living in east anglia, i have mildenhall and lakenheath usaf airbases just up the road, so get loads of eagles,c-5, c-141, c-17 kc-135’s, ch-53’s, kc-10’s c-130’s etc, then not far away are various RAF bases, so get Tornados, canberra’s, harriers, jaguars etc.
then just across the forest from me is a big army battle area where they go to play, so get to see lots of military helos as well.
and then i go to work, and work on military aircraft!

LesB beat me to it.
Yes, depleated uranium is substantially denser than lead and so is used in many aircraft with unpowered control surfaces that need balancing and the area forward of the hinge is small enough to warrant it.

(better tell the Iranians that it’s DEPLETED urainum, not enriched – before they start stripping down their aircraft ! :diablo: )

it doesn’t need to be unpowered controls, Tristars use it on the rudder horn, stretched c-130’s use it on the elevators (short c-130’s use lead), and both of these controls are definately powered.

berylium is another strange and exotic material used in some bearings on aircraft (wing sweep on Tornado, and under carriage on c-130 spring to mind).

i seem to recall it was XX166 that flew into the Isle of Man.

Spent just under four years there, 1979 to 1982. Gnats going, Hawks coming. Wessex at 22 Sqn, Whirlwinds at SARTU, and Hunters. And all the visitors. Broken F111’s a regular thing. Very busy airfield in those days.

i got there not long after you left (early ’84), but by then it was all hawks and wessex.
i spent nearly 2 years on TAHS (or visiting aircraft to the rest of the world!), and as you say, you’d get at least one or more F111’s in with an engine out, and quite often tornado’s as well. usually it was bird strikes.

there was quite a difference in the way the repairs were tackled, the yanks usually flew in a new engine and groundcrew the same day, in the back of a herk, but our lads would turn up in a few days in a sherpa minibus, then a four tonner would turn up a few more days later with the new engine!…..average F111 stay was just a few days,average tornado stay was over a week!

i spent 4, very happy years there, fixing hawks.

they aren’t that modern though, been in service 30 years this year!

i’d be very suprised if any bolts on a british aircraft were measured in millimetres (although i’m quite prepared to be proved wrong!).
american bolts have the diameter and length of the plain shank measured in 1/16ths of an inch, some english bolts have the diameter in 16ths of an inch, and the overall length (from under the head, to the end of the thread , including the thread), measured in 10ths of an inch.

they look like close tolerance bolts, with a ground shank , as opposed to a standard bolt. they could either have been used on an engine, or in a close tolerance part of the structure.
i’m not sure if they are TSR2 specific, as we still use similar (but not exactly the same) bolts today.

Best memory of F-100s – Lakenheath’s Armed Forces Day 1965, 48 TFW launched a 24-ship formation for a single flypast, then landed again.

they still have a F100 as a gate gaurdian there.