So on 9^th August the Squadron left Lee for Machrihanish. The buzz was that this station on the Mull of Kintyre was a training ground for the kind of work Ransford and company had been doing in Malta- all-weather night strikes .As always there were two parties, the air party and the land party, the latter in the capable hands of Lt. Palmer and S/Lt Paddy Allen, our ‘mad’ Irishman who had joined us on 27th July. They accompanied our 40 ‘troops’ to Waterloo-Euston-Glasgow by rail and then by bus to HMS Landrail. The air trip north was memorable for its stop for lunch at Ternhill, a stone’s throw away from James Turner’s home at Wem. Before landing James and Ransford  in ‘A’ flight flew low in greeting over the Rectory to greet the Rector, James’s father. This was not the first or last visitation and when James was showing Owen Johnstone and John Taylor round the grounds in 1980, he remarked that on one visitation when Ransford ‘shot the place up’ Jim Palmer had omitted to reel in his trailing aerial and “had left it in that tree and I suppose it’s still there”.

After lunch at Ternhill we took our leave in spectacular fashion. Ransford ordered a formation take-off and two flights of Swordfish roared down the runway , executed what was known as a split-arsed climbing turn off the deck. We thought it very impressive. The Commander of the station did not. His was a  training station where such antics were seen as breaches of flying discipline, so a signal was sent to Lee complaining about the offence and about a Lt. Slater who appeared to be in charge. Lee, in the person of Commander (A) (vice the Commodore, on leave) forwarded the signal to Macrihanish ‘for such action as seemed desirable’. None was.

From Chief Instructor No.3. (Pilot) Advanced Flying Unit                    To Officer Commanding, Royal Naval Barracks, Lee-on-Solent, Nr Portsmouth

Aerial view of HMS Landrail-Machrihanish

It was our misfortune to fall out with the station establishment from the first. Problems over the location of the Squadron’s dispersal point- the farthest from ‘main camp’- and the quality and quantity of Squadron transport provision in comparison with that allotted to ‘resident’ squadrons soon emerged. Anyone with business at the main camp, for instance with the Paymaster, faced a two-mile walk around the perimeter, for buses were laid on only at the beginning and end of working hours. Soon, we had enraged torpedo workshops, or at least its Chief Commander Dimsdale, who waxed furious that Nick Piercy had had the effrontery to use his personal loo when he himself was in dire need. Hence the verb ‘to Dimsdale’ entered the squadron vocabulary.

  In the wardroom another 'war' was in progress; the result of the clash of interest and temperament between the permanent station establishment and the transitory squadrons. To the Establishment, many of them retired Naval Officers recalled to duty, Machrihanish was home, a cold, miserable and isolated place, but home. These station officers resented having the peace of their home disturbed by the 'here today - gone tomorrow' squadrons and their noisy boisterous parties, when groups of young flyers seemingly unable to hold their liquor would sing and swear and wreck the mess to demonstrate their dash and vigour. To the residents it must have been at worst boring and depressing. To the aircrew it was a way of letting off steam. Fighter squadrons, all macho and mono­planes, were the worst culprits; 836, though it had its moments, did not often break out into such behaviour. We did, however, fall out over the limitation of supplies of spirits in the J.C.R. and the restriction of its sale to one hour only in the early evening while supplies in the S.C.H. were unlimited. We - and Ransford - thought this grossly unfair. Ransford's reaction as typical: he invited his junior colleagues into the S.C.R. as his guests and bought then drinks, or came and drank beer with them in the J.C.R.

Machines B,C & G went to Skipness for dive-bombing, and on return the recorders at the range reported a mysterious machine A. it transpires that during painting operations the panels became transposed so that G had an “A” on one side.

On a navex S/Lt Turner returned very close to his finishing point. He says on one outward course a fix showed him to be flying parallel, but 12 miles from his correct track. However on the final leg he says he allowed the wind to blow him back to his correct position.