Episoder
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Log book stories still abound but I’m now on the last volume of my small collection of RAF Form 414s. Unbeknown to me back then, my time in the Air Force was fast coming to a close. When I was offered the job on the Tornado it was on the understanding that I would serve an additional year to amortise the cost of training and I was now in coming up to the completion of my term of service, 19 years or aged 38 which ever was longer. If I signed on again it would be to age 55. What's more, I needed to make up my mind as the RAF wanted 18 months of notice of my decision… would I stay or leave.
The F3 Tornado
He used a mixture of chicken entrails, throwing bones and gazing into his crystal balls to tell me my fortune
With their glory days behind them the young guns often treated Specialist Aircrew with scant respect and as their skills grew tired and their experience became tarnished with age they sometimes had little to offer but old war stories
The KC135 equipped for probe and drogue refuelling
RAF weather colour codes
My ATPL study books
An F3 equipped for QRA
The result of a midair collision
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Ronnie Macdonald, Mike Freer, Trougnouf, US DOD, Mike McBey, Defence Imagery, the RAF, the MOD, the RAF Air Historic branch, the IWM, J Thomas, Midjourney and Adrian Pingstone. -
In the words of it’s benefactor, “It has been described as the most exclusive Club in the world, but the entrance fee is something most men would not care to pay and the conditions of membership are arduous in the extreme.” Other clubs that sprang up during the World Wars are more a measure of the bravado, luck or good fortune of its members to make use of an aircraft’s emergency survival equipment but the club I will tell you about today is one that honoured the grim stubbornness of its members to overcome the pain and disfigurement of their injuries with stoical good (if rather dark) humour. The Guinea Pig Club.
The badge of the Guinea Pig Club
McIndoe
McIndoe and his patients
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the RAF, East Grinstead museum, the Library of Congress, the RCAF, the IWM, the RAF Benevolent fund and the Queen Victoria hospital. -
Mangler du episoder?
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My logbook tales continue with my tour on Tremblers flying the F3 Tornado which had got off to a difficult start when our compliment of brand new aircraft were shipped off to other squadrons and, in return, we received the dregs of the RAF’s Tornado ADVs. They certainly weren’t in the best of condition and I began to think I was fated when I was forced to divert following a generator failure and X-drive clutch failure on an air test but then I was looking forward to leading a detachment down to Coningsby to fight F-16s over the North Sea in the Air Combat Manoeuvring range for a week.
The British Aerospace North Sea ACMI served UK and European Air Forces
Tremblers formate on the RAF's new E3D Airborne Early Warning aircraft.
An F3 Tornado fires an AIM 9 Sidewinder missile
A piper plays at sunset
A 100 Squadron Hawk trainer
An F3 on approach
The K2 Victor Air to Air Refuelling tanker trailing all 3 hoses
Italian firemen hose down a Tornado canopy as it was too hot to close properly
The F3's single Mauser 27mm cannon
The golfer Tom Kite playing for the USA in the Dunhill Cup at St Andrews
The Royal and Ancient golf club at St Andrews beside the 1st tee and the 18th green. In front is the historic bridge built for herders over the Swilken Burn
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the RAF, the R&A golf club, BAe, Mike Freer and Optograph. -
It’s the summer of 1971 and Helen Reddy is singing about hiking down to the canyon store to buy a bottle wine and having such a good time. I have no doubt that the nine prominent Salt Lake members of the Fishy Trout and Drinking Society returning from their deep sea fishing trip were feeling equally relaxed as they boarded their flight back home from Los Angeles. They were getting onto a Hughes Airwest DC-9, Flight 706, the forerunner of Capt Jeff’s beloved Mad Dog and Angry Puppy, belonging to a new regional airline purchased and renamed by Howard Hughes. A little before them, a U.S. Marine Corps F-4B Phantom II, Bureau Number 151 458, departed Mountain Home Air Force Base in southwest Idaho, bound for Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada.... and so the story starts!
A Hughes Airwest DC-9
A U.S. Marine Corps F-4J Phantom II,
An ANA B-727
A JAF Japanese built F-86F Sabre
The B-727 and F86 tracks
The flight paths of the DC-9 and the Marine F-4
The F4's position as would be seen from the DC-9 cockpit
The DC-9's position from the F4 front cockpit
The eye's Fovea Centralis, the small area of the eye’s retina that can detect fine detail
Various TCAS displays
Images under a Creative Commons licence with thanks to Richard Silagi, the U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation, Michael Bernhard, Hunini, the NTSB, the USN and U.S. Defense Imagery. -
The numeric version of three previous Tales covering the A to Z of Aviation. Now we look at what numbers might mean to pilots?
Babylonian numeric text
The Japanese Zero fighter
A 'tongue in cheek' three engined Airbus
The twin hulled S55 flying boat
The North American F-82
Flying in Vic
The Piaggio Avanti EVO
The Old Course with RAF Leuchars in the background
The 10 ton Grand Slam bomb
The Seven Seas appeal of the DC-7C
The NASA B-52 "Balls 8"
Red 10
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin, Kogo, Arpingstone, images from the Public Domain, the USAF, the RAF, Scott Cormie, Swissair and Delta, NASA, -
As you may recall I was undergoing the training course for the Tornado F3 Air Defence Variant having completed four previous flying tours. Now being a senior officer it made the job of working as a student again a little more bearable.
The Old Pilot's logbook tales continue:
An RAF Tornado Air Defence Variant
67° wing sweep
Ait to Air refuelling from the wing stations of an RAF VC10
We watched in horror as a motley collection of hanger queens and scruffy excuses for aeroplanes were delivered, bent and leaking, onto our aprons
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the Royal Air Force, the MOD, Adrian Pingstone, Chris Lofting, J Thomas and Pràban na Linne Ltd. -
Form 414, my RAF Logbook continues with me leaving Australia and the Hornet unhappily in my rear vision mirror as I was heading back to Blighty and a cold winter in Lincolnshire. No 229 Operational Conversion Unit was the training unit that would give me my first taste of the Mighty Fin, the Swing Wing Super Jet, Mother Riley’s Cardboard Aeroplane otherwise known as the Air Defence Variant of the Tornado.
Not just a British aircraft, the Tornado was a project involving Germany and Italy as well.
A cutaway of the ADV Tornado
Just some of the multitude of limitations that Tornado pilots were required to memorise
The Tornado cockpit showing the wing sweep lever
The Mighty Fins of 43 and 111 Squadrons
The RB199 lacked sufficient thrust to allow the F3 to perform adequately at medium and high level but it did have a way of going backwards!
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Surruno, Panavia, BAe, the RAF Museum, Mike Freer, Kevan Dickin, Chris Lofting and the RAF. -
After I landed my aircraft I clambered out of the Hornet with the cold realisation that I might have flown my last sortie. The spinning sensation had ceased and the sortie had gone beautifully, it was almost as if it had been a bad dream. A continuation of tales from the Old Pilot's logbook, RAF Form 414.
Was the sun about to set on my career?
The surgery span round and round
Promotion
Exercise K89
One of our opponents, the F16
Firing off live missiles like the AIM 7M Sparrow
Landing in a thunderstorm
A week on Song Song island acting as the Range Safety Officer
The RSO and his crew of Malay troops
My final flight and the boys renamed my aircraft Nick The Pom!
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The year is 1957 and the space race is underway. The major powers around the world, mainly the Soviet Union and the United States, are all striving to develop the technology that will allow them to reach outer space. The Soviet Union’s Academy of Sciences prime aim was to beat the Americans into Earth orbit and their top secret Sputnik project was about to reward all the efforts put in by a generation of scientists and engineers. Sputnik 1 was soon to be placed atop an R-7 rocket and launched into a low orbit to become the first artificial Earth Satellite. But what if they hadn’t been the first?
Sputnik was fired into a low earth orbit on the 4th of October 1957 atop an R-7 rocket
Some months before the Sputnik launch the US were conducting nuclear tests
The Pascal I underground test caused a huge blue flame to erupt from the desert
Very high speed cameras were used to film the tests
The Horizons spacecraft
People wonder what became of the manhole cover and if anything was written on it?
Images under a Creative Commons licence with thanks to the Atomic Heritage Foundation, the Federal Government of the United States, NNSA and NASA. -
Let me take you back to the dim distant past and Captain Jeff’s start with his legacy airline, ACME, I mean Delta, no ACME, Delta, Acta, Delme… oh whatever. His career started, not in the Captain’s seat but somewhere in the bowels of flight deck, sitting sideways with control panels in front of him instead of windows, that stretched to the ceiling! Jeff was an engineer on his favourite three holer, the Boeing 727. The loss rate for this iconic airliner was, unhappily, quite high. As of 2019 the aircraft had suffered 351 major incidents of which 119 resulted in a total loss. The loss of life resulting from these bare numbers has risen to over four thousand souls. One addition to those sad statistics came from Flight 600. This is the story.
The Boeing 727 Flight Deck
The 727 on its maiden flight
The famous S bend
With tail mounted engines the wings could be fitted with full span lift devices
The B727 was the first first airliner to have an APU
The 727 had rear mounted stairs that were used by the nefarious DB Cooper
Which resulted in the fitting of a Cooper Vane
The mechanics of a microburst
Our Captain Jeff
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Felix Goetting, Alex Beltyukov, Boeing, Tank67, Daderot, Juras14, Aero Icarus and NASA. -
Two of the Saratoga’s F14 Tomcats were tasked to defend the carrier against a simulated attack during Exercise Display Determination 87. The leader of this small formation included a senior pilot and skipper of a newly arrived Junior Grade Lieutenant Timothy Dorsey. Many years later, Dorsey would be nominated for promotion to a one-star Rear Admiral, an appointment that required Congressional approval. What stood in his way was an incident that occurred during that fateful day in 1987.
USS Saratoga
Timothy Dorsey
F14 Tomcats on deck
An F4 tanking
HUD film of the engagement
US Navy wings
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the US Navy, US Air Force and the US Gov. -
Part 2 of my interview with my mate Matt, steely eyed rocket man extraordinaire.
Goonhilly
Gyros and spacecraft in Telstar
The interior of Telstar
The magnitude of space junk around the world
The first live TV pictures transmitted via satellite
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to NASA, I Alison, Rama, NASA, US Gov, the BBC and Andrew Bulko -
At first glance he looks to be a rather scruffy and unkempt elderly chap but behind the heavy glasses there are two twinkling eyes that reveal more than you can imagine. Indeed, appearances can be deceiving as this retired RAF Technician could have well been a steely eyed missile man as he controlled military satellites around during the Cold War. Meet my mate Matt!
Sputnik
RAF Oakhanger
Inmarsat equipment on board a ship
Not every launch was a success
Telstar
Voyager
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Nigel Chadwick, NRAO/AUI, Saber1983, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Dale Griffin USGS, then Science Museum and NSAS. -
In the tale, the Applegate Memorandum, I described the difficult birth that McDonnell Douglas had with the DC-10 when it’s safety record was permanently marred by a cargo door design flaw that plagued its introduction. Sadly, this wasn’t the only issue that was going to discredit the aircraft in the eye of its passengers and they would ultimately condemn the world’s first 3 engined wide body as a dangerous failure. Although the aircraft’s problems with its cargo doors could be firmly laid at the feet of McDonnell Douglas, the next disaster that the aircraft would have to cope with was not of the manufacture’s making, but of some operators who took it upon themselves to shorten engineering procedures.
Then incident aircraft N110AA
Cutaway showing the configuration of the wing mounted engines
The DC10 cockpit
The last moments of American Airlines Flight 191
The aftermath
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the Dale Coleman, Jyra Sapphire, Jon Proctor, the Bureau of Aircraft Accident Archives, the NTSB, the US Gov and American Airlines.
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I left you last time after we had returned with our Hornets from New Zealand having had a very productive and interesting few weeks working with the Kiwi A4 Skyhawks. We soon settled back into our Squadron HQ at RAAF Williamtown and started to work up some Maritime Strike tactics against the ships of the Australian Navy. These were early days for the Australian Hornets and the anti ship missiles that were to be purchased had yet to be properly integrated into the aircraft’s weapons system... and so continues the Tales from the Old Pilot's Log Books.
The Hornets mix it with the Navy!
It was the P3 Orion's job to find the ships and broadcast their positions
The RAAF had yet to equip their F18s with anti ship missiles but that didn't stop us training
We flew affiliation sorties against the RAAF Caribous so I got the chance to observe from the other side of the engagement
Called in from leave to fly an engine air test I did so with my holiday beard still attached!
The rake of the Hornet seat didn't suit my back leading to a nagging problem
On our way to Malaysia we staged through Bali
At RMAF Butterworth we stayed in the beautiful old RAF Mess
And could frequently be found in the Hong Kong Bar
Back home in Australia I started to suffer from vertigo and wondered if the dream had come to an end -
The conclusion of a chat over a pint with Wood Duck, the Royal Australian Air Force Air Attache to the Australian High Commission in London.
Images of No 2 OCU when it was equipped with the FA18
The handover of No 2 OCU Hornets to the new commanding officer and the new F35 Lightning fighters.
RSAF Hawk trainers -
As a fighter pilot on the newly formed 77 Squadron Royal Australian Air Force, now equipped with brand new FA/18s, we had many experienced pilots but before long we also acquired pilots on their first operational type. One such pilot was Woody, or more formally known as Wood Duck and flying the Hornet was just the start of a long career in aviation that took him all around the world. Now the Air Attache at the Australian High Commission in London, Woody and I met at a local hostelry and had a beer whilst talking about old times.
The Australian FA/18B
Flypasts performed by No 2 OCU RAAF whilst under Woody's command
Woody as a youngster in the Hong Kong bar whilst on deployment in Malaysia.
RAAF Hornets in Butterworth
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the RAAF, the USAF, the RMAF and No 2 OCU RAAF. -
So you want to be an airline pilot? You want to travel the world, visit strange and exotic countries and immerse yourself in the wonders of foreign cultures? You want to make a good living, bring up a family and plan for a wonderful retirement driving your luxurious RV around the wide open spaces of your beloved country? Has it crossed you mind that your chosen occupation might not be the safest way to achieve your dreams?
The Old Curmudgeon rides again
Airliner crashes are rare events
Ensure that you join a recognised union that can afford you legal representation anywhere in the world -
I trust that you will recall the stories from my RAF Logbook which had reached the point of my first Hornet deployment to New Zealand to work with the Kiwi A4 Skyhawks of No 75 Squadron Royal New Zealand Air Force at Ohakea.
The squadron we were working with had a rich history and I was sure I was going to enjoy my time with them.
75 Sqn RNZAF formed with Wellingtons purchased by the New Zealand government
75 Sqn A4 Skyhawk
The Kiwi Red formation team
Inverted whilst in contact
An A4 in combat firing rockets
How to fly a flat scissors
An FA18 pulls into the vertical
The effectiveness of camouflage
Low level
Attacking a splash target
The Hornet at night
The disappearance of the hook was investigated
The perp was arrested!
75 Sqn RNZAF was sadly disbanded
Images shown under creative commons licence with thanks to the RAF, the New Zealand Defence Force, the USN, CNATRA, Bernardo Malfitano and Myself.
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The Right Hand Traffic Rule stated that an aircraft which was flying within the United Kingdom in sight of the ground and following a road, railway, canal or coastline, or any other line of landmarks shall keep such line of landmarks on its left. For reasons that defeat me the rule went on to give an exception stating, “provided that this rule shall not apply to a helicopter following the Motorway M4 on a route from West Drayton to Osterley Lock!” Let me take you back to the the birth of commercial aviation in Europe after the First World War.Daimler Airways operated the De Havilland aircraft on the Croydon to Paris route and Grands Express were operating the same route, albeit originating from Paris. The scene was therefore set and, no doubt the astute amongst you will already be speculating on what befell the Daimler Airway mail flight departing Croydon on the 7th of April 1922 and the Grand Express aircraft that left Le Bourget on the same day, just after noon. This is that story.
The Farman Goliath airliner
The DH18
The BAS 500cc single Gold Star
London to Le Bourget
Le Bourget to London
Traffic in France drove on the right hand side
On that fateful day, the weather was poor
The Picardie accident was the world’s first mid air collision between airliners
Images shown under the Creative Commons licence with thanks to Albert Thuloup, Handley Page, BP, SADSM, The Library of Congress and Popular Mechanics. - Se mer
