The Lightning also carried Violet Picture, selected through the ILS/VP switch. Not sure that it actually worked, never tried it myself and never heard it discussed.

The Rainbow codes seem random, because largely they were, and by design. In WW2, the allies correctly guessed the function of some of the German kit purely by it's name. For example, it was correctly assumed that the Wotan (Odin) nav system had one transmitter as the mythical god only had one eye. There was a concerted effort to make sure the same mistakes weren't made.

DIALECT?
 

We had a piece of ESM kit in the old R30 (Temporary Ops Room) at Neatishead, I think it was supposed to be from a Vulcan.

If memory serves, it was referred to as DIALECT ... I never heard it called by a Rainbow Code, but as an FC who had passed the controller training, I was never invited to use it, Does anyone remeber what it was? ORAC?:

Probably still here:Which is well worth a visit if you're in the area.

Friedlander

I could be wrong here as I was radar and ESM was looked after by the comms. guys, but the only Vulcan ESM that I remember was Blue Saga which monitored L band and X band. This was replaced by ARI 18228.

What was it supposed to do, Firestreak?

Lightning days - radar AI 23, no name ?

Missiles: Firestreak was a generic trade name, Mk3 as used, was Blue Jay.
The development Firestreak Mk4 became Red Top.

Other developments included Blue Vesta which was possibly a Radar version of Red Top, also considered were variants of early Sparrow, Matra R530, or Sidewinder on outboard pylons.
Plus thoughts of 2in rockets over-wing; SNEB, Bullpup, AS 30, Falcon, Zuni, 1000lb bomb, ventral fairing / underwing.

Predecessors, Blue Sky (Fire-flash ?), Red Dean, Red Hebe.

Re radar homing: was the Lightning ‘S’ band homer a separate (un-named) system or integral with AI 23B ?
What was the V Force S band jammer called; reportedly wartime use only.

Friedland- I have a vague memory it was the Orange Harvest stripped out of the 8 Sqn Shacks.

It was used for UHF homing on spoofers and comms jammers. If the pilot called “bloodhound” then the controller was supposed to shut up to allow the pilot to identify and ride the jamming/spoofing radial..

Ewan, simply gave a turn left or right indication using ILS localiser needle, when centered pointing towards the transmitter. The info came from the 2 small vertical aerials on the spine of the aircraft.

Red Shrimp.

Incident at AKR
 

Most of the ECM cans took some time to become operational, known as "warm up time", the power switch had an alternate position which had a plastic guard that could be broken if enough force was used. This was marked as the war switch, it truncated the time the unit took to become operational. Bomber wing at Akrotiri received a panic call wanting to know if we had a problem with any aircrafts ECM. Apparently the VHF comms channels were all being jammed. A quick run around all of the airframes that had power on discovered a Green Salad???? unit (VHF Jammer) with the war switch on and the plastic guard broken. The panic was that it effectively wiped out VHF comms in the easterm Med including most of Israel, who were about to bring all of their forces to the highest alert level fearing an imminent attack. Akrotiri was only 90 miles from the Golan heights. We never found out how it, or who, managed to operate the war switch.

There was an early VHF jammer called Green Palm replaced by ARI 18146.

I have only come across DIALECT at EWOSE, I can't remember but I think it was based on ARI 18228 RWR, as that was the main area I worked in.

You would seem to be correct, the mention I have found of DIALECT from the Neatishead Air Defence Museum defines it as the “Dialect ARI 18228 EW system.”

Thanks, ORAC and Firestreak.

Ewan,

Ill add that we had one at Buchan in the early 1980s, left hand side off the well, and it was bloody useless. Can’t remember it ever providing any useful intel, and hence the lack of interest…..

My reference book mentions a system used to counter Soviet jamming codenamed "Winkle". Introduced between 1965 and 1968 it consisted of a high speed rotating aerial and was installed at four sites. It was worked together with a Type 85 radar to establish the position of the jamming source.

That was the Passive Detection System installed along with the T85 radar at Boulmer, Staxton Wold and Neatishead.

To this day I can recall the details of hyperbolic lays….

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linesm...sive_detection

https://www.radarpages.co.uk/mob/linesman/pd.htm