Flying with a Shark

In 1975, Neil Hawkesford joined the Royal Navy as one of the last intake at the notorious HMS Ganges training establishment. He trained as an Aircraft Handler before transferring to the Survival Equipment branch of the Fleet Air Arm, where he spent the next three years servicing life rafts, packing parachutes, and maintaining the kit that kept aircrew alive.

Flying With a Shark is a collection of stories from those years. Theres the attempt to build a jet-powered bicycle using CO2 cylinders from life rafts. The stomach-churning flight with the Sharks helicopter display team, where an Australian pilot put a Gazelle through stall dives and grass-cutting manoeuvres. The NATO exercise aboard a Dutch replenishment ship where everything that could go wrong did. And the brutal introduction to service life climbing the 143-foot mast at Ganges, where the safety net below would probably kill you anyway.

This isnt a memoir in the conventional sense. Its a short, sharp glimpse into lower-deck life in the 1970s Navy—the language, the characters, the black humour, and the casual disregard for health and safety that would be unthinkable today. The book is peppered with footnotes explaining the unique slang of the Senior Service, from steaming bats to Mexican hat dances.

Hawkesford never set foot on one of Her Majestys Ships and never once visited foreign soil beyond ten minutes on a Norwegian beach. But he flew in Sea Kings, worked on Phantoms, and left rated Leading Airman. Hes glad he joined.