John,
Good point re the odd coloured blade. How we laughed when OC78 flying a Sea King with such a blade flew up and down the Stanley Rd in the Falklands as OC1435 spent an hour trying to find him in an F3......at least the Argentinians didn't plan to use Sea Kings against us!

VR,
2v1, quite simple - multiple eyes to hold padlock and provide warnings.
1v2 great fun in peacetime, relies on the FJ crews getting their timing right - agreed, would be far more challenging 'for real'.

The shockwave kill philosphy is interesting, but very difficult to set up. If you've got the set up right you may as well select A-G strafe.

Pointing & squirting with a GPMG at 2000 yds is not valid; 8-10 secs tracking M134 at less than 1000m may well achieve some hits due to sheer weight of fire. The J-CATCH stats were a combination of turret guns and IR AAMs.

Done a fair bit of HvF teaching myself with both Evalu8ter and others and also had a backseat ride in a Hawk vs 2xChinooks.

Like Evalu8ter I had to regularly talk the jets on despite them having your exact track and distance from the bull.....the helicopters are very difficult to see if being flown correctly with good lookout and in a tactical way. We often had to talk them back on after the merge itself to get a good fight for the trainee, as with a good bit of terrain you could quickly get away if in something smaller like a Puma or Lynx.

From sitting in the back of a Hawk I thought it would be easy to see two big lumbering Chinooks, but it wasn't....it was bloody difficult for both of us even though we knew where they were and as soon as the formation split it was even harder. There was no way a single seat jet would have been able to down both (one even?) aircraft without a lot of luck on his part and a total lack of awareness/ability on the other side. I'm fairly sure a direct overflight at very high speed would cause all manner of trouble for the helo, but I'm also fairly sure that it would be a very difficult manoeuvre to pull off against an 'aware' target and there is huge scope for the jets to get it very wrong. Certainly the drivers I spoke to in my past life weren't particularly keen on doing it....or so they said :}

So I think any kill would be a lucky break for the jet driver with the helo crew thumb up bum doing other things. Probably whinging about JPA and the low quality of their bag rats. Probably. :E

Having done a bit of fast jet v. my Puma, I wasn't too bothered about them. It was the thought of the Frogfoot that did.

Mind you, the USAF did manage to shoot down a couple of Blackhawk with their F-15s a couple of decades ago, killing all 26 persons on board.

But they were supposed to be on the same side, so I wouldn't have thought the Blackhawk pilots were expecting the threat from above. :(

A mate of mine had an Angolan helicopter kill he got in a SAAF Impala (Aermacchi 326) during the 'Border War' before he joined the RAF. He took great delight in telling the QWIs that when we were training for Op DENY FLIGHT.

Whilst we talk about difficulty to detect - on DENY FLIGHT I intercepted a HIP after a call from AWACS of a possible 'slow mover' and it was easy to find. Many of my buddies did the same as well. The most annoying thing was that by the time the CAOC had got their act in gear, the helicopters would 'land on' knowing that they were now protected by our restrictive ROE and wait for us to run low on gas and have to leave - at that point they would get airborne and be on their way again. I even heard reports of a helo crew getting out and sticking up 2 fingered salutes at the NATO jets circling overhead! Hanging around helicopters for any length of time whilst they are on the ground is also a bad idea in case they get a MANPADS out of the back!

Finally, in a shooting war, a helicopter (or helicopters) are not going to be high up on the list of things to shoot down (unless intel tells us it is a SF or enemy VIP flight). Bombers, fighter sweep, AWACS, tankers and other ISTAR assets are all going to be higher up on the list for strategic gain than helicopters; which tend to be knobbled only as a target of opportunity if able.

LJ

Leon,
I'd agree with your last para.

Difficulty to detect has an awful lot to do with camouflage, terrain and pilot skill. I spent a delightful hour in Appleby once against 2x F3s with an E-3 overhead. No valid BVR mx shots and the only merges were the ones I called the jets in on my exact position. Bear in mind the jets also knew my start/end points and my Towline. On the other hand, 1v2 overwater could be quite different......

As I said before, a non-RWR equipped helo with a crew untrained in air to air tactics (which, let's face it, is most RW crews worldwide) can present a simple target for a FJ. But a well equipped cab, with a well trained crew is another story.

I have just chanced upon an article in the old magazine Royal Air Force Flying Review from December 1962. It tells of an encounter between an Avro Rota ( Cierva C30a Autogiro ) and a pair of Fw 190s. The Rota was finishing a Radar Calibration sortie for CHF Rye at 4000ft in the evening of 14 July 43 when it was bounced by the Fw 190s. After desperate evasive action, including exceeding Vne, it got away and landed safely. There is no claim it was the first FW/RW combat, but there can not have been many earlier.

Yep! [pity it's not 1/1 tracer mind....]

Got to agree with Evaluator. Always seemed to be an awful lot of telling them where we were. I should point out that that was in a seaking!
In my Gazelle they really would be very unlikely to see me. We used to lose visual on each other in formation FFS!

I always hear a lot about how the radar will find us. Not convinced. Had an E3 and a Bagger have a go on one occasion and didn't see any of the package. 3 SK4, 2 merlin and one Gazelle. We were low, but not proper war low, not even close. Wartime with an air threat I'd be at 10ft. How do missiles work through trees?

With no cover I'd be very scared. In European countryside with any trees and terrain I'd be relatively comfortable. How do you hit me if I hide behind a hill/trees/buildings etc?

The Gazelle has very low thermal signature, it's small, it's sprightly and it has fantastic lookout.
Tricky target if prepared.

Think I am the only UK FJ driver to have done it for real: I Puma with wingtip vortices, one A109A gunship with 30mm and a further (landed) Puma with 30mm, all in the space of a couple of mins. I have also done a fair bit of fighter evasion when I used to fly Wessex. But don't tell my old mother - I told her I played piano in a brothel!

Details in my book "Hostile Skies" or PM me.

Damn if you'd have missed the 109 we'd have had another.

I seem to remember post FI, 3 BAS decided everybody had to learn a new skill, ex38'ish; fighter evasion or something like that? I could never quite understand the point of wanting to put on a nice little flying display prior to being blown out the sky! Albeit hiding in the weeds was pretty damn difficult down south.

I heard an LGB through the rotor disk works quite well provided the helo is within the ground burst envelope.

Mogwi,
Indeed you are - and the point re non-RWR equipped, non-Trained crews are emphasised by your success. I use your engagement as a case study, would you mind a pm with some questions?

PN,
GW1 saw an F15 kill a hind with an LGB; at the speed/height they were at it outranged the AIM-9 and didn't have any issues looking down into the desert. I fought a pair of F15Es over the North Sea a few years back and after 45 minutes of trashing F2/F3/Guns they presented a slightly narrower spread and simulated releasing a pair of LGBs each at us. The debrief was 'we were sick of you getting away - it didn't matter which way you went you were in a frag envelope...'. Fair one, bang to rights.........

Nah, they would have had to get a passing Bucc to help :)

I'm pretty sure there was another thread on this sometime last year. Perhaps a search will find it for you.

I hate to burst your bubble, Evalu8ter et Al, but I spent a few months chasing helicopters around Bosnia, same as Leon. A tricky target to find sometimes, but we never missed one. We weren't allowed to shoot them down, more's the pity, but we had plenty of valid opportunities.

I don't think you'll find you're as safe and indestructible as you seem to think.

Courtney,
And having often flown rings around F3s, Typhoons, Hawks, et al in the Falklands and the UK I would suggest you're, perhaps, not as good as you think you are....yes I've lost plenty of engagements, but 'won' far more and losing is essential to learning.

Read the posts - there's a big difference finding poorly equipped and poorly trained helo crews to finding those with some kit & trg. I would suggest it's the former you were chasing around the Balkans.

Just passing on my experience of the subject. Modern airborne weapons systems can deal with helicopters.

Didn't intend to touch such a raw nerve, but thank you for your kind words.

I'm with Courtney on this one.


In planned Helio affil the egg whisks were hard to engage. When it wasn't planned (ie TOO) they were rats in a barrel. The FI was/is the best play ground for Helio plunking.


During planned affil I would tell the Chopper WHERE and WHEN I planned to engage, the eggers would have all their eyes out ready to play. Unplanned, just easy meat.


LJ,


I think the last brief on "Blowing the bloody rotors off" was a 0.95M pass and a 7G pull in combat pwr....and the C-130 boom damage is pants, they'd been woofing around at LL and blamed it on the F3 (I was there! As was the F3 STANEVAL pilot)

Well this deteriorated fast. Good old pprune.

You think a helo is an easy target and you are almost certainly right against a single one lumbering around at height over flat terrain, flown in a non-tactical manner with no crew experience of fighter evasion and/or an RWR. However, the reality of what all of us rotary guys seem to be saying is a western crew/formation trained in evasion, employing good lookout and flying tactically is another matter entirely. Having flown and taught HvF against all manner of pointy things over ten years the only aircraft that regularly seemed able to 'win' when it got into the merge was the AlphaJet. Finding us, would of course be a different matter entirely for the AJ.

What I don't think you might appreciate (no offence meant) is there is a big difference in a 2 or 3 crew Mi8 (generally flown medium level like a FW) with no RWR and no experience of HvF vs a modern helicopter with 3 or 4 crew employing good lookout techniques, tactical low flying, route selection, RWR and trained in HvF techniques etc etc.

So I don't think its anywhere near as 'easy' as some of you make out, which is all I think that Evalu8ter was saying. He and I worked hand in hand with your brethren for a very long time and my experience as previously outlined was backed up by the debriefs received from them both in the air and afterwards on the ground. Nobody is trying to point score here, just trying to explain our experiences, which in turn is as valid as your experiences.

Interesting to hear your experiences of actual intercepts in Bosnia if you are able to share the detail....ie height, speed, terrain.....what actually happened?

OP

The Falklands terrain very much favours the jet as I'm sure you are aware.

No trees, no buildings, lots of areas with not much terrain to hide in and no roads filled with vehicles. Added to this you have generally epic viz.

Try Norway and you have rather less chance

As SimonK says, references to finding Hips flown non tactically are irrelevant. It's the equivalent to shooting down a Ryanair Boeing on the Dublin run vs shooting down a B1B. Both are big, but they are a very different proposition.