Don't eat Benbecula fish
 

A lot of 7 Sqn Rushton sorties were out of Kinloss to the Benbecula range.
For a while we used a device called RAMDI. Radioactive Miss Distance Indicator. A small geiger counter placed in the body of the Rushton which could pass information down the cable to the Canberra crew.
A small radioactive particle was placed in the nose of the Rapier. If it passed close to the Rushton we obtained a readout of distance.
I wonder just how "trace" that particle was if it could be detected at 20ft whistling past at 600kts.

Drift:

There is a story about (Paddy someone, crewman Ldr?) a 33Sqn officer who was so confident that the crewmen were total crap at A to G, that he put his SD hat on the target at the range. Not a scratch, apparently.

Someone will have the details I'm sure.

CG

It would be just like him to do that. I believe that after we left the other squadron fired off loads of ammo, then threw the rest in followed by the guns.

Enough thread drift; back to the Cranberries.

Gents, I am staggered, but very happy at this flurry of activity. Usually there are only one or two replies, but this bevvy of stories has had me grinning all evening here. :ok:

Lots to work through here, but a few things spring out and some PMs maybe coming your collective ways as a result. Everyone else, perhaps too many priceless gems in there to call individually, but cheers all for sharing them. A few others though I have to mention:

Halton Brat:

The story you referred to in Air Clues sounds suspiciously like the one the late Les Bywaters of 3 Sqn told me about Flt. Lt. Ron Ledwidge (if I recall his surname correctly). The incident he related was that Ron's B(I).8 indeed had a stuck aileron and matches yours perfectly, down to the nav bailing out after timing the orientation just right. Not easy I would imagine from the prone position in the Can nose cone.

Beagle:

You wrote: "the first target was a Canberra PR9 (some trials thing with an odd-looking nose)." My suspicion is this was almost certainly XH132, the Shorts modified SC.9. This was the only Cran PR.9 with a nose job. Went through several paint schemes over the years - do you happen to remember what it wore for this incident? Pretty cool that it gave a good account of itself. Did the TT.18 actually put up a fight despite being easier? Being from East Anglia (next door to Wyton), hearing about doing QRA intercepts on these Cans is of interest to me. Can you describe how you typically approached them and what action they typically took if they saw you?

Dalek:
You say you were on 85 Sqn in the early 70s- did you ever fly the T.11 or 19 during that period?

ExMudmover:

Are you referring to the runs performed at Goose Green? If so I am assuming you were on GR.3s - again, if so, did you know Jeff Glover by chance?

BBadanov:

Sorry, yes, I grew up reading too many war comics and even in my mind as 32 year old I imagine that banner towing was adventerous! As you are all rapidly pointing out to me it seems it was a little more sedate than that.;)

Question re the exact location of the Bombing range on the Wash / East Anglia.

I used to spend a fair bit of time on the Wash (bird catching)
and used to sit on the sea wall and watch some of the jets doing
what they did - late 60's and throughout the 70's.

I can't remember exactly where it was so if anyone could remind me,
this would be good.

Also, did any mishaps occur (bird strikes) with the huge flocks of birds / waders that used to fly around their ?

Thanks.

Possibly Holbeach Bombing Range:

RAF Holbeach - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I am sure someone will confirm though. The wildlife aspect is mentioned here so seems a good match:

RAF Marham - RAF Holbeach Bombing Range

Thanks. Holbeach sounds right as that was one of the places we went.


I like the warning at the bottom of the RAF Web page.
Used to find (or see) a fair bit of stuff way out on the Marsh
as that was where we were mainly catching the birds.
.

Canberra target facilities flying
 

Nazca, drifting a bit from your earlier question regarding target tug and AI training tasks, but possibly of interest to you are some of the other roles that 100 Sqn RAF (aka Tatty Ton) undertook in the early 1980s. Its primary task, at least in terms of programming priority and time spent airborne, was performing practice interceptions (PIs) for the School of Fighter Control at West Drayton. These PIs were mind numbingly dull - 2 Canberras were launched to act as a target and 'fighter' for the trainee FCs. I think we were contracted to provide an hour and a half on task, usually in the upper 30s/low 40s flight levels with a half hour transit each way. Two of these sorties a day was not uncommon. An earlier poster has already bemoaned the appalling air conditioning in the 'berra - we had heated electric socks to try and keep the frostbite at bay. We (well the navs certainly, not sure about the nose gunners) got a good soaking in the descent as the ice inside the cockpit melted. I have said previously that banner towing was dull, but it didnt come close to the boredom of these PI sorties.

A much more interesting task was acting as targets for the Bloodhound SAM sites around the UK. This was our one chance to do some low level flying. A significant part of the sqn was young pilots and navs who had not quite made the fast jet slots through training and needed some flying hours, airmanship and experience before stepping up to fast jets for their second tours. Fat dumb and happy in a large slow jet, with no RWR, we happily tooled around the Bloodhound sites having a bit of fun.

Spectre150, this is exactly the kind of stuff I am interested in. Please let me know if I have not sent a PM yet to you. Feel free to drift around topics as much as you want. 100 Sqn is always of interest to me - those filthy stripey things will always have a special place in my childhood memories!

The defrosting ice decent comment is priceless...lack of most mod cons seems blindingly apparent in the Canberra. Perhaps another of its endearing factors to the armchair enthusiast like me, but not to those who lived it!

You say no RWR - I thought most Cans from the Mk.8 onwards had Orange Putter? Oh wait, that was active radar, right? I always get muddled with radar types, bear with me...

500N "Thanks. Holbeach sounds right as that was one of the places we went."

Mate, it's been a few years but I thought the most southern range and closest to the wash was Wainfleet. Then Holbeach was north, and Donna Nook further north again. I may have these last two ass about.

No doubt QWI extrordinaire, Foldie, will pull his range map out of his hip pocket and correct me! :ugh:

Steve: "You say no RWR - I thought most Cans from the Mk.8 onwards had Orange Putter? Oh wait, that was active radar..."

I never had anything to do with the Canberry in the RAF, but my guess would be that the only one that had an RWR was the PR.9. I stand corrected, but it was probably an ARI 18228 (or some such number?).

GAP
 

One function we had on 7 Sqn which was a lot of fun was providing training for Forward Air Controllers at Templeton Airfield in South Wales. This involved flying what was known as the Templeton GAP (Ground Attack Profile) which was a cloverleaf pattern of airfield attacks usually flown as a battle pair.

As I remember the four legs were: From the North at 250ft 360 knots low level straight in lay down bombing followed by a pull up to 4000ft and a tear drop turn to run in from the West for a dive bomb run bottoming out at 250ft for a low level run out to the east, a low level turn in on an offset to pull up for a tip in dive attack which was repeated with a run from the south.
At this point, the no 2 aircraft would take the lead and we would go round again.
Great fun and usually flown on Thursday and Friday when the Navy didn't need us at Plymouth.
These manoeuvres formed the basis for the attack profiles used during the St Mawgan Air Shows.

Had a look in the log book I have with me and note that we also did a similar profile on the Larkhill ranges.

NS
Quite a few T19 sorties. B2 with pointed concreted nose and no tip tanks.
No navaids either other than TACAN.
We tended to use the T19 for PI's and any sortie that required climb above 410. Pressurisation limitations limited ceiling to 470 but with a light aircraft we once took one to 520. We still had a reasonable rate of climb but MCrit and safety speed considerations made us chicken out.
Never heard of a T11

Steve, the period I am talking about (early 1980s) was towards the end of the Canberra's long career. With the demise of 13 Sqn in the recce role around that time that just left one operational mark in the RAF - the PR9 flown by 39 Sqn. 100 Sqn was a targets facilities unit and having no operational role did not require operational role equipment such as RWRs. We did hope that something would be fitted if we ever had to carry out our war role of LOPRO (I think this was covered elsewhere in this thread) although it was generally accepted that without the performance and manoeuverabilty to evade Soviet maritime defenc,s the RWRs of the day would not have provided much more than an warning of imminent disaster!

I have no idea what an Orange Putter is. The B(I)8 was long out of RAF Service by the time I joined the Force (my father was a B(I)8 nav in Germany when I was born). Later marks were not necessarily more 'operational' in the sense that they had more modern equipment (your comment suggests this might be your thinking). The TT18, for example was a re-worked B2 fitted for the Rushton target towing role. The E15 (a modified B15 variant) had the bigger Avon engines whereas the TT18 had the smaller donks fitted to the B2/T4 family. On 100 Sqn in my time we operated a mixed fleet of B2, T4, PR7, E15 and TT18s - the monthly log book summary was always a bit of a chore!

Yes, it was the SC9, probably on the way back to RAE Bedford. It was in raspberry ripple clours, if I recall correctly. I think it ended its days at RAF St Mawgan as I saw it there during a UAS Summer Camp in about 1992 looking rather forlorn in faded hemp and grey. I can't remember whether it was still intact, but the nose section certainly was.

A practice QRA intercept was unlikely to include any evasion - the targets did not normally respond. All the practice was intended for was to exercise the system, so we were usually tasked just to 'intercept, identify and report' - even an exercise engagement with 8 live missiles on board posed a degree of risk. So usually it was just a simple intercept, before closing to loose echelon.

Orange Putter
 

Spectre #94

Orange Putter was a little active radar, of 1950's vintage I guess, to be found in the tails of PR 7 and B15 (and no doubt other operational) Canberras of my time - FEAF 1962-4. It gave a coarse quadrant display of a threat from behind to the nav plotter. I never knowingly saw the display myself. It gave too many spurious warnings so it would have been a worrying nuisance on an operational sortie (you hoped); of course you would only switch it on briefly for fear of actually attracting trouble.

If however you had a high level night exercise with the promise of an interception, it was then useful to time the start of your version of the Lancaster corkscrew. You might never see the Sea Vixen or Javelin concerned (which you could usually by day), but I remember no post-flight crowing about being "splashed" so it presumably worked.

Canberras and loosing things
 

If the topic is to drift a bit then someone has to mention the Prussian Queen event

You talk about interesting pilot/nav miss communications

A 100 sqn Nav Laurie Davies, later died in a PR9 crash at Wyton, had a favourite trick when airbporne with a new pilot. He would disconnect from RT and pass the cockpit on his way to the nose bombing area waving a large screwdriver. Over the next few minutes important looking electric thingies would be thrown backward into the cockpit area. Laurie would then reappear saying " OK clever dick lets see you cope with that", the bits had of course come aboard in his navbag and were nothing to do with the aircraft being flown. After landing the pilot would then find his flying boot laces had been tied to the rudder pedals

Certainly brightened-up a summer camp at West Raynham for this cadet when, out on a forced-march around the local area, a Canberra appeared from behind a row of trees.

I know what you mean...whilst at Brawdy in the late 70's and while picking up a brand new Triumph Tiger 750 from Llawhaden (sp?) a canberra appeared at extreme low level - contour hugging through the valley...lovely sight !

rlsbutler - thanks for that info. I am still a little confused - you describe OP as an active radar but also make it sound like an RWR (ie a receiver) when you say 'It gave a coarse quadrant display of a threat'. I could understand if the bombers were fitted with rudimentary RWRs to pick up AI radar equipped fighters (Jav/vixen in your time?) but not an active sensor. Can anyone enlighten me further?

The Orange Putter they had on the Valiant was a baby radar. It had a small screen in front of the captain that indicated where a trailing aircraft was. Taken out of bombers to stop missiles homing on to it, too long minimum range for tankers, so ditched.