Striking firefighters left their picket line to watch as RAF Green Goddess crews struggled to put out a car fire under a block of flats in Cambridgeshire.

The car fire broke out just 500 yards from Huntingdon's fire station on Wednesday night.

Once the fire was out it was clear there was extensive damage to part of the building.

Striking firefighter Adrian Clarke said the fire would have been out within minutes had regular crews been dealing with it.

Striking firefighters look on

"A car fire to us is bread and butter work. That would have been out within minutes," he said.

"The RAF have come along and I understand it took them a minimum of 12 minutes to get water on to the fire.

"I would not profess to be able to do their job with a couple of weeks of training and they are beginning to realise the reality of doing ours."

RAF Green Goddess crewman Nick Bradbury said the site of the fire made it more difficult to deal with.

"A car fire could possibly be put out more quickly with a high-pressure hose. It depends where it is and how you can get at it.

False alarms

"On this occasion it was underneath a building and there were complications."

On Thursday morning the Ministry of Defence said troops had attended about 50 incidents in East Anglia since the strike began.

A spokesman said there had been no serious injuries and no deaths and the majority of the incidents were small fires.

About half of the emergency calls have either been hoaxes or false alarms.