92 Sqn F4 v 14 Sqn Jaguar

Having only just seen this thread this pilot of 92 Sqn at the time can fill in gaps. Wildenrath was on a no notice exercise which had 2 parts, a generation phase followed by a flying phase. The generation phase required all aircraft to be fully armed (4 Sparrow, 4 AIM-G and gun) & ready for flight within 6 hours. Thereafter normal practice was to download the weapons before the flying phase but, on this occasion the Stn Cdr (quite legally) chose to have the flying phase done with live. Precautions for flying with live weapons involved taping the pilots Master Arm switch with red tape & pulling the trigger CB in the rear cockpit. On that day the sqn had run out of red tape (!) & although the pilot complained he was prevailed upon to accept the aircraft without it. Shortly thereafter the crew were scrambled.
On all training sorties the Master Arm switch was made immediately after take off so that training attacks could be carried out; the switch needed to be made to get the growl from the traiining acquisition Sidewinder and for filming attacks (F4s did not have HUDs by the way).
Reverting instinctively to training mode, the pilot selected the Master Arm as he had no cues that the aircraft was armed (you cannot see the missiles or gun from either cockpit & the handling is barely any different). The Weapons Event Panel had a fault and showed one AIM7 (it should have showed all 4) and one AIM9 (which it does even with 4 on board) which is what the crew would have expected in the training fit so now there was no cockpit indication that they were armed. Towards the end of the sortie, having had no trade, the crew carried out a filmed, training attack on the Jaguar that was recovering to Bruggen. Lawndart is correct; the Fire Committal Switch (trigger !) has to operated to get the completed attack filmed. What about the trigger CB? This CB is on the RH wall of the RHS naviator legwell. This navigator was well built and was carrying his revolver (part of the exercise) in his RH leg pocket and this was pushed hard against the CB panel which crucially allowed the CB to be made thus completing the circuit it was trying to protect. The rest is history.
This was a shocking accident and thankfully Steve G was OK. However all we pilots agreed that Roy had been put under enormous, and unfair, pressure. We all also agreed that ‘there but for the Grace of God’ we might well have made the same mistake had we been in his place.