Mauripur was one of the main Staging Posts enroute to and from the UK to the Far East and Australia.
The flights were designated UAH to Australia, USH to Changi and UKH to Kai Tak the busiest being the UAH's
as the Woomera rocket range was in full swing and the preparations for the atomic bomb tests on the Montibello Islands
off the west coast of Australia.
UAH flights were the priority and if one went u/s and there were no spares available from the stores then any other Hastings unlucky
enough to be parked nearby was robbed of the parts required and forced to wait for fresh ones to be sent out from the UK.
On some occasions a Hasting arriving from Negombo would be fully loaded to 80,000lbs but for it's next leg to Habbaniya there would be
strong headwinds and the fuel load normally being 2000 gallons and extra 200 gallons would be needed. I would contact the pilot who by now
was in the officers mess and inform him of the situation and he would usually instruct us not to unload any passengers as they would
probably be going home time expired and instead ""lose"" items off the trim sheet like the water etc so next morning the Hastings
would take off 2000lbs overweight !!!.The captain would sign the trim and load sheets as would the Movements officer but he hadn't a clue
what he was signing anyway.
The UKH returning to UK would nearly always be in Case-Vac mode.
One of my jobs at Mauripur was with the UKH flights returning to the UK was to steer the case-vac ramp up to the open doors to the Hastings in order to unload the stretcher cases. It was four coolie power with me steering it
