Muharraq was a large base (though not as huge as Khormaksar had been) with a small proportion of accompanied posts for nominally two years, but the vast majority of people were on thirteen-month unaccompanied tours. This led inevitably to some friction and bad feeling. Offensive Support Wing consisted of 8 and 208 Squadrons, a GL Section with an Army major and a couple of FACs, and an RAF Regiment Squadron. Ops and Transport Wing had a detachment of 114 Squadron Argosys from Benson, 152 Squadron (Pembrokes) for communications duties until they were grounded for fatigue reasons, and all the facilities for the H24 staging post for transports, not just serving the Gulf but also going to Singapore and Hong Kong.

Number 8 Squadron’s time at Muharraq was much quieter than the Aden days in terms of operations. There was some involvement of ‘B’ Flt, which had the four FR.10s, in border problems around Oman - things were kept very close to a very few chests, and even as the ‘A’ Flt commander I was not privy to what went on. As far as I know, it was recce only, with no weaponry involved. Both 8 and 208 had an air defence commitment in Bahrain. There was a GCI radar in the middle of Bahrain island at Hamala, which was also the base for the UK infantry battalion. We would occasionally fly practice intercepts under their control, and some of them did not work as intended - I remember once being vectored very cleanly onto an airliner in the airway into Bahrain from the SE, instead of the intended Hunter. Ho hum.  

The experience level on the squadron was very low at the time, with mostly first-tour pilots. ‘A’ Flt’s main flying task was taking a lot of them from Chivenor, giving them experience and building their flying skills, so they were ready to go on the Harrier or Phantom when they went home. We had few experienced pilots on ‘A’  Flt, only about three or four out of around twelve had previous Hunter tours. ‘B’ Flt were more experienced - at that time, FR was regarded as more demanding than the FGA role.

Regarding the airframes, you may know that Middle East squadrons aircraft each came back to the UK every two or three years for a major service at St Athan or Kemble. That started to change during 1969, as the UK and Germany-based Hunter squadrons re-equipped with Harriers, and there were many airframe moves. Some Gulf FGA.9s were sold back to HSA and re-sold overseas, some West Raynham aircraft came to the Gulf, and so on.”