Yodelling? Why am I reminded of "The Lonely Goat-herd"?


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....0172c7d763.png

I mean, how hard would it be to mark the display site with smoke? Just deploy a spotter aircraft ahead of the main package - job done.

When it comes to bombers being in the wrong place, the last people you should point the finger at is the Swiss.

They spent years being accidentally bombed by the allies during World War Two and suffered significant causalities.

There is a reason that the Swiss used to paint their flags on the roofs of their houses!

OH

Yodelling up the valley! Those were the days!!!!

What I hear is that the guys at the yodeling festival liked the performance just fine and the only question around was "who the heck organized that superb surprise?"

The village the festival was is a very short distance from Langenbruck and the people there waiting for the pass actually saw them form up and expected them to come back. It was a festivity to honour a famous Swiss army pilot by the name of Oskar Bider who is from and buried in Langenbruck.

The F5's don't have GPS but they do have IRS.

As this was not a full performance but just a fly by, there was considerably less preparation than in a normal display.

Many moons ago i read about the U2 or blackbird sortie over some bad guys country, they had pushed for a GPS system for years and it and been refused, so the crews chipped in bought a handheld, on one long sortie the nav system failed over bad guys country and the crew managed to complete the mission using their cheap handheld, after that they got them fitted.

Rather like the thousands upon thousands that turned up to see the Vulcan do its farewell pass at EGNX to watch it in the far distance turn and disappear to save time by "cutting the corner".

U2 crews get issued a GPS watch

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/av...aviator-watch/

Reminds me of the time that Upper Heyford F-111s were tasked with an airfield attack at Honington for a station exercise. Such was their navigation skill that the base Hunters tasked with airfield defence were diverted to the Aardvarks to point them in the right direction - which of course resulted in 2 hours in gas masks for us poor unfortunates stuck on the ground, which could have been avoided if the powers that be had left the USAF to find its own way to the target!

I wonder if they ever got home safely!?

85 ish, retirement of wg cdr branch officer FC, John ????? Lightning due to do flypast. Aunty Joan talking to Lightning pilot.
"Where are you?"
"Just pulling up between the two towers"
"We don't have towers",, but there were at Bacton gas terminal.......

Stories like this emphasise just what a brilliant team the Red Arrows are. Never heard of them displaying in the wrong place or confusing timings/run-ins or whatever. Well done chaps - I bet someone will have witnessed something but I never did.

Indeed, The Day We Bombed Switzerland is a great read if you haven't already found it...

The Reds themselves seem a little more circumspect on the subject than that...

The Reds do of course have retrofitted GPS to hinder this sort of cock-up.....

I worked at Pilatus Aircraft in the late 1980's, on loan from British Aerospace, to help sort out some PC 9 engine issues that were particularly problematic in high temperature operations. The relationship between Pilatus Aircraft and Pratt and Whitney Canada was pretty fractious and both companies were blaming each other for the main problem. The local P and WC rep had served as aircrew in the USAF during the second world war, if I remember rightly he had been a B17 pilot. When relations between the companies were particularly strained, he used to take great delight in telling us that he had bombed Switzerland during the war. I don't think it had been entirely accidental as there was some suggestion that the Swiss had been supplying the Germans with engineering components, possibly bearings.

Walbut

But it only takes one mistake.....

There's a joke about Welsh professionals taking years to earn their reputation but Dai only had to $ha& one sheep for him to get his nickname.

Wasnt there a SR71 crew did something similar in England many moons back?
Am sure i watched a interview with a crew member or read it in a book, The got mixed up in a foggy day when ment to do a fly by.

"You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3" is a quote I heard from an SR71 pilot.

​​​​​​The story I remember (here on PPRuNe?) was when an SR-71 almost came a cropper when looking for a group of air cadets promised a fly-by, the crew in question spent a little too much time looking out of the window, too little on their airspeed. Fortunately they realised their predicament in time, and gave the cadets one helluva surprise