Originally Posted by
walbut
Mechta,
I believe you are right in thinking that the Sea Vixen drones never flew without a pilot on board. I worked on the project at Brough in the 1970's, as we were at that time the Sea Vixen design authority as part of Hawker Siddeley Aviation. I assume that was because were were also design authority for Buccaneer and Phantom, so must know something about carrier borne aircraft. The drone control pack that sat in the cockpit in the observers station was known locally as 'the iron man' I made several trips down to Tarrant Rushton airfield to liaise with Flight Refuelling who were doing the majority of the design work. I can remember watching one of the aircraft weave its way down the runway under the control of the ground operator.
There was considerable debate about the safety of the system fitted and what was the preferred method of destroying the aircraft if control was lost. There were a number of explosively driven actuators that put in full aileron, elevator and rudder control deflections, independently of the main drone actuators. I seem to remember the plan to minimise the potential cone of impact was for the aircraft to be pitched up into a spin rather than pitched down into a spiral dive.
I don't know why the project never came to fruition but I believe there was some concern about the extent of corrosion in the airframes and there was a possibility of the aircraft breaking up under the loading of the planned evade manoeuvre that the aircraft was to perform when approached by the missile being used against it.
Like a lot of MoD sponsored projects at the time it just seemed to drift along with no clear end in sight and then faded away with no feedback why. Then again maybe I was in such a lowly position in the organisation in those days the management never told me such things.
Walbut
Correct - the Sea Vixen drone never flew without a safety pilot on board. The corrosion was fine on the airframes allocated for D3 conversion as they were specifically selected after thorough inspection by FR and engineers from the FAA and Farnborough and many were from the fleet based at VL - some had never even been on a carrier. Quite a few were from 899 squadron too when Eagle was decommissioned - but the corrosion was perfectly OK. In fact many frames were relatively young and quite a few were from the "XS" serial range built in the mid-60s so were only about 7-8 years old when taken out of naval service. Two came from the School of Aircraft Handling at Culdrose and were flown up on a one-flight test certificate after some 10 years outside and these were a bit ropey - it was these two were parked right outside my office window.
The project ran for about 10 years from 1974 until cancellation and the main reason I believe for cancellation was that AAM seeker technology (and emerging computer simulation) had progressed so much that it obsoleted the need for full-scale target drones. During the development we did get to the stage of flying the aircraft out of Hurn Airport (BOH) from take-off to touchdown fully remotely, albeit with a safety pilot on board. Not sure that sort of work would be permitted from BOH now!
FR also used two of the airframes allocated for drone conversion for other purposes - XJ524 was used as a high-speed target tug for the navy with the low-level height keeper target towed behind to simulate a low-level incoming missile such as Exocet. That aircraft was pretty busy after mid-1982!! A second frame (XJ580) was used for the flight trials of the new Mk32 underwing refuelling pod then being developed for the upcoming VC10 tanker fleet. This frame was alternately based at BOH and Boscombe Down and flown by an FR pilot and a civilian in the coal hole and trial refuelled a number of aircraft from Boscombe including the Phantom, Buccaneer, Lightning etc. Happy days working there,