Originally Posted by Knucklehead
Beside the pulled cct breaker in the rear cockpit, armed aircraft were supposed to have the armmament master switch in the front cockpit immobilised with orange dayglo tape. It's 24 years ago but I'm pretty certain that the tape wasn't there. This is understandable as our armourers did not expect the jets to be launched live. They then met the Jaguar pair at Borkun (the largest POL in N Germany) at 1000' QNH and shot down No 2.
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Hang on a minute, the taping up of master arm switches came about as a result of the phantom pilot forgetting to see the 8 !!!!!!! big missiles and a gun hanging underneath his aeroplane, same guy not reading the armament state of his aeroplane, and for all I know same guy's gung ho attitude causing him not the armourers to shoot down a friend
Trying to shift the blame even a small portion of it on to guys who sweat blood arming your mounts is quite simply out of order but sadly it is expected.
you might have guessed by now i was an armourer on phantoms and quite prepared to accept my share of a f*ck up if merited. In this case the blame lies solely with the trigger presser