Both 43 Sqn and 111 Sqn, based at Leuchars, were equipped with the FG1.
Both 43 Sqn and 111 Sqn, based at Leuchars, were equipped with the FG1.
Not entirely correct. When 54 Sqn (FGR2s) ceased the ground pounding role, in 1975 they moved to RAF Coningsby to work up into the Air Defence role, be rebadged as 111 Sqn, (treble-One, or 'Tremblers') where I joined them as Junior Engineering Officer. Also at Coningsby were 19 Sqn doing the same role conversion. They were to move to RAF Wildenrath in Germany as AD aircraft once role conversion was complete. Our partisan view of them was expressed thus: 'The King of Saudi Arabia asked his 3 favourite sons what they wanted for Christmas. Abdul the eldest at 25 said "The latest top-of-the-range Ferrari and Porsche, please!" The second, Jamal, at 18, said "Lots of sparkly diamonds I can wear to parties, please!" (The King was a bit worried about that one), and the youngest, Karim, at the age of 8 said "A cowboy outfit. please!" and so he got 19 Sqn...'
111 Sqn, after eight months, moved to RAF Leuchars where 43 Sqn and 892 (Fleet Air Arm) Sqn were based. Previously, the last Lightning squadron had disbanded there. The time of our move coincided with an outer wing rebuild problem where outer wings were removed, sent to BAE somewhere, and reskinned and strengthened, in a long-running programme. Our aircraft establishment was 10, that of 43 Sqn was 12 plus 4 spares, and 892, 12 with 5 spares, but all three squadrons had to generate 75% of their establishment when a no-notice exercise was called. The less mathematically-challenged of you will note that 75% of 10 aircraft is 8 (you can't generate half an aircraft), but 75% of 12 is 9, but for 43, this was actually from 16 airframes and for 892, from 17 airframes. So, our move had to be completed by us generating 8 fully-armed aircraft within 6 hours of arrival at Leuchars, but the repair system could provide us only with 16 outer wings; in other words, we had to obtain 8 from 8, or 111 Sqn would have been rated as a 'fail' on its first day. Now the problem was that FG1 outer wings could not be fitted to FGR2s, and so our move required the 16 outer wings to come from the FGR2 pool. We succeed that Friday in generating 8 out of 8 on arrival at Leuchars just in time for the squadron boss, Wg Cdr Tony Park, to take us to Happy Hour in the Officers' Mess (he'd bought 3 barrels for the ground crew and had them brought to the hangar crewroom, and arranged transport home for them that night). At the Officers' Mess bar, Tony Park ordered a barrel of beer. The barman said "Sorry sir, the PMC (President of the Mess Committee) brought in a new rule last month that barrels can't be ordered any more". Tony Park's instant response (a classic in RAF folklore) was "That's all right, barman. 88 pints, please!". By the next Friday, the 'No barrels' rule had been rescinded.
Of our 16 outer wings fitted to the aircraft, 7 were unmodified and had been ruled as safe for one flight, and from midday on the Saturday, the ground crew were all back in to remove the 7 outer wings and package them up for road transport to the BAE factory. For the next week or so, we had only four flyable aircraft at Leuchars, and if one of those went long-term u/s, we would have had to remove its outer wings and transfer them to one of our serviceable wingless 'hulks'.
We then received four modified wings at Leuchars, but this was in error because these should have been delivered to Coningsby to our two aircraft that we had left there, wingless. We obtained agreement for the low-loaders to take the unpacked wings back to Coningsby, where after a delay because the truck drivers were out of driving time, we unpacked the wings only to find that there were three RH and one LH wing, the error being that the paperwork for one RH wing was actually for a LH wing still at the factory! We had to send ground crew by rail and their tools by truck to Coningsby. It took three weeks before our last aircraft at Coningsby had a pair of outer wings delivered and fitted.
Re the FG1 outer wings, RN aircraft still had the full mechanical wing-fold mechanism parts fitted. Some of the 43 Sqn aircraft had that system fitted - a few had a functioning system, other had disabled systems and a few had been modified to fully manual (groundcrew operated). However, FG1 outer wings were not compatible with FGR2s, and vice versa; FG1 wings had not suffered the fatigue loads of the FGR2 in the latter's low-level ground attack role - the upper surface suffered extensive skin panting and some of the internal ribbing had microscopic cracks detected by Non-Destructive Testing techniques, mostly radioactive sources emitting on to film material.
For all you modellers out there, FG1 tailplane tips differed from FGR2 tips in shape and planfom, but in some cases (maybe not 892) a little bit of fettling could make them fit. The RAF's last Phantom Squadron, 74 at RAF Wattisham, flew F4J(UK) aircraft cobbled to gather from stored US F4Js. F4J tips fitted neither FG1 nr FGR2, but apparently we bought about 60 spares - that's another story!
Ostensibly an off-the-shelf purchase of a complete squadron, 74 suffered additional difficulties because no two aircraft had been at identical modification standard when stored, and several had incomplete modification histories. Some effort was made to standardise the more important modifications before the aircraft were flown to UK, but quite often, RAF teams had to be sent out to the US to scour the stored aircraft (in the Mojave desert) to find parts that no longer were in the US inventory system.
The 111 FGR2s had an Inertial Nav system, AN/AWG 12 radar much superior to FG1 radar (and in the end on 111, much more reliable than elsewhere - credit goes to my radar/electronic/electrics technicians, who worked hundreds of hours of overtime to seek out the reasons for system failures - for example, on one aircraft (XV410) that had been used in Boscombe Down trials, we removed about 400kg of trials wiring which because of misconnections and defects, carried start currents and interfered with instruments and systems: we raised the radar total system airborne MTBF from around 8 hours to around 22), and we had made the external gun (previously used only in GA) a functioning and very worthwhile air-to-air weapon. The FG1 could not be fitted with the gun.
Some years after I left RAF Leuchars, the RAF powers that be decided to standardise on the lower capability FG1 at RAF Leuchars, and at about the same time the RN disbanded 892 Sqn, and so 43 and 111 standardised on the FG1. Incidentally, 43 Sqn, known for years from their emblem as the 'Fighting Cocks' tended at first to look down on 111 as upstarts, but soon after we arrived at Leuchars we managed to put one over on them. I mentioned to one of my flight line SNCOs, and Armourer ('Plumber' in RAF parlance) that it would be simply awful if the words 'The Fighting Cocks' over the side entrance to 43 Sqn's hangar were skilfully amended to read 'The Fighting Cooks', and he agreed wholeheartedly. When the motto was mysteriously so amended, we were thunderstruck that nobody on 43 Sqn noticed for about 8 days. says it all, really!
Mike Blair