Originally Posted by
BEagle
In November 1978, the WIWOL brother of one of our Vulcan Flt Cdrs was on exchange with 416 Sqn at CFB Chatham on the CF-101B. I'd been guesting on another crew for a Combined Ranger to Goose and Offutt. After the OBs, we returned to Goose; the Nav Rad on our crew had some influence, so a little playtime was agreed with 416. Simple rules - we would do an airfield attack and they would intercept us...
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the CF-101B hoofed off a head sector Genie, which would doubtless have vapourised a few cubic miles of sky and anything in it. Dashed unsporting!! But then they'd planned a stern conversion for an IR shot (AIM-4, I guess) - and we weren't having any of that. Fortunately 'Mongo', our Nav Rad, was a 'fishpool' ace and a turning flght ensued. The Vulcan could only manage around 2.3 G, but that rather surprised the Voodoo mates, whose V-sub-C to avoid pitch-up was something enormous, meaning that we were soon inside them, tracking nicely and wishing we had an AIM-9 or two...
After KIO, we landed at Chatham, whereupon the Voodoo crew replayed the tape they'd made. All had been going according to plan until the merge, whereupon the back-seater called "Where'd he go?". Much grunting and cursing then followed, culminating in "Ah heck, how did ya let something THAT big get behind us...eh??".
A sociable evening followed, involving 'Screech'. The next day 'Animal' and I tossed up for the back seat ride which was on offer; fortunately he won as I had a hangover from hell! A very quiet trip back to Goose, then the following day back to Sunny Scampton.
We later heard that the experience had been reported back to Ottawa and had reinforced the Canadian New Fighter Aircraft requirement need for an agile fighter to replace the CF-101B!
Very interesting, the Genie had a nuclear warhead as you point out, but I was not aware that the Canadian CF-101s were fitted with them.