Noah Zark.

I am enjoying reading the threads on the Vulcan and the Buccaneer. Has anyone any stories to recount about another favourite of mine, the Gloster Javelin?

polyglory

I remember the Javelin when I first joined up, had them at Binbrook and we controlled them from Patrington and at Butterworth on the Steam Iron detachments?

That rumbling sound from the Sapphires made them stand out a bit, they were all we had all weather wise at Butterworth, until the Miracles and 74 Sqn arrived in the Mk6 Lighning.

My eldest brother was an Engine fitter on 60 and 64 Sqn at Tengah, they were hard used during the Confrontation Period.

http://www.btinternet.com/~javelin/50th_ani.htm

Blunty

When I joined the RAF back in the long forgotten past, part of my training was to fit cameras to aircraft. Although the Javelin had been out of service for a while I had to learn to fit a gun camera to the wing of an aircraft at Cosford. That and fitting cameras to Canberras was the total of my aircraft training. So guess what? I was posted to St Mawgan and had to fit cameras to Nimrods!

Pontius Navigator

Forty-five thusand feet, forty-five degree bank turn, 1.5g, 2,000 feet per minute rate of climb.

No, not the flying flat iron but us in a Vulcan trying to evade a Javelin. The Javelin was hanging in there, tied on 7 o'clock 5 miles on our inside.

Round and round we went climbing higher and higher but still he was there unmoving on my Fishpool display. Eventually, when he slipped out to 6 miles the pilots broke the spell. We had been doing simulated IMC evasion and they could see the flat iron turning aimlessly 25,000 feet below.

As a missile platform against an unalerted bomber it was a good bet at a night fighter. One of our plotters, Bertie Wooster, was held in great awe on our sqn. He had 1,700 hours on Javelin all-weather night fighters. Somewhat less impressive was his grand total of 150 hours night.

Art Field

We used to Tank them around the world with the Valiant. They climbed at our rate, cruised about 2 kts faster but could out descent us by miles. The Gloster Dragmaster was one name for them. They had a cartridge start system which frequently failed.
I remember brining one back from op Shiksha, a co-operate with the Indians, which had lost its Nav from an ejection over the Jungle [fortunately he survived] and was so bent after recovery from a spin that it flew sideways.

BEagle

Wasn't it the world's first non-aerobatic fighter?

Hope that one parked in front of the Leeming OM is still there? Or is there a plastic Spitfire or something there now? There used to be a NF Meatbox quite near the old guardroom at Leeming - what ever happened to that? Not a bad tally of gate-guards at Leeming in the mid 70s; Javelin, Meteor and Spitfire LFxvi.

TheNightOwl

I have a hazy recollection of a Javelin on QRA at Leuchars in 1961/62. Young LAC sent out by Chief to renew BF status, playing "hangar-pilots" and managed to arm and fire the Red Top/Firestreak out over the Eden estuary! All hell broke loose, but I can't remember what happened to the poor unfortunate! I was on 228, SAR choppers, and had to go looking for the practice missile remains.


Kind regards,

TheNightOwl.

Audax

Quote from the Javelin OCU Line Book

US exchange crew stood in front of the a/c for the course photo, pilot turns to the a/c, looks in amazement at the depth of the wing---"Gee, that's some advert for power"!

tony draper

Slightly off topic here, when one was a young lad ones elder brother began his Aircraft model making career on a Glouster Javelin, much work with craft knife balsa wood dope paper and Jetx engine,the post above about the aircraft flying sideways rings a bell, said model was long in the building but had a very brief tragic flying career .
Elder bro transfered to ship models.

Samuel

I was at Tengah during 1966 when both 60 and 64 Sqns operated the Javelin; alongside 45 Sqn RAF with Canberras, and 14 Sqn RNZAF, also with Canberras but the B12. 20 sqn were also around with Hunters.

The Javelins were by far the most entertaining, and a number were lost, at least four I think. One , a trainer variant, had a brake problem on landing and took a sharp left past the Crash Crew who were on the runways side of the mossie ditch that ran the length of the runway. The aircraft ended up straddling the ditch, with the crew legging it towards the flight line which wasn't that far away! The aircraft was scrapped.

Another was turning onto finals above and behind the the Officer's Mess, and I was watching it very closely as I was prone to do, when the canopy flew off, quickly followed by two seats. I actuallly heard the bangs. I can tell you that the first thought in your head is one of disbelief at what you are seeing.

The crew were fine and the aircraft was more or less in one
piece in a fishing pond in Jurong! The one which went into the Straits was not so fortunate.

They had AVpin starters, which occasionally caught fire, and I used to watch the lineys, while they watched us, and if they moved away from the aircraft we moved towards it! While the aircrew took off in a hurry!

One thing I did notice about the Javelin was it created its own weather on take-off in high humidity conditions. Almost a halo!

forget

This reminds me of an interesting article in Air Clues(?) during the 60’s. Two pilots with nothing better to do at the time had discovered that if you levelled off two Javs at 15,000 or so, wing tip to wing tip, and then gently climbed and descended one aircraft about the mean altitude of the other, the first aircraft would gradually pull away.

No one could explain why. Canberra and Lightning pilots tried it and the expected happened, with the first aircraft gradually falling behind.

Might have had something to with Javs not fully understanding aerodynamics.

The closest I ever got to Javs was Tengah during Vulcan detachments. They made the world’s scariest alarm clocks. Our accommodation block was very close to the end of the runway. After a bad night in Bugis Street in the company of beautiful oriental ‘ladies‘, and two hours sleep, the first sound you’d hear was the approaching wail of two unsynced Sapphires. It took a few terrifying moments to realise you were still on planet Earth.

Pontius Navigator

BEAgle it is stall at Leeming.

Coningsby now has two, a shiney F4 and an F3.

hairyclameater

Much too young to have ever seen a Javelin fly but my Dad has several on home movies form Norfolk Broad holidays whilst around Coltishall and Horsham St Faith - what a beast!That static example at Fairford last year and Duxfords exBoscombe test machine are superb.

I thought the weird noise a Javelin made was aerodynamic rather than powerplant- caused by the gun ports in that barn door wing, like the Meteor F8s engine intake "groaning" or the Hunter's sabrina's blue note??

Hate to be padantic but shouldnt this, the Vulcan and Bucc threads be in history & nostalgia?

TheNightOwl

With regard to the Sapphire engine, I recollect being told by a 29Sqn Engine Fitter at Leuchars that it was prone to a phenomenon called "centre-line closure"- I think that was the term. Would anyone have any idea what this would be, and how it was overcome, if at all?

The Avpin starter used to scare the tripes out of me, however ready I was for it, just like the PR9 Canberra of 13Sqn. I also remember the propensity for the #1 Royal Inverter(?) being the cause of start-up fires, not sure how.

Kind regards,

TheNightOwl.

Audax

The Sapphire did suffer from centre line closure. To the best of my knowledge, it was the engine's outer casing deforming slightly, causing the internal rotating bits to come into contact with the casing--nasty.

henry crun

Centreline closure, if my memory serves me well, was caused by the ingestion of supercooled water droplets which caused the compressor casing to contract and touch the blades.

The result could be blades breaking and passing through the engine to the turbine causing it to break up in turn.

With the other engine and vital ancillaries like hydraulic pumps and generators so close the outcome is no difficult to imagine.

I think the fix involved some sort of abrasive material being fixed to the compressor casing so the blades would grind down rather than break off.

Hairy, the engines at idle rpm had weird undulating sort of low pitched moan that was very penetrating.

BEagle

A chap who was a well-known TP told me of his course at ETPS when they still had the test Javelin there. Off he went to wild West Wales to do some TP thing involving rudder doublets, SPO excitation or somesuch. After a while doing this, there was a strangled yelp from the back seater; he suggested that they RTB'd fairly schnell. Some gross cock-up about fuel flow, fuel volume - and the ac having 2 engines rather than 1! Off they went at best range cruise, approaching Green One they were given the usual (for those days) "Turn right 60 for ident" from the Air Traffickers...... "Madam", quoth TP chum, "I am flying the world's last remaining Javelin. If I do what you ask, the world will soon have one less. Non-deviating direct please....."

Apparently they just made it home on fumes....

ORAC

The Javelin was the only aircraft I know of where, for a short period, the recommended stall recovery technique was for the Nav to eject....

Samuel

There was a very topical and funny newsletter produced at Tengah during Confrontation called "Tengah Times", and after the Javelin T3 failed to clear the mossie ditch, an issue appeared with a cartoon on the front and two pilots running across the tarmac with the smoking Javelin in the background, and the caption, "They didn't bloody-well teach this at OCU".

I guess you had to be there!

Art Field

The moaning sound of the Sapphire could also be heard from the Victor 1's which of course had four of them. When the Javelin people discovered the centreline closure problem they failed to tell the Victor operators and a Victor out of Singapore suffered a double engine failure which was no fun in the grossly underpowered "in the hot" Victor. Because of the poor engine intake design the Sapphires were only producing 7500lbs thrust on take-off rather than the 11000lbs as advertised. I believe the captain got a gong for recovering that aircraft. Incidently I seem to remember the cure was carburundum paste on the blades rather than the casing but the effect was the same. There were certainly some incidents over France with Javelin engine failures caused by centreline closure.