bet Helen wasn’t too happy about it.

 

Speaking good timing tho – good thing your exercise didn’t happen around August of 1981.  Kaddafi had declared his territorial water extended on the Medetrainian out to 100 nautical miles instead of the universal 12 nm.  So much for that except he sent out a gaggle of Soviet made jets towards our Naval fleet but US Navy pilots turned the Libyan jets back.  Subsequently two Soviet made SU-22’s zeroed in on two of our F14’s and fired missiles at them and missed.  The F14’s shot back and downed both SU-22’s.

 

That kind of action most likely would have pissed off a bitchen guy like Kaddafi.

 

Glad you and Helen made it back home.

 

Cheers

Doug

 

 

 

From: Ferrari [mailto:ferrari-bounces+dnt=dock.net [at] ferrarilist.com] On Behalf Of Grahame Reinthal
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2019 6:03 PM
To: DOUG <dnt [at] dock.net>
Cc: ferrari [at] ferrarilist.com
Subject: Re: [Ferrari] Some clown just bid $68k

 

Hi Clyde,

 

Your story of carrying $3,000 USD reminded me of an experience my wife and I had in May 1981 returning home from our honeymoon.  It was a Cathay Pacific flight from London to Bahrain, then via HK to Sydney. First thing we knew anything was amiss was the fighter jets surrounding our Jumbo.  Our very British captain came on the intercom and said: “Ladies and Gentlemen, you may have noticed that we have company. They are Syrian Air Force.  A short time ago, Nicosia air traffic control had 3 planes converging on the same place at the same time, so we were all sent off in different directions.  We were sent off into Syria and unfortunately the Syrians aren’t too happy about it. They have asked us to land in Damascus. I have suggested to them that we can simply turn around and fly out of their air space, but they have not agreed to that.  So we are on our way to Damascus.”

 

This was, of course, the Northern Hemisphere’s spring, and Sping of 1981 was particularly tense in that region. It was complicated both militarily and politically, but the salient events at that time had included the French building a nuclear power plant in Syria that the Israelis could not tolerate so they destroyed it with air strikes, and then there was the disputes over the Golan Heights, Syrian helicopters being downed and Soviet ground-to-air missiles being wheeled in to spice it all up.  So it was an interesting time to arrive in Syria unannounced.

 

We landed at dusk in Damascus and the plane taxied right to the far end of the runway, away from everything else and onto the grass.  A bunch of old cars that looked like Fiat 124s surrounded the plane and a bunch of tough-looking guys carrying lots of guns boarded the plane and positioned themselves throughout.  Everyone remained calm although anxiety levels increased when the pilot and co-pilot were taken away at gun-point.  And so here we sat for hours and hours into the night and early morning, until the captain’s voice came on the intercom to say they were back.  He said: “Well, we managed to convince the local (pregnant pause)… authorities… that we were directed on this vector and Nicosia has confirmed this, so it looks like we will be able to go soon.  However, because of this diversion, we will need to get fuel and we are arranging this via the French Embassy because Britain does not have representation here.  Stand by…”  Much later, he came back on the intercom again: “Well, we have arranged fuel and will get that shortly and should be ok to leave then.”  Later again: “OK, we have got fuel and are ready to go but we have hit another snag.  The local… authorities… are now asking for landing fees and they want it in USD cash.”  (From memory, the figure demanded was $1,000 USD, which was a lot of readies in 1981.)  The captain again: “Unfortunately, we don’t carry that sort of cash around with us under the pilot’s seat.  So I suppose we could get the French Ambassador out of bed again and see if he can help us again, but perhaps we could have a whip-around amongst you all to see if we can raise the cash.”  And that’s what we did and we still had to go to Bahrain and then to HK and then to Sydney so by the time we got home it was about 3 days in transit. 

 

Cheers,

Grahame