Yes, 5 got a bit lost during the orbit of Vauxhall - and 4 had a rather curious nose-up attitude compared to those in front. Guess the stubbies were in the back.

R

Saw them over London at 12.34
Thanks for the heads up, great to see, and sounded wonderful!!:ok:

Best of luck guys.

Tiger Mate - how did you manage to get all the tail rotors in the same position? :)

Off topic - to Wycombe
 

Sorry, I am not a teacher at that certain well-known establishment on high ground where the World Archery Championships were held in July. Dover is a fairly small town yet has three, and soon to be four, CCF contingents - all but the one you went to in state secondary schools.

Strangely though, one of our former RAF section officers went to teach at your old school, and is now a CCF officer there - and I used to live in Wycombe, High Wycombe that is.

Small world!

21st SOS MH-53 FINAL FLIGHT
 

I recall a conversation with some folks from Hulbert Field at the Air Fete 2000, and queried the V-22 and was told in no uncertain terms, that the V-22 was AFSOCOM's future. Rotary Wing Spec ops was going to be purely in the lap of the 160th SOAR and that was that.

The Hulbert Field folks also back then, said by 2007, CV-22 would be in the Suffolk countryside however within a few months, there were two fatal V22 accidents and V22 testing and fielding got slightly ummm suspended so i suspected the timeline for fielding AFSOCOM units would be last on the agenda with regard to putting the USMC VMM squadrons as priority.

I guess now with the final flypast of the Pave Lows, and the gradual introduction of the CV-22...then the predicted timeline for this year being the CV-22 stationed in Europe might not be off course as such possibly by 1 or 2 years. So close.


The other alternative if there was an urgent need was when the old cant' remember the unit at Taegu or Osan AFB, in 2001 when their Pave Lows were gone from the 353rd Special Operations Group, and replaced by E Company of the 160th SOAR with MH-47E for vertical lift in that theater or operations.

V-22s are not expected to be stationed in Europe. Instead the overseas based SOGs will be based at Cannon AFB, NM. The Pave Low mission will be adopted by the Army, in the short term at least, but they (MH-47E) won't be permanently based this side of the pond.

The 53's did a five ship low pass at Wattisham, I didn't realise it was a swansong. I was good to see though.:D

Cannon AFB & GSP are two separate entities - as much as AFSOC would like them to be merged.

I highly suspect GSP may see quite a bit of sliding right, if not cancelled outright. My opinion only.

Just to clarify a wee bit:
AFSOC = Air Force Special Operations Command
SOCOM = Special Operations Command
Two separate entities.

The former has no RAF equivalent organisation (save the onesie, twosie (SF) units), the latter is most akin to DSF.

As an aside, UK SF are organised very (frighteningly) similar to US SF prior to the Nunn-Cohen amendment to the Goldwater-Nicholls Defence Reorganisation Act of 1987 that created SOCOM. (To be fair, previously, US were probably organised like UK!)

As for what gets based in Europe, there have been plans for an MH-47(E) unit since at least 2000 - most likely based in Germany (Stuttgart). At one point, they were to be in place by end of '06 - don't know what happened to change that.

I believe that there are only 2 CV-22s in the USAF inventory.
They were both used in the recent Transformer movie- when they drop off the SOCOM team (prior to the attack).

aviate1138 - he didn't - I did! :)

A real shame the heat haze was as vicious as it was yesterday because they looked amazing coming in off the sea, but sadly the images are completely unusable....

More than that. Don't have an exact number for you, but if I were a guessing man, I'd guess high single digits...

02-0024 CV-22A 91005 71st SOS jul06 apr07 act as 0024
02-0025 CV-22A 91006 8th SOS 16nov06 may07 act as 0025
04-0026 CV-22B-10 91007 71st SOS 20mar06 jul06 act
04-0027 CV-22B-10 91008 71st SOS may06 may07 act Lot 9 LRIP
05-0028 CV-22B 91009 8th SOS apr07 jun07 act Lot 10 LRIP
05-0029 CV-22B 91010 8th SOS may07 act Lot 10 LRIP
05-0030 CV-22B 91011 o/o Lot 10 LRIP
06- CV-22 o/o Lot 10 LIRP
06- CV-22 o/o d/d sep08 Lot 10
07- CV-22 o/o d/d sep09, Lot 11
07- CV-22 o/o d/d sep09, Lot 11

These go to eleven. (said in my best Nigel Tufnel voice);)

Friend of mine is ex-ground-crew, he was up there to video the final arrival at Mildenhall, he apologises for the quality, the chain-link fence fought back....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7UNe4H6-ew