WW3 Battle of Britain
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Well, Lincolnshire
Age: 69
Posts: 1,101
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
TD, that looks rather wider in scope and I don't see the BoB scenario as discussed here.
I like the idea though. I used to do that sort of game for WW2 operations on the ZX Spectrum.
I like the idea though. I used to do that sort of game for WW2 operations on the ZX Spectrum.
Bloodhound Mk2
ExRAFRadar:
Ref post 99; Great data & research but aspects are incorrect. I was an Engagement Controller on B Flt XXV Sqn (Wildenrath & Wyton) from 1982-1987 then became the Sqn Trg Off on 85 Sqn at West Raynham until 1989. I then did an ops tour at Laarbruch until 1991 & returned to 85 Sqn briefly as they disbanded until going to F3 ops at Coningsby.
From my time on 25 Sqn from 1982 until the decommissioning of Bloodhound 25 Sqn only operated the T86 Radar. 85 Sqn had only the T87 in that period.
From an (experienced) operators view, despite the slightly limited range (approx. 80nm over the T87's 120nm) the T86 was far superior in both aural Doppler & ability to hold radar lock. The search dish was smaller enabling faster re-acquisition/search parameters.
It was my understanding (certainly what I was told by the Bloodhound Force Cdr, Gp Capt Graeme Smith - ex F4 Wg Cdr) that Bloodhound was retired simply because the four solid propellant boost rockets per missile had reached the end of their useful life & were too expensive to replace for 300+ missiles. This was a peculiar decision considering MOD had spent several tens of millions of pounds during 1986-1989 in upgrading the perfectly adequate analogue (ie RAW RADAR DATA) displays in the Launch Control Posts (LCP's) to fancy colour TV displays. An utter waste of money scrapping the system leaving the major East Coast airfields & radars undefended since then. Britain has NO Medium/long range SAM System anymore. Despite the problems of automatic engagement (which can be overridden) MOD should purchase "off the shelf", tried & tested Patriot batteries for every major airfield in England & Wales. But not Scotland, which may have to look after itself soon...
I understood at the time that the real reason Bloodhound was scrapped was that the UK had received all the monies from the USA for HAS sites that required local SAM defence.
That raises the question of why the UK Government spent over 2 million pounds per UK GR4 Tornado HAS to store a WE177 underneath each HAS, then scrap WE177? Yes -I was the crypto custodian at Marham who had to deal with the monthly flights by private jet delivering the US supplied Crypto cartridges to raise/lower the weapons - now long since gone - along with the multi-millions spent on installing those multi-million pound underground vaults. Are they still there?
Bloodhound was a seriously underrated SAM system & the controllers took a lot of flak in the OM bars - apart from Wildenrath & Bruggen where the F4 & Jag mates knew the LL capabilities of the system. The USSR tried to copy it with the SA2. From nearly 7 years experience I can say that there will probably never be a similar & effective medium range SAM built again. Every aspect of Bloodhound was down purely to the training & experience of the Engagement Controller. Wild Weasel F4's (repeater jamming), EF111 (noise & repeater) & B52's with their massive noise jamming were no problem. 360 Sqn (bless their socks) with weak noise jamming & weak repeater jamming (where their 2 bloody great engines burnt through & gave 2 enormous spikes above the repeaters) were barely adequate weekly exercises. The Weasel F4's were the same when they turned....
I spent 2 months working with EWOSE at Wyton & created a Bloodhound simulator tape of a simulated Backfire attack launching AS4's on Wyton. Bloodhound could NOT engage due to the inability to lock-on because of the tiny RCS (Radar Cross Section) of a head-on flight profile.
Hope this helps your scenario.
Posted by a seriously "P****d" off ageing ex-pat who is well aware, living in SW France, having many Mirage 2000's overflying me at well under the 500ft UK limit every day that the UK cannot defend itself anymore.
SAMXXV
Ref post 99; Great data & research but aspects are incorrect. I was an Engagement Controller on B Flt XXV Sqn (Wildenrath & Wyton) from 1982-1987 then became the Sqn Trg Off on 85 Sqn at West Raynham until 1989. I then did an ops tour at Laarbruch until 1991 & returned to 85 Sqn briefly as they disbanded until going to F3 ops at Coningsby.
From my time on 25 Sqn from 1982 until the decommissioning of Bloodhound 25 Sqn only operated the T86 Radar. 85 Sqn had only the T87 in that period.
From an (experienced) operators view, despite the slightly limited range (approx. 80nm over the T87's 120nm) the T86 was far superior in both aural Doppler & ability to hold radar lock. The search dish was smaller enabling faster re-acquisition/search parameters.
It was my understanding (certainly what I was told by the Bloodhound Force Cdr, Gp Capt Graeme Smith - ex F4 Wg Cdr) that Bloodhound was retired simply because the four solid propellant boost rockets per missile had reached the end of their useful life & were too expensive to replace for 300+ missiles. This was a peculiar decision considering MOD had spent several tens of millions of pounds during 1986-1989 in upgrading the perfectly adequate analogue (ie RAW RADAR DATA) displays in the Launch Control Posts (LCP's) to fancy colour TV displays. An utter waste of money scrapping the system leaving the major East Coast airfields & radars undefended since then. Britain has NO Medium/long range SAM System anymore. Despite the problems of automatic engagement (which can be overridden) MOD should purchase "off the shelf", tried & tested Patriot batteries for every major airfield in England & Wales. But not Scotland, which may have to look after itself soon...
I understood at the time that the real reason Bloodhound was scrapped was that the UK had received all the monies from the USA for HAS sites that required local SAM defence.That raises the question of why the UK Government spent over 2 million pounds per UK GR4 Tornado HAS to store a WE177 underneath each HAS, then scrap WE177? Yes -I was the crypto custodian at Marham who had to deal with the monthly flights by private jet delivering the US supplied Crypto cartridges to raise/lower the weapons - now long since gone - along with the multi-millions spent on installing those multi-million pound underground vaults. Are they still there?
Bloodhound was a seriously underrated SAM system & the controllers took a lot of flak in the OM bars - apart from Wildenrath & Bruggen where the F4 & Jag mates knew the LL capabilities of the system. The USSR tried to copy it with the SA2. From nearly 7 years experience I can say that there will probably never be a similar & effective medium range SAM built again. Every aspect of Bloodhound was down purely to the training & experience of the Engagement Controller. Wild Weasel F4's (repeater jamming), EF111 (noise & repeater) & B52's with their massive noise jamming were no problem. 360 Sqn (bless their socks) with weak noise jamming & weak repeater jamming (where their 2 bloody great engines burnt through & gave 2 enormous spikes above the repeaters) were barely adequate weekly exercises. The Weasel F4's were the same when they turned....
I spent 2 months working with EWOSE at Wyton & created a Bloodhound simulator tape of a simulated Backfire attack launching AS4's on Wyton. Bloodhound could NOT engage due to the inability to lock-on because of the tiny RCS (Radar Cross Section) of a head-on flight profile.
Hope this helps your scenario.
Posted by a seriously "P****d" off ageing ex-pat who is well aware, living in SW France, having many Mirage 2000's overflying me at well under the 500ft UK limit every day that the UK cannot defend itself anymore.
SAMXXV
Last edited by SAMXXV; 24th Oct 2013 at 17:15.
You are welcome Geehovah. I probably knew you. 19 or 92 Sqn? I used to take great delight in "engaging" returning QRA AC long before the Rapier Sqn picked you up . We could get a fire control solution on a fast jet at 300ft at 7 miles. But it took the EC around 1-2 secs to react before they could not fire. Times long gone & the UK will never have a medium range missile defence again - ever...
I might add that I spent a small time operating SAM control from E3DA from Geilenkirchen in the 90's. I would not be very happy if things are the same today. On one mission we were told that the pilot was a Greek. The landing after 8 hours was a disaster, we bounced 3 times. The only consolation was the menu choice we were given prior to deployment. That made up for everything!
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
SAM,
I remember a couple of Aberporth hits. I think the Mk 2 got a hit at 189 feet at around 7 miles. The Mk 1, IIRC, got a hit at 500 ft, can't remember the range, 15 miles rings a bell.
When were you in ops at Cgy?
I remember a couple of Aberporth hits. I think the Mk 2 got a hit at 189 feet at around 7 miles. The Mk 1, IIRC, got a hit at 500 ft, can't remember the range, 15 miles rings a bell.
When were you in ops at Cgy?
SAMXXV
85 Sqn phased out the T87's between June 86 and mid 88 (they were at West Raynham when I left there in Apr 86 to go to Newton on the missile course (the day after the F-111 raid on Libya) and they were still there in the late May when I went back there for a mate's wedding) When I got back to Raynham in late Sept 86, the 87's were gone and A Flt had 3 T86's on towers in their place. I've no idea when North Coates or Bawdsey replaced the 87's but, I'm got mates on facebook who served at both stations at the time and I can find out. 85 Sqn D Flt only operated T86's and they became operational in 1982. Having spent a lot of time from my first full day at West Raynham in July 85 to when I left the force in July 1989 stuck in one of the many sangers around 'A' site on numerous exercises, I know exactly what was where and when (as far as WR is concerned).
When the build up in the BH2 force in the UK started in 1975 from the Bloodhound Support Unit's two trials sections at WR, the planned OSD for the T87 was 1985 and it was reckoned that if the RAF could get the ex Army Thunderbird AD-10s and Swedish PE-44 Firelights modified to T86 standard that the system OSD could be pushed back to 1992. You could be right in some respects about the Boost Motors, But I'm pretty sure there was a plans to replace them sometime around 1987 which would have given a service life up to 2000 and the Swiss actually did that. However the Bloodhound force didn't get axed all at the same time. Its a dead cert that 4 of the flights were axed in 1990 as soon as the HAS funding finished. But 2 flights at West Raynham and Wattisham were scheduled to keep going until 1995 and be replaced by an off the shelf system. That was until the RAF canned the rest in July 1991 (I was at Wattisham at the time).
The T86 was no doubt a better radar that the T87 in a lot of respects, as it was almost fully transistorised, thus the receiver system didn't suffer the thermal noise issues that the thermionic valve driven receiver in the 87 suffered from (thermal noise would and did cause big problems in a CW based radar system), plus the doppler search filter bank in T86 was faster at acquiring a target than the system used in the T87.
The plus point for the T87 was with its much bigger aerials, it had a much tighter beam width, hence a higher gain and the reason for the much longer range (Both radars used the same final transmitter power amplifier) and thanks to this gave a better low level coverage over water.
The biggest problem that the missile had was it had a horrible tendency to have large miss distances when engaging very low level targets over the sea, due to the sea's thermal noise and multipath reflections of the target's return.
This resulted in a few missiles fired from Aberporth with a perfect lock on target diving into the sea in front of the target. The tighter beam on the 87 reduced the chances of this happening a bit and research was done in trying to overcome the issue, I'm not aware of any fix was found to overcome that problem. (I first heard of the issue years later from a guy who had been at CSDE working on the problem, and a report I found at Kew backed it up). Though in the case of the service acceptance trials at Woomera over land in 64/65, the missile worked very well down to 200 feet.
As for the Mk 2 system. when introduced into service in 1964, it was 10 years ahead of any other SAM system in the world with the exception of the CIM-10B Bomarc (it's other equivalents would be the SA-4 and Hawk) Bloodhound Mk 1 was streets ahead of any of its equivalents (i.e. SA-2 or Nike Ajax), again with the exception of Bomarc A. The is a very good reason for my stating that Bloodhound and Bomarc were close and that is because Boeing and Bristol had a formal technical agreement to share data, especially on the ramjet development front.
As for Patriot, the RAF very nearly bought it back in the 80's as they had a very good offer made to them by Raytheon (the fact that a Patriot radar and ECS (Spam term for a LCP), appeared at West Raynham for a week in 87 and a lot of visitors turned up, back up the claim by a later boss of mine (who I do believe had been in the HQ STC SAM Electronic Eng Office at the time)). He claimed that the Ops people had shot the purchase down due to the requirement for 3 radar / ECS's to give 360 coverage at any one site, plus Patriot's maximum range was no where near long enough to replace Bloodhound 2.
As for the LCP Mk 2A with the updated computer display systems, the Swiss though it was an excellent piece of kit as it had an in built simulator facility on it, which the original LCP didn't. I said in an earlier post that I was involved in a group working on a WWIII simulator, I'll throw a photo of it in (The serial number of the Cabin is 1022 and it was Yellow section in Germany and Kestral section in the UK).
And we do have the Software for it (though this photo is from the working Swiss LCP MK2A Sim)
The Mk2 at just under 200 feet and 7 miles is pretty much minimum range book figures. Mk 1 at 500 ft, very much doubt it PN as the book minimum height for BH 1 was 10,000ft (The last Mk 1 was fired from Aberporth in late 63 / early 64 according to the RAF Aberporth F540).
However if your talking around 1960, BH1 airframes with prototype CW homing heads (known as XTV15's) were being fired at Meteor drones off Aberporth and one meatbox did take a direct hit at a range of 16,000 yards and 500 ft altitude (XTV1504 on 14 Oct 1960).
85 Sqn phased out the T87's between June 86 and mid 88 (they were at West Raynham when I left there in Apr 86 to go to Newton on the missile course (the day after the F-111 raid on Libya) and they were still there in the late May when I went back there for a mate's wedding) When I got back to Raynham in late Sept 86, the 87's were gone and A Flt had 3 T86's on towers in their place. I've no idea when North Coates or Bawdsey replaced the 87's but, I'm got mates on facebook who served at both stations at the time and I can find out. 85 Sqn D Flt only operated T86's and they became operational in 1982. Having spent a lot of time from my first full day at West Raynham in July 85 to when I left the force in July 1989 stuck in one of the many sangers around 'A' site on numerous exercises, I know exactly what was where and when (as far as WR is concerned).
When the build up in the BH2 force in the UK started in 1975 from the Bloodhound Support Unit's two trials sections at WR, the planned OSD for the T87 was 1985 and it was reckoned that if the RAF could get the ex Army Thunderbird AD-10s and Swedish PE-44 Firelights modified to T86 standard that the system OSD could be pushed back to 1992. You could be right in some respects about the Boost Motors, But I'm pretty sure there was a plans to replace them sometime around 1987 which would have given a service life up to 2000 and the Swiss actually did that. However the Bloodhound force didn't get axed all at the same time. Its a dead cert that 4 of the flights were axed in 1990 as soon as the HAS funding finished. But 2 flights at West Raynham and Wattisham were scheduled to keep going until 1995 and be replaced by an off the shelf system. That was until the RAF canned the rest in July 1991 (I was at Wattisham at the time).
The T86 was no doubt a better radar that the T87 in a lot of respects, as it was almost fully transistorised, thus the receiver system didn't suffer the thermal noise issues that the thermionic valve driven receiver in the 87 suffered from (thermal noise would and did cause big problems in a CW based radar system), plus the doppler search filter bank in T86 was faster at acquiring a target than the system used in the T87.
The plus point for the T87 was with its much bigger aerials, it had a much tighter beam width, hence a higher gain and the reason for the much longer range (Both radars used the same final transmitter power amplifier) and thanks to this gave a better low level coverage over water.
The biggest problem that the missile had was it had a horrible tendency to have large miss distances when engaging very low level targets over the sea, due to the sea's thermal noise and multipath reflections of the target's return.
This resulted in a few missiles fired from Aberporth with a perfect lock on target diving into the sea in front of the target. The tighter beam on the 87 reduced the chances of this happening a bit and research was done in trying to overcome the issue, I'm not aware of any fix was found to overcome that problem. (I first heard of the issue years later from a guy who had been at CSDE working on the problem, and a report I found at Kew backed it up). Though in the case of the service acceptance trials at Woomera over land in 64/65, the missile worked very well down to 200 feet.
As for the Mk 2 system. when introduced into service in 1964, it was 10 years ahead of any other SAM system in the world with the exception of the CIM-10B Bomarc (it's other equivalents would be the SA-4 and Hawk) Bloodhound Mk 1 was streets ahead of any of its equivalents (i.e. SA-2 or Nike Ajax), again with the exception of Bomarc A. The is a very good reason for my stating that Bloodhound and Bomarc were close and that is because Boeing and Bristol had a formal technical agreement to share data, especially on the ramjet development front.
As for Patriot, the RAF very nearly bought it back in the 80's as they had a very good offer made to them by Raytheon (the fact that a Patriot radar and ECS (Spam term for a LCP), appeared at West Raynham for a week in 87 and a lot of visitors turned up, back up the claim by a later boss of mine (who I do believe had been in the HQ STC SAM Electronic Eng Office at the time)). He claimed that the Ops people had shot the purchase down due to the requirement for 3 radar / ECS's to give 360 coverage at any one site, plus Patriot's maximum range was no where near long enough to replace Bloodhound 2.
As for the LCP Mk 2A with the updated computer display systems, the Swiss though it was an excellent piece of kit as it had an in built simulator facility on it, which the original LCP didn't. I said in an earlier post that I was involved in a group working on a WWIII simulator, I'll throw a photo of it in (The serial number of the Cabin is 1022 and it was Yellow section in Germany and Kestral section in the UK).
And we do have the Software for it (though this photo is from the working Swiss LCP MK2A Sim)
I remember a couple of Aberporth hits. I think the Mk 2 got a hit at 189 feet at around 7 miles. The Mk 1, IIRC, got a hit at 500 ft, can't remember the range, 15 miles rings a bell.
However if your talking around 1960, BH1 airframes with prototype CW homing heads (known as XTV15's) were being fired at Meteor drones off Aberporth and one meatbox did take a direct hit at a range of 16,000 yards and 500 ft altitude (XTV1504 on 14 Oct 1960).
Last edited by MAINJAFAD; 25th Oct 2013 at 11:33.
That raises the question of why the UK Government spent over 2 million pounds per UK GR4 Tornado HAS to store a WE177 underneath each HAS, then scrap WE177? Yes -I was the crypto custodian at Marham who had to deal with the monthly flights by private jet delivering the US supplied Crypto cartridges to raise/lower the weapons - now long since gone - along with the multi-millions spent on installing those multi-million pound underground vaults. Are they still there?
I spent 2 months working with EWOSE at Wyton & created a Bloodhound simulator tape of a simulated Backfire attack launching AS4's on Wyton. Bloodhound could NOT engage due to the inability to lock-on because of the tiny RCS (Radar Cross Section) of a head-on flight profile.
.
Last edited by MAINJAFAD; 25th Oct 2013 at 11:35.
Coffmanstarter:
I don't see the point of a thread on an obsolete system - but good idea. However, a thread with suggestions by the ex/current Air defence crews & ex-missile operators about the total lack of UK defensive SAM systems might cause a jolt in Whitehall...
Pontious Navigator:
I was an Ops Off & the SOMA Manager at CGY from Feb 92 - July 93.
MAINJAFAD:
Wow! You do your research well. I have no doubt of your T86/87 dates. I was recalling from 26 odd years ago! Great pics of the revised LCP - but it was still a disaster in terms of response time by the EC on a close in VLL attack. I assume that you were a Sgt/Chf Tech engineer whilst I was the snotty operator?
The Swiss might well have loved the LCP MK2 but they only bought it after the RAF (ME - at W.Raynham) spent 2 years sending fault reports to BAE via the next to useless Bloodhound School (Sqn Ldr J** McG*****) to get all the glitches ironed out. The money should never have been wasted on the new visual displays. In fact it degraded the system from the EC's position. It was a backwards movement.
How many of our old F4/Jag/Tornado GR1 crews knew that during the daily missile operability & maintenance checks where we had to run the system up to a live launch state & track live passenger airliners or our own jets, the only thing stopping a live launch was a dayglo/cardboard & cellophane box placed over the Fire button? I believe that this same "Heath Robinson" arrangement over Live/Master Arm switches on the F4 caused the dreadful mistake of the Wildenrath F4/Bruggen Jaguar loss. Twice during my career I had to grab the arm of an EC to prevent an actual launch on an approaching A/C at Wyton. One of those was the then Wg Cdr G.C. I actually slammed his arm with a coffee cup as he was attempting to kill an approaching TR1 doing touch & goes from Alconbury. He got very upset but several weeks later he promoted me early & gave me the 85 Sqn Trg Off's job.....
I don't think, also, that many readers realise that this formidable system used a memory feeble Argos 700 series computer (Am I right?) programmed using a jam-jar of graphite pegs.
Great stuff MAINJAFAD. Keep the memories coming
I don't see the point of a thread on an obsolete system - but good idea. However, a thread with suggestions by the ex/current Air defence crews & ex-missile operators about the total lack of UK defensive SAM systems might cause a jolt in Whitehall...
Pontious Navigator:
I was an Ops Off & the SOMA Manager at CGY from Feb 92 - July 93.
MAINJAFAD:
Wow! You do your research well. I have no doubt of your T86/87 dates. I was recalling from 26 odd years ago! Great pics of the revised LCP - but it was still a disaster in terms of response time by the EC on a close in VLL attack. I assume that you were a Sgt/Chf Tech engineer whilst I was the snotty operator?
The Swiss might well have loved the LCP MK2 but they only bought it after the RAF (ME - at W.Raynham) spent 2 years sending fault reports to BAE via the next to useless Bloodhound School (Sqn Ldr J** McG*****) to get all the glitches ironed out. The money should never have been wasted on the new visual displays. In fact it degraded the system from the EC's position. It was a backwards movement.
How many of our old F4/Jag/Tornado GR1 crews knew that during the daily missile operability & maintenance checks where we had to run the system up to a live launch state & track live passenger airliners or our own jets, the only thing stopping a live launch was a dayglo/cardboard & cellophane box placed over the Fire button? I believe that this same "Heath Robinson" arrangement over Live/Master Arm switches on the F4 caused the dreadful mistake of the Wildenrath F4/Bruggen Jaguar loss. Twice during my career I had to grab the arm of an EC to prevent an actual launch on an approaching A/C at Wyton. One of those was the then Wg Cdr G.C. I actually slammed his arm with a coffee cup as he was attempting to kill an approaching TR1 doing touch & goes from Alconbury. He got very upset but several weeks later he promoted me early & gave me the 85 Sqn Trg Off's job.....
I don't think, also, that many readers realise that this formidable system used a memory feeble Argos 700 series computer (Am I right?) programmed using a jam-jar of graphite pegs.
Great stuff MAINJAFAD. Keep the memories coming
Last edited by SAMXXV; 25th Oct 2013 at 15:37.