I think the 'RN blaming the RAF' came about largely because our political masters had decided our forces would not operate outside the NATO theatre area in future.
'No role East of Suez' marked the beginning of the end.
Hence we didn't need carriers because the RAF coud provide air cover for the fleet locally. This of course ignored the point that in any sort of shooting war in Europe the RAF would have been be more than busy enough trying to defend BAOR, let alone the sea areas.

Perhaps some RAF senior officers saw benefit in supporting this daft idea but I suspect (hope) it was not common.

Not quite. The RAF was assigned to support both SACLANT and SACEUR. You can be quite sure that SACLANT would have screamed blue murder if his forward offensive screen had been diverted to SACEUR, which is not to say that that might have happened if the need in ACLANT was negligible.

You could argue of course that splitting what small forces we had between 2 MNC was contrary to 'concentration of force'.

True Pontius. I think you make a very good point about dilution of effort. Also the snag for SACLANT was exactly that - he would not have had his own dedicated force, but would risk diversion to another theatre. Having your own organic force under command is much better. Naval airmen understand naval problems.

The apparently lesser threat gets sidelined by focus on the 'main 'threat'. All organisations suffer that. The RAF showed that before WW". Notionally in charge of Fleet defence, but that got ignored becasue of the much greater threat.
(Note - I'm not bashing the RAF here. This is normal behaviour, hard to avoid. It's one reason why the Captain of HMS Sheffield decided to abandon ship so soon - he was distracting the Task Force)

... for you, parochially, not necessarily for the interests of the whole campaign - and can only be done if there are sufficient air assets to be able to afford to use them in this less-than-optimum way!

When did the Buccs deploy to Stanley
 

Does anybody know exactly when the 2 Buccaneers mentioned earlier deployed to RAF Stanley?

See page 17 at following link

http://biblioteka.mycity-military.co...d_Special_.pdf

XV868 - S.Mk.2 Production

XV353 - S.Mk.2D Production

Thanks TEEEJ.

There seems to be something amiss then, as the Yorkshire Aircraft Museum seem to think that their Bucc, XX901, was part of the detatchment.

Blackburn Buccaneer S.2B - Yorkshire Air Museum

I have a fuzzy recollection that one of the aircraft was damaged by the RHAG and took a while to be recovered.

No problem, Andy.

I had a further search and found the airborne spare Buccaneer - XW547. Perhaps XX901 was a spare and remained at Ascension?

https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/documen...S.2B-XW547.pdf

I've contacted the Yorkshire Air Museum and passed on the info.

I've just checked my logbook and I was on the 3 March 83 deployment, on one of the Victors. The op was called Latherton.

I flew 7:05 MR to DAK then 2:20 DAK to ASI. Can't remember the details but we probably topped up another Victor which carried on to ASI with the Buccs whilst we dived in to Dakar for a top up.

I then flew another Op Latherton trip on 5 Mar 83, ASI-ASI which was 10:10, so we must have gone a fair way south with the Buccs then.

this may be a very silly question, so forgive my ignorance, but why did anyone think it a good idea to send Buccs down to the FI in March 83?

there were already 4(?) Phantom FGR2 in the FI, and while they were AD orientated, the Phantom was still a handy strike/CAS aircraft - so why send another aircraft type with all the duplication of the logs/spt train that entailed rather than just bump up the number of Phantoms?

certainly the Bucc was a far more capable bomber than the Phantom, but was it really worth the effort of getting it down there and supporting it over the flexibility of having another couple of multi-role (ish) Phantoms?

Not at that point in it's life. The capability to drop bombs had not been maintained and fell in to the far too difficult to reinstate bracket. It was thoroughly investigated at the time.

It certainly wouldn't have been used for strike missions! After the war we did a bit of strafe, but that was about it. Apart from the centre station selector for the gun, no-one with any sense ever touched the rusty old mud-moving crap in the centre pedestal. The wiring hadn't been checked for years and legend has it that when someone did move one of the switches, the tanks fell off...:\

It would have been one heck of a challenge, both in engineering and training terms, to have resurrected any A/G capability of the F-4 in 1982. Had there been a serious A/G requirement beyond the ability of the SHAR, the Buccaneer was the obvious choice.

But if we'd had CVA-01, perhaps even with P.1154...ah well :ugh:

What Beagle said..

By early 83 It has been a while since the UK's F4s had been used in any strike/CAS/mud moving role so heaven knows what state the wiring was in for any of the air to ground functions (though as Beags said the cockpit switches were still in situ, gathering dust..).

Obviously the centreline SU-23 hardware had been maintained for air to air purposes and before deploying south we did a limited strafe work up. I was down south for the first time late 82 - March 83 and some of us did the odd strafe "currency"" session against some surplus to requirement Pucaras but I'm not sure how well the profile we flew would have worked in anger against a grunt armed with a SAM 7 or Blowpipe....

I heard that one...someone supposedly couldn't resist playing with a certain selection ;) and lost the centerline tank...not sure if it's really true but it's a good story.....

The Bucc also had the MARTEL system for anti shipping use

'Limited' indeed! I did a dual trip with the QWIL but the harmonisation wasn't good - as was confirmed by one of the Flt Cdrs. Next day I went on my one and only ever trip to Donna Nook; we were late off as the previous crew had been late back. Wattisham to DN at 500KIAS+, one dry pass then a couple of hot passes which was all we had time for. The NRL 'Griggles' was in the back reminiscing about his mud-moving days, then we waxed my Flt Cdr on his Tac check having timed our briefed bounce to occur right in the middle of his frequency change from Eastern to Neatishead..:ok: One of my few really enjoyable F-4 trips, made doubly so after I was told I'd scored 52% on the range!

Wiggly, the centreline drop did happen. It was the last of the pre-80-update FG1s on 43(F). The nav had recently completed the QWI course and both he and his pilot were working with the Navy up north with little happening. The nav remarked that all of the jets had had the special wiring removed which meant that if his pilot selected master arm on, 'special' on the pedestal, and if the nav were to make the consent switch, nothing would happen if the pilot pickled. There was a sickening thud and they came home. Great pair of guys, not so lucky a year or so later. RIP

In October 1989 we flew a trial at Boscombe to increase the maximum take-off weight of the Phantom from 58 000 lbs to 60 000 lbs. We used a FG1 that had a high basic weight and flew with 3 tanks and 4 x 1000 lb bombs. I suspect that we must have still had the jettison facility available for the bombs (but cannot be certain), and as it was a standard squadron airframe that capability must still have existed in the fleet even then.

That's if they would have worked after a 8 hour very cold soak at 40,000 feet for the transit down there. Supposedly one of the reasons the Shrike was used instead for the anti radar Black Bucks.