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PN
There were all sorts of 'special briefs' in 1990 to which you refer when some of the ex-Soviet equipment belonging to former East Germany fell under the gaze of the NATO Allies...:eek: Some of this came at a very good time as Saddam had gone to the USSR to buy his arms after the West stopped selling him anything of use (apart from the French, with Mirage and Roland). If the Berlin Wall hadn't fallen in 1989, I wonder if the outcome of the Air War would have been slightly different? LJ |
Hi JAJ,
Yes, but they were a GR1 pair with 4x1000ret on Q the first night we had any jets at Bahrain, 28 Aug 90. OAP |
Another favourite from the time:
Plus, if I recall correctly, the GR1s arrived about 2 weeks after the F3s and the Jags. PS. Wasn't there a good story about how the Pilot Officer became a Pilot Officer at 3:54 into the video? Always heard a rumour that there was, as it is highly unusual to make CR as a Pilot Officer on the Jag. |
JaJ. How short our memories are. I think you will find that the GR1/pavespike combination was marginally better than the GR1/TIALD combination. About 51% vice 50.5%
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History of the Royal Air Force here seems about right from what I remember at the time
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Whatever happened to the 'out takes' version, complete with 'Buxton Mineral Water', "that crew drank my hospitality budget" etc? Someone taped a rugby match over my copy... would love to see it again...
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Originally Posted by oap
Yes, but they were a GR1 pair with 4x1000ret on Q the first night we had any jets at Bahrain, 28 Aug 90.
OAP
Originally Posted by darvan
JaJ. How short our memories are. I think you will find that the GR1/pavespike combination was marginally better than the GR1/TIALD combination. About 51% vice 50.5%
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From the link at post 25
By this time it was clear that the weapon-carrying capability of the Buccaneers was being under-utilised and that mixed Buccaneer and Tornado formations raised some inevitable coordination problems. Thus, in the last ten days of the war, Buccaneers using Pave Spike and Tornados using the newly arrived thermal imaging airborne laser designators (TIALD) increasingly carried out self-designating attacks. A brand new system, TIALD offered important advantages over the day-only, manually controlled Pave Spike laser designator used by the Buccaneers. TIALD was more reliable, fully integrated into the Tornado's navigation and bombing system and could be used at night. As a result of this newly acquired night/LGB capability, the Tornados were tasked to help the US F-117A Stealth fighter with its attacks on Iraqi HASs, and thus for the next two weeks Tornado packages hit Iraqi HASs by night and bridges by day. At this stage of the war over 60% of Tornado sorties were using laser-guided bombs. |
Having left the RAF I was involved in the repaint of the Ferranti 125 that had been involved in the development of the TIALD pod, they were operating out of Turnhouse and when setting up the TIALD on the aircraft they were presented with a feint image of the word FERRANTI in reverse across the screen, the engineer was telling me it took them ages to find out the cause. The jet was facing their ( closed I believe) metal hanger and it was detecting the thermal differences on the far hangar wall which had Ferranti painted in big white letters on the outside facing :)
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Pavespike and TIALD results were pretty much on a par during GW1. The TIALD pod rushed into service under UOR was still a developmental pod but still managed to guide approx 200 PW IIs against Pavespike, which designated 746 PW IIs with an overall accuracy of 51.34%.
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JN,
Someone mentioned BAOR/RAFG, whilst there are some book about BRIXMIS nobody as far as I know has undertaken a documentary. Same amazing stories in the books. The second one is about the teams and crews in the MERT/IRTs and CCAST and their development in Iraq and Afghanistan. Saved many a life and nobody except you and your co-author in 'Medic' has written about them. They so deserve their history becoming far more widely known as the award of the ARCC to Sqn Ldr 'Charlie' Thompson-Edger PMRAFNS will have passed so many on the 'outside' by without a thought. She was involved in moving up to 600 causalities. An outstanding achievement. |
Interesting link in post #25 that is referred to in post #28...
By this time it was clear that the weapon-carrying capability of the Buccaneers was being under-utilised and that mixed Buccaneer and Tornado formations raised some inevitable coordination problems. Thus, in the last ten days of the war, Buccaneers using Pave Spike and Tornados using the newly arrived thermal imaging airborne laser designators (TIALD) increasingly carried out self-designating attacks. A brand new system, TIALD offered important advantages over the day-only, manually controlled Pave Spike laser designator used by the Buccaneers. TIALD was more reliable, fully integrated into the Tornado's navigation and bombing system and could be used at night. As a result of this newly acquired night/LGB capability, the Tornados were tasked to help the US F-117A Stealth fighter with its attacks on Iraqi HASs, and thus for the next two weeks Tornado packages hit Iraqi HASs by night and bridges by day. At this stage of the war over 60% of Tornado sorties were using laser-guided bombs. My bold above; I'm not sure about more reliable but then PaveSpike may have been quite unreliable??? but to claim that the 2 TIALD pods in GW1 were integrated into the nav & bombing system is a bit of a stretch. It was only after GW1, during the work-up and deployment for the return to the Gulf in 92 that they started to become integrated. Still, let's not have a pi$$ing contest over who a few %age points....both systems did incredibly well. |
JAJ
No problem. The JP233 was not sent until much later. JN You must be deep into research. Do you know what has been released 540 wise for the Bahrain deployments or Auth sheets? Cheers OAP |
thanks for the replies guys - always appreciated.
If there are any more chaps (from any aircraft type!) out there who'd like to put themselves forward, I'd be more than pleased to hear from you. OAP - I'm not looking too deeply into the paperwork trail as this is very much a "personal reminiscence" type of programme - & most certainly not a documentary reconstruction of the war. |
If you want to know about TIALD, "DunIan" who has occasionally posted on here is the man to speak to. He had a beard you could hide a badger in.
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John's project concerns the first few nights of the air war. Pave Spike didn't arrive until the Buccs entered theatre on 26th Jan - and TIALD arrived on 6 Feb. Thus JN's project will probably focus on the time before PGMs were available, when only JPs, dumb bombs and ALARM were being used by the Tornados.
I was over at Tabuk on 19th Feb and was fortunate enough to see some TIALD imagery - an excellent piece of kit. The destruction of whatever had been in the Iraqi HAS which it had been designating was very impressive, causing a massive secondary. Unfortunately our evening mission was cancelled due to a Tornado unserviceability after we'd launched, so we flew back to KKIA instead. |
Originally Posted by BEagle
I was over at Tabuk on 19th Feb and was fortunate enough to see some TIALD imagery - an excellent piece of kit. The destruction of whatever had been in the Iraqi HAS which it had been designating was very impressive, causing a massive secondary. Unfortunately our evening mission was cancelled due to a Tornado unserviceability after we'd launched, so we flew back to KKIA instead.
It certainly was a game-changer, esp the ability to debrief the crews when we got back. For the first time, they could actually see what their bombs were doing. The debriefs were usually crowded, guys who hadn't been flying that night coming in to watch the recordings. |
Don't forget to invite the panelists to bring their hotel loyalty cards and they can compare points accrued during the period :)
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Hmm...not sure I'd be that keen to claim 'loyalty points' for the Sahara at KKIA as it doesn't feature too highly on my list of preferred holiday destinations....
Waiting in the foyer for the engineer and navigator to turn up (as usual...), one of the recently arrived French Air Force Transall crew came up to me and asked "Where is ze bar?".... The look of total shock on his face when I told him that not only was Saudi dry, but it was also a serious offence for anyone to be caught with alcohol was quite remarkable! |
Sahara at KKIA Great sport lobbing the complimentary shampoo over the balcony from the mezzanine level into the ornamental fountain next to reception, and then listening as the noise of the water was muted somewhat some seconds later.. :E The not-so-secret local police didn't know what to make of it either... And the Gingers driving their minibus into the hotel garage behind another one - unfortunately not realising that theirs had the a/c unit on the roof, and didn't quite fit... oh how we laughed!! |
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