My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

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Alisoncc
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My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#1 Post by Alisoncc » Thu Apr 14, 2016 3:05 am

I posted this to TOP in the days when it used to be fun there. Also remember discussions from back then re: The Grey Ghosts - The Shackleton Aerobatic Team.

The fact that Vulcans carried a Rear Gunner was a closely guarded secret, with many air crew being terminated should they have inadvertently disclosed their knowledge of such. Termination being initiated by requiring them to exit the aircraft at altitude with a malformed parachute. If the termination was carried out with extreme prejudice then the captain would lower the undercarriage before the terminatee exited. Bouncing off the nose wheel hydraulics was considered extreme prejudice.

Many would have seen evidence of the presence of a Rear Gunner by the apparent deployment of a parachute out the back of a Vulcan on landing. It was considered standard procedure for the Rear Gunner to open their hatch to get some air immediately the wheels touched the ground. The sudden inrush of air made it extremely difficult to stop the deployment of the Rear Gunners backpack parachute once the hatch had been opened, thus necessitating them to hang onto their seat like grim death as the aircraft slowed.

It was widely believed that the B2 Vulcans had four Olympus 200 series engines. This is wholly incorrect. There were in actual fact only three fitted, with the fourth, the inner starboard slot being taken up a with a revolving Gatling gun. Hence the need for a Rear Gunner. The Armourers would be required to hoist a fully loaded gun into the rear of the inner starboard jet exhaust slot prior to take off on a mission.

Whilst they were rarely mistaken in locating an inner slot, and were well aware that Port was left and Starboard was right, occasionally they assumed that left and right was looking from the back of the aircraft where they were working and would install the gun in the jet exhaust of a working engine. This had the unfortunate consequence when the engine was fired up of launching the complete loaded gun in the direction of the Tower at a high rate of knots. Bit like a cork out of a champagne bottle. The Air Traffic Controllers weren't overly impressed with this as it required them to duck under their desks, sometimes at very inopportune moments like when one had a full house in the their daily poker tournament.

An interesting aspect of the training undertaken at 230 OCU RAF Finningley in the early '60's was the ability of new pilots to undertake "asymmetrics". This initially necessitated the CFI shutting down the engines on one side of the aircraft and getting the pilot in charge to fly parallel to a line down the centre of the runway using max rudder. Once they got the hang of this it wasn't unusual for the CFI to fire off a hundred rounds or so from the Gatling gun to test their ability. This was banned when it was found that using the runway 02 direction the shells were coming uncomfortably close to RAF Bawtry, with one shell passing though the AOC Group's office window when he was in residence.

Beside having the responsibility of protecting the rear of the aircraft from enemy fire, on long missions the Rear Gunner ran the aircraft laundry. Should such a long mission be planned then one of the ECM cans was filled with warm sudsy water prior to the flight. The equipment mounted on the pointy bit at the end, often referred to as Red Steer was in actual fact a washing machine with the impeller blade easily being mistaken for a rapidly spinning antenna. By venting the relevant water containing ECM can into the radome after the addition of the crews clothing, enabled the crew to exit the aircraft on completing the mission with freshly laundered kit.

The AEO had control of the washing machine and was able to monitor their undies circulating around via his screen in a like manner to front loading machines of today. This practice was discontinued when female members of the crew became commonplace. If the front end crew forgot to send fresh coffee back at reasonable intervals then it wasn't unusual for the Rear Gunner to vent glycol into the washing machine instead of the sudsy water.

Whilst the laundry facility worked fine when Vulcans flew high altitude missions, once they changed to low level attacks in 1966, the ability to dry the clothes when the weather may have been inclement was a problem. A solution was found whereby the Rear Gunner was allowed to string a clothes line in the large bay immediately forward of his/her position. Occasionally when this was found necessary and if there was large white shiny object with fins in the way of the clothes line, it had been know for the Rear Gunner to jettison it to make more room. This, quite understandably, caused great consternation in Whitehall. Standard Operating Procedures were immediately amended specifying that any such jettisoning only took place overseas and never ever over the UK.


To be continued.......

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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#2 Post by ian16th » Thu Apr 14, 2016 10:25 am

Seeing as we are in hilarity mode and referring to plumbers, what else besides bombs did the plumbers fit into the bomb bay of V Bombers?
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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#3 Post by Sisemen » Thu Apr 14, 2016 10:45 am

Fuel tanks .... and contraband!

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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#4 Post by Alisoncc » Thu Apr 14, 2016 12:03 pm

Panniers when carrying out exercises to Goose Bay. Said panniers being full of fresh salmon when returning from Goose just before Christmas. Seen them and have personally helped winch the panniers down, not that we erks were offered any. Nasty buggers.

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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#5 Post by ian16th » Thu Apr 14, 2016 12:09 pm

One thing that they had to go away and do a course on was fitting the Hose Drum Unit (HDU) or 'Hoodu', into the Valiant BK1 tanker at least.

It was lifted by the same device as was used to lift the nukes into place.

While I was on 214, we had one Cpl plumber who was an expert, if the job needed doing when he was not on the shift it always took twice as long.
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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#6 Post by Boac » Thu Apr 14, 2016 3:14 pm

At least one Vulcan went into a major service which involved removing Alison's 'Tail Cone', out of which fell enough tobacco to keep the Naafi stocked for weeks :))

When doing PIs on a Vulcan in the Lightning we used to close at the end and wave at the Alisons.

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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#7 Post by Alisoncc » Thu Apr 14, 2016 7:37 pm

Boac were you the guy with the red bone dome and tiger insignia? Always used to wave back. :-h

Don't we have any Shackleton members here. That's a pity, no one to talk about the Grey Ghosts? I understand their five aircraft star formation barrel roll was something else again.

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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#8 Post by Boac » Thu Apr 14, 2016 9:22 pm

Odd you should mention that - I was talking to the leader who used to fly 'Zebedee' just the other day.

"red bone dome and tiger insignia" - no, white with Red Eagle. I thought the mooning in the turret was a bit too much, though, but it was a pretty sight, Alison. I could see right up yer barrel.

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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#9 Post by MoreAviation » Fri Apr 15, 2016 9:43 am

Ok, you RAF types, I am a simple South African, what precisely did the Alisons do (technicians I guess, but what part of the whole package, avionics, electrics, hydraulics, airframe, engines, armaments, a bit of everything...?) and why Alison?

Yours in a welter of ignorance...

MA

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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#10 Post by Alisoncc » Fri Apr 15, 2016 9:55 am

MoreAviation wrote:Ok, you RAF types, I am a simple South African, what precisely did the Alisons do (technicians I guess, but what part of the whole package, avionics, electrics, hydraulics, airframe, engines, armaments, a bit of everything...?) and why Alison?

Yours in a welter of ignorance...

MA

Me you daft bugger. :-h

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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#11 Post by MoreAviation » Fri Apr 15, 2016 10:06 am

Alisoncc wrote:
MoreAviation wrote:Ok, you RAF types, I am a simple South African, what precisely did the Alisons do (technicians I guess, but what part of the whole package, avionics, electrics, hydraulics, airframe, engines, armaments, a bit of everything...?) and why Alison?

Yours in a welter of ignorance...

MA

Me you daft bugger. :-h

Alison


I am a daft bugger! I knew you had been in the RAF but always assumed that Alison was your web moniker based upon what you did in the RAF? I had images of cadres of Alisons doing specific tasks... (what a buffoon I am).

I'll get up off the floor when I have opened my mouth to change feet! :ymblushing:

MA

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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#12 Post by ian16th » Fri Apr 15, 2016 1:26 pm

MoreAviation wrote:Ok, you RAF types, I am a simple South African, what precisely did the Alisons do (technicians I guess, but what part of the whole package, avionics, electrics, hydraulics, airframe, engines, armaments, a bit of everything...?) and why Alison?

Yours in a welter of ignorance...

MA

One needs to travel back to before the word 'avionics' existed.

The RAF used the words 'wireless' and 'radar', the generic name that included both was 'radio'.

So we had Wireless Fitters, Radar Fitters and Radio Fitters. To confuse things a little, we had Air and Ground versions of each of these! Ground Wireless Fitters were rarely seen by other humans, as they populated a strange place, away from the airfield called 'Transmitters'.

In the later years when repairing things was very much simplified by what I called Field Replaceable Units in civilian life, a lot of trades were amalgamated into 'Avionics Technicians'. This happened way after my time in the service. But I believe it included what I knew as Instrument Fitters and Electrical Fitters.
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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#13 Post by MoreAviation » Fri Apr 15, 2016 3:11 pm

ian16th wrote:
MoreAviation wrote:Ok, you RAF types, I am a simple South African, what precisely did the Alisons do (technicians I guess, but what part of the whole package, avionics, electrics, hydraulics, airframe, engines, armaments, a bit of everything...?) and why Alison?

Yours in a welter of ignorance...

MA

One needs to travel back to before the word 'avionics' existed.

The RAF used the words 'wireless' and 'radar', the generic name that included both was 'radio'.

So we had Wireless Fitters, Radar Fitters and Radio Fitters. To confuse things a little, we had Air and Ground versions of each of these! Ground Wireless Fitters were rarely seen by other humans, as they populated a strange place, away from the airfield called 'Transmitters'.

In the later years when repairing things was very much simplified by what I called Field Replaceable Units in civilian life, a lot of trades were amalgamated into 'Avionics Technicians'. This happened way after my time in the service. But I believe it included what I knew as Instrument Fitters and Electrical Fitters.


Thanks for the elucidation Ian16th!

On a lighter note, one of my early flying instructors was a senior ex-RAF guy (now sadly deceased) who was also a flying examiner for the CAA. He was a brilliant pilot and really nice guy (if somewhat old school and old boy's tie) with a completely non standard use of terminology for many things related to civil aviation. For example I remember been amazed at his use of the radio terminology which sounded more like something out of a second world war film than anything you would find in CAP 413. He was far too senior and stern to ever be told off by the controllers and a mere whippersnapper like me would never have dared question a sky God like him about such things and I think it was then that I started to believe that the RAF used a completely different language to mere mortals like me... :)

Now I discover that an Alison really is a charming administrator on an aviation related website and not a slang RAF term and not even an aircraft engine manufacturer with a double ll as in Allison.

But enough of my foolishness, back to the thread...

MA

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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#14 Post by Boac » Fri Apr 15, 2016 5:10 pm

Here is an image of the rear gun assembly being tested
Image

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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#15 Post by boing » Fri Apr 15, 2016 9:14 pm

Yes, the testing was only done at Goose Bay, as in the photo, for secrecy purposes.
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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#16 Post by Boac » Sat Apr 16, 2016 7:11 am

Goose alert!

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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#17 Post by Ex-Ascot » Sat Apr 16, 2016 11:48 am

On my first Sqn (No. 32) we had an aged nav who always referred to the thing one chats to ATC on as 'the wireless'.

Great guy, Spec Aircrew Sqn Ldr 'A cat' nav. He never bothered with an overnight bag. Everything he needed was stuffed into his service raincoat pockets. Saved on portarage at hotels but of course he still claimed it.

Bit of a thread drift but he took no sh1t. We always ran the after t/o checks into the climb checks. The boss was on a check ride and asked for the after t/o checks and got both as usual. He said 'in future nav only tell me what I ask for'. We entered the hold. Boss said, 'drift nav'. 'five' came back the reply.
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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#18 Post by Alisoncc » Sat Apr 16, 2016 4:04 pm

Ex-Ascot wrote:On my first Sqn (No. 32) we had an aged nav who always referred to the thing one chats to ATC on as 'the wireless'.


On pass out from Locking those who were solely responsible for communications as opposed to radar were classified as air or ground wireless fitters. Along with them were air or ground radar, and those who skill set encompassed both were classified air or ground radio. So Yup, in 1963 the RAF's No 1 Radio School were spitting out junior techs with the trade of air wireless fitter.

Nuffing wrong with wirelesses for chatting on. Note the Avatar, which I got to wear. Meant I could use and fix the chatting machines known as a wireless, as well as other stuff. :)

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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#19 Post by OFSO » Sun Apr 17, 2016 2:46 pm

Brilliant, Alison. Were - perchance - any parts of it true ?

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Re: My life as a Rear Gunner on Vulcans

#20 Post by Alisoncc » Sun Apr 17, 2016 2:58 pm

Only this bit OFSO.

An interesting aspect of the training undertaken at 230 OCU RAF Finningley in the early '60's was the ability of new pilots to undertake "asymmetrics". This initially necessitated the CFI shutting down the engines on one side of the aircraft and getting the pilot in charge to fly parallel to a line down the centre of the runway using max rudder.
:D

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