Bye bye Tornado!

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Re: Bye bye Tornado!

#21 Post by Boac » Mon Feb 25, 2019 8:10 am

Indeed, welcome back, F3, and thanks or a fascinating insight into the beast - please do NOT give away any more secrets of how we flew intercepts in the Frightning, and if you mention "One peep is worth a thousand sweeps" you are a dead man walking. =))

Great to see the vast improvement in radar technology you describe.

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Re: Bye bye Tornado!

#22 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Mon Feb 25, 2019 1:17 pm

OK, my Lightning knowledge lips are sealed.
It was very interesting to go from a radar which was so bad it was worse than the previous generation, and lots of ancient techniques had to be used (such as that described), to something two years later which could you tell you everything about the opposition, even allowing you to work out which valley they were headed for, sometimes without them knowing - the FMICW* in its widest sweep (120 degrees lateral, 8 heights) was often difficult to detect.
We also started trying tactics where one pair would remain Radar Standby, and the other would give target info based on a Bullseye, a la AWACS. Since one could drop the Bullseye onto the Plan display, it was very easy to work out what was going on, and after the pilot had done some wacky manoevre, often a post hole*, to upset the opposition, the nav would have the radar pointed at the right piece of sky. Radar On, pick up bad guys in 2 short sweeps, sort, shoot, splash; job jobbed.

*FMICW - F#ck Me, It Can't Work

*Post hole - roll inverted, full burner, pull hard to the vertical, (go supersonic), roll to correct angle for the heading you want after pullout, throttle back if you reach M1.3, start pulling all 7.5G 12,000 feet before the height you want to level out at. You could go from 40,000 feet to 10,000 feet in about 25 seconds, which means the bad guy is still looking for you at 40,000 feet. If done at the correct range, it means his radar sweep will not now cover 10,000 feet, where you now are. By going into the pure vertical, you have zero doppler velocity, so a pulse doppler radar will lose you. It's the same principle as bombers turning 90 degrees horizontally to lose a doppler lock, except done supersonic in the vertical. You can also go from 40,000 feet to the ground in about 35 seconds if you get it wrong, digging a very large post hole, hence the name. If you go below 10,000 feet pure vertical, not only is it irrecoverable, but the bang seat is out of limits already also.
For bonus points, you switch the radar to standby as you roll inverted. When you pull out, the target is still in Track While Scan memory. He probably hasn't changed height or heading, especially if he's a single seater, because he's still thinking "WTF?" and playing with his radar controls to try and find you again (at 40,000 ft). And he gets no clues from his radar warning gear because your radar isn't transmitting. He's guessing you've turned around and run away. You now position yourself for the correct intercept geometry, and Radar On as above. For extra bonus points, we worked out how long it took the average crew (and the average Rooskie crew) to start looking down at 10,000 feet having failed to find you where you were, and made sure our time from start of post hole manoeuvre to shoot time was 3 seconds less than that. He's now confused, still looking for a fighter that was up high, and has a missile coming at his face from an invisible fighter down low. Not a happy bunny. As Mike Tyson said "Everyone's got a plan till they get punched in the face". He will probably take 3 seconds to take that all in and start evading. You can fire 3 seconds outside your missile No Escape Zone, because by the time he tries to escape he's now in it and can't. Goodnight Vienna.
Air Combat isn't just pulling 'g' and firing guns, in case you were wondering what BOAC, others here, and myself, did all day.

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Re: Bye bye Tornado!

#23 Post by Boac » Mon Feb 25, 2019 2:04 pm

*Post hole - No 1 favourite with the back-seaters. no doubt =))

Sisemen

Re: Bye bye Tornado!

#24 Post by Sisemen » Mon Feb 25, 2019 2:13 pm

Ho - lee - fook! You lost me at roll inverted and go vertical. ^:)^ :-ss

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Re: Bye bye Tornado!

#25 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Mon Feb 25, 2019 2:18 pm

Oh yes! They are head in setting up the radar, with the altimeter and fuel gauge both whirling down faster than a dervish, only the tens of thousands digit readable on either, and then they get 7.5 'g' in the neck.
One nav used to nag "What's the fuel?" at me every five seconds or so. I'm guessing he wasn't entirely comfortable at that point.
I recall one of them saying that there was no mention of this in the original job advert ;)))

I don't know who invented it. I first heard about it from the Cloggy F16 guys. It's certainly wacky enough for them to have come up with it. Obviously it's a bit safer if you don't accelerate so fast and have 9 'g' available for the pullout, but then they can't set up the radar during it.

Siseman: As I said, the idea is to lose the opposition at that point also ;)))

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Re: Bye bye Tornado!

#26 Post by Cacophonix » Sat Mar 02, 2019 9:03 am

I was so taken with this thread, and realising I knew bugger all about the Tornado really save for what Fox3 has kindly written here, that I bought 'Tornado Boys by Ian Hall'.

Now having read the first three chapters, I still know bugger all about the aircraft really, but am beginning to realise that the pilots drank a lot of beer and seemed to have a lot of fun while flying it, so I will persist. I have picked up a whole lot of new RAF specific acronyms, most of which are a complete mystery to me. It seems to me that the RAF was a riddle, wrapped in a acronym, hidden inside a bottle of beer!

I did however learn that the first ever female fast jet pilots flew Tornados...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Salter

Wing Commander Nikki Thomas...
Girlies doing it for themselves.JPG

For all I know Fox3 might be a girly, although if he is Nikki Thomas, then I would call him Ma'am (no doubt someone here will correct me), salute and would deny I had ever used the term "girly" not least because Commander Thomas looks like she could give me a thorough going over in the worst possible meaning of those words! =))

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews ... homas.html

I am also beginning to appreciate that the Title "Tornado Boys" might just be a tad chauvinistic!

Caco









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Re: Bye bye Tornado!

#27 Post by Tall Bird » Sat Mar 02, 2019 9:44 pm

I can confirm that Mr Fox is not a girlie tho' he does have firm thighs and great legs. ;))) Ahem, here are a few more pics taken when the three Ts went over the National Memorial Arboretum on 19 February. I did consider going to Cottesmore for old times' sake but the Ram Jam is no more and the NMA has loos and a caff. :-bd
Spot the Tornados:
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This was the train engine that brought us home from London last Tuesday: :D
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DBFDB1B5-A3B1-48BC-A406-22A45823AA8F.jpeg (51.84 KiB) Viewed 398 times

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Re: Bye bye Tornado!

#28 Post by Cacophonix » Sun Mar 03, 2019 5:44 am

TB I am somewhat glad to hear that Fox3 is not a 'girlie', not least because such a fact, had it been true, might have put a Sapphic spin on your relationship which might have tempted the insensitive here to indulge in wry ribaldry :)

On the firm undercarriage front, one hopes that Fox3 carries off his full dress uniform with the dash and swagger that Sisemen appears to have mustered if we are to go by the photographs that were doing the rounds here! ;)))


Caco

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Re: Bye bye Tornado!

#29 Post by Undried Plum » Tue Mar 05, 2019 8:30 pm

More in the same vein:


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Re: Bye bye Tornado!

#30 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Tue Mar 05, 2019 9:22 pm

Fine chap Phil; we were at Coningsby together. Ditto Dave Gledhill, who also has a fair amount of F3 stuff floating around the interweb.

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Re: Bye bye Tornado!

#31 Post by Cacophonix » Wed Mar 06, 2019 10:01 am

Undried Plum wrote:
Tue Mar 05, 2019 8:30 pm
More in the same vein:

18 - 0 to the RAF. =))

F-18's being 'shot' down by Hawks. How embarrassing!

Seems like a very nice guy.

Caco

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Re: Bye bye Tornado!

#32 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Wed Mar 06, 2019 11:05 am

I have also been in a Hawk shooting down an F-14 (back seat ride at Deci), and I have assorted victories against much more "capable" fighters with my F3. I shot down the General Commanding US 17th Air Force flying his shiny new F-16C on one sortie. Twice. We were asked to leave the second half of their debrief whilst the General presumably had the error of his ways pointed out to him in no uncertain terms.
The nice thing about ACMI ranges (as Deci was) is that the computer gives you the 'kill', so there's no argument about whether claims were valid - these arguments can be very long in DACT debriefs without them.
It is a question of dirty tricks. I recall one F-15 flight leader saying to our QWI flight leader at a 4v4 debrief, where they had lost 1 jet in each engagement to no losses for us, saying something like.

"All these cheap tricks only work once, and if you try any of them again you will get slaughtered"

"Yes, but you are here for 10 more days, and we have more than 20 other cheap tricks!"

..and the cheapest trick of all was.....we didn't! We had about 5, but now we had them nervous, so some of the earlier tricks, slightly modified, now worked a second time because they thought "They can't be trying that again!"

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