RAF Phantom - In It's Day
A bit of a thread drift here but there was a time when all the chips fell into place to give us a first rate capability for a while.
I was the JEngO on one of the Phantom sqns at Wildenrath in the late-1970s. The sqn had only been formed a few months when I arrived. The crew ratio at the time was 2:1 and we had the use of an In Use Reserve aircraft in addition to our established strength. Almost all the pilots were ex-Phantom mud movers or ex-Lightning, quite a few with 1000+ hours on those types. Initially, to keep experience levels up in the demanding low-level role, only one first tourist pilot and nav per sqn were allowed. I well remember the outcry in the crewroom when it became known that we were to get another first tour pilot and two retread navs - one from the Vulcan and one from the Shackleton AEW2. Cries of "crew experience dilution" and warnings of dire consequences were heard but of course nothing untoward actually happened (not attributable to those individuals anyway !). In fact the pilot went on to do an exchange tour with the USN on the F-14 and subsequently commanded a Tornado F3 sqn so he obviously was no slouch.
At the time, apart from the USAF F-15s at Bitburg, just about everybody else in NATO in that part of the world was still flying the F-104G with just 2 x early model Sidewinder and the M-61 20 mm gun. By contrast, our Phantoms carried 4 x Skyflash (just introduced), 4 x AIM-9G Sidewinder and the SUU-23A 20mm gun pod, and the MCS radar was the subject of numerous ongoing updates. In the hands of an experienced crew who knew how to exploit the advantages of the weapon system, it was a formidable beast in it's day and even managed to defeat a few F-15s on Sqn Exchange through the use of superior tactics.
Aircraft on "Battle Flight" [QRA(I)] were held in HASs at RS05 with crews out of the cockpit in adjacent living accommodation. Frequent practice scrambles were mounted which I never got tired of watching. Ideally, if everyone was on the ball (bearing in mind they might have been asleep seconds earlier), both aircrew would be in the cockpit, both engines would be started and, if the hydraulic reservoir did not need topping up, the aircraft would be ready to taxy even before the pre-heated INAS had aligned (which took 108 seconds IIRC). Hooter to airborne in well under 3 minutes was frequently achieved. On occasion, we would deploy forward to RAF Gutersloh and occupy the former Lightning QRA sheds there. Being so close to the ADIZ, INAS alignment could be dispensed with and the best time achieved from hooter to commencing takeoff roll was 75 seconds !
During Station MINEVALs, HQ RAFG MAXEVALs and NATO TACEVALs (something every month), well-trained and regularly practiced groundcrew routinely performed Operational Turn Rounds in 15-20 minutes (from engine shutdown pushed back in a HAS to aircraft on state again) in full NBC IPE and the Wildenrath Wing earned the best possible TACEVAL result at the first attempt (a feat totally unachievable by anyone in NATO now).
Like everyone before us, then and since, we claimed to be short of resources - too few personnel to man all the HASs and do force protection even when working 16-hour days, too few aircraft spares, too few vehicles, not enough GSE and so on. However, looking back it was a golden age before all the Health and Safety, Equal Opportunities, Management Plan, Performance Indicators and similar bolleux was invented and took away all the fun (or made it more difficult to have anyway).