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.

F111s & Buck
 

As demonstrated in GW1 - very well thank you!

Oh and by the way bastOn- your flip on LRJs nationality is way off.

The Nimrod.

One day, bumbling around the North Sea, as one did, we were called by a Rig Support helos for the weather and cloudbase as we were near his rig.

"About 200 foot ish"

How ish?

"Well 20-30 feet lessish"

I'll call it a day he said, the deck's at 240 feet.

Couldn't see what his problem was :ok:

I was at Holbeach '88 to '90.
4 x Tonkas from TWCU arrive to do some toss bombing on the far ship target (can't quite remember the number, 8 I think).

Anyway, out of 16 bombs (4X4) 14 "DH"s, ie within the 50 foot circle round the target. Of those 14, 12 hit the ship and 2 just missed so the real thing would have done lots of damage. The 2 outside the circle? Well, one would have taken the bow out and t'other would have had the stern off.

Impressed, I certainly was.

I can imagine a Bucc with Tonka avionics and a well trained crew would have been magnificent.

Doc C

Wasn't there a Buccaneer with development Tornado kit, which led the Test Pilots to wonder ' why are we bothering with Tornado ' ?!

Obviously needed upgrading or a revised airframe / engines, but overall seems to have worked.

Not sure what it would be like at medium level, then again the Tornado was not a spectacular success at that either...

My own ( peripheral ) experience of the Bucc' was the chase / photographic examples at West Freugh, green & yellow; the staish authorised an air-air photo sortie with an Andover, self thankfully not involved.

When the photo's were printed, it turned out the aircraft's upper surfaces had been liberally coated in guano by the resident Jackdaws - C/O was not a happy bunny, and one has to wonder about inspection procedures !

"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)."

Hi,

That sounds amazing.
Which route would you have taken? I suppose it would not have been around the equator.
More Northern routes would have upset the Russians and the Chinese more than RAFG.:}
Would it have been a circle around the Northpole, taking off from Norway?

Best regards, Transall.

Transall,

You misunderstand me or I have misled you. It would have taken about 30 days, with stop-offs on route, crossing the Pacific via a well-chosen route where the longest leg would have been Hickom to McLellan (2300nms) achievable with 23,000lbs (inc. bomb bay ferry tank) of gas in a Bucc at high level. The plan was to be escorted by a VC10 with spare engines, wheels etc and support groundcrew but no AAR (a pax/freight VC10 rather than a tanker).

In true Bucc spirit we would have visited most of the fleshpots of the World on route and taken a couple of days R&R on the way in those that provided the most pleasure (of course, for fear of being classed as early day New Labour politicians, we didn't tell RAFG that last bit. R&R is R&R after all!).

The point in my post was that we could do it without AAR whereas the GR1 couldn't even have got across the Atlantic let alone the Pacific without tanker support.

The Atlantic was easy for a Bucc. The Navy were the first to prove the Bucc eastbound direct from Newfoundland to Lossie without AAR and I have personally flown St Mawgan to Lajes to Gander without AAR on a westbound Atlantic crossing.

Foldie

Your post brings me back to my recent question about blackbuck. i.e. why didn't the bucs do it. Hmm. This issue with using up oil didn't appear to be a problem for you.:confused:

Thanks for the explanation, Foldie.

It was a magnificent plan.:ok:

Cheers, Transall.

And there was me hoping this thread would provide us with more marvellous footage of Bucs going about their business at zero feet....:E

Totally different aircraft I know but I was watching an F22 last year and the side view seemed vagely reminiscent of the Flying Banana. Silly old man's thought I know.

hulahoop,

I refer you back to:

http://www.pprune.org/military-aircr...lack-buck.html

In my post #9 of that thread I stated:

Seems clear enough to me! However, for clarification, the problem was the length of the sortie from Ascension to Stanley, some 3800nms (one way) which, at 0.8M, would have taken just under 8 hours. Without a landing option on Corporate that turned the distance into 7600nms and rather more than the Bucc gearbox oil (or my ass) would last. Hickom to McLennan (with a bomb bay fuel tank and therefore no bombs), some 4.8 hours, was a mere bagatelle compared to a round-trip Ascension/Stanley/Ascension!

32 years ago, I flew a 4-hr maritime attack sortie in a Bucc from Honington deep into the Atlantic (with AAR) and back (to Mildenhall because some dope blacked the runway at Honington) without any gearbox oil problems.

Hope that helps

Foldie

Also no one has mentioned that the Bucc could land on an Aircraft carrier

If a real one was available.

The US have a fair few - presumably there was some cross decking in the good old days?

Like tu chan go, I had the honour to fly both types...and his comments about separating the flying / going to war issues are spot on. I wouldn't fancy a high threat MEZ pen in the Bucc, (not really sure I relish it in a GR4 either for that matter) but for the sheer pleasure of flying an aircraft around the Highlands, ridge rolling at low level - it would have to be the Bucc every time.

Ask me about flying the Bucc at lower speeds, sometimes cross-controlled going around finals, and I might have to think a little harder.....

....nah!....on Thursday I confessed....BUCCANEERS WERE BEST!!!:)

Quite so. The sheer workload involved with flying the Buccaneer from a tactical formation break into the circuit to a 45-25-25 landing, at night, whilst keeping an eye on the aircraft ahead and trying to avoid its wake, was quite the most demanding flying I've ever attempted.

I wasn't good enough; hats off to those who were!

If you are a proper fan look here:

Amazon.co.uk: Used and New: The Buccaneer Songbook (The Buccaneer Songbook: An Anthology of Drinking Songs)

Foldie

Foldie. . thanks for that, one click ordered in a heartbeat! My dad spent many years as a bombhead on Buccaneers, 1's and 2's. So after I've giggled a bit I will pass it on to him with pleasure.

Growing up with a dad who did that, you can imagine we're a Buccaneer family through and through. Quarried indeed. . . .

Parrot might have been a pile of cack for operators but it could be fixed in austere locations. Providing there was a handy radio shack.

regards

retard

I'm not so sure that the Blue Parrot was a pile of cack in the maritime role; it certainly did the job of locating the bad guys in a rolling sea pretty well! Over land it was a bit of an issue but then it was never designed to be used as a navaid and it was OK at Nordhorn on Tgt 1 even producing the occasional radar laydown DH:}!

Foldie