Air Clues is back!

[VictorPilot]

Def Recce Journal

OK!! Memory jogged!! Are we saying the Recce Journal is still going strong?

[RETDPI]

Editor of Recce, Barry ???? was previously Ed of Airfix Magazine.



I think you mean "Wheels", Gainesy ( Barry Wheeler) .
He left his den in Adastral some 20 years ago to go back to the civilian aviation publishing world .

[LeggyMountbatten]

Originally Posted by BEagle

In 1994, Spam F-15s managed to shoot down their own Blackhawks over Iraq, thinking them to be Hinds

This "incident", in which 2 British personnel died with 24 others, deserved a thorough review. This former US Army officer http://tinyurl.com/yfnhksg wrote a PhD on the systemic failure. Usefully (mainly for him I suspect) he published it as a book Friendly Fire: The Accidental Shootdown of U.S. Black Hawks over Northern Iraq: Amazon.co.uk: Scott A. Snook: Books

Originally Posted by BEagle

both helicopters were fitted with external, 230-gallon fuel tanks on sponsons mounted beside each side door with each tank emblazoned with large American flags. In addition to the flags on the fuel tanks, each helicopter was marked with American flags on each side door, on the nose, and on the belly

Snook's PhD is a thorough review of systemic failure but IIRC he makes no comment on the choice of weapon. This should probably be a fresh thread but did the choice of weapon contribute to the failure? It's been a while since I read Snook's book, but one F15C used an AIM120 and the other an AIM9 and I think the visbility was good. I have no expertise in this area (I was admin(sec)) but is there a reason as to why the F15s did not use their guns? Snook says that the F15s mis-identfied the UH60s at 5 and 8 nautical miles. Were they capable of using the internal gun? Snook quotes a comment that a HIND would only be a threat to a F15 if it landed on top of it. How appropriate would the gun have been in this situation? My assumption is that closing for a guns kill would have revealed the stars and bars; is my assumption wrong?

[Pontius Navigator]

Originally Posted by LeggyMountbatten

I have no expertise in this area (I was admin(sec)) but is there a reason as to why the F15s did not use their guns?

There used to be an exercise in the 50s, hare and hounds, with Meteors trying to engage helicopters. The helicopter was an extremely difficult target for a high speed guns engagement.

The easiest way to engage a helicopter is to wax him before he can evade. The weapons chosen were therefore probably the best choice for the mission; just target recce was poor.

One solution would have been eyeball-shooter.

[Wholigan]

Going just over the top supersonic is not very pleasant for him either.

[The Nr Fairy]

Would Air Clues follow the lead of the US Army, Air Force and Navy/Marines in eletronic publishing of their flight safety magazines for the rest of the world to read ?

Naval Safety Center

https://safety.army.mil/aviationsafety/ (used to have access to their full magazine)

Air Force Safety Center - Wingman with archives ?

[lkdown]

Air Clues is Online

Air Clues is on the public internet. The link is: RAF - RAF Periodicals

For earlier posts, RAF appears to be produced entierly by RAF Flt Safety, not DARS.

LD

[BEagle]

The direct link is http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafcms/mediafi...921CF3F852.pdf .

An excellent relaunch....

[VictorPilot]

Air Clues - 1 Oct 2009

Agreed ..... Much more like the good read of the past....

[Gainesy]

I think you mean "Wheels", Gainesy ( Barry Wheeler) .

That's the chap Ret, never knew him as "Wheels" though.

[Easy Street]

For earlier posts, RAF appears to be produced entirely by RAF Flt Safety, not DARS.

It was the creation of DARS' precursor DASC that did for the original Air Clues. At the time, I could almost understand the logic behind the RAF's virtually complete disbandment of its own Flight Safety empire; if the other two services had followed suit, and properly supported the tri-service organisation, it might actually have worked. However, given that it was only the RAF that gave anything up (including Air Clues), and the Army and Navy carried on with their own single-service FS structures (and their own in-house magazines), it didn't work - and Aviate didn't have enough "RAF" in it to suffice as the RAF's only Flight Safety periodical.

Typical jointery really, the RAF made compromises while the others pressed on regardless! At least the damage is now being undone. The fightback starts here in anticipation of the Defence Review?!

[Ali Barber]

From a location that is probably off the distribution list at the moment, thanks very much for the link. Great to see it back.