Cherry RipeMaybe the government will see the logic in the 2015 SSDR to start the draw down of the Hawk T1/T1A in favour of some new build Hawks.
No logic in sending money towards Brough unless they reveal a new airframe that can slash operational costs.
The T. Mk. 2s in service will provide the LIFT component of training for the next few decades and I’d expect the T. Mk. 1 role to be consumed by the upwards syllabus expansion of the eventual Tucano replacement.
As for the Saudi deal: well done, but BAe / BAE have rested on the Hawk’s laurels for so long now that I reckon this will be the final hurrah. 38 years old.. nearly on a par with the T-33!
Cherry RipeNope, its reconnaissance
So it is commonly held, but what is the official document that confirms all the role codes? Their application is very inconsistent.
Other thoughts:
1. Somewhere between the Hunter FGA.9 and the Phantom FG.1 the “A-for-attack” was dropped. Where is this change documented?
2. The FAA don’t seem to have bothered using R-for-recce; the Bucc should theoretically been designated SR ( or RS ) given the recce pallet, and the Scimitar should have been FGR or FRS.
3. The vanilla Tornado GR.1 had no recce capability at all, unless one considers ECM traces to be a form of recce.
Cherry RipeFrom what I gather, “S” for strike is for anti-ship and/or precision-weapon aircraft
S-for-antiship would make sense and be consistent with the Wyvern S.4*, but I cannot locate the Air Publication that lays these out.
Some other complications:
1. There arose a distinction in NATO between strike and attack missions, the former being nuclear-armed.**
2. The Sea Harrier is said to have been designated S-for-nuclear strike, but this may have been the result of a journalist aware of point (1) without being aware of the traditional FAA usage.
3. The RAF had, around the time of Tornado induction, introduced the Vulcan SR.2 ( strategic recon ) designation so there would not have been an unambiguous means of using S and R for the Tornado.
I think we have to accept that UK military role designations are inconsistent and messy, as with all those Lynx suffixes!
* but then its successor the Sea Hawk, with the same armament, was FGA…
** for example: The UK-based squadrons were all earmarked for declaration to NATO as dual capable in the fighter-bomber strike/attack roles and integrated into the Central Region’s strike and attack plans as quoted in Birth of Tornado
Cherry RipeSeems a cheap option but is this aircraft really suited for this kind of work?
32 Sqn have been flogging their 146s around Iraq and Afghanistan for the past few years on general staff support, to the extent that Royals + family have been chartering-in commercial leases to fly them around.
The 146s seem to be handling the conditions well enough. A cynic might say that is partly because the hair dryers under the wings don’t have enough suction to lift sand.
Cherry RipeLots of good stuff there JDK. Just to pick-up on a couple.
If you charge admission, it is a absolute ‘hurdle’ to entry; and people need to feel it’s ‘worthwhile’ to pay – the amount, oddly, is almost completely irrelevant.
There is a heritage museum in a converted coastal freighter on the river right beside my day job. None of the 120 people in my office have visited the museum, not because of lack of interest but because there is a £4 charge for admission.
No-one wants to be the first to pay a tiny-but-arbitrary fee and be disappointed.
I would strongly recommend donations as the initial course and you will find that people are much more generous with a donation barrel or “honesty box” than when forking-over exact change at a kiosk
Start with a shop selling trinkets, postcards and a guidebook, it can then be built up later over time with bigger stock. It will enable donations beyond RRP.
There are lots of online vendors who will customise bulk lots of goods with your logo and name for reasonable unit costs. Running a small business I find that items such as branded umbrellas and metal water bottles are great ways of advertising and people pay for them! Double-win! Even coasters can be a great seller and money-maker if they aren’t tacky.
Absolutely stay away from mainstream aviation merchandise such as generic books and models, otherwise Amazon and Hannants will gladly accept your visitors’ orders after they thumb your stock. If you do want to sell something along those lines try to find something that you can tie-in to you displays, such as reprints of old Air Publications or Home Office brochures; stuff that people can’t easily buy on Amazon and which will stick in their mind as being unique and showing that you do have an interest in furthering their knowledge.
Cherry RipeI suspect over the past 30 years the service Hawks have been progressively updated and modded (T1A ?) but the Arrows aircraft were only updated as necessary as they were not going to be used as trainers, but only as display aircraft.
Hi Amarok,
The Hawks allocated to the Red Arrows pool were upgraded with the mods to become T Mk 1As, they were fully combat-capable with AIM-9 compatibility and Aden pod for use as supplementary AD assets. A quick wash with water-soluble paint and they were ready to go!
I understand that the problem has arisen since the T Mk 2 programme was funded as there was no provision made for the additional rebuilt airframes needed to maintain the Red Arrows pool.
Cherry RipePaging XN923 & Alertken…
That all said, perhaps a more important question (in actual procurement and efficacy) is why you’d be looking at an obsolete biplane, or – an obsolete biplane in 1939. Discuss, as they say.
Haha! It’s actually scary to read through the Flight articles on the FAA in the 1937 – 39 period. Never once I have seen obsolescence being mentioned. For example, this article could well have been written 10 years earlier…
Jolly good fun landing on carriers, what
Something like the Vought Vindicator would have sent them into palpitations!
Cherry RipeIt seems to me that the Swordfish was just one of those outstanding designs, and although old fashioned in 1939, it was used along side two of its replacements (Albacore & Barracuda), and that the Shark had problems, not very desirable on a a pitching carrier deck in the N.Atlantic, there was good logic in just having the one good design in service and fulfilling the torpedo/spotter role.
Thanks for the thinking-points. It will probably come down to something as basic as that. I notice that the Swordfish had a much greater wing area than the Shark, so perhaps it was superior for carrier ops. I’d love to read the memoirs of a someone who flew both.
In his Blackburn Putnam book A J Jackson suggests the the Swordfish was preferred as it required less strategic alloys in its construction, but I’d be surprised if the Admiralty were that forward-thinking in 1937! Blackburn had to build an entirely new factory to fulfill the Swordfish contracts which must have been galling.
The RCAF were “recommended” to purchase the Shark by the British but again there seems to be little record of why the TSR II wasn’t offered.
Cherry RipeFunnily enough, I’ve often wondered about that as well.!
DD
So I’m not alone 🙂
I do wish the aviation press would look into odd stories from history such as this.
This page suggests that there were problems with the Tiger engine and that the Admiralty wanted Blackburn to concentrate on the Skua.
http://warships1discussionboards.yuku.com/topic/16541/Iron-Duke-conversions?page=2#.TnXP6j3681J
But that doesn’t really explain why Fairey weren’t just given a contract to build Pegasus-engined Shark IIIs, since the Shark spares were already in the logistics chain. And then Blackburn were contracted to build Swordfish…
I wonder if there was some deeper friction between the Admiralty and Blackburn.
Cherry RipeSome interesting, to me at least, learnings about British night-fighter operations whilst reading this afternoon.
First, regarding my question about Fighter Command influence in the tactics, page 5 of this USMC report notes that RAF night-fighter pilots were drawn from all the Commands including Bomber and Coastal, basically high-time older pilots with lots of instrument time:
Night Fighter operations in Great Britain
so perhaps less of a Fighter influence than I suspected.
Second, I haven’t yet substantiated this claim but it seems that at least one FAA Firefly crew had a go at blind-firing on a radar contact while hunting He 111s:
Good lads!
Cherry RipeWhere do you get that from? Certainly 10 Sqn and 461 Sqn RAAF (Sunderlands) that was never the case throughout W.W.II based in the UK. I’ve interviewed one 10 Sqn pilot, who was very much ‘Skipper’ and in charge of the aircraft – his Coastal Command flying starting in September 1939.
Regards,
Hi again,
It was a Coastal policy pushed-through by Group Captain Richardson in 1943 on the basis that the Nav had better situational awareness ( through charting, radar and the fact that he was often the only chap awake on long flights ) and was therefore by default the crewman in command, since he was the one giving the instructions and waking the pilot to make course changes. Yet despite that responsibility of command the pilot remained the Captain.. Richardson determined that had to change.
The first non-pilot Captain in the RAF was Flight Lieutenant Bob Irving ( of later orchestral fame ) who passed the No 111 OTU course in the Bahamas. After that, Coastal accepted that Navs could and should be Captains.
Anyway my original pondering was whether night-fighter tactics were dictated by the pilot doing traditional fightert-piloty things whereas the Nav had the big-picture.
Cherry RipeAs JDK correctly says radar in night-fighters was never used to engage the target; that was done entirely visually. Radar, both ground control and on the fighter, was only used to find the target. Night-fighter radar of this period was very limited in range; perhaps only a mile or two under good conditions.
Very interesting, thanks to both CD and JDK. This was quite a revelation to me, as I had assumed that the AI would have been the primary means of executing for the attack.
More reading required for me but I did find this account that indeed highlights the passing-off from radar approach to visual attack
After four minutes, range was 1,000ft and I obtained an indistinct visual of a twin engined a/c, which, on closing to 300ft, I believed to be a Ju88.
I wonder what tactics would have been used if the Coastal Command acceptance of Navigator as captain of the aircraft had been applied in Fighter Command and the pilot reduced to driver…
Cherry RipeI think id rather they bought backthe shak – c130s are not the smoothest or quietest of aircraft –
Ahh nostalgia… but the Herk isn’t even in the same league as the old Shak when it comes to shaking-apart delicate electronics or destroying human hearing. Consider 48 6-inch bore cylinders firing in sequence versus four smooth T56s.
There were plenty of crew complaints about the cabin noise levels when the Shak entered service and permanent hearing damage was the occupational risk.
Yes, the Herk in many transport configurations has minimal noise insulation but that’s something Lockheed has offered to commercial levels since at least 1983.
The USCG used to cruise their HC-130s on two engines for eight hours at 1000 miles radius from base. The noise levels were even more diminished then.
Cherry RipeIn one of their earliest engagements while watching his pilot fire at, and fail to hit, a V1, this navigator suddenly realised that he could use his radar to give his pilot the range to the target; it turned out that his pilot had greatly underestimated the range to the V1 and their fire was falling well short.
I admit to being a bit baffled by that “discovery”… wasn’t that the point of using radar-equipped night fighters?
Why would the pilot have tried a manual interception in the first instance?
Pilots! Who can understand them?
Cherry RipeI notice that no-one has attempted to respond to the protestor’s main point, that these drone attacks violate international law. I suppose it’s easier to mock them for their rather daft behaviour.
The Economist recently ran an article on the subject and suggested that all UAV operations be moved wholly into military oversight, from the CIA. I suppose that’d be a start, but it still ignores the violation of sovereign integrity and presumption of innocence.
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