...starring Tom Cruise in a snappy, well-cut uniform and an eye patch.

Oh, silly me. Wrong war.

Thanks for the info regarding the air-drops Ray.

The info I found on lynehamvillage.com was interesting, especially the bits about air-to-air refuelling C-130s from Victors which had to be done in a shallow dive because of incompatable air speeds. I had a suspicion that these missions were similar to Black Buck from an AAR perspective but hadn't seen them mentioned before. A 25 hour non-stop trip in a Herc must have been quite an endeavour. Respect to all the Herc and Victor crews. :ok:

one of these c-130 flights from ascension is described by lieutenant colonel david chaundler who was the replacement C/O of 2 para following the death of H.
chaundler parachuted from the herc to collected from the water.

forgotten voice of the falklands - hugh mcmanners describes the campaign

After the war the C-130s would refuel then continue south to the point of no return (PONR) and get a go/no go weather call from Stanley based on the weather. If it was dodgy they turned back, landed, refuelled and tried again later.

I felt sorry for one CSE show travelling by C-130 who flew south, turned back at the PONR, were off-loaded at ASI into another C-130 ready and waiting for them and set off again.

IIRC by the time they landed they'd spent about 26-30 hours airborne with about a 15 minute gap in the middle. And their first show was the same evening they arrived.

brickhistory

I think that comment (USAAF) went above a few heads..nevertheless many of us are still grateful for the Mighty 8th and the like, be they USAAF or USAF.

Rgds

Falklands Movie
 

Polecat

I'm a confirmed lurker, but I nearly sprayed my coffee when I read that. How is that even possible? There's no way all three rounds (if any) entered the skull - his brain would be mush a la JFK, surely? If was an HP, maybe...

No, because for artisitic reasons the Falklands will be moved to California, and filmed on a flat, desert terrain. Kate Beckinsale is apparently to reprise her Pearl Harbor role, playing the lead nurse attached to the Delta force beach recce party.

USAAF - Hmm, yes, an extra vowel crept in there!

Floating things - seconding what's gone before (thirding?) ... mail drops, SAR gear drops, personnel drops from RAF aircraft have all been carried out for yonks.

Dave

Besides an apparent shared dislike of the scientologist elf, what's the difference in that and nearly every Roman epic ever made featuring British (almost always English) actors?

How the h@ll did Republican and Imperial Rome acquire Eton accents?

Well, besides invading originally, of course..........

"Floating things - seconding what's gone before (thirding?) ... mail drops, SAR gear drops, personnel drops from RAF aircraft have all been carried out for yonks."

Including Richard Harris- Juggernaut( its a film, jumping out of a C130 into
the sea for IED'S on a liner) the C130 was in brown/black colour scheme- sorry I'll stop now.

Brick, I think it all stems from Shakespeare and his 'Julius Caesar'. Sorry if it offends you, but Russ Crowe or any of the old Brit Shakespearean actors rounding their vowels in a toga or a Roman soldier's short leather kilt somehow works for me where Victor Mature or Robert Young trying to look (and particularly sound) believable in a very short skirt just doesn't.

If they were upper class Romans, we not of the New World sort of assume they would have spoken with posh accents. And Roman enlisted men seem way more believable with a thick Brit regional accent than a Noo Joisey drawl.

At least for the rest of the world.

My point might be illustrated better by quoting something totally off the subject (and guaranteed to offend everybody):

Hold on though wasn't Spartacas a yank and Ben Hur as well.

But the Brits got to be the bad guys in the Star Wars empire too, and at some time in the 1970's evil ceased to be voiced by a Germanic accent and became British.

:uhoh:
:)

Perhaps, more worryingly:

:)
:eek:

Wasn't it some Roman epic with John Wayne, who first read his lines as;

"Truly he musta been the sonofgod" (Read like 'sonofabitch')

To which the director said he needed to sound more in awe of the deceased JC. "More awe, please, Mr Wayne!"

"Awwwww, truly he musta been the sonofgod!"

Isn't that one in which a Roman Centurion can be seen wearing a wrist watch?

I think that was Spartacus, if they remade it you'd probably hear mobile phones going off now.

There is supposed to be a VC10 in the background to a dogfight in the BoB but I've never seen it, unlike the up and over Westland's garage door and modern doorbell on the cottage.

What was that film where they kept getting annoyed by Lossie Jags so gave up in the end and included them in the film?

Gainesy
 

The film was 'Local Hero'.
Absolute classic!
Kind of!
BV:ok:

"Local Hero"? About some Yank oil firm in the Highlands?

DarkBlueLoggie,

" The plan was failed by the French " - does that mean they were attempting it, or stopped it ?!

In fact, reading Jerry Pooks' excellent book ' RAF Harrier Ground Attack Falklands ' the French helped out a great deal with DACT involving Mirages & Super Etendards.

His book also backs up a great deal of what 'Sharkey' Ward mentioned, in that his team on Invicible were the only Seajet pilots fully trained up on the Blue Fox radar, and there was a serious lack of intelligence - in every sense - from Hermes - sorry if that doesn't suit some people, as it seems fashionable to knock Sharkey, but it all has a sadly 'ring true' factor to me...

There was also an active setup where the UK secret service ( not that one, the other one ) set up a 'sting' scheme to buy up any spare Exocets on the black market before the Argies got hold of them.

To be fair, I always thought whoever cobbled up that land-launched Exocet deserves a lot of recognition, hope he's in a well paid job ( preferably on our side ! ) now.

The AIM9L had just been trialled on the FRS1 at Aberporth by Dunsfold Test Pilot Taylor Scott, then Boscombe T.P. Jim Giles ( XZ440 ).

Taylor made great efforts to make sure the task force took AIM9L's, which were indeed supplied discreetly by the U.S; as I understand it we didn't have that many at the time.

Jerry Pook's book is an eye-opener, and sadly I can believe evey word - it also ties in with Sharkey Ward's account.

I rather doubt it has pride of place on Sandy Woodward's shelf !

Another book with some interesting little nuggets is ' The Secret War For The Falklands' by Nigel West.

And another thing...
 

I had the pleasure of working with Flight Test Engineer Mel Quick; he recounted how he & his colleague ( Don March ? - I remember Mel saying they had a sign on their door, " Quick - March " ! ) were working together at Boscombe during the Falklands.

During the 'conflict' they were doing stress calculations for the Vulcan to carry Shrikes - when they arrived at the result, Don grabbed the 'phone to wherever the Vulcan was, and yelled " Stop ! "

Apparently the supporting pins/whatever on the pylons wouldn't stand even taxying over a bump...

When they did get the thing sorted ( I've never heard of any successful Shrike attacks in the Falklands, any answers ? ) one sortie had the unfortunate experience of some sort of failure - tanking ? - and had to divert to the South American mainland - to add insult to injury they were unable to jettison the 'secret' Shrikes and were much photographed on landing !

No offense taken (thick skin firmly in place). Just the thought struck me is all.

And to further your thought, does the above mean that a male British accent does go well in a very short skirt? (Not that there's anything wrong with that...........)

Re Spartacus - weren't the evil Romans played by British actors while the 'heroes,' Spartacus and his switch-hitting buddy (played by Tony Curtis) Americans?

My favorite miscasting of John Wayne was as Ghengis Khan. Classic!

Re the Vulcan in Brazil - the Shrike made a wonderful coat hangar if I remember the photo correctly.

Accordng to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrike_missile ;

Harrier/Mirage DACT

Follow on from posts 19, 51 and 99: I was an ATCO at Eastern Radar (RAF Watton) during the build up to Op Corporate, and on quite a number of occasions we handled small groups of Mirages, inbound from their country of origin, to meet up with small groups of Harriers for DACT in various areas off the north Norfolk coast. On completion the Mirages would head for home zapping through most of the southern England airspace with the full co-operation of the various UK civil sectors, only to be met with a resounding 'non' from Paris or wherever. Oddly enough I don't believe any Mirage returned northbound.

If any DACT took place over Wales with SHARs out of Yeovilton they would have been handled by London (Mil)

There may have also been activity with the F5 Aggressors out of Alconbury, but that probably would not have stood out in my mind as they were quite active at that time anyway.

F-5 Aggressors
 

I remember speaking to a Navy Test Pilot a few years after the Falklands War - he mentioned that he with a Seajet " could just about hold off an F-5, but get marmalised by anything like an F-16 "

Of course that was before BVR AMRAAMS came into the equation; ironically he was on the first FRS2 ( as then ) trials when speaking !

So the theory of our lot playing with F-5 Aggressors at some stage sounds right to me.

Comedy accents in the movies
 

Surely the worst ever has to be Sean Connery's take on the Lithuanian captain of Red October in the otherwise excellent film 'The hunt for ....'.

Despite Sean's best efforts, he sounded just the same as in any other film e.g. :

"Shonar, give me a shingle ping, jusht the one..."

Eagle402

p.s.brickhistory - I am liking your subtle "Not that there's anything wrong with that". My all time fave Jerome Seinfeld quote.

Navy Adversaries
 

I wonder if there was any effort to speak to the US Navy Adversary squadrons flying A-4s at the time?

I heard it was in the SWAps under Neatishead (just before my time) Shrike took out the wave guide on the TPS43 making it useless but recoverable post-war, which is what happened or so I've been told

No wasn't Swapps under Neat as Neat only had 84/85 feed in those days (R30).
I can remember GR3/F4 and Mir V and Super E's overhead E Anglia but there was no A4 DACT to my Knowledge.

Portreath not sure if that was up and running as a CRP by then. If so then they would have worked within the Swapps. But these were the days when the WC was not allowed to routinely control over land.

In the F4 world, we certainly did DACT with the Mirage F1 - a tricky little sod! Simulated Matra 530 engagement parameters, IIRC.

I also bounced a pair of SuEs in transit heading north up the North Sea. I remember thinking how the planform was very similar to a big Gnat! That time we actually got a good stern AIM-7 firing one one of them, then an AIM-9 on the other; my navigator was a creme-de-la-creme QWI, so was an ace with the missile control system - I just pointed the jet where he asked.

Wasn't Roger Dunsford, ex-AWC, involved with Black Buck?

Falklands
 

As an aside, I was working with an RN officer at the time, and understood that any missing item in the entire RN inventory theoretically went down with the Sheffield. One further thought, the Sea Skua installation on the Lynx which I helped to design only ever sank a small vessel that was probably worth less than a Sea Skua.

I often wondered why the RAF took Shrike when the US had the more capable, longer ranged STANDARD ARM AGM 78 available. Surely the Vulcan could carry those.

Was it simply that that was all the US offered or wasn't it possible to clear the larger weapon for the Vulcan.

Dooh! trap_one's right, not SWAps, but Neat airspace south (ish) according to a 'source'

Scarecrow450

Including Richard Harris- Juggernaut( it's a film, jumping out of a C130 into the sea for IEDs on a liner) the C130 was in brown/black colour scheme- sorry I'll stop now.

No need to stop since the film was presumably based on the May 1972 real life incident on board QE2 - see http://tinyurl.com/66qemu for the details.

Jack

PS I wonder if the ATO was awarded para wings for his mid-ocean first jump .....

Movies
 

Eagle402,

I agree re. Shaun Connery's accent, but the book 'Hunt for Red October' is much better, though there's the odd howler such as '"armrests on Harrier ejection seats".

The ultimate, by the same author Tom Clancy which I'd love to see a film of ( - it would have to be largely computer-generated ) is 'Red Storm Rising' which sounded fantasy at the time but now sounds eerily possible...

Double Zero - Thats the only Tom Clancy book I'd really like to have seen made into a film too.

Two men in a jeep against the Russian hordes.;)

Double Zero - the Shrikes having the possibility of overstressing pylons designed to carry ruddy great Skybolts doesn't sound very likely!! They certainly did have at least one successful Shrike attack, I met the Argie battery commander who was under it. Reckoned it was an exciting night.

The late Nish Bruce - SAS - who mysteriously fell 5000ft from a light aircraft without a parachute told me the story of the US/Argie troops that were captured. He also told me a the plan to invade Buenos Aires. The SAS were to HALO into various streets, chainsaw down telegraph and lamp posts so that C-130's could land........:hmm:

Thats a pretty meaty pylon for the Shrike.

http://www.raf.mod.uk/falklands/images/bbshrike.jpg