St Mawgan during another JMC:
ATC – “Request departure details”
Bucc – “We’ll be getting airborne off 31 and descending low level”
(For those who don’t know St Mawgan runway 31 ends at a cliff edge 350 Ft above the sea)
Departure clearance from Pisa Tower – enroute to Cyprus in the tanker fit (23K fuel):
ATC – “Departures require you at 5000 ft by 5 DME”
Bucc – “We could probably guarantee 500 ft”
In any hot weather ops a heavy Bucc would take approx 11500 Ft horizontally to make 50 Ft vertically on take off – not overly impressive performance but an excellent crack – particularly getting airborne in Cyprus at night - crossing the Guard Post at 50 ft – much to the displeasure of the Feds therein!
A number of stories that spring to mind invariably revolve around ranges and bombing.
The first involved a press day at Spadeadam EWTR; the brief was quite simple – run through the range avoiding any threat radars or systems and drop a 3 Kg practice bomb on the simulated target at Wileysike where the press would have their cameras set up.
Our intrepid heroes were airborne on time and quickly established at low level. Maintaining +/- 5 secs timing they masterfully avoided all threat systems presented, flew a text book IP to Tgt run, positively identified the target and pickled followed by a loud thump.
Crew: “off hot” - that did not feel like a 3kg.
Range: “unscorable at 6:00 – looked like a CBLS”
It was – one of the walk round checks was to ensure a screw on the pylon pointed at either Pylon Release or Carrier Release (depending on whether you wished to drop the whole store from the pylon or release a practice weapon from a carrier) – guess where this one was set.
The only saving grace was that the cameras had been focused on the target and the drop was out of the field of view of most of them – there, but for the grace ……... So saying, I believe it did bring their laydown average in.
The second happened at Garvie Island (just east of Cape Wrath). A relatively junior crew went off to toss a 1000 lb bomb for the first time. In addition they carried a CBLS with 2 x 14 Kg bombs for a practice run. Unlike more modern jets with clever stores management systems (though only as good as the weapon code set – tanks over Kuwait anyone?), one had to remember which station had which store on and manually select the appropriate one -what is the AMD for an ECM pod? (a certain sqn with a now infamous badge at Tain).
Back to the story, the crew flew a couple of dry runs with no problems and elected to run in hot on the next pass. ‘Standby now’ 4g pull, egg timer runs, 6” small thump “Off hot switches safe” into toss recovery.
Range: “no spot”
Crew: “we felt it come off” curse at ‘blind’ range controller and return to Lossie.
Armourers meet the jet: “any problems sir?”
Crew: “None at all, bomb came off as advertised – but a no spot, range controller couldn’t spot a …….etc, etc”
Armourers: “actually sir the bomb is still on the ac – but you're missing one 14 kg”
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Standing on the corner swinging my chain ....
[This message has been edited by Buck Kinnear (edited 22 April 2001).]
[This message has been edited by Buck Kinnear (edited 22 April 2001).]