Buccaneer versus Tornado: there's only one way to find out...
 

Ah, the venerable Buccaneer…

As an air cadet, circa 1976, I was standing behind the controllers on a tower visit to the Holbeach ranges. Following a flight of Harriers which came in and shot up the targets, we were informed that the next traffic would involve USAF F111’s. Ooh – exotic foreigners! There was much anticipation; unfortunately, there was also much clag and in due course our friends from across the pond called in to say that the cloud base was below 1000 feet and they were scrubbing – boo!

Moments later, one-by-one three Buccaneers literally tumbled down through the clag, stabilising in an instant, hit their targets and powered out – wow! Wow!!!

The Bucc was eventually replaced by the Tornado; can those who flew both please venture as to whether or not this was a good move?

Thanks.

I flew neither and am not sure if it was a good move or not.

Hope that helps!

There is more to bombing than going to the same academic range day in day out......

Bucc v GR4
 

Like Flarkey I did not fly either, either.

But the Bucc was certainly quieter ;when you lived at Lossie that made a difference.

Y_G

I'm sure that replacing the old analogue servos in the Buccaneer bombing computer which, once the accept bar had been squeezed, all voted on when to release the weapon, was probably a good thing, given the computing power of digital avionics. Tornado ground mapping radar is probably rather easier to use than the Blue Parrot radar in the Bucc was as well.

As for airframes?

Improved Buccaneer with updated avionics and radar - now, that would have been interesting!

I shall give a former colleague of mine a nudge on Facebook as he flew the Bucc and the Tornado before coming to fly F/A2 Sea Harriers on exchange.

Apparently he earned himself the moniker of 'Crap Pilot' at Lossiemouth but I'm sure he will spin that dit better than I !!!

Brother Parker, where art thou?

BEagle, updating the avionics and radar is something but repairing/replacing the main spar on the whole fleet quiete another unfortunately.

Matkat - I think Beagle was suggesting a 'new' updated version of the Buccaneer - not refurb the fleet as you suggest.

Actually that approach (old airframe, new technology) might work well for several airframes - not least a mosquito built from carbon fibre/composite with a pair of turboprops - great intruder type aeroplane for sure...........

Hmmm


Arc

As the famous Buccaneer pilot Bruce Chapple once said "Buccaneers weren't built, they were quarried! You don't go over hills, you go through them - and you look for things to ram!"

Yes, I was indeed referring to a new build (or quarrying).

By the way, the Mosquito thing has been somewhat exaggerated. An acceptable wartime design but with major low speed handling and asymmetric issues which wouldn't be acceptable today.

I don't think that many would consider going to war in a 'plastic plane' - the A-10 is a much better choice for the role to which you refer. Even if it is pig ugly!

I never had the honour of working on the Buccs but during Red Flag in 89 I witnessed a bucc returning with wire strike damage to the belly and lower aerials, If the story of the crew is to be believed the barbered wire fence they hit was a little over 5' high. Good old ground effect (Even if the fence was higher than that they were still pretty low).

Wasn't the Blackburn B-108 the proposed uprated Buccanear ?

Only to lose to the TSR2.........and so the story goes :{

B-108 was a developed Buccaneer offered by Blackburn to meet the Canberra replacement requirement, but didn't meet the conventional attack requirements demanded for the TSR2.

I was thinking more of the P150 'thin wing' re-heated digital Buccaneer put forward 40 years ago - and resolutely turned down by Healey. Its only legacy to the S2 was the very useful bomb door fuel tank.....:mad:

Well I must have been really lucky as I have flown both - my last sortie in a Bucc was on Nov 14 last year at Thunder City but I had 2500 hrs on it prior to that! Sadly, but perhaps not when you read further, I only managed about 800 on the GR1.

In my view, and notwithstanding the digital wizardry of the GR1, the Bucc was a much better platform for almost everything that it was required to do in both overland and over water roles in the RAF. It was a much more comfortable ride at lowlevel over land or sea and it could fly some 15,000ft higher than a Tornado at high level; that's if you can call the paltry height that the Tornado cruises at to be high level. It was stable both as an AAR receiver and provider and whilst it couldn't match the Tornado for speed at low level when the latter was clean it could actually carry more ordinance further and at a higher sustainable speed for longer thanks to its rotating bomb door. As I stated on a previous thread, a Bucc could actually fly round the World without having to air-to-air refuel (we planned it but were stopped from doing it by RAFG because it would be an embarrassing act that its replacement the Tornado couldn't contemplate).

A Buccaneer 2 Star, as it was referred to by Roy Boot and his team at Brough, would have waxed most at low level in the role and provided a pretty good late 20th century mud mover in the RAF inventory.

By the way, it was never resparred after the 2 accidents when, first, a folding wing locking bolt fell out on a sortie in RAFG and then, second, when the wing broke off on Red Flag which saw a second 6-month grounding during my time on the Bucc; it just had the cracks that were repairable in its spectacle main spar smoothed out. Sadly, after that, however, its days were numbered.

Avionics aside, the Bucc gets it for me and anyway, most navs preferred the Mk 1 eyeball even when the Kalman Filtered Tornado allowed you to follow the green writing which most often resulted in the unwary getting lost!

And as the song goes:

Give Me Buccaneers They're British Through and Through
The Banana Jet the Best We've Had Yet
We Were the Last of the Few!:D

Yours proudly

Foldingwings

Weren't the Tornado avionics trialled in a Bucc? I seem to remember seeing the aircraft at West Freugh on one of my BFT landaways in 1980.

I seem to recall being told that a fully loaded Buccaneer was in fact faster than a fully loaded Phantom ( low level ).

Surely there's a market for a modern job with instruments for humans, + internal / conformal weapon carriage - hang on, F-35 anyone ?!

I flew both........

The avionics and weapons system in the Tornado is superb but its a pain to fly............

The Buccaneer was a joy to fly but the avionics and weapons system was a pain.......

So...... as a pilot, the Bucc gets my vote..........but I'd rather go to war in a GR4 as its all well and good enjoying the ride to the target but not much use if you can't hit it with anything useful when you get there.

I remember an airshow at Duxford with really horrible weather and the cloud base about 800' very little could fly other than some local based stuff when the commentator announced that a Bucc would be arriving shortly, it did pulling very hard in a turn to run through at about a 100' having eye-balled it down the M11 at low level. :ok:

i may be missing the point entirely but can i point out the small fact that
bucc is better looking.
mind you, i think rhino is better looking than ADV, so what do i know!!!

Another falling out of the clag story involves that most warlike of machines the Westland Sioux.''

Standing on one of the helipads at Bessbrook Mill 1975 was an RAF squadron leader with his number 2 telling all the world how the weather was appalling and the mighty Wessex would not be going anywhere.

Out of the cloud dropped a Sioux flown by one Sgt G Laverton. To discomfort the Wessex crew even further his body armour was adorned with a large dayglo superman "S" !!!!!!!!

Army, big grins all round. Airforce, sad shaking of heads and off to check to weather.