Saudi IDS / Fuel tank jettison incident / Warton

[STENDEC North]

Does anyone here remember the inadvertent fuel tank jettison incident at Warton in the 90's? Remember a photo of two large scorch marks paralleling the runway, and heading towards the caravan park at the end of 25. Saudi IDS departure I think, does anyone have any information or photos?

[Ewan Whosearmy]

While you await an answer, I did hear about 10 years back that a Saudi F-15S, enroute to Red Flag, combat jettisoned all three bags while over the mid-atlantic!

[Tashengurt]

While you await an answer, I did hear about 10 years back that a Saudi F-15S, enroute to Red Flag, combat jettisoned all three bags while over the mid-atlantic!

He was probably just creating a diversion!

[Flap Track 6]

One of my work colleagues at RR claimed to have witnessed this event.

if I remember his version correctly: he was on the flightline at the time and claimed the pilot had a heated discussion with someone just prior to strapping in. The aircraft taxied and took off, but the tanks departed the aircraft on initial climb out and 'napalmed' (his phrase) a cabbage field at the end of the runway.

The above may be second hand codswallop.

[Valiantone]

The eastern end of the airfield has a public footpath parallel with the road that goes round past the end of the runway and the other side of that is a creek going out to the Ribble estuary. The other side of that is fields usually full of grazing sheep.

The western end is pretty much the same with comes out on the estuary and I doubt they have had anything growning on there for a long while. Still has the caravan park on Bank lane almost on the estuary too.

V1

[Valiantone]

A couple of Facebook groups for Warton exist, one is run quite well, the other run by a colossal T@@@

[LOMCEVAK]

We had a similar incident at Boscombe Down in the late '80s. An F3 with 2250l tanks was taking off on runway 05, the pilot raised the gear and we think that his index finger touched the Emergency Jettison button. The jettison buttons on the F3 were in a different position to the IDS/GR1 and no-one had anticipated such an inadvertent EJ selection. The buttons were subsequently redesigned to prevent this happening but I cannot now remember the details; I think that they were either recessed or a cover was fitted.

In the incident at Boscombe the fuel did not catch fire which almost caused more problems because the main runway was totally contaminated. I was running the squadron ops desk when it happened and it was quite a battle to get the airfield re-opened to get the aircraft on the deck and shut down within 2 hours of the incident such that the Accident Data Recorder was not overridden such that we could work out what had happened.

[ORAC]

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1991-01-25/debates/9605310c-1441-4785-b4a0-cad8d027db2b/TornadoF3(FuelTankLoss)

[SLXOwft]

This appears to have been discussed before - see final post.

https://www.pprune.org/military-aviation/547691-tornado-f3-incident-year-unknown.html

[Fonsini]

I recall having lunch at Ferranti’s facility in Nottingham back in the 80s with a guy who worked as a technician on Saudi Lightnings and his tales of Saudi operations were far from complimentary. My foggy memory recalls some dit about 2 Lightnings dispatched to escort a VIP aircraft back to base, apparently they got lost in a sandstorm and ran out of fuel and crashed, the (British) line crew fell about laughing on hearing the news - no idea as to the truth of it. Ferranti did a nice lunch though - I can at least attest to that.

[EAP86]

...lost in a sandstorm and ran out of fuel and crashed...

This was in the early 80s if I'm not mistaken. The story I heard at Tabuk was that the pair had returned to base from a normal sortie to find a pretty bad sandstorm under way. They shut down one engine each and plodded around in the circuit waiting for the sandstorm to clear. Inevitably the sandstorm didn't clear and fuel became low so they pointed the aircraft away from populated areas (not too difficult) and ejected.

There were civil airports not too far away (eg Al Jouf) but they weren't really suitable for Lightnings. The flight duration was around 2 hr 20 min if my memory serves, which someone said was as long as any Lightning flight they were aware of.

EAP

[EAP86]

This appears to have been discussed before - see final post.

https://www.pprune.org/military-aviation/547691-tornado-f3-incident-year-unknown.html

I posted on the thread above. The aircraft was CT10 (BAe identifier) which I think later flew into the side of a mountain in KSA. There may be photos of the runway damage in the local press (St Annes Gazette?) - it was quite a big story locally.

EAP