No Radar Returns — Gan, Addu Atoll Incident - 1962

[Warmtoast]

Especially for Danny 42 as we've been in correspondence about RAF Gan in the 1950's - 60's.


No Radar Returns — RAF Gan, Addu Atoll Incident - 1962
The night is one of those which can only be read about in a Mills and Boone novel - but is real. The warm, gentle, breeze blows off the Indian Ocean and rustles the Coconut Palm tree leaves. In the distance is the soft murmur as the rollers break on the reef. Stars shine down and seem no more than arms length away. The moon shines so brightly as to make it possible to read a newspaper, outside, in the middle of the night, and I can - I tried!
Things could be perfect, or as perfect as they can get on Gan, but the situation has gone horribly “Pear-shaped”.
It’s like this; manpower on the Transit Aircraft Servicing Flight dictates a permanent three-shift system each twelve hours “On” and twenty-four “Off”. No weekends, no Bank Holidays, no leave, nothing but “Time Ex” to relieve the repetition. We have Two/Three Airframe trades, Two/Three Engine, two Electricians, two Instrument and one “Electronics” man, plus a Boss, on each shift. The usual total of thirteen is definitely unlucky for some.
At the moment we have a problem. Due to sickness and family difficulties back in the UK we are down to just one “Electronic” representative, Cliff, among the three shifts. He can’t work 24h/day, so he is not on any one shift, but available at any time. “Available” in Cliff’s language means that you have to search the right watering hole in order to catch him for work when he is required. We need him tonight because we received a “Tech Warning” from a Britannia coming in from Singapore, “No Returns on CCWR (Cloud Collision Warning Radar)”. This means the crew cannot use Radar to see tropical storms ahead. They won’t be happy with a “Turnaround” servicing and Take-off again. Gan has to increase its population from around three hundred to four hundred with all the feeding and shelter for crew and passengers this entails, until the aircraft is fit to fly once more. No-one is happy at the prospect. Cliff must be found!
Everything that can be done is done and we are ready for the arrival. As the aircraft stops we go through the turn-round procedure. Cooler, Oxygen/Air bottle/Bog Trolleys, Ground Power Unit, Fuel Bowsers etc. are brought into position and the inspection starts and finishes as far as we are concerned, Radar excepted. Excuses are found to go onto the A/C to see how the Shift Boss is getting on with the Navigator. The “Rover” arrives - the driver has found Cliff. Mixing him and the Navigator is likely to be a problem. Cliff looks and smells like someone who hasn’t showered, eaten or slept for some time. The Nav. is immaculate; for someone who has just flown a leg from Changi, he is a walking miracle. SD hat TDC, creases only where required in trousers. No sweat streak down the middle of the shirt back above a ramrod spine, tie straight and mat black. Shoes with no marks to mar the high polish and not a pinpoint of a sweat on his brow. A regulation picture.
Cliff gets down to business; that is, he sits at the Nav’s station and closes his eyes. Electricians hover with AVO Meter and lamp and batteries at the ready. “Check Resistance between “D” and “F” on Number Three plug”, the check is made and the result passed back to Cliff. “Check between “A” and “K” on Number Two”. The assistants down in the “Forward Freight” carry out further instructions as requested, the shift boss anxiously consults his watch, the Nav. stands waiting (Why doesn’t he sit, go away, or at least, lean). Time passes, Cliff sweats even more, brow furrowed, heads peek out from the forward freight, everyone is at the ready, waiting for him to work his magic. Our meagre store of spare “Boxes” etc. for the CCWR system are gathered and we are ready to change, repair as far as we can or just thump the item that Cliff indicates is U/S, but he seems stuck. Everything is back to the way it was when we started. We are going round in circles. The A/C is cleared of equipment, except for Ground Power and the Cooler, ready to go when it’s fixed. We await Cliff...
“Run it” said Cliff. In no time I have three and four going in S’fine and the radar “ON”, we wait. Time seems to stand still, no one moves. The roar of the GPU intrudes above the engines and they are the only sounds in the world, apart from the thump, felt rather than heard, of the oscillating scanner. Suddenly, Cliff surges to the front of the cockpit, crying “Let me see that f*****g display”. He stares at the screen, turns to me and says “Stop it”. He stays there as the engines stop and the steps come in. We wait for Cliff to say something.
He turns and says “Who snagged this f*****g thing?”
“I did” states the Nav.
Cliff looks at him and, apparently, sees him for the first time. He puts his face close to the Nav’s, breathes out, and tries to focus. Everyone stays frozen in impossible positions, thinking he has finally cracked.
“You?”
Cliff hangs on his tie, flows round him and then pulls him, by the tie, to the top of the steps, we follow. He swings his spare arm in a gesture that covers the star-spangled firmament and declares.
“Can you see any f*****g clouds?”
Then, “How do you expect to get any f*****g returns?”
The Nav enters the cabin while Cliff stumbles down the steps and into the back of the Rover, shouting “Get me back to the 180”. It goes off. So do we, fast.
No one but the Shift boss and the Nav. is on the A/C. Everyone is back on the Flight veranda, gazing back at the Brit and wondering what will happen now. After a few minutes the shift boss comes in and calls “Ops”.
“The Brit is finished, F700 cleared, and it’s ready to go”.
I suppose we never will find out what happened after we left the A/C, or what was said - unless someone really knows.........?


As related to me by someone who was on 99 Sqn at the same time as me.
WT

[DeanoP]

There were no clouds around on the test but the Nav would have expected to get a radar return from that very big Cumulonimbus cloud resembling Gan on the approach!! Hence the 'snag' no radar returns.

The Ekco 290 CCWR fitted to the RAF C130's was prone to overheating and losing returns. A period of cooling would allow the CCWR to function again normally. No fault found was quite a common occurrence due to intermittent faults. Aircrew do not snag things for the hell of it. I believe the Brittannia was fitted with an Ekco190 CCWR which may have been prone to the same overheating problem. The implication in the above story is that the Nav was incompetent which I do not believe for a moment. Certainly the technician was pushing his luck.

Why spoil a good story with the facts.

[TorqueOfTheDevil]

that very big Cb called Gan


Cg, shurely?

[Basil]

DeanoP, Yup, that's what occurred to me; whack the tilt down and look for Gan. Perhaps there was no return when he did that.

On the calibration Argosy we used to arrange an extra day in Gan for beach activities :)

[ancientaviator62]

Dean,
after dodging Cu Nims for a long while we also dodged Gan once. Mistake soon realised and did not delay 'sundowners' for too long.

[Dougie M]

The overheating theory was well known and switching off for a period was the best reset for the kit but if otherwise serviceable then turning the tilt control down a "height ring" return would appear from the sea surface relative to the altitude of the aircraft when over the open ocean. Approaching Gan, one could follow the NDB for an hour before switching on the radar to see the atoll at 100 miles to go. It was nice when it showed up.

[Dougie M]

I had a birthday in Gan once and it was decided that I would have a fly past. A couple of the crew went out from the Blue Lagoon and shook the palm trees and dozens of fruit bats spiralled out of the foliage. Very impressive but when bats are startled they void themselves and the two crew members were not allowed within 50 yards of the bar till they had showered off all the smell.


http://i1299.photobucket.com/albums/ag76/dougiemarsh/17b2f982-1d88-4ed5-a600-61325ebcf7f1_zps8zgy8qj9.jpg

[ancientaviator62]

The road to smell is paved by alcoholic antics.

[Vzlet]

or bat intentions?

[Danny42C]

Warmtoast,

How thick, myopic, slow off the mark and generally stupid have I been not to spot your Post before now ! Never mind, I'm on frequency now.

This seems to have been a case of Overlooking the Bleeding Obvious, but I'm not skilled enough in Radar to offer useful comment.

Yet do I remember one night in the CPN-4 at Thorney Island. The one thing worse than a radar which cannot see something which is there is one which sees things which aren't !

It was a warm autumn night in the bird migration season; we had a party of local ornithologists visiting the truck to watch the myriads of birds setting out South over the Channel. A twitcher looked over my shoulder, pointed to the tube and asked politely: What's that ?

I had been asking myself the selfsame thing for a minute or so, for I was not happy with what I was seeing. About thirty miles south, in mid-channel, a faint shapeless mass was forming where no land existed. The apparition was on a broad front of some 10-15 miles and tailed out south for 5 miles or so. It was certainly not a large flock of birds, rather more like some huge Leviathan of Biblical proportions rising from the foam, or a seabed volcanic eruption (and we didn't have many of these around there).

Fascinated, and more than a little uneasy, I watched the Thing take form and become more defined - and suddenly recognised the northern outline of the Cotentin peninsula ! But that was 40 miles further on, out of range and off my tube. Then memory stirred, and I had the answer - "skip distance". Five years before, I'd read about this at Shawbury, but never seen it. In "inversion" conditions in stable air, the radar can "bend" to follow the curvature of the earth - but the return pulse is now out of phase and fools the radar receiver into a display at half the true range. Problem solved.

Warmtoast, your:
...The night is one of those which can only be read about in a Mills and Boone novel - but is real. The warm, gentle, breeze blows off the Indian Ocean and rustles the Coconut Palm tree leaves. In the distance is the soft murmur as the rollers break on the reef. Stars shine down and seem no more than arms length away...
recalls my short idyll reported in "Military Life on the Malabar Coast..." (currently on Page 3 of "Military Aviation"): it was a nice cherry on the cake at the end of my 3½ years out there - and could well have come straight out of Mills and Boone, as you say.

Danny.

[Pontius Navigator]

Danny, indeed, at school we could see the Isle of Man many miles distant while standing on the beach. On the H2S once had the whole of the Dutch and Belgian coast a few miles off Yarmouth and beyond.

Driving through Nawfok once, I know they're different, but I received RAI from Italy loud and clear.

Or my nav instructor retelling of a visual on Cyprus shortly after take off from Malta.

Finally, in Cyprus, watching the 72 Olympics on the old band 1 TV from Greece some 500 miles away.

[ancientaviator62]

Radio is a black magic. There are stories of German tank commanders transmissions being heard in Berlin whilst at the same time they could not be heard at the much closer HQ. No doubt we have all called a near HF station only to be answered by another at the other end of the world. Radio Amateurs use the varied atmospheric phenomenon all the time.

[Pontius Navigator]

And a Gan story, in '64 heard a pair of old transport hands, one to the other about he was the first to land at Gan.

A young PN, wet behind the ears and legs all crab pink piped up "Oh, you were here in the war then?"

Splutter, splutter, mutter mutter :)

[Danny42C]

Pontius Navigator,

A little Indian Ocean island that was used by the RAF during the war, and is now entirely forgotten, was Socotra.

Only reason I know about it was from a girl I met shortly after the war; she had (or said she had) been a WAAF Sgt storebasher out there, and had left in distressing circumstances (but we don't need to go into all that).

Where are you now, Miriam, and what happened to you after we parted ?

Ah, well. Danny.

[Dougie M]

Another story from the sixties regards a flight from Masirah to Gan . This was in the days of Mercator charts where Rhumb Lines were flown in True headings (snif). The young Nav insisted that the first track was just shy of due East instead of the Captain's expected 160 degrees (ish). After a moment the Captain asked solicitously "What ETA did you say we have?" On hearing the estimate he said "Show me your chart" and as suspected the track had been plotted from Masirah in the top left of the chart to the map of Gan printed as an inset in the top right hand corner of the chart. Finer points of coriolis were then discussed.


Danny.
The Beverlys of 84 Sqn went out to Socotra from Khormaksar in 66/7 and only brought back cowrie shells.

[Pontius Navigator]

Danny, the wartime strip was the next island to the right.

Regarding Socotra, I read a very interesting 540 entry for Wellingtons hunting a sub. Back in the 70s the runway was thought to have been repaired and us ed by the Russians. A covert overflight proved it was not in use.

[Warmtoast]

PN

And a Gan story, in '64 heard a pair of old transport hands, one to the other about he was the first to land at Gan.

From an upcoming piece I'm doing about RAF Gan and later, research shows 160 Sqn flying Liberators were the first to fly from Gan in WWII on coastal photo-reconnaissance, air/sea rescue and meteorological sorties whilst the lagoon was used by Sunderland flying boats from 230 Sqn (also detached from Ceylon) for patrols over the Indian Ocean.

In 1957 as the rebuilding of Gan started. Moorings, together with refuelling and basic servicing facilities, were established for 205/209 Sqn Sunderland flying boats and by the end of 1957 the refurbished crushed-coral landing strip was ready to receive its first aircraft, a Bristol Freighter of 41 Sqn. Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) that flew in from Negombo, Ceylon.

[Wwyvern]

Ref Socotra – in the early 1990s it was the transit point for oil workers in transit to/from a drill ship in the Gulf of Aden. Oilies would be flown from The Yemen mainland onto the island in a small aeroplane (Twin Otter in my experience) and transferred to/from the drill ship by helicopter.
I don’t recall a runway as such. A large flat area was used.

[Pontius Navigator]

Socotra had, IIRC, a long strip between two areas of higher ground. The middle then collapsed and had been thought to have been repaired.

[Shackman]

My first Flight Engineeer actually had been one of the first to land at Gan (the lagoon) in a Catalina, taking in part of a surveying team. At the same time the island had been misplotted when first surveyed, and our Nav (a certain Fr... Ea...) spent a couple of days proving it with the sextant, in the days before GPS etc. It had been plotted as being North of the Equator during the war, but is actually slightly South.

[Pontius Navigator]

44 miles south indeed.

[tucumseh]

CCWR did indeed suffer from overheating. It was originally designed using Germanium technology, requiring significant cooling. In the early 60s this was upgraded to Silicon devices. The LRU that suffered most was the Control Indicator. Once modified, its cooling fans were removed, which some thought too drastic. I cannot speak for civilian airlines, but MoD still used Germanium in at least 1990; probably later given IFS's 1997 report.

A major difficulty arises if an aircraft comes along whose cooling convention isn't compatible with Germanium. The failure rate increases but that is not the fault of either the CCWR or the aircraft.

[Brian 48nav]

IIRC, 0041S 7309E

[Pontius Navigator]

Spot on. .

[ICM]

Concerning Socotra, I have a record of having airdropped supplies by Argosy to a Middle East Command Expedition in March 1967 on a 'Hadibo Strip' which, from what I recall, seemed to fit the descriptions above. That name might ring bells with others.

[DeanoP]

In 1979 I was navigator on a C130 flight back to the UK from Woomera staging through Fiji, Pago Pago (American Samoa) and Honolulu.

After a night stop in Fiji we took off for Pago where, after refuelling, we departed into the dusk with CBs all around. After an hour’s flying both the CCWR and the Doppler ( Drift &Groundspeed) failed.
There was no question of continuing to Honolulu without the CCWR at night in very poor weather. A decision was made to return to Pago and fuel dumping was initiated to get down to landing weight. All radio and radar transmitters were switched off for fuel dumping. After dumping thousands of lbs of fuel into the Pacific, the CCWR was switched back on and having cooled, gave us good returns but now we were committed to land. The CCWR had overheated.

The handling agent could not find any accommodation for the crew, and so to find a bed we had to return to Fiji, about 3hrs flying away. So after 8hrs flying we were back where we started from. The CCWR continued to overheat on the return flight to Pago which justified the decision to abort the flight.

The flight continued the next day, in daylight, from Fiji direct to Honolulu keeping the CCWR in ‘standby mode’ until required.
Nursing the CCWR was a common place occurrence. Indeed on a few occasions we flew in formation with another C130 with u/s CCWR. The a/c with the serviceable CCWR guiding the other through the CBs.

It always amazes me that in the Hastings days we used to fly IMC without a care in the world with no CCWR, engines backfiring with carburettor ice causing the a/c to yaw from side to side and ice accumulation around the static vents which caused some consternation.

[Lancman]

CCWR wasn't fitted to make aircraft safer, it was fitted to make them lighter. Not like the brick-built Hastings.

[ancientaviator62]

Dean,
on the Hastings the ADF would usually let us know in which direction the thunderstorm was. The St Elmo's fire also hinted there was activity about.
The rules for our Hercules made a lot of sense to me especially in the light of the Kuwait Hercules crash in France.

[Dougie M]

Whilst on Argosies which didn't fly much higher than the Hastings we used to bimble through the ITCZ choosing the dimmest returns as a route. I would watch the silver wings against the blackened sky flexing like a giant sea bird as we were thrown around the sky. The point about "No CCWR - no flight at night" for the Herc was simply that Mr. Lockheed didn't use enough nails to keep the wings on.


http://i1299.photobucket.com/albums/ag76/dougiemarsh/ff32ffc6-5038-45f7-883d-22071b63525b_zpsqtoknwhi.jpg

[CoffmanStarter]

If I may just pop my head around the corner on this thread ... 'Tales of Mr Argosy' sounds like a good Thread Title to me ;)

Especially if you have some of your wonderful pics Doug :ok:

[Shackman]

The Argosies weren't the only ones - we (205 Sqn Shacks) seemed to spend a lot of time at night either transitting through or operating under the thunderstorms of the ITCZ. Although we didn't have a weather radar at the front, the ASV21, which was not only a good ASW radar, with a good operator (they were all good!!) could weave us through the bad weather with only a few steep turns.

[reynoldsno1]

Socotra
Did some recces around Socotra in the mid-70's, and got some nice photos ... some months later Carlton-Brown from the FO turned up and wanted to see the nav charts & logs. They were all beautifully presented at exactly 12nm from the coast, but thankfully never correlated with the photos ...

[Pontius Navigator]

Rey, Canberra? Enough route Nairobi?

[DeanoP]

Pontius Ref Post No 33.

Are you referring to the loss of a Canberra over Ethiopia in the 60's. If so I believe Fg Off Gibbon, who was on No5 Air Nav course at Topcliffe with me, was the navigator. I think this a/c broke up in a CB but I have not heard anything definitive about this tragedy.

[Pontius Navigator]

Deano, no, referring to Reynolds post immediately above and the possibility that it was the same flight I mentioned early, would have been Spring 73.

We made it to Nairobi, for various reasons the Canberra didn't.

[Dougie M]

Shackman #31


There were similarities. The Argosy had a Shackleton wing with torque rods and trunnion boxes to protect the controls from distorting. Together with the two meteor fuselages as tail booms and lots of other parts found in the factory spares dept, it was a fairly good lash up. See photo of sleek Shack and its ugly cousin.


http://i1299.photobucket.com/albums/ag76/dougiemarsh/db2eda3a-3aee-47ce-ad78-1e50e33281f4_zpsc2asnfrt.jpg

[Lyneham Lad]

There is quite an extensive thread on the Whistling Tit (http://www.pprune.org/aviation-history-nostalgia/441946-whistling-wheelbarrow.html) in AH&N.

[CoffmanStarter]

Many thanks LL :ok:

Some great pics from our good friend Brakedwell too ;)

[Dougie M]

Thanks LL. Read and noted. There's your thread Coff.