Fighter Control 1960s/70s
 

I'm a retired civil ATCO. A friend of mine is writing a novel and has asked me to provide him with a transcript of the phraseology which would be used by the fighter controller and a Lightning making an interception of a Russian Bear approaching UK airspace in the 1960s or 70s. Obviously I am familiar with basic ATC phraseology but am not too sure of the specific phraseology used in that sort of situation. In particular, I would need representative callsigns for the aircraft and the ground station (Boulmer or Buchan perhaps). Any help appreciated.

Thanks for this. Very helpful, but more detail needed. Any ideas?

Codewords for weapons fit were used, but I can't remember the exact details and there's a list of NATO brevity words which Fighter Controllers would use in the linked doc. Bizarrely, Left and Right was replaced with Port and Starboard by the intercept controllers and rumour has it that the Lightning Jocks had P & S written on their flying gloves.
BREVITY WORDS (radioscanner.ru)

Interesting that the NATO brevity codes document comes from a link to a Russian website.

I’d suggest you probably won’t find many better sources in this place than ORAC when it comes to this topic ……….maybe there are some things and subjects that still can’t be said/written in detail (unless as Courtney has pointed out you run a Russian website :E)….

The “Port/Starboard” hit my ears too! Whatever, if the pilot understands, who am I to argue as a former Mil ATCO!

However, during my time as GATCO at HQ 11 Gp (remember them?) I spent a lot of time working with my FC colleagues getting FC and ATC to use common terminology and rules, culminating in a joint ATC/FC tour of the SOCs to explain it all. It made sense, when both sets of controllers were batting aircraft around in Mandatory Radar airspace at high speeds!

Leo pilot, check your Mail inbox.

Port and starboard were used for giving vectors to fly “port 240”. Left and right were used for giving target information “target 35 left, 50. Port 20” or “new target 30 left, low, heading west, hard port 270”.

Much more applicable in the Lightning days than from the F4 onwards when a magnetic bearing would be given “target 340, 50”.

The original reason was based on operating in a jammer environment* where a fighter might hear only hear the port or left part of a transmission, but they would still know whether to start a turn or just search on their radar.

(*This was in the days of manual spot jammers when it was thought you’d be able get out a few words before the jamming started).

IIRC the use of port and starboard ceased when we got more involved in coalition ops and standardisation became more critical - and sweep/barrage jammers plus data links rendered the original rationale obsolete.

And, of course, when fighters got much better radars and calls became much more along the lines of “pair, 070, flanking right, no threat” and into the realms of F-pole and E-pole manoeuvres and big picture information.

When I last spoke to a fighter they were already dropping close control as a basic controller skill and adding it as an add-on skill that could be taught when they had more experience and spare capacity - and of course because it was largely obsolete.

Thanks, ORAC .., that makes a lot of sense!