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Old 4th Jan 2004, 16:46
  #148 (permalink)  
BEagle
 
Join Date: May 1999
Location: Quite near 'An aerodrome somewhere in England'
Posts: 26,829
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B(I)8 - yup, that's the one! Last time I saw the ac remains they were all chopped up into bite-sized chunks in a quiet corner...

One of the more interesting low level profiles we developed as a crew was the anti-Bloodhound attack against West Raynham. You approached at low level on the bomb steer as normal, listening for the 18228 to give a warning. As soon as it did so, the non-flying pilot put the MFS back to 'Central', the flying pilot broke at 60 deg AoB to 90 deg off in order to beam the threat, then reversed to the correct AoB for range (passed by the non-flying pilot) which would cause a zero-doppler turn around the target. The flying pilot then eased or hardened the turn in response to the AEO's 18228 display indications; meanwhile the Nav Radar kept aiming at the target. As soon as the Bloodhound radar broke lock, the flying pilot turned back onto the Nav Plotter's best estimate of target heading at 45 deg AoB, then the non-flying pilot reselected MFS to 'Bomb' when the Nav Radar had corrected and checked his 50 thou target map. The action was repeated at roughly 10 second intervals; "High Threat...MFS central, break left onto 150, reverse right to 10 deg bank, ease to 5 , hold it, hold it...lock broken...come right onto 260...wings level for correction...correction coming in...go to bomb, advise demand...follow the steer....10 miles....High Threat....etc etc"; until finally you got within the min range of the Bloodhound, then followed the bomb steer until visual acquisition of the target was achieved.

This was usually quite successful; however, it needed close co-operation from all 5 crew members and was quite physically demanding as heaving a Vulcan into steep turns at 300 ft every 10 seconds or so was quite an effort!

And this was long before the airline luvvies thought that they'd invented something called 'CRM'......
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