Let's go get a beer.

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boing
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Let's go get a beer.

#1 Post by boing » Thu Apr 28, 2016 3:13 am

Once upon a time, a long time ago and not too far away from Blighty, there was a nice little vacation resort which happened to be home to a considerable number of Her Majesties combat aircraft, a good number of which were the famous triangular sunshades.

Now, one day, the operators of the triangular sunshades were requested to take part in an Exercise, a fortunately infrequent and inconvenient happening because it usually meant a large number of crew-members living in hammocks together for several days with inadequate toilet facilities.

On this occasion things developed as they had in the past but with one unusual addition - we were issued with side-arms, Browning Hi-Powers, a first as far as anyone involved could remember. If I remember correctly the firearms were issued on the morning of the second day of the exercise. Fortunately, by that evening somebody had thought to issue holsters for said firearms which was nice because it solved the problem of dozens of officers walking around waving pistols in their hands since they had nowhere to store them.

The exercise rolled on, people began to get suspicious. "Hey Boss, shouldn't we be doing something by now?". The exercise rolled on.

The next event of significance was that the firearms were withdrawn. Rumour had it that so many people had taken the guns apart out of boredom and lost the small parts that most of the issued guns were inoperative (remember, these are aircrew that we are dealing with). A more likely reason for the withdrawal (and I have some support for this theory) is that someone eventually realized that there had never been any trials on what happens if you eject with a heavy pistol somewhere on your body. Pistols on belts on the ground are OK but flight suits do not have the requisite belt and ejecting with one merely slipped into a flying-suit pocket creates images that make me wince even now.

About the same time we found out that all available aircraft on the fleet had been loaded with a full complement of 21 one thousand pound bombs. Mmmm, odd, very odd, we thought.
The truth had to filter out - it's future official name was to be Mohammar Gaddafi, but nobody knew that at the time.

The Exercise, now called in higher circles an Operation, rolled on.

Eventually all sides had their chess pieces in place and the mate was announced in favor of the revolutionaries but it was decided to launch our futile gesture regardless. In a stream the loaded triangular sunshades lifted off with the instructions that the bombs were to be off-loaded, with prejudice, on a bombing range in the wavering country in the hope that such a show of force might change the direction of events at the last minute.
Our aircraft was in the middle of the stream. As things turned out I was flying with one of the wiser, more rational, members of the group as Captain.

So, one by one as we approached the future enemy coast, the triangular sunshades reduced engine power and started their steep descent from cruise altitude down to near ground level for the final attack and a 2J delivery.
During this sort of attack with a load of live weapons things get quite intense in the aircraft. Speech is curt and tensely delivered, nothing unnecessary is said. The Nav. Radar says, "Looking good, looking good, small correction left coming in, yes, looks good, take it out". "Range 10 miles, range five miles, standby bomb-doors, bomb-doors open, bombs gone". He does most of the talking. Only this time nothing happened.

Just short of release the Nav. Radar called "Radar malfunction" and flipped the necessary switches to safe and we overflew the target through clouds of dust left by the attacks of the previous aircraft. Nothing we could do, we still had the bombs on board and we could not go around for another attempt since the later aircraft in the stream were still making their attacks. Head for home with the bombs still on board.

Now,in a situation like this it is best to tell someone about it. Unfortunately, we would need more height for the HF radio to work and even then our HF radio was one of the morse-key types so it would be difficult to hold a detailed conversation since the Captain would be dictating to the Air Electronics Officer who would be converting the message into a stream of dots and dashes with his key. It is not surprising that headquarters misunderstood our situation. Command had got the idea that we had tried to release the bombs and they had not separated from the aircraft whereas what had happened is that we had not tried to release the bombs at all. We could not convince them otherwise.

After considering for a while Command came back with their sage advice. We were to land back at base with the bomb doors open, I would have been surprised if the duty officer back at headquarters did not hear the screams of derision from the cockpit. Now, WE, knew that we had not tried to release the bombs so that it would be perfectly safe to land the aircraft with them on board. We would be a little heavier than usual but we had a nice long runway and a braking parachute. It was the headquarters imagined alternative that was so amusing.

You see, when you drop a bomb there are safety devices to make sure it does not go off prematurely - like immediately under the aircraft. The first safety device is a simple length of wire, as the bomb falls away from the aircraft the wire tightens and pulls out a safety clip that starts the arming process. The second safety is a little propeller on the front of the bomb, when the bomb is in the nice comfy bomb bay there is no wind so the propellor cannot turn (actually it is locked by the safety pin and wire). When the bomb falls away from the aircraft and the safety pin is pulled the propeller starts to rotate, after just a few turns this action fully arms the bomb and when it hits something it will explode. Now, imagine we had really tried to release the bombs and had failed. Then imagine we landed with the bomb doors open. Perhaps the little bump on touchdown would be enough to shake the bombs off their hooks at which point they would fall away from the aircraft and they would follow their normal arming sequence. At this point our triangular sunshade would be on the ground rolling down the runway being followed by 21 armed one thousand pound bombs. The idea is that the aircraft stops before reaching the end of the runway - I do not think that this has been explained to the bombs. Eventually the bombs would catch up with the aircraft, probably striking the nose landing gear leg just behind the cockpit and the rest would be history.

At one point the Captain said "Well fellows, do we try to explain the situation to Air Traffic Control for forwarding to headquarters?" Silence then our old Navigator Plotter said "No, if we do that we will never get this thing down. Let's just land and go get a beer".

True story with the script as we saw it from the flight line. The official version may vary.
the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.

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Re: Let's go get a beer.

#2 Post by 500N » Thu Apr 28, 2016 4:39 am

Very good story, thanks for posting. Always liked seeing and hearing the Vulcan.

Got the impression that things were pretty hectic in the aircraft during the bob run from
the Black Buck videos and pilot commentary.

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Re: Let's go get a beer.

#3 Post by Ex-Ascot » Thu Apr 28, 2016 8:44 am

Excellent story Boing. What is it about aircrew and shooters. Complain like heck about having to go on GDT and take one apart but as soon as you get into theatre with one the first moment of boredom and you are stripping it down. My F/O in the Gulf was an ex-armourer. He could get the thing down to component parts. And, put everyone else's back together again when they couldn't.

On The Queen's Flight we were exempt uncivilised things such as GDT but at some point a bright spark decided that we should be able to handle a pistol. They didn't trust us with bullets though we just had to practice by going, 'bang, bang'. After being instructed on how to strip the things down we had to be sent to lunch whilst the F/S recovered bits from all over the room and put them all back together again. They didn't bother running that course again.
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Re: Let's go get a beer.

#4 Post by stuart » Thu Apr 28, 2016 11:44 am

I really enjoyed that story boing, thanks for posting.
it's good to be bad.

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Re: Let's go get a beer.

#5 Post by Alisoncc » Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:37 pm

Me to.

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Re: Let's go get a beer.

#6 Post by boing » Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:57 pm

Ex-Ascot
There was an understandable objection to the carrying of firearms in combat by our crews, not one that you can officially approve of but understandable.
Our primary job was to drop a nuke on "the enemy", during this process it was possible that the aircraft could be damaged and the crew would have to bail out.
Almost certainly, since you were over enemy territory dressed in a flight suit and possibly injured, you would eventually be captured.

The argument was "Look, we just dropped, or intended to drop, a nuke on one of their cities. You expect me to pee them off some more by opening fire on their ground troops with a handgun and the generous allowance of fifteen rounds of ammunition you gave me? Sorry, I think I will just throw the gun as far away as I can as soon as I get on the ground and I may have a chance to escape not just be shot on the spot."
the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.

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Re: Let's go get a beer.

#7 Post by Boac » Thu Apr 28, 2016 4:15 pm

I suspect that had I dropped nukes on anyone and bailed out over 'enemy territory' I would only have needed one bullet. I would question where you would have been 'escaping to', having contributed to a nuclear winter?

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Re: Let's go get a beer.

#8 Post by boing » Thu Apr 28, 2016 5:04 pm

BOAC

There were some spots on the delivery list where you were actually quite close to a supposedly friendly border. If you could keep the aircraft limping along for a while to get you into a less densely populated area nearer the friendly border you MIGHT just have had a chance.

More likely you would have been killed just for fun because after the big one you clearly had no publicity or intelligence value. Doing it yourself would seem to be a bit extreme though, as Baden-Powell said "Never say die until you are dead".
the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.

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