“Pete” found that peacetime flying could have some exciting moments:
On a flight with 408 Sqdn from Vancouver to Rockcliffe, everything went wrong. Attempting to land at Rockcliffe in a heavy snowstorm, the aircraft struck a tree, lost the pitot head and VHF antennae, bent the undercarriage and holed the wings and body, diverted to Uplands, landing blind and plowed through deep snow to a stop.
With #120 Sqdn., Kinloss, Scotland, took part in a large-scale NATO exercise involving surveillance of a large Russian fleet.
In the North Sea, off the Norwegian coast, they breached a restricted zone and were warned off by a Sverdlov cruiser which trained its guns on the Shackleton.
“Pete”s aircraft picked up a Russian sub and promptly laid a ring of sonobuoys around it as it maneuvred underwater. ( The sonobuoy is a canister dropped by its own parachute. Upon hitting the water, it releases a hyfrophone on a 60 foot cable which picks up “cavitations” from the subs propeller (and other noises) which it then transmits to the monitoring aircraft ASW operator. After laying a pattern of some 12 buoys, they were again warned off the restricted area. Upon leaving, they saw the Russian sub surface and pick up all their sonobuoys.