21st SOS MH-53 FINAL FLIGHT

[SUPER JOLLY GREEN]

The 21st Special Operations Squadron will be flying their MH-53's for the very last time tommorrow afternoon (Thursday 13th Sept). A four ship will launch and route through the London heli-lanes, Dover/White Cliffs, Bawdsey and then out off the East coast to change some minigun and .50 cal live rounds to empty cases. Eyes on the skies!

[Tigs2]

Super
Can you pm me the time so I can go down to the river.

Tigs

[SUPER JOLLY GREEN]

Tigs,

PM sent. Just imagine being at the very top of the London Eye watching these four beasts thundering past!!!

SJG

[dum_my]

Please can you remind us what is happening to the 21st SOS? Are you disbanding, relocating to somewhere else, or converting to the Osprey, or something else?

[US Herk]

I believe they will eventually be replaced with Osprey - timeline TBD.

[BEagle]

When blattting away with those miniguns and 50 cals, don't forget to lead the women and children in the immigrant detention centres a little less.....

[abeaumont]

Can you advise the likely time for flying over the Dover/White Cliffs area if at all possible please?

I work in Dover, live in Canterbury, and would like to keep an eye and both ears strained in the hope of seeing them.

Thanks!

[SUPER JOLLY GREEN]

BEagle - "Target will fall if hit!"

abeaumont - Pure guess at the moment, but I reckon between 1330 and 1400 Local.

Rgds

SJG

[abeaumont]

Many thanks indeed - should happen during the school lunch break.

I'll tell those who run the RAF side of our CCF contingent so they can try to make sure the cadets look out for them.

Much appreciated!

[airborne_artist]

Good luck gentlemen - I have happy memories of working with your colleagues at Eglin AFB/Hurlburt Field many years ago.

[The Helpful Stacker]

The thing I remember most about the MH-53 is being woken up an hour early or waiting for an hour when on TSW duty refueller at RAF Stafford because of a ZULU/Local ETA mix-up by either someone at the Mildenhall end (not so likely) or someone in the TSW ops room (very likely).

I've got a 21st SOS bar coin thingy (that I was given at silly o'clock in the morning whilst on duty refueller some time ago) stashed away somewhere for all those "who's round is it anyway" occasions when working with our colonial brethren.

A good bunch of lads, it'll be a shame not to see the Super Jolly thundering through the skies anymore.

[Safety_Helmut]

Have just seen the formation going past St.Ives following the A14, made quite a sound !

S_H

[greycoat]

Yep. Just seen them turning over the Thames at Vauxhall heading towards Victoria/Westminster.

[Self Loading Freight]

They just circled schloss SLF (on the South Bank), causing no little commotion among the natives...

R

[Tracey Island]

Cert sighting on top Northwood, ahem, so my friends tell me...

[Footless Halls]

Was it just my eyesight, or were there five of them? Great show!

[slip and turn]

So that little clockwise ring-o-ring-o-roses round Vauxhall was a Special Ops thing was it? Looked to me like No 5 atishooed a tad too long and had to play catchup to Tower Bridge! I had thought the orbit might have been a request to stand aside for the LCY traffic on RWY10...

Found myself in the company of some blokes in camouflages for a pint an hour afterwards a bit further downstream...

[abeaumont]

Sadly, no sight or sound of them in White Cliffs country.
Ears were straining and eyes peeled though.

Adrian

[Wycombe]

From what you said about your location at a School in Dover and CCF contingents etc, I was wondering if you're at a well-known (in Mil circles anyway) School up on the cliffs?

If so, greetings from an ex-pupil :ok:

[Fugazi1000]

I was on a training course in central London and happened to be looking out of the window at lunchtime. I was lucky enough to see 5 of the big beasts flying a very big circle. Number 5 seemed to be lagging somewhat....

I mentioned what was happening to the others around me, and the discussion turned to military matters and it amazed me just how little people know of what happens in the armed forces. I'm just a civvie who grew up in a military environment, so I have an interest, but it's a shame that this isn't shared more widely. :(

[Self Loading Freight]

Yes, 5 got a bit lost during the orbit of Vauxhall - and 4 had a rather curious nose-up attitude compared to those in front. Guess the stubbies were in the back.

R

[Tiger_mate]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v473/KarlADrage/070913%20Orford%20Ness/IMG_2013.jpg

[Tigs2]

Saw them over London at 12.34
Thanks for the heads up, great to see, and sounded wonderful!!:ok:

Best of luck guys.

[aviate1138]

Tiger Mate - how did you manage to get all the tail rotors in the same position? :)

[abeaumont]

Sorry, I am not a teacher at that certain well-known establishment on high ground where the World Archery Championships were held in July. Dover is a fairly small town yet has three, and soon to be four, CCF contingents - all but the one you went to in state secondary schools.

Strangely though, one of our former RAF section officers went to teach at your old school, and is now a CCF officer there - and I used to live in Wycombe, High Wycombe that is.

Small world!

[chopper2004]

I recall a conversation with some folks from Hulbert Field at the Air Fete 2000, and queried the V-22 and was told in no uncertain terms, that the V-22 was AFSOCOM's future. Rotary Wing Spec ops was going to be purely in the lap of the 160th SOAR and that was that.

The Hulbert Field folks also back then, said by 2007, CV-22 would be in the Suffolk countryside however within a few months, there were two fatal V22 accidents and V22 testing and fielding got slightly ummm suspended so i suspected the timeline for fielding AFSOCOM units would be last on the agenda with regard to putting the USMC VMM squadrons as priority.

I guess now with the final flypast of the Pave Lows, and the gradual introduction of the CV-22...then the predicted timeline for this year being the CV-22 stationed in Europe might not be off course as such possibly by 1 or 2 years. So close.


The other alternative if there was an urgent need was when the old cant' remember the unit at Taegu or Osan AFB, in 2001 when their Pave Lows were gone from the 353rd Special Operations Group, and replaced by E Company of the 160th SOAR with MH-47E for vertical lift in that theater or operations.

[Regie Mental]

V-22s are not expected to be stationed in Europe. Instead the overseas based SOGs will be based at Cannon AFB, NM. The Pave Low mission will be adopted by the Army, in the short term at least, but they (MH-47E) won't be permanently based this side of the pond.

[AHQHI656SQN]

The 53's did a five ship low pass at Wattisham, I didn't realise it was a swansong. I was good to see though.:D

[US Herk]

Instead the overseas based SOGs will be based at Cannon AFB, NM.
Cannon AFB & GSP are two separate entities - as much as AFSOC would like them to be merged.

I highly suspect GSP may see quite a bit of sliding right, if not cancelled outright. My opinion only.

AFSOCOM units
Just to clarify a wee bit:
AFSOC = Air Force Special Operations Command
SOCOM = Special Operations Command
Two separate entities.

The former has no RAF equivalent organisation (save the onesie, twosie (SF) units), the latter is most akin to DSF.

As an aside, UK SF are organised very (frighteningly) similar to US SF prior to the Nunn-Cohen amendment to the Goldwater-Nicholls Defence Reorganisation Act of 1987 that created SOCOM. (To be fair, previously, US were probably organised like UK!)

As for what gets based in Europe, there have been plans for an MH-47(E) unit since at least 2000 - most likely based in Germany (Stuttgart). At one point, they were to be in place by end of '06 - don't know what happened to change that.

[High_lander]

I believe that there are only 2 CV-22s in the USAF inventory.
They were both used in the recent Transformer movie- when they drop off the SOCOM team (prior to the attack).

[KarlADrage]

aviate1138 - he didn't - I did! :)

A real shame the heat haze was as vicious as it was yesterday because they looked amazing coming in off the sea, but sadly the images are completely unusable....

[US Herk]

I believe that there are only 2 CV-22s in the USAF inventory.

More than that. Don't have an exact number for you, but if I were a guessing man, I'd guess high single digits...

[Sensible Garage]

02-0024 CV-22A 91005 71st SOS jul06 apr07 act as 0024
02-0025 CV-22A 91006 8th SOS 16nov06 may07 act as 0025
04-0026 CV-22B-10 91007 71st SOS 20mar06 jul06 act
04-0027 CV-22B-10 91008 71st SOS may06 may07 act Lot 9 LRIP
05-0028 CV-22B 91009 8th SOS apr07 jun07 act Lot 10 LRIP
05-0029 CV-22B 91010 8th SOS may07 act Lot 10 LRIP
05-0030 CV-22B 91011 o/o Lot 10 LRIP
06- CV-22 o/o Lot 10 LIRP
06- CV-22 o/o d/d sep08 Lot 10
07- CV-22 o/o d/d sep09, Lot 11
07- CV-22 o/o d/d sep09, Lot 11

[US Herk]

These go to eleven. (said in my best Nigel Tufnel voice);)

[Wessex Boy]

Friend of mine is ex-ground-crew, he was up there to video the final arrival at Mildenhall, he apologises for the quality, the chain-link fence fought back....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7UNe4H6-ew