75ZT Community

RAF High Wycombe, HQ Strike Command, in the office of Sqn Ldr Tony Wright CMLO. He entered our office and announced, 'Gentlemen we have our first casualties, I have just been informed that one of our ships has been hit by an Exocet missile'.

Operation Corporate, 4 May 82.

Was living and working in France on state of the art computer control and robotics in the armaments industry. I was quite concerned at the amount of French supplied stuff being used by the Argies and contacted our embassy in Paris to say so, informing them that I could easily pull the plug on current and future production especially on the Mirage plane. The secretary that I spoke to listened with interest and told me that the noises the French government were making to their public were not the same as being expressed at diplomatic level and not to worry. "However", he said, "I'll take your phone number if I may". Quite amusing with hindsight.

I was working at Smiths Industries in the calibration department, myself and another did the optical calibration on the sea harrier master mirrors fixture used to set up the test bench to set up the head up displays fitted to the sea harriers on board Invincible

I was still single, playing lots of football and owned an immaculate Austin 1800 land crab which I bought from my uncle ,I was working for Inland Revenue which changed to HMRC in 2005 and am still there after 50 years !

I was working in North Wales at that time where we were treated to two national anthems (English and Welsh) when TV finished for the day - no 24hr TV back then. I dreaded switching on the early evening news, the task force seemed to be very vulnerable to Exocets but from the aftermath I gather that bombs did most of the damage. I also played a little football back then, played in the West Mercia league against the likes of the Police and ... HMP Strangeways, lol. Thinking of it always reminds me of that episode of Porridge with the celebrity football match.

Branch manager of a large heating company, single, not even started playing in the band. Mum and Dad still around and life was good. Was in awe of the whole operation so far away. Days when we were still a force to be reckoned with.

Working at Woolworths (weekends) while doing my A levels. There were lots of discussions about it on the shop floor, not so much at college. I was just 17.....