Plane Tales

It’s logbook time again and you may recall that I was as freshly a minted A1 QFI as there could be and I had just left the training world to return to the front line on my old Squadron, the Fighting Cocks. I had been in Wales for over 4 years and in that time the faces I knew on 43 Sqn had almost all gone... it was like I was joining a unit of strangers.   The Q Shed   Additional armed aircraft ready to go onto QRA   The F4 tank limiting speeds   A Soviet Badger trying to sneak past at low level   An F4 tanking from a converted Victor V Bomber   Decimomannu Air Base   How the ACMI Air Combat Manoeuvering Instrumentation worked   The Men of Harlech near Llanbedr   The Jindavik target drone   A frame from the Jindavik cameras showing a Sidewinder about to impact the towed flare target   My new navigator, Coolhand   A 43(F) Sqn Phantom   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the RAF, the USAF, RuthAS and Mike Freer.

It was a grand sight to see another German aircraft there, a Junkers W33 with its distinctive corrugated metal skin and stylish enclosed cockpit, a far cry from his own flimsy machine. The German pilots greeted each other and marvelled at how, in 1928, they should have met in such a remote place… some 3,300 miles, 5,300 km, from the Fatherland. It is doubtful that the Junkers pilot knew much about the young 22 year old airman with his flimsy little aircraft, but the gaunt and weathered Baron was well known to von Koenig-Warthausen! The Junkers W33   Ehrenfried Günther Freiherr von Hünefeld   Alcock and Brown preparing for their transatlantic flight   Posing in front of the W33 named Bremen   The Bremen damaged but safely across the Atlantic   The flimsy, lightweight Klemm L20B   The Klemm airborne   Baron Freidrich Carl von König-Warthausen   The Baron renamed his aircraft after his countryman Hünefeld   Images under a Creative Commons licence with thanks to Monika Hoerath, Tomas Mellies, MIKAN, The Bundesarchiv, Edward N. Jackson, L'Aéronautique magazine, John Underwood plus images in the Public Domain.

Instead of a cargo of bored business men and excited holiday makers, this aged DC-10 was carrying 12,000 gallons, thats 45,000 ltrs of bright red liquid in a huge tank attached to the centre of the fuselage. This is the story of the fire fighting water bombers.   A vast DC10 converted to flying tanker operations   A forest fire   Mixing fire retardant   A fire lookout   The Morton Lake hotshots   The dangers of a wildfire are considerable, even during an evacuation   The dangers of manoeuvring a big aircraft at low level are considerable   Other aircraft are converted into water bombers like this PBY-6A Catalina   Helicopters deliver water from buckets   One of the few purpose built water bombers, the Canadair Superscooper   The magnificent Mars water bomber   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the USAF, John McColgan, signal mirror, DarrenRD, Tim Peterson, the USN, SSgt Ed Drew, Pierre Bona and Alex Juorio.

On the last tale, Sidewinders and Sparrows we talked a little about the history of rockets and missiles but it’s a big subject so this week I thought I’d expand on the theme a little and as I'm going to mention lots of rattlesnakes and sparrows, I should probably use the correct collective nouns… rhumbas and quarrels!   Rules of Engagement   JTIDS   The result of a Blue on Blue engagement   An AIM 54 Phoenix launch   An AIM7 Sparrow in flight   The APG63 radar   Radar discrimination     AIM7 Sparrow missiles on an F15 Eagle   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the USAF, USN, Daderot and the DOD Media.

Despite their obvious differences, Sidewinders and Sparrows often went together because they aren’t just the names of flying creatures and slithering serpents… they are weapons of war.   The Sidewinder   House Sparrows   The Rapier missile system   Chinese Fire Arrows   The Tipu Sultan's artillery rockets   The RS-28 rockets fired by the Polikarpov I-16   The German R4M unguided air to air rocket   The nuclear AIR-2 Genie missile   A Genie launch   The AIM9 Sidewinder   The rotating reticule   The rolleron   Guidance   The warhead   An AIM 9 warhead effect demonstration   The AIM7 Sparrow   A QF4B killed by a Sparrow missile   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to images in the Public Domain, UK Defence Imagery, Wubei Zhi, NASA, Juergen Schiffmann, the USAF, David Monniaux, RoyKabanlit, U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation and the USN.  

It was New Year’s Day, 2007 and the 96 passengers booked on Adam Air Flight 574 from Java to Sulawesi boarded their Boeing 737-4Q8 for their 2 hour trip. The Indonesian government had adopted a policy of deregulation in the country’s aviation industry which had resulted in a boom of start-up airlines, many of which were low cost carriers. This decision wasn’t matched with an equivalent ramp up of government supervision and control… the result was fierce commercial competition amongst the new airlines with little or no oversight.   Competition amongst the many start up low cost airlines was fierce.   The incident Adam Air Boeing 737, ready for boarding.   An Adam Air B737 taxies out.   Debris from the flight is washed up.   The USN ship Mary Sears.   Adam Air flight 172.   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to FLasset for logo, marlborotosca, Dmitriy Pichugin. the NTSB, the USN, the NTSC and ERRORHUNT.

Another installment of tales from my RAF logbook. I’m about halfway through my 4 year sentence at RAF Valley instructing those RAF pilots destined for the fast jet world. The first couple of years had been far from without incident and I should probably mention that I nearly lost my greatest friend to an accident but someone was watching over him that day and he survived.   Our great friend, Glen, a USAF exchange pilot.   Flying in the Hawk   The laying on of hands by Central Flying School   The Hawk T1 trainer   The horrible Spinning explanation   The laziest A1 QFI in existence

How do you get a pilot going? Well, in the old days it started with a hand crank!   The Hucks Starter   ... Cowboy Land!   The Coffman Starter   A cartridge starter on the RB-57A   The DHC1 Chipmunk   The Arnold Benz Velo   The cycle of a jet engine   RN Seahawks simultaneous use of their cartridge starters   RAF Lightnings of No56 "Chicken in the Basket" Sqn at RAF Akrotiri   The SR71 Blackbird   The Riedelanlasser starter for German BMW 003 and Jumo 004 turbojet engines   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the Library of Congress, Jeff Dahl, NACA, US Patent Office, bomberpilot, Jeff Dahl, the IMW, the RAF, the USAF and Kogo. Attribution not possible for some images.

Waiting for the arrival of the December flying roster was always a tense time. Those with big family gatherings are anxious to ensure they are at home with their loved ones whilst the more carefree crew, with fewer ties, might want to be down route somewhere exotic knowing that a bevy of party goers would be flying with them. I know of one crew who flew over Christmas with great excitement… at least I believe so! Their names were Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders, the crew of the Apollo 8 space mission. Saturnalia   Victorian Christmas   Father Christmas   The Apollo 8 Crew   The Zond 5 spacecraft   The emblem and launch of Apollo 8   Stage 3 jettison   The surface of the moon   Earthrise   A safe return   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Antoine-François Callet, Joseph Lionel Williams, Robert Seymour, Josiah King, Alfred Henry Forrester, the USSR Post and NASA.

And so Plane Tales was born with the story of the mixologist Joe Gilmore… well, kind of. There had been a few bits in the Show pre the Farnborough special but it hadn’t become part of APG like it is now. The number of Tales will never catch Jeff’s impressive half millennium but they have now passed the 300 mark and these are a few of the memorable ones. The mixologist, Joe Gilmore   Tumble Down Dick   The flight under Tower Bridge   Parliament   Capt Ogg ditching the Sovereign of the Skies.   Bob Hoover   Major Bung Lee lands his Bird Dog on the USS Midway   Capt Andy Anderson   Hillel   Voiceover artist Greg Willits at GregWillets.com   A tribute to the crew of Lady be Good   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks given on the original episode, Thomas Rowlandson, Greg Willits and DaniKauf, the USAF, the USN and those in the Public Domain.

In the United States the Coast Guard is a fully paid up branch of the military. Its men and women have served with valour in many conflicts and I’m going to tell you about one such event, the rescue of Misty 11.   The badge of the US Coast Guard   An F100 Fast FAC Misty crew   An OV10 Bronco   Spads escorting a Jolly Green Giant   The jungle penetrator.   Landing in difficult terrain   500 saves   The approach into the valley   The rescue   Technical Sergeant Donald G. Smith   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the USAF National Museum, the USAF, USAF National Museum, USGOV-PD, Digital Public Library of America, Defence Imagery, the US Coast Guard and US Gov.

Year two of Porridge… that’s an old term used by prisoners to describe their time inside jail but was very apt as many of my fellow flying instructors and I had not volunteered for this particular job and it was a long one.  As I leaf through the pages of my log book I recall memories from my flying career. Flying with the Air Officer Commanding   The badge of No 4 Flying Training School, palm tree and all!   Lining up for breaks to the right when someone decided to go LEFT instead!   The fabled MON formation   How the English might have read it!   10 Hawks in echelon   Fishing!   The F4 FIRE Drill   If FIRE confirmed - EJECT       Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the RAF, BAe, MOD and Mr Geoff Lee of Plane Focus.

Suddenly the black of the night that surrounded them was split open by bright tracer cannon fire that streaked by the windows with loud cracks and then came the shock and thud as some struck the aircraft. The lights were all extinguished… so in the dark, tense and alarmed, everyone waited to see what would happen next. It was the 24th of October 1956, and the first shots in a war over the Suez Canal had just been fired! Ferdinand de Lesseps, the Father of the Suez Canal   The opening of the canal   A collection of canal views   British armed forces went great lengths to protect the canal during 2 World Wars   After a military coup in Egypt, Nasser took control of the country and seized the Suez Canal     The NF13 Meteor sold to the IAF by Britain   An Il14, as used by the Egyption Air Force   The actual Gloster Meteor used in the attack   The Ilyushin is brought down killing all onboard   The invasion by British, French and Israeli forces is a complete success but political pressures force them to relinquish the canal   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Mohamed kamal 1984, NADAR, the Tropenmuseum, the IWM, the RAF, the MOD, Lars Söderström and other images in the Public Domain.

About this time of the year, I like to do a tale that turns our minds to those who gave their lives for their countries in the many conflicts that have plagued the world.  In the past in tales such as, “In Flanders Fields and Lest We Forget” I’ve talked about the poppy, used as a symbol of remembrance in many countries, and the poem penned by the Canadian doctor, Lt Col John McCrae.  There was a gap in my story, however, that I would now like to close.  The gap that transformed the sad words of John McCrae’s poem into the adoption of the poppy as a representation of remembrance for the fallen, amongst such a large part of the English speaking world… and beyond. Lt Col John McCrae   The Escadrille Lafayette in July 1917   Moina Belle Michael   Desk and poppy   The YWCA   In Flanders Fields written by John McCrae   An original remembrance poppy   The Poppy Factory in London   Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance in the Albert Hall   The Poppy Lady's historic road marker   Images under Creative Commons licence under Public Domain and with thanks to the National Museum of the Air Force, the Poppy Project, Neysa McMein, Heatherannej, Nickeaglesfield, the MOD and Ember390.

Within a few days of detonating their first nuclear bomb, to the dismay of the Soviets, President Truman announced that they had the evidence to prove that within recent weeks an atomic explosion had occurred in the USSR. How the United States had obtained that knowledge was highly classified but we now know the story of the secret snoopers who sniffed the stratosphere and their spooky sorties! The Castle Bravo test blast   The Tsar Bomba   American concerns over nuclear fallout   The WB-29   The RB-47H at the National Museum of the United States Air Force   Balloon debris   The RC-135   The long thin island of Novaya Zemlay   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to TravelingOtter, the US Department of Energy, Croquant, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Ruth AS, the USAF, the University of Texas, the SDASM Archives and NASA.