Air-to-air gunnery really was the sport of true fighter pilots, rather than the air-to-mud antics of lesser beings who lurk schniebling in the weedisphere.
TWU at RAF Brawdy in 1976 was my first taste of this fun. Get airborne, sort out the GGS camera mags and off to Hartland to find Puddy in his Meatbox. Get set up, do a dry ciné pass, then sit up on the perch above and abeam the Meteor. Looks good...call “In Hot”...tip in... reverse to track the flag. Wrist out and hope the radar ranging takes over...yup, range drum moving...tracking like a god...angle off looks OK...in range...squeeze tit and “BRRRAP” from the mighty Aden with satisfying cordite smell. Cease fire...wrist in/out/in...stick top safe...break up and over the flag and up to the waiting position on the other side whilst your mate starts his run....
...and breathe!
Back to Brawdy after firing out, then a nervous wait for Puddy to come back with the flag still attached. Watch him drop, then accelerate and hurtle out to initial and back in a cloud of compressibility and a satsifying blue note. Count your holes, then survive the ciné room debrief.
Utterly great. It wasn’t as much fun on the Hawk though - no radar ranging, no smell of cordite and a circular tow pattern which seemed very odd after the straight tow we did at Brawdy. Neither could you hitch a back seat ride in ‘Clementine’, savour the delights of a bygone era and watch your chums shooting at you...
One problem at Brawdy was shipping intruding into Hartland range. I recall Puddy storming into the building one day fulminating about “The ruddy Navy! One of their wretched boats was in the range and wouldn’t go away. But I’ve got his number!”. He had indeed - it turned out to be HMS Bronington, commanded by Prince Charles! We wondered whether Puddy would put up a ‘By Royal Appointment’ sign over his desk.
Onto the F-4 with the SUU-23. This time we shot at the flag towed by a 100 Sqn Canberra. Some anxiety getting your shoots in after your first qualifier, but I see that on 16 Aug 1982 I managed 50.2% on my ‘ACE’ (not ‘ace’, I assure you!) qualification sortie. The second trip that day was rather interesting though as I experienced the “It never happens...” phenomenon of the runaway gun. I'd fired and released the tit, but the gun kept going and had fired out my entire sortie’s allocation of rounds before I could deselect the centre station selector. My colleague in the other jet said it looked rather interesting to note the massive shimmer of brass behind me from the spent cases - he'd been about to call “STOP!!!” when I'd announced the runaway...
Yes, true sport of the supreme knights of the azure.
Sadly though, I guess that nowadays it’s a thing of the past and all weaponeering is done in some horrid simulator instead....... Which simply isn’t the same.
Last edited by BEagle; 29th Apr 2013 at 16:33.