Having watched a documentary on TV last night about the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the options they considered to deal with this I was reminded of the Torrey Canyon which suffered a similar fate in 1967, was repeatedly bombed by Buccaneers over a period of 2 days to break up the wreckage.
Does anyone have any footage / stories of this taking place.
Appologies if this has been covered before but a quick search only brought up a couple of links.
By: Flanker_man - 28th March 2009 at 14:28
IIRC, weren’t questions asked in the House of Commons as to why British forces still had napalm???
I believe that some naive MP’s were shocked that Britain still used such an indiscriminate weapon (their words not mine).
At least that’s how I remember it – I was only 20 at the time…. and my memory isn’t what it was 😮
Ken
By: TwinOtter23 - 28th March 2009 at 13:31
I believe that they had to resort to using napalm because the original ordnance that they using was in-effective and didn’t ignite the oil; and that they cited this was because the “oil was the wrong type!”
Sounds a bit like the “wrong type of snow” or “the wrong type of leaves”. :rolleyes:
By: pagen01 - 28th March 2009 at 10:27
RN Bucaneers, Sea Vixens and the RAF Hunters were all involved, along with various helio.
There is some really good footage of it, used to show up on our local telly quite regular, but who owns it and where it’s kept I do not know.
My family are from the Scilly Isles and remember it well, my late Grandfather was working with the BEA S-61s at the time, his thoughts were the bombing and attacking of the Torrey Canyon was more a realistic combined forces training exercise than a good way of containing the worlds largest tanker wreck and oil slick!
By: colin.barron - 27th March 2009 at 21:27
I remember seeing the Torrey Canyon air attacks live on BBC – TV in 1967. I clearly remember seeing some Hunters firing rockets into the oil spillage.
Colin
By: Peter Mills - 27th March 2009 at 21:15
The Hunters were using napalm loaded into drop tanks to try to ignite the oil spillage. Many Hunters were sent to St. Mawgan for a few days while this operation took place. There was the fascinating sight of a group of plumbers (sorry armourers!) mixing the concoction in 45 gallon barrels with big wooden stirrers!
By: Arabella-Cox - 27th March 2009 at 21:00
Torrey Canyon bombing
Didn’t Hunters bomb or rocket it too?
Anon.
By: TwinOtter23 - 27th March 2009 at 18:36
This topic was partially covered in the following thread and via some of the links therein, the military-airshow one still seems to be live.
http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=79029
Just over a year ago Buccaneer XN964 had some temporary markings applied to celebrate the Torrey Canyon sorties. There was a lot of debate on other fora about the sorties and the role of the different military assets plus some feedback from various local newspapers and radio interviews in the south west and west Wales – I recollect that RNAS Brawdy was an operating base.
Sadly the person who gathered it all together at Newark Air Museum is away on holiday until early April, so for the time being I am unable to get in touch with him to confirm the final outcome of the feedback that I know came in.
Stop Press: I knew there was more … http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7449443.stm …. my two fellow volunteers in the clip still haven’t lived it down!!
By: Wyvernfan - 27th March 2009 at 18:06
was repeatedly bombed by Buccaneers over a period of 2 days to break up the wreckage.
…and i understand RN Sea Vixens.
By: MSW - 27th March 2009 at 17:20
Here is a bit more I found out for those unfamiliar with this event:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/29/newsid_2819000/2819369.stm
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March 27, 2009 at 5:16 pm