Two of my innumerable birds strikes of note.
Germany, mid seventies, low level over Germany. A flock of starling or sparrows erupt from some trees and I go IFR in birds. Lots of banging and crashing so I decide to proceed to the nearest RAFG airfield to, if nothing else, clean the blood off the windscreens.
The base is a Harrier base and as soon as I told them I had had a birdstrike they went into full emergency mode because it was a Harrier base and apparently they are allergic to birds. On shutdown I had a lot of important people surveying the damage. I took the most important up to the top deck, opened the intake and pointed out the mass of feathers and bits attached to intake struts and compressor with the normal statement that the Turmo IIIC merely converts birds to fuel. Meanwhile my crewman was levering out carcasses from the rotor head assembly.
We washed the windscreens, fired it up and punched off back to base.
The other was in China where I ran into a cormorant flying illegal IFR at 2.500 metres. It collected the radar radome and dented in so badly that it jammed the scanner which was quite inconvenient because I was dodging cu-nimbs at the time. However we survived and landed safely.
The cost of a new radome was horrendous and would have taken a couple of days to arrive.
The local car repair shop had it as new in an afternoon.
Last edited by Fareastdriver; 7th Oct 2018 at 09:00.