Form 414, my RAF Logbook continues with me leaving Australia and the Hornet unhappily in my rear vision mirror as I was heading back to Blighty and a cold winter in Lincolnshire.  No 229 Operational Conversion Unit was the training unit that would give me my first taste of the Mighty Fin, the Swing Wing Super Jet, Mother Riley’s Cardboard Aeroplane otherwise known as the Air Defence Variant of the Tornado.

Not just a British aircraft, the Tornado was a project involving Germany and Italy as well.

A cutaway of the ADV Tornado

Just some of the multitude of limitations that Tornado pilots were required to memorise

The Tornado cockpit showing the wing sweep lever

The Mighty Fins of 43 and 111 Squadrons

The RB199 lacked sufficient thrust to allow the F3 to perform adequately at medium and high level but it did have a way of going backwards!

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Surruno, Panavia, BAe, the RAF Museum, Mike Freer, Kevan Dickin, Chris Lofting and the RAF.

After I landed my aircraft I clambered out of the Hornet with the cold realisation that I might have flown my last sortie.  The spinning sensation had ceased and the sortie had gone beautifully, it was almost as if it had been a bad dream. A continuation of tales from the Old Pilot’s logbook, RAF Form 414.

Was the sun about to set on my career?

The surgery span round and round

Promotion

Exercise K89

One of our opponents, the F16

Firing off live missiles like the AIM 7M Sparrow

Landing in a thunderstorm

A week on Song Song island acting as the Range Safety Officer

The RSO and his crew of Malay troops

My final flight and the boys renamed my aircraft Nick The Pom!

The year is 1957 and the space race is underway.  The major powers around the world, mainly the Soviet Union and the United States, are all striving to develop the technology that will allow them to reach outer space. The Soviet Union’s Academy of Sciences prime aim was to beat the Americans into Earth orbit and their top secret Sputnik project was about to reward all the efforts put in by a generation of scientists and engineers.  Sputnik 1 was soon to be placed atop an R-7 rocket and launched into a low orbit to become the first artificial Earth Satellite. But what if they hadn’t been the first?

Sputnik was fired into a low earth orbit on the 4th of October 1957 atop an R-7 rocket

Some months before the Sputnik launch the US were conducting nuclear tests

The Pascal I underground test caused a huge blue flame to erupt from the desert

Very high speed cameras were used to film the tests

The Horizons spacecraft

People wonder what became of the manhole cover and if anything was written on it?

Images under a Creative Commons licence with thanks to the Atomic Heritage Foundation, the Federal Government of the United States, NNSA and NASA.

Let me take you back to the dim distant past and Captain Jeff’s start with his legacy airline, ACME, I mean Delta, no ACME, Delta, Acta, Delme… oh whatever. His career started, not in the Captain’s seat but somewhere in the bowels of flight deck, sitting sideways with control panels in front of him instead of windows, that stretched to the ceiling!  Jeff was an engineer on his favourite three holer, the Boeing 727. The loss rate for this iconic airliner was, unhappily, quite high.  As of 2019 the aircraft had suffered 351 major incidents of which 119 resulted in a total loss.  The loss of life resulting from these bare numbers has risen to over four thousand souls.  One addition to those sad statistics came from Flight 600.  This is the story.

The Boeing 727 Flight Deck

The 727 on its maiden flight

The famous S bend

With tail mounted engines the wings could be fitted with full span lift devices

The B727 was the first first airliner to have an APU

The 727 had rear mounted stairs that were used by the nefarious DB Cooper

Which resulted in the fitting of a Cooper Vane

The mechanics of a microburst

Our Captain Jeff

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Felix Goetting, Alex Beltyukov, Boeing, Tank67, Daderot, Juras14, Aero Icarus and NASA.

Two of the Saratoga’s F14 Tomcats were tasked to defend the carrier against a simulated attack during Exercise Display Determination 87. The leader of this small formation included a senior pilot and skipper of a newly arrived Junior Grade Lieutenant Timothy Dorsey. Many years later, Dorsey would be nominated for promotion to a one-star Rear Admiral, an appointment that required Congressional approval.  What stood in his way was an incident that occurred during that fateful day in 1987.

USS Saratoga

Timothy Dorsey

F14 Tomcats on deck

An F4 tanking

HUD film of the engagement

US Navy wings

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the US Navy, US Air Force and the US Gov.

Part 2 of my interview with my mate Matt, steely eyed rocket man extraordinaire.

Goonhilly

Gyros and spacecraft in Telstar

The interior of Telstar

The magnitude of space junk around the world

The first live TV pictures transmitted via satellite

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to NASA, I Alison, Rama, NASA, US Gov, the BBC and Andrew Bulko

At first glance he looks to be a rather scruffy and unkempt elderly chap but behind the heavy glasses there are two twinkling eyes that reveal more than you can imagine.  Indeed, appearances can be deceiving as this retired RAF Technician could have well been a steely eyed missile man as he controlled military satellites around during the Cold War.  Meet my mate Matt!

Sputnik

RAF Oakhanger

Inmarsat equipment on board a ship

Not every launch was a success

Telstar

Voyager

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Nigel Chadwick, NRAO/AUI, Saber1983, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Dale Griffin USGS, then Science Museum and NSAS.

In the tale, the Applegate Memorandum, I described the difficult birth that McDonnell Douglas had with the DC-10 when it’s safety record was permanently marred by a cargo door design flaw that plagued its introduction.  Sadly, this wasn’t the only issue that was going to discredit the aircraft in the eye of its passengers and they would ultimately condemn the world’s first 3 engined wide body as a dangerous failure.  Although the aircraft’s problems with its cargo doors could be firmly laid at the feet of McDonnell Douglas, the next disaster that the aircraft would have to cope with was not of the manufacture’s making, but of some operators who took it upon themselves to shorten engineering procedures.

Then incident aircraft N110AA

Cutaway showing the configuration of the wing mounted engines

The DC10 cockpit

The last moments of American Airlines Flight 191

The aftermath

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the Dale Coleman, Jyra Sapphire, Jon Proctor, the Bureau of Aircraft Accident Archives, the NTSB, the US Gov and American Airlines.

I left you last time after we had returned with our Hornets from New Zealand having had a very productive and interesting few weeks working with the Kiwi A4 Skyhawks.  We soon settled back into our Squadron HQ at RAAF Williamtown and started to work up some Maritime Strike tactics against the ships of the Australian Navy.  These were early days for the Australian Hornets and the anti ship missiles that were to be purchased had yet to be properly integrated into the aircraft’s weapons system… and so continues the Tales from the Old Pilot’s Log Books.

The Hornets mix it with the Navy!

It was the P3 Orion’s job to find the ships and broadcast their positions

The RAAF had yet to equip their F18s with anti ship missiles but that didn’t stop us training

We flew affiliation sorties against the RAAF Caribous so I got the chance to observe from the other side of the engagement

Called in from leave to fly an engine air test I did so with my holiday beard still attached!

The rake of the Hornet seat didn’t suit my back leading to a nagging problem

On our way to Malaysia we staged through Bali

At RMAF Butterworth we stayed in the beautiful old RAF Mess

And could frequently be found in the Hong Kong Bar

Back home in Australia I started to suffer from vertigo and wondered if the dream had come to an end

The conclusion of a chat over a pint with Wood Duck, the Royal Australian Air Force Air Attache to the Australian High Commission in London.

Images of No 2 OCU when it was equipped with the FA18

The handover of No 2 OCU Hornets to the new commanding officer and the new F35 Lightning fighters.

RSAF Hawk trainers

As a fighter pilot on the newly formed 77 Squadron Royal Australian Air Force, now equipped with brand new FA/18s, we had many experienced pilots but before long we also acquired pilots on their first operational type.  One such pilot was Woody, or more formally known as Wood Duck and flying the Hornet was just the start of a long career in aviation that took him all around the world.  Now the Air Attache at the Australian High Commission in London, Woody and I met at a local hostelry and had a beer whilst talking about old times.

The Australian FA/18B

Flypasts performed by No 2 OCU RAAF whilst under Woody’s command

Woody as a youngster in the Hong Kong bar whilst on deployment in Malaysia.

RAAF Hornets in Butterworth

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the RAAF, the USAF, the RMAF and No 2 OCU RAAF.