Originally Posted by
SLXOwft
Mog, belated thanks for your reply. 'One snag was that SHAR training for ground attack was cursory during conversion and CBUs were not even in the RN inventory,'
Got me thinking, were the custard bombs, that were delivered in response to your suggestion, confined to Hermes? In their absence would you have been expected to have used 2-inch against parked aircraft etc.
? I understand 1(F) used both CBUs and 2-inch against troop poditions?
Also, I wonder if 'you know who' had CBUs on his wish list when he was flying the relevant desk. Funding them is a different question, one tends to forget how tight things were, as some one put it to me he was thinking aalong the lines of 'soon we'll be alongside and the pipe will be, for exercise the ship is now at sea'. 'No way, anti-armour weapon - not a Navy role.'
As far as I am aware, only Hermes used CBUs. It might have been a function of magazine space being limited on Invincible. The fall-back would have been KRT but they give frag problems (30 secs between aircraft) during an attack. Level 2” rockets would be effective but would require a hard, level breakout to avoid frag without exposing yourself to the defences. 30mm likewise.
The RN had never even heard of BL755 until I mentioned it to the admiral’s aviation advisor in the bar, on the night we sailed. To be fair, they arrived by Chinook the following day!
Mog