Typhoons being tanked through lichfield corridor
 

Pictures online of 2 Typhoons being TANKED by a Voyager at 14k in the LICHFIELD RVC I thought there was a restriction on Tanking in certain areas.

If there's a slot, why not? Were they in formation, or actually tanking?

Do you have information that says they were ACTUALLY refuelling? Source, please ;)

Picture on Fighter Control on FB clearly shows 2 Typhoons attached to a Voyager . No problem with it but I seem to remember from my controlling days about where you could tank.

We had Towlines for sure, but across the LIC corridor wasn't one of them!

Interesting ... I'm a few decades out of date, but I would suspect the picture being reality.

Picture link, please.

I believe there was QRA over Wales today, which may have had something to do with it.

Image at following Twitter link

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DOHyOgFWkAAMDhz.jpg

https://twitter.com/jamyt123/status/928289809369624577

Playback of flight at following link.

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/a.../zz337#f7712e8

Overland AAR in the UK is an unusual activity. Some years ago, even use of the AARAs over SW England became restricted unless approved for specific purposes. There are a couple of 'Refueler' routes used by the USAF, but neither route through the Lichfield Corridor.

Hence conducting AAR in the Lichfield Corridor must have been required as the result of an operational imperative. If that was the case, you are unlikely to know why on an open Internet website.

Good photo though.

Who says they were actually transferring fuel and not just using an opportunity to practice hooking up ?

Nice picture.

Hooking up or not, fuel flowing or not, certainly as I recall it back in the olden days most towlines ( but not all, as Beags mentioned there was one over the southwest UK) ) were over water, working on the principal that if at all possible you wanted to avoid the chances that if things went wrong the, err, , bits, didn't fall on the general population...I'm not talking big airplane size big bits....I'm talking about spokes, or on occasions whole baskets and bits of hose..in fact thinking about it hasn't there been at least one case where the basket and hose departed company with no assistance from a receiver...

Not that I ever had it happen to me of course ( I generally was a slowly slowly..slowly...missed! merchant) but I know one or two individuals that did manage to remove one or two components from drogue... .....

I was joining from the right when I witnessed the centreline hose depart the VC10.

An interesting day to say the least.

I don’t know the established cause but at the time there was talk of an inadvertent jettison caused by the engineer’s seat.

wiggy I can confirm that. In 6 years on tankers I can recall only one incident when a complete hose parted company with the tanker and as sod's law would have it it was over land.

It happened at night when our squadron's only 2 point Victor tanker was practising AAR with Gutersloh Lightnings on the RAFG towline, which was completely over land. The 2 pointers didnt have a rear view periscope, so when the nav radar trailed the hose he was unable to do the normal visual check. One of the Lightning guys reported that there was no hose trailed on his side. The sortie was abandoned and when they got back to Marham the crew chief immediately confirmed that the hose wasn't still in the pod.

A couple of nervous days ensued, as visions of a 60 foot hose scything through the streets of a German town weren't comforting, but eventually a report came in that it had turned up in some allotments on the outskirts of Bremen. There were no casualties other than perhaps a few squashed cabbages, and I dont remember there being any comeback after the incident.

As Beagle said there was an overland towline down over Devon and Cornwall (Towline 7 I think) but it was rarely used in my time.

This is correct.

OAP

Interesting to hear all the concern about the dangers of over-land refuelling.
About two weeks ago I enjoyed watching a 5-10 min ‘nose-pointing, contest between two F15s. BUT, they were at about 12000ft directly over the centre of Norwich!! They were going at it full on; and at times were very slow. I didn’t see it start, but eventually one (who looked to be winning) bugged out to the East.
I would rather have a hose fall on me than a whole F15!

Apparently, according to who I don't know but it's what we get told, boom AAR'ing is considered safer than probe and drogue which is why UK and US boom equipped aircraft are allowed to regularly do it over the UK through the Flamborough track. If the QRA boys are allowed to go supersonic over the mainland then I can't imagine the risks of getting a bit of fuel will worry anyone.

Can’t remember the number but there was a towline overland in the Highlands. There were also occasions, when the sea state precluded oversea AAR because of the survival risk after ejection, that we moved TTL8 inland and handed control over to Eastern.

ORAC, there are quite a few errors on the map in that link...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C03086aWB5c

I rather think the end result would be the same - just more of you left to pick up if it had been a hose that hit you!

Squashed cabbages, was the owner a sauerkraut.

Sorry hat coat.

ORAC is right - was it ARA 1 in Scotland?

Crazy Near Miss During Air Refuel | Military.com

Boom is safer? I'd rather have a flexible hose between the aircraft than a rigid boom.

I think in my day winding and trailing overland was to be avoided unless operationally essential. I don't think we bothered too much about refuelling over land. I think we were obliged to trail over land crossing France (or did we just leave the hoses out)? French fighters used to police the refuelling areas, sometimes resulting in diplomatic escalation.

We certainly trailed and rewound our hoses when doing AAR over France. Never left them trailed once AAR was complete.

Is it true that a boom driver once stabbed an A10 pilot in the chest?

There is (as I type on Friday morning) a French Air Force C-135FR tanking an RAF Sentry over Cornwall in AARA10W.

Fairly sure I night tanked from a VC10 over the Great Glen in about 95. Not Op Workup either as I seem to remember (although the chaps from Hereford were involved in the sortie so who knows?)

Flap62, October 1994, perhaps?

Oh, perhaps. Might have to dig out the logbook. Twas pretty dark tho!

Tanking over land is one thing, but trailing the hoses is another as they occasionally came off on extension. Many years ago, a 101 Sqn crew were considering trailing over land in Scotland as they were running a bit late. The co-pilot was a very wealthy and much landed chap known as Bisto (Thick and rich). He checked his map and informed the Captain that it was OK to trail, as he owned that bit of Scotland!

Dan, do you remember any incidents, other than the German incident I described in post 11? No doubt that wasn't the only occasion, just the only one I knew about.

101 had to loan a VC10K to Boscombe for some receiver trial or other - the usual handbag session between Brize and Boscombe over who should fly the aircraft resulted in a Boscombe crew being allocated.

Off they went to the North Sea and trailed the hoses. The left trailed as normally, but the right went to full extension, kept going and departed.

It wasn't due to any error on behalf of the Boscombe crew, apparently it was a failure of the jettison assembly. But did we give them any stick about their trip? You can probably guess! They'd taped the CCTV and intercom, so we saw and heard the whole thing in the crewroom afterwards!

Bisto was indeed a 'bloody nice chap' on 101, but rather like Tim-nice-but-dim, he only had Harrovian levels of mathematics. After he once announced "You can't have a minus minus a plus!", he had the task of sorting out the imprest figures taken over by his long-suffering captain!

Going to and from Maple Flag exercises in the early '80s we (Buccs) would tank from Honington to Goose Bay and then tank between Goose and Cold Lake from a Victor. We also did a Goose Bay detachment in early '82 when we had a Victor with us and would tank overland on most sorties.

At Lossie we had a Bucc tanker where the crew one day trailed the hose which just kept going and detached, at which point the pod caught fire (hydraulic fluid, I think) so they had to jettison the pod! Luckily, that was somewhere over the Moray Firth.

Hope they trailed and wound the hoses over the lakes! :ok:

Did tac LL AAR with a Bucc tanker "Oop North" once. Got enough fuel to go home. :)

OAP

I remember training a student and impressing on him that when trailing the hoses to monitor their deployment, this we did, we then watched the basket on the right hand hose start to spin and twist the hose until it failed, we lost about five metres of the hose and the basket, thankfully, we were over the sea!