Did you use GCI?

[brickhistory]

Along the lines of the very interesting "Did you fly the...." threads, it would be interested to hear of funny, insulting, informative or just recollections of various GCI (to include all variations - ground, AWACS, Shackleton, helo, ship, etc) tales from either aircrew or controllers.

To start:

One common observation from my perspective was that if my flight lead was having a 'good day,' then I was the greatest controller ever.

Example:
F-16: "Deerfly, bogey dope."
GCI: "Uh....."
F-16: "Tally, fox 2, kill the Eagle, 20k, left hand turn!"
Debrief: "GCI, great call! Put my eyes right on him!" :confused:

Conversely, if he just couldn't pull his head out, then no matter how good my control was, GCI wasn't helping.

Example:
GCI: "Beer 01, bandit, 360, 1 mile, northbound."
F-15: "No joy."
GCI, "Beer 01, nose, 1/2 mile, co-altitude."
F-15, "Tally one there."
GCI, "Look through him, 1/2 mile, second bandit."
F-15: "Lost tally, bogey dope."
Debrief, "GCI, you'll have to do better on your calls..." :ugh:

Now I realize my and other controllers' role is combat support, but there were some great moments that would be good to hear from both sides of the scope.

Any takers?

[soddim]

Best example I can recall dates from 1974 when the fighter controllers at Troodos/Cape Gata were controlling the FIR because Nicosia Centre was down after the Turks invaded. A sharp young female fighter controller in response to a stroppy Lightning pilot said:

"Shut up or I'll hit you with a 707!"

[ORAC]

Steely eyed controller turns fighter on 180 for stern intercept.

"22, steady 360"

"Roger, tgt dead 1, level".

"Negative contact"

"Roger, can I speak to your tail gunner please".
--------------------------------------

Telephone debrief during exercise (Binbrook - Staxton Wold, so we had a good working relationship) concerning a low level intercept.

Pilot: "You barsteward, you rolled me out in the middle of a 6 ship."

Me: "Yeah, but you fcked up".

Pilot: "How!

Me: "You trusted me"....
-------------------------------------------

LK has a new pilot who, or so we are advised, thinks he is an ace at aircraft recognition. We are asked if we can provide a target to flummox him. We agree, take him on channel a couple of hours later and get him to intercept and identify Anyface XX, a shacklebomber. Stunned silence follows intercept.

"Clank XX, confirm aircraft type"

"Sir, you won´t believe this, but I think it´s a Lancaster"

[brickhistory]

A retired FAA gent who had been the CAG (air ops boss if I used the wrong term) on board one of your Majesty's finest in the 1960s related this one to me several years ago:

Seems one of his Gannet pilots ( a South African if I remember his tale right) sported a long, grey-ish beard. Also,like to fly with his canopy open.
While flying back to your CV, he shut down one of the double Mambas (don't remember why) and feathered the appropriate prop.

Intercepted by USN F-8s, the US aviatior saw a airplane flying along with the prop feathered, long beard streaming in the slipstream and radio'd "I've just intercepted God!"



(Used this one on JB recently as well.)

[ORAC]

Ahhh 280SU.

1977, Israel Air Force has just taken delivery of F15s and is doing training flights in Med. They fly about about 250nm West and then do a high level, high speed run back home, just inside the Nicosia FIR.

We have a couple of F4s and a tanker on a Ghost Trail and are do PIs. (Tanker goes out of cover and tries to sneak back in. We intercept it, they F4s take some fuel, then repeat).

We see a couple of F15s outbound and have a great idea (not). We call the 8truckie fleet) duty controller at Epi and persuade him that these unknown aircraft should be identified. He agrees.

F4s are duly informed of pair of targets, FL450, hdge 280 etc etc, and hare off to intercept.

"Judy Judy........closing.......visual.......2 x F15....armed."

"Roger"

"Now what do we do Oly?. ****!! they´re turning!!!"

F4s roll inverted and pull for the deck, rolling out low level at high speed heading for Akrotiri. F15s resume their track.

A week later we are called down to CBFCs office at Epi. The Israeli ambassador in the UK had had a nice chat with the Foreign Office and informed him they did fly live armed, what with the threat from Egypt, and they´d hate for there to be an accident, and would we mind not doing it again.......

[BEagle]

"Alice, Alice, Lion checking in"

...........................................

"Alice, Alice.....HULLLLLLLLOOOOOOOHHHH!!!"

...........................................

"Alice, Alice, hola, buenos dias, hijos de putas!! Nosotros son aqui - dos Mirage Cincos con destino Puerto Galtieri....."

"Station calling, say again callsign??"

"Alice, Lion, thought that might wake you up. Transit to Swan, yet again.....!"



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"Neatishead, Neatishead, Firebird checking in C4404 Tiger Fast plus 20"

..................................................

"N E A T I S H E A D , N E A T I S H EAD........!!"

..................................................

"Attention, attention, this is the master fighter. Neatishead, bring one controller to immediate readiness!"

"There's no need to be like that!"

"Clearly there is. Anyway, Firebird checking in C4404, Tiger Fast Plus 15"

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[brickhistory]

Excerpted from a longer E-3 article from many moons ago (hence the 'best' description, now Kadena's Eagles are referred to, using part of the 67 Ftr Sq "Fighting Cocks" moniker "Jurassiac Cocks" and dated reference to the F-15 radar)........

We had arrived on station in our orbit for the exercise over the Sea of Japan and our F-15s had just checked in on their way to their combat air patrol (CAP) point to the east of us. As part of standard operating procedures, our surveillance section was busy scanning the entire coverage area of our radar which can be out to hundreds of miles. Within that coverage was part of the Russian coast off to our west.
Shortly after our arrival, our surveillance technicians pointed out a blip that had originated from the Russian interior and was on a fast beeline toward us. In the bad old days of the Cold War, the USSR and other countries had spent considerable time and effort in devising tactics to take out an AWACS. They knew that the ‘big picture’ we provided to both tactical aircraft and air battle commanders was a huge advantage that the Soviets couldn’t match. If they couldn’t have the advantage, they didn’t want us to have it either and were willing to sacrifice many fighters if need be to deny us that advantage.
As part of our training, AWACS and fighter crews had studied the fast flyer tactics and had developed countermeasures which for the E-3 consisted mainly of bravely running away while calling for help.
In this situation, the unknown ‘bogey’ was still screaming towards us so we decided to move and see if it was a coincidence that the blip was aimed towards us. We moved, it moved with us. It wasn’t a coincidence.
We had just about determined to abort the sortie when we came up with the idea to scare the bogey. Due to the geometry of the developing intercept, we figured the probable Russian aircraft didn’t know about the Eagles to our east so I radioed the F-15 flight lead to “go secure.” Moving to a scrambled frequency, I told the flight lead of our predicament and my intent to place his four ship between us and the rapidly approaching intruder. “You want what?” was the incredulous response. The F-15s expecting a training sortie were carrying no armament. An Eagle without weapons is akin to a supersonic Lamborghini. Neat to look at, but what do you do with it?
Nevertheless, I figured the approaching Russian wouldn’t know that the Eagles were declawed and faced with a wall of the best fighters in the world, he might decide that his mission of gathering intelligence on the E-3 wasn’t worth the confrontation.
The F-15s pushed up their throttles and hustled to place themselves between the E-3 and the adversary. Using their powerful APG-63 radars, they asked the electronic equivalent of the famous Dirty Harry movie line of “Are you feeling lucky, punk?”
I’m sure any Russian crewmembers on that aircraft that had any coffee sitting on their crew stations spilled it on their laps due to the rapid turn and equally rapid egress from the area.

[BEagle]

The somewhat stuffy 'Thrombo' is up front in one of HM's finest F-4s. In the boot sits 'R2D2' (PPRuNer of this parish!). Taceval twitch is in the air - and the latest niff-naff to concernal the wheels is authentication procedures...

"Neat, Neat, Firebird 66 checking in C4404 Tiger Fast plus 20"

"Roger, vector blah, make angels blah blah..." comes a sweet voice from Neat.

"Firebird 66, roger, turning blah, climbing angels blah blah!"

"Shouldn't you authenticate, R2?", queries Thrombo.

"Authenticate? No need, mate - I've §hagged her!"

Even Thrombo saw the funny side!

[ORAC]

Sometime in 1975 I was at Neatishead and was tasked to control a trial involving a trials Jag from Boscombe against an F4. IIRC it was an RWR trial and required the aircraft to be set up on 180x0 intercepts.

Time after time I tried to get it right, but they always seemed to drift off.

Then the CONEX (precursor to MC) rang from the bridge. She was married to a Jag pilot at Colt and had a suggestion. "Ask the Jag if he´s flying True or Magnetic".

Now the mighty Toom, like most jets of its era flew magnetic headings, but some new aircraft were just getting around to this new fangled True thingie, so it seemed like she might have hit on what was going wrong.

"Bluebird XX Neat, are you flying True or Magnetic headings, over?"

There was a pause for a few seconds, then the reply came back...

"Errr, I´m not sure really, I´m just flying up and down the lines on the map"......

[brickhistory]

"Authenticate? No need, mate - I've §hagged her!"


Coffee, keyboard, unplanned results..................:ok:

[Wensleydale]

Just after the Taliban were (theoretically) defeated in Afghanistan (early 2002), the E-3D received reports of possible hostile vehicles using a road in the remote regions of the country (yes, they're all remote there). The only suitable aircraft under control was a B-52 on CAS cap. He was therefore tasked with carrying out a "Recce between positions nn and nn".

He checked in again about 10 minutes later with a request to go off station as he had expended all his munitions. It transpired that he had "wrecked the road" as tasked. The word "Recce" was replaced by the full version that I cannot spell for all taskings shortly afterwards!

While I am on the subject of Americans who cannot speak English, there is the story of National Guard F-15 pilots calling for more help of an E-3D controller during a detachment to New Orleans. The controller advised "Factor Bandit". Our American cousins came back to the debrief incredibly impressed by the Brits' punchy control - they had heard the instruction as "F**k the Bandit" and permission to engage.

Finally, chinese whispers also happens to the Brits. On one 15 hour mission during the Afghanistan conflict, one of the crew members suffered "tummy troubles" during the long transit back to base. The request that medical assistance meet the aircraft was radioed back through ATC. The aircraft landed to be met by a sea of flashing blue lights at the end of the runway, and a medical team rushed on board with a crash cart. The hospital had received a report that one of the crew had SHOT himself!