Under the Radar – V-Bomber novel

[kluge]

Just read Under the Radar by author James Hamilton-Paterson of Empire of the Clouds fame.

Seems that some Vulcan anecdotes from PPruNe have contributed to the story.

Perhaps the protagonists are based on certain PPruNe characters too? :eek: :E

[clunckdriver]

If the above is the case then there is no doubt its a work of fiction!

[kluge]

Quite - that's why it's called a novel. :ugh:

[clunckdriver]

OK, how about a "Line Shoot?"

[OverRun]

That just cost me a few quid. As I read the thread, I thought of Tony Blackman. Turns out he has written a new fiction book (ordered) and one I hadn't seen before on being a Test Pilot (ordered). Now let me go and look up 'Under the Radar' . . . . .

[parabellum]

It is true that RAF Vulcans did cross the Atlantic and come into the USA from the north and avoided radar detection, my guess would be early to mid sixties.

[BEagle]

This novel is perhaps based on Operation Skyshield, a series of ADEXes held between 1960-62.

Skyshield I and Skyshield II appear to have been particularly successful; however, the US Defence Department tried to downplay the Vulcans' successful penetration of the CONUS ADIZ and simulated destruction of major US city targets...:\

Which was hardly surprising, given the state of contemporary Cold War tension.....

[Yellow Sun]

This novel is perhaps based on Operation Skyshield, a series of ADEXes held between 1960-62.

There is already a book loosely based upon Skyshield:

The Penetrators By Anthony Gray first published 1966.

YS

[alisoncc]

It is true that RAF Vulcans did cross the Atlantic and come into the USA from the north and avoided radar detection, my guess would be early to mid sixties. Our ECM was more than capable of facilitating this. Written by someone who regularly jammed all the BBC signals in Southern Yorkshire if unhappy with the state of the nation, or cold tea.

[ian16th]

Allisoncc,

I can remember we had to change the frequency of our Gee-H Tx's on the Lincoln's & Varsity's at Lindholme, when the Emley Moor TV mast started up for business.

About 1956 if my two remaining grey cells are cooperating. :)

[BEagle]

The Pentrators By Anthony Gray first published 1966

It is, I have to say, utter rubbish.

ITV first started 405-line TV broadcasting from Emley Moor on 3 Nov 1956. The service was Granada TV on Band III Channel 10 (196.25 MHz sound / 199.75 MHz vision).

As for Vulcan ECM, it was pretty ineffective and had never been properly updated due to cost......

[ian16th]

Thanks BEagle!

ITV first started 405-line TV broadcasting from Emley Moor on 3 Nov 1956.It seems that both of my remaining grey cells are working today :ok:

[alisoncc]

As for Vulcan ECM, it was pretty ineffective and had never been properly updated due to cost......Probably finger trouble by those who flew, as we never considered the "operators" to be the brightest pennies in the bucket. :ok:

I have very distinct memories of a snowdrop wagon screeching to a halt and heavy pounding on the underside of the door of our Vulcan, followed by demands from a very distraught chappie with a white hat insisting that we cease doing whatever we were doing as the CO was mightily unhappy at having his evening TV news disrupted, circa late 1964. We always found it to be very effective at ground level, with requests, nay demands, from the Tower that we always, but always, tell them prior to any tests. :8

.

[BEagle]

Green Palm, a VHF noise jammer, only worked on 4 preset frequencies and was very limited, although it might have upset nearby TV reception. But TVs of those days would be upset by pretty well any nearby RF source...

Green Palm was removed, Blue Diver and Red Shrimp were simple radar jammers which weren't very advanced - and ARI 18146 was a real Sparrow magnet for HOJ or RSOJ attacks by any competent F-4 crew, so the opposition were probably equally capable of such an attack.

Of course this antique junk should have been upgraded to keep up with the threat as the Vulcan's in-service life pushed to the right. As was the B-52's equipment. But it wasn't; for EX GIANT VOICE 1979, the USAF had to drag something out of a museum for us to be able to jam during the competition and in 1982, 'Dash-10' pods had to be fitted to give any worthwhile protection against Argentine AAA for the attacks against Stanley aerodrome.

The myth of a Vulcan being successfully able to jam its way to the target should be dispelled - after the late 1960s Vulcan ECM was virtually obsolete. Although we had to be able to recognise and trot out facts about various radars, fighters etc., there was no proper tactics training. For example, we didn't even know that a fighter AI radar doesn't need to lock on to the target for a successful attack.... Neither did we know anything about lead/lag angles, off-boresight shots, beam look-up shots etc.

[WH904]

Sadly, factual books on aviation topics are out of fashion. Publishers want novels for readers with goldfish-sized attention spans. Hope the new book doesn't contain as much nonsense as Empire did;)

[John Farley]

Hope the new book doesn't contain as much nonsense as Empire did

Care to give some examples of what you mean?

[WH904]

His comments on TSR2 are a good example. He doesn't grasp how BAC was set-up in order to produce TSR2 (in effect a merger by blackmail) and claims that EE felt like sub-contractors, even though in essence the aircraft was the EE P.17 merged with aspects of the Supermarine 571. It was very much an English Electric aircraft with Vickers systems. However he then goes off in the opposite direction and claims that TSR2 was a "Page design" which it was not.

He's also wrong to claim the reasons why Vickers-Armstrong was awarded the lead in the contract. Records show that there was no reason at all - the decision was simply taken as a matter of choice. His account goes on in much the same way, using snippets of half-truths but nothing to explain the true story.

The most annoying aspect however, is that he lazily pins the project's demise on the Wilson government yet again. If he'd bothered to study the subject first, he'd know that Wilson was the last person to put a nail in TSR2's coffin. He wilfully sat back for many weeks to allow ministers and industry to find a way out of the saga. Even Healey wasn't the "hatchet man" he's always painted to be. The simple truth is that the RAF (Ellworthy) abandoned TSR2 before Healey axed it. This is on record.

The author simply opts for the usual ill-informed story of the Wilson government's wicked deeds, claiming that the way TSR2 was cancelled was "crass" but not explaining why. Then he tried to mix-in P.1154 which (as you will surely know!) was not a victim of governmental hatred but one of inter-service rivalry, and naval (Mountbatten-inspired) interest in big carriers and Phantoms.

He completely mis-represents the story of F-111A/K and why it was cancelled (chiefly the withdrawal from East of Suez), and then (in a bizarre twist) concluded with a line about how the Buccaneer was "no substitute for a Lightning" (eh?).

He also mis-represents BAC's position post TSR2 cancellation. BAC did not make any "desperate final plea" to keep one TSR2 flying. Utter nonsense. Jenkins and Healey offered the two TSR2 airframes and agreed to allow them to continue flying if BAC wanted them - at BAC's expense. When BAC learned that the government wasn't going to finance them, they didn't want to know.

His line about cancelling a "much needed new strike aircraft" is nonsense. It wasn't needed by the time it was built. It was designed for East of Suez. Without that commitment it was redundant (hence Tornado a decade later).

I could go on, but you get the idea. He simply went for the usual time-honoured story of TSR2 without bothering to explain (or even find-out) why it became such a pointless white elephant, and jumped on the old bandwagon by blaming the Labour government again for killing it off (and lots else). It's a bit like the way that Sandys gets painted as a hooligan... but that's another story!

[WH904]

The same author's comments on Sandys, incidentally, are just as misleading. It's far too easy to peddle the age-old claim that Sandys was hell-bent on destroying everything because of some bizarre obsession with missiles. It's simply not true.

Sandys simply did what he had been tasked to do - cut the ridiculously oversized defence expenditure that was crippling the country. He embraced the (then) current thinking that future defence policy relied upon MAD and the prevention of war through the ability to strike the USSR with nuclear bombs. He concluded that devoting huge resources to fighter assets was therefore pointless. In his view there was nothing much to defend other than Thor and (eventually) Blue Streak.

It's lazy to claim that Sandys simply didn't understand the need for new fighters. He did understand but he simply believed (and with good reason) that fighters were unnecessary. But once again, in Empire, the same old line about Sandys was churned-out...

[John Farley]

Hope the new book doesn't contain as much nonsense as Empire did

Your good points above would seem to support something on the lines of:

Hope the new book doesn't contain as many debatable 'facts' as Empire did about the TSR2 for example

rather than a very general comment against a book that has been well received by many.

Anyhow a novel is fiction and surely by definition fiction cannot contain rubbish - only stuff that one might think unlikely in real life.

May I ask at which stage in its unusually varied life were you associated with WH904?

[WH904]

Not associated with WH904, just a fan. It became a familiar sight to me back in 1976-7 when it was with 7 Squadron at St.Mawgan. These days I occasionally re-acquaint myself with the old girl, at Newark.