Tornado/Jag mid-air 17/06/1987

[EGNH Flyer]

Good morning gentlemen,

I wonder if anyone might be able to help? I'm looking to contact John Head, the nav from ZA493 involved in the midair 17/06/87. I have a very old Squadron Print he kindly signed for me at Fairford some years after. Unfortunately the signature has faded (biro!) and I'd like to replace it.

Kind regards

Andy

[LeggyMountbatten]

Does this help?
http://www.pprune.org/military-aviation/352048-mid-air-incident-17-06-1987-raf-tornado-gr1-za493-jaguar-gr1a-xz116.html

[threeputt]

Headless is on Facebook.

3p

[EGNH Flyer]

Could you post a link?

[BruisedCrab]

Here you go:

http://www.just*******googleit.com

[headless]

Saw your post from 2016 looking for John Head!
I'm at johnshead (at) hotmail (dot) com

[Just This Once...]

I remember seeing the pictures of the severed Jaguar forward fuselage / cockpit area - a rather sobering image for anyone routinely flying FJ aircraft at low-level. If I remember correctly, the terrain, geometry and dynamics precluded any possibility of a see-and-avoid manoeuvre by anyone involved.

[CharlieJuliet]

Was this accident not the origin of the apocryphal story? The SAR chopper picked up Dim first and then picked up Al who, on entering the chopper, uttered the memorable words: 'Hi Dim how long have you been on choppers?' To be answered with: 'about 5 minutes longer than you you c*** ?'

[Old-Duffer]

No I don't think so, Dim's was over the sea.

OD

[99 Change Hands]

Al told me that story himself but without the swearword. The story is possible because the Jag was over the sea.

[pulse1]

If its the same accident I don't think that Al ended up in the sea, at least his kneepad ended up in a hedge in Norfolk. He told me this many years later as we were starting out on our first flight together in a light aircraft which we shared. He did confirm the helicopter meeting too.

[99 Change Hands]

Al was definitely overland, hence he was picked up second. I remember us asking the house band at a hotel in Vegas to play for Lord xxx of Sheringham; we told them he had ploughed a lot of money into land in North Norfolk,

[John Nichol]

Was this accident not the origin of the apocryphal story? The SAR chopper picked up Dim first and then picked up Al who, on entering the chopper, uttered the memorable words: 'Hi Dim how long have you been on choppers?' To be answered with: 'about 5 minutes longer than you you c*** ?'

Nope - Not sure if Dim is on this forum, but I interviewed him for TORNADO (where - should you so desire - you can read the full, gory in parts, details) as he managed to have 2 head-on collisions with a GR1. His 1st mid-air with a Tornado was in July 1984. Head-on over the sea:
http://www.ukserials.com/pdflosses/maas_19840712_xz393_za408.pdf

His actual quote on being picked up by the SAR helicopter was: "Once in the helicopter, I was ordered by the quite forceful doctor to sit in the corner and behave myself while we went to fetch the Tornado crew. As I sat there, I became aware that a spare comms lead was dangling from the bulkhead. Keen to find out what was going on, I plugged it in. Error!. With a helmet still full of water and lots of static, the wiggly-amps took the path of least resistance – straight through what had, until take-off time, been my brain. The perfect end to a perfect sortie. There are a couple of footnotes to this saga. The first involves the reaction of the Tornado pilot (a friend then, but an even better one later, as we pounded the AOC’s Wilton together). I stumbled, regardless of the Doc’s orders, from the helicopter to see how he was, only to be greeted by a look of complete bewilderment (he was not aware at this stage that I had hit another aircraft). Suffice to say that it had something to do with 'how long have you been on helicopters'."

Dim & the Tornado pilot (as he says above) were both 'criticised' for not seeing each other. Rather unfairly when you look at the evidence, and especially when you look at his 2nd head-on with Ian Mclean & Neil Johnson in a Tornado GR1 in Jan 1990:
http://ukserials.com/pdflosses/maas_19900109_xz108_za394.pdf

Neil & Ian were lucky to survive and both suffered really horrific leg injuries. Dim miraculously managed to recover his jet minus 3ft of wing, single-engined and flapless. The subsequent BOI established that there was no chance of either pilot seeing each other (AND reacting in time) in the seconds before the accident. All the latest medical evidence showed that the eye/brain/reaction interface was not capable of dealing with the circumstances - which were near identical to Dim's previous collision. So he felt rather vindicated

[1.3VStall]

By chance, Dim is staying with us for the next two nights; we are off to JB's funeral in North Norfolk tomorrow.

[Just This Once...]

Dim & the Tornado pilot (as he says above) were both 'criticised' for not seeing each other. Rather unfairly when you look at the evidence, and especially when you look at his 2nd head-on with Ian Mclean & Neil Johnson in a Tornado GR1 in Jan 1990...

My memory fades but wasn't that also Ferret's second Tornado/Jaguar midair, albeit with him flying the Jaguar in the prequel?

[ETOPS]

I had the pleasure of flying with Neil C the Lake District Tornado pilot after he joined our airline. He never mentioned the accident until one day we were visiting the museum at Addison Texas on a layover. Looking at the cockpit of a Phantom must have brought back the memories- he was still very sorry about the loss of the Jag pilot but reckoned they had no chance to avoid each other.

[John Nichol]

My memory fades but wasn't that also Ferret's second Tornado/Jaguar midair, albeit with him flying the Jaguar in the prequel?
Nope - he banged out of a Jag at the OCU in 1983 after a birdstrike on finals:
http://www.ukserials.com/pdflosses/maas_19830919_xx114.pdf
(Full details and stories in a certain book.... etc etc - you get the picture!)