For today's photo I'm going back to 1990 and the sand dunes I worked in western Libya and where one of our drivers was learning to fly.
The Land Rover is not the most aerodynamic of aircraft – in fact, it's more like an emu, a flightless creature except in exceptional conditions.
These sand dunes provided just those conditions.
Owing to the very low contrast during the day, this driver thought he was driving on a flat stretch of sand when he found he wasn't on the sand at all!
Unlike the cartoons, when you realize this you can't hurry back to terra firma. Gravity acts instantly.
Unloaded Land Rovers are front heavy. This one more so because it had an emergency water tank grafted onto the front bumper.
The net net was that the Land Rover came down on the front bumper and the momentum tipped it over. Unfortunately for the crew, the radio antenna was broken in the process.
Fortunately for the crew they didn't know the radio wouldn't work so tried to use it anyway. None of what they said got through but we kept hearing these bursts of noise and quickly realized something was not quite right.
The crew were fine and back at work the next day. The Land Rover, on the other hand, never worked another day in its life.
