After 20 years flying I fully accept my job has plenty of risk attached to it and when flying on Op's that risk is exacerbated but unless my eyes deceive me there are folk posting on here that advocate the fact that up to
two tons of aviation fuel sloshing round a bomb bay is nothing to be concerned about, in fact not even worthy of a Mayday Call
Can someone please clear this up for me?
Well I know for fact that there was not 2 tons of fuel rolling about the bomb bay. People blowing things out of proportion. If 2 tons of fuel were in the bomb bay then there is severe major issues, its impossible for that to happen . The bomb bay is not air tight , with airflow and the usual low pressure high pressure it would be sucked out . One thing that not many are aware of is the keel drain system , when a major hyd component is changed there is a tendency like all AC for all hyd oil to leak when changing a component, when component is replaced the system is replenished and thats it . But all the oil has to sit somewhere, in the nimrod case the keels, when in flight and pressurized the excess hyd oil gets blown out into the bomb bay and into the keel drains bottles, sometimes the pipe into the bottle pops out (no major drama) and that can give the impression of leaks, think of the length of a Nimrod by about 1 inch high, thats a lot of fluid plus water ingress blah. Ok its not going to smell of fuel but that drains can kick out a lot of residual hyd fluid. in this case unlikely at 20k ft plus that would already have been done !! But its common things like this that can get mistaken