pinehilljoe
Senior Airman
- 674
- May 1, 2016
If you are in the DC area, the RAF is going to be holding an airshow at the Udvar Hazy; April 15
The Great British Fly-In
The Great British Fly-In
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The British are Coming, to the Udvar Hazy
- Thread starter pinehilljoe
- Start date
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Too bad I can't make it to DC that weekend.
buffnut453
Captain
Hmmm...interesting that the Queen's Colour Squadron is on the agenda. Hope they actually show up for the gig.
Back in '93, our Station Commander decided to put on a major show for Battle of Britain Day (15 September), inviting local dignitaries and politicians. The plan was that the QCS would provide 2 squads to parade in front of the Officers' Mess at evening twilight, marching, halting, turning and dressing without a word of command being spoken. There would be a brief discourse by the Station Commander on the significance of the Battle, after which a bugler was to play Last Post and one of our Tonkas would approach the Mess from behind the crowd at high speed and at low level, and then pull up to the vertical with both afterburners going. It was supposed to be an impressive and carefully choreographed demonstration.
The only snag came the morning of the event when we learned that the QCS could only bring half of the required number of personnel because they'd been out on the town the night before and got into a fight...among THEMSELVES! It was clearly too late to cancel or significantly modify the event so, in true RAF fashion, we adapted and made the most of it. The Station Warrant Officer grabbed "volunteers" from the various units on the Station and spent the entire day drilling them with the remnants of the QCS who were fit for parade.
In the end, the event was a great success. The Tonka flypast certainly made people duck, and seeing climb into the darkness as the final notes of the Last Post were fading made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. But precious little of it was thanks to the QCS...bless 'em!!!
Back in '93, our Station Commander decided to put on a major show for Battle of Britain Day (15 September), inviting local dignitaries and politicians. The plan was that the QCS would provide 2 squads to parade in front of the Officers' Mess at evening twilight, marching, halting, turning and dressing without a word of command being spoken. There would be a brief discourse by the Station Commander on the significance of the Battle, after which a bugler was to play Last Post and one of our Tonkas would approach the Mess from behind the crowd at high speed and at low level, and then pull up to the vertical with both afterburners going. It was supposed to be an impressive and carefully choreographed demonstration.
The only snag came the morning of the event when we learned that the QCS could only bring half of the required number of personnel because they'd been out on the town the night before and got into a fight...among THEMSELVES! It was clearly too late to cancel or significantly modify the event so, in true RAF fashion, we adapted and made the most of it. The Station Warrant Officer grabbed "volunteers" from the various units on the Station and spent the entire day drilling them with the remnants of the QCS who were fit for parade.
In the end, the event was a great success. The Tonka flypast certainly made people duck, and seeing climb into the darkness as the final notes of the Last Post were fading made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. But precious little of it was thanks to the QCS...bless 'em!!!
Pardon the ignorance of a mere colonial, but what's a Tonka? Hmm...two burners: Lightning? Tornado? Jaguar?...or, OMG...a Phantom?(crude, primitive, brute force bludgeon from the colonies)? Yeahh, guess that fits the image of a Tonka Toy.
Cheers,
Wes
buffnut453
Captain
Tonka = Tornado. We had the GR1A recce variants. Really, REALLY good at low level!
Never seen a Tornado. They were after my time, but we were visited by HMS Ark Royal, who flew her Buccaneers and Phantoms ashore for a little "friendly tussle" with our ACM training F4s. They quickly discovered our huffer units didn't have enough oomf to start their Speys, so they had to sling load a couple of theirs in from the boat.Tonka = Tornado. We had the GR1A recce variants. Really, REALLY good at low level!
So when they went out to play a little "grab-ass" in the offshore training range, they waxed our Tobgun trained instructors every time, with even the Bucs scoring kills on our birds. In all the engagements, our guys never scored a kill, and none survived. On more than one occasion the Brits would engage a four plane of ours with only two of their Phantoms, and then when the furball was mixing it good, a pair of Bucs would come steaming in at 0 ft MSL making nearly Mach, pop straight up under the furball and get Sidewinder tone on a couple of our F4s, then be gone back on the deck. Our radar's look down capabilities weren't good enough to catch them, plus the RIOs were busy spotting furball opponents for the pilots.
Their Spey engines outperformed our J79s handily, especially in high AOA, high G maneuvering. Apparently their intake ducts were more efficient, losing less ram effect at high AOA than ours, and they had some sort of G actuated Boundary Layer Control that kept the airflow attached at higher AOAs. Ours only functioned with flaps and slats extended. To top it all off, they burned less fuel on each sortie. All in all the mother country showed the colonials who's boss.
Cheers,
Wes
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They seemed to have been remarkably well trained. Honestly, I'm curious why is it that the Brits didn't have the same problems the USAF & USN had in the same time period?
They had some of the same aircraft, they had a nuclear war provision, yet our guys would see progressively declining training and they didn't.
buffnut453
Captain
Great info, Wes. Never realized the Spey Phantoms were that good.
Regarding the Tonkas, my squadron was among the first RAF units to take part in COPE THUNDER in Alaska. I got to work with the Range Officer (Range-O) pretty closely. He was a Wild Weasel back-seater and knew his stuff when it came to adversary threat radars. The range was a mix of real threat systems and emulators positioned to cause problems for the incoming raids from the participating squadrons. At each post-mission debrief, after the mission lead had provided his comments on the mission, the Range-O would play video feeds that were boresighted to the threat radars, coupled with the soundtrack of the operators.
My guys went in at 100ft and used the terrain to maximum effect. Every video from a threat system showed, perhaps, a fin cutting across the bottom of the feed, or a quick view of a Tonka rolling inverted before it pulled down behind a ridgeline again. The operators cursed us up a storm...and they didn't get a single kill.
That exercise was also the scene of the most immortal post mission debriefs EVER. The formation lead was one of our Flt Lts, an awesome pilot who sounded more like a tractor driver from the West Country than a fast jet pilot. He'd laid out the plan and coordinated with all the other squadrons to ensure timing and tempo of the entire gorilla package. Come the debrief and our mission lead stands up, says "Bombs on target, on time." and sits down again. The Range-O stands up, puts on a slide showing the bomb hits on the target and says "Yep, that about covers it." Happy, HAPPY days.
This was at the very tail end of the Vietnam War, in which the US had spent nearly a decade fighting a third world country over an obsolescent battlefield, so that is where tactics, training, and hardware had been focused. The Brits, OTOH, were training to tackle the varsity, the Warsaw Pact.
Another reason was that the British aviators apparently had far fewer collateral duties than USN types, and could focus more fully on flying. They were aghast at the amount of time our aviators had to devote to "distractions".
On paper, the difference isn't that impressive, but couple that with crews that think and fight outside the box and use the strengths of their plane to best advantage and are a little less beholden to ROEs, and you get an impressive result. It was Braddock against the Native Americans all over again...in reverse!
So, their equipment were better and their tactics were based on countering state of the art rather than primitive?
Why such a difference?
I think the difference was due to different philosophies of carrier aviation. US tended toward larger air wings onboard, typically two fighter squadrons , three attack (two light, one heavy), two ASW (one fixed wing, one rotary) one recon, and one AEW. That's a lot of personnel and equipment on one ship. Squadrons had to be "lean and mean" with minimum non-aviator officers, thus requiring more collateral duties of aviators and more versatility amongst senior enlisted in embarked squadrons. The Brits tended not to cram so many squadrons aboard, and there were more non aviator officers for administrative duties.
I'm curious if that was the case in WWII times or if that was a distinctly post-war development?
British WWII carriers tended to carry more armor, reducing the physical space in hangars and on elevators, hence their air wings tended to be smaller than US. Their division of personnel between squadrons and ship's company tended to lean more towards squadrons. A US squadron brings a certain number of supernumerary personnel with it who are sent to work TAD in various ship's company departments, such as Intermediate Maintenance, Supply, Security, EM and Officer's Mess, Air Ordnance, Special Services, etc. I believe you'll find the average British seagoing squadron will have fewer aircraft and aircrew, but more personnel, with larger TAD contributions to ship's company. At least that's the way it was last time I had any contact with them. With their new carrier classes it could be all different now.
To be honest, I don't know. The UK ended WWII with its treasury depleted and the remnants of its largely demobilized military stretched rather thin across the empire and occupation forces. Given that, I doubt there was much carrier building going on, so I'm guessing their carrier operations were not much changed from the war, except for the gradual introduction of jets. The superb Sea Fury, with its impressive performance, might have delayed somewhat the urgency to get jets on board. In any case, I suspect the air group limitations of the legacy carriers most likely continued, with the advent of the US Forestall class supercarriers further increasing the discrepancy in air group sizes.
By the end of 1945 the carrier construction programme for the RN had been significantly curtailed.
Ships ordered but not laid down were cancelled (4 Malta class fleet & 4 Centaur class light fleet). 3 more Centaurs whose construction had begun in 1944/45 had their construction continued at a slow pace to clear the slipways in 1947/48 and were laid up until work began again from 1949 to a modified design. The final ship, Hermes, languished on the slip until launched in 1953 and completed to an entirely different design in 1959.
Of the 3 Audacious class laid down in 1942/43, the original Eagle was cancelled in Dec 1945 and broken up on the slip. The other pair Eagle (ex Audacious) and Ark Royal were completed in 1952 & 1955 respectively with differing levels of modification. The 6 Majestic light carriers ordered in 1942 were laid up in various stages of completion until being sold off to Commonwealth countries in the 1950s or scrapped in the 1960s.
That left Britain with the Illustrious / Implacable classes and the 8 Colossus class ships completed 1944-46. With the manning problems that the RN had immediately postwar it was the latter that formed the core of the carrier fleet as they required much smaller crews. Only Implacable and then Indomitable had an operational role as the principal Home Fleet carrier, with Illustrious in a trials and training role while Victorious and Indefatigable became training ships spending most of their time in harbour. Formidable was laid up in 1947 and saw no further use. Of the Colossus class, Colossus herself was loaned to France in mid-1946 (and sold in 1951), and Venerable was sold to the Dutch in 1948. Vengeance was loaned to the RAN 1951-55 while they waited for HMAS Melbourne to be completed.
So when it came to the start of the Korean War in 1950, the Colossus class Triumph was the carrier in the Pacific region with a squadron of Seafire FR.47 and another of Firefly FR.1. These squadrons carried out their first operations at the same time as the USS Valley Forge joined the fray - 3 July 1950. From then until November 1953 Britain & Australia maintained a single light fleet carrier with the UN naval forces operating off Korea. Triumph was replaced at the end of Sept 1950 by Theseus fresh out from the UK with a squadron of Sea Fury FB.11 and another of Firefly FR.5. That became the standard air group for the duration of the Korean War on the other carriers. Theseus was replaced in April 1951 by Glory and then in turn the following carriers had additional tours - HMAS Sydney, Glory, Ocean, Glory then finally Ocean again from May-Nov 1953. Most of the carriers had air groups of around 30 aircraft and were flying operations at rates that at times exceeded those achieved by the BPF carriers in 1945 which had larger airgroups.
Theseus borrowed a Sikorsky S-51/HO3S-1 for air sea rescue in place of her Sea Otter & later the carriers received the Westlad Dragonfly (licence built S-51) for the role.
The story of the Commonwealth carriers and heir air groups is covered in this book.
The RN also deployed the Aircraft Maintenance Ship, Unicorn to Japan as support for whichever operational carrier was present.
As for jets, while the Sea Vampire was used by various second line squadrons for trials and traning purposes, the first operational jet in the FAA was the Supermarine Attacker which entered service with 800 squadron in Aug 1951. Eagle became the first RN carrier to operate jet squadrons when she completed in 1952.
In the 1950s the RN carrier force went through a total overhaul both in terms of ships and aircraft and their capabilities. In 1955 Ark Royal became the first carrier to complete with all 3 of the postwar British innovations that revolutionised carrier operations in the jet age - the steam catapult, the angled deck and the mirror landing sight. Before the year was out she had been followed by the USS Forrestal and HMAS Melbourne (note each of these features had appeared alone or in combination in earlier ships or by way of conversion).
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Thanks for updating us with the straight skinny!
E
EwenS
What I was curious about was the quality of the crews to their American counterparts: In WWII the crews at least seemed to be similar to each other. In Korea this appeared to be similar as well as both seemed to rack up quite a bit of kills.
The fact that during X XBe02Drvr 's time in the USN, they described the RN:FAA as utterly whooping our ass and speculated that part of the problem on our part was that we were fighting a small country like Vietnam whereas they were still predominantly geared for a fight against the Warsaw Pact and USSR, and the amount of flight-time they had being higher owing to their duties often being solely to flying rather than flying and other responsibilities.
However if their air-groups were smaller than ours in WWII and Korea times: Then they would have always had less non-flying responsibilities and if the argument holds, that would have effectively seen them routinely doing better than us.
Now maybe it's the workload being so much higher in those time-periods with two squadrons doing the work of four or five in our case making the job harder for the FAA (we could throw more planes around) to the somewhat larger air-groups later on making it possible for them to spend more time training while not quite enough to require non-flying duties in most cases, or maybe there's a fundamental difference in USN training from Korea to Vietnam.
What I was curious about was the quality of the crews to their American counterparts: In WWII the crews at least seemed to be similar to each other. In Korea this appeared to be similar as well as both seemed to rack up quite a bit of kills.
The fact that during X XBe02Drvr 's time in the USN, they described the RN:FAA as utterly whooping our ass and speculated that part of the problem on our part was that we were fighting a small country like Vietnam whereas they were still predominantly geared for a fight against the Warsaw Pact and USSR, and the amount of flight-time they had being higher owing to their duties often being solely to flying rather than flying and other responsibilities.
However if their air-groups were smaller than ours in WWII and Korea times: Then they would have always had less non-flying responsibilities and if the argument holds, that would have effectively seen them routinely doing better than us.
Now maybe it's the workload being so much higher in those time-periods with two squadrons doing the work of four or five in our case making the job harder for the FAA (we could throw more planes around) to the somewhat larger air-groups later on making it possible for them to spend more time training while not quite enough to require non-flying duties in most cases, or maybe there's a fundamental difference in USN training from Korea to Vietnam.
