Trials and Errors

by Mike Brooke

  By now I had read my way into the background for the trial. It was a tri-national US-Anglo-French project called Sabre. At least that was the name of the air-ground missile that would form the central part of our assessment and work. This was a modified version of the highly successful, laser-guided version of BAe’s Rapier SAM, which would be redesigned to be carried by single-seat attack aircraft such as the Jaguar, Mirage or Harrier. The French bit was the TV and laser pod to be used as the missile guidance system; the French aerosystems company Thomson-CSF had supplied this to Martin Marietta so that they could simulate it correctly. The whole project was a response to a requirement for a more accurate method of attacking enemy armoured vehicles from the air. The rationale being that the use of bombs led to the need for multiple sorties to kill one tank. Moreover, the tank had to be overflown, so increasing the exposure of the delivery aircraft to enemy action. It was felt that a laser-guided missile could increase the likelihood of stopping more tanks with fewer sorties and give a safer stand-off capability. In cold technical terms: improve the kill probability. An added advantage was that the much lighter weight and slimmer profile of the Sabre missile meant that more of them could be carried than the conventional laser-guided or cluster bombs, another factor in improving the KP. Our job was to test the system’s utility and make recommendations to those in the appropriate ivory towers as to moving forward to flight trials.

  The next day we boarded the hire car furnished by Hertz and paid for by BAe and drove to the Martin Marietta plant about 5 miles to the south-west. Once we had checked in we were directed to the simulation and laser-range facility, where the managing director of our trial met us. Briefings and a first look at the flight simulator followed and by coffee time we felt ready to start. The flight simulator was modelled loosely on the cockpit of the Fairchild Republic A-10 Close Air Support aircraft. However, we were told that the flight dynamics had been modified to allow us to fly at speeds up to 500kt; something impossible in the rather ugly, straight-winged A-10, which soon gained the nickname Warthog from its aircrew. The A-10 was then still in final operational test and evaluation and would enter USAF service the following year.

  By the end of that first day both Rich and I had ‘flown’ an hour or so each and had got to grips with the cockpit layout and the operation of the total system. The task was to fly repeated attacks on a wide spectrum of model targets and launch and track a missile to its target during a low-level pass over the ‘battlefield’. The simulator was set up with a model diorama, which was viewed by a miniature TV camera that ‘flew’ over it in response to our inputs from the cockpit. We viewed this Lilliputian world on a large screen outside the cockpit through a fairly conventional HUD and we saw the simulated seeker of the TV/laser pod on a small display high up on the instrument panel, just to the right of and below the HUD; we called this the Chin-Up Display.

  The basic principle of operation was as follows. As we flew towards the area where there would be targets (usually tanks) randomly positioned we used the pod TV in a wide field of view mode to look for the targets. We could move the seeker with a button on the throttle. When we found a target, the field of vision could be narrowed down with another switch and then the target centred with the button. At this point a button on the stick was used to initiate what was called ‘contrast edge lock’, which kept the cursor that indicated where the laser would illuminate the target, locked to the body of the tank. Then another button on the stick was pushed to launch the supersonic missile. As long as the clever digital technology kept the laser locked on a few seconds later the missile would arrive and its shaped-charge explosive would put the tank out of action. Sadly this bit of the process was not simulated.

  As the trial progressed we were able to refine the ‘switchology’ to reduce both the pilot’s mental workload and the number of errors we made in using the various buttons on the throttle and the stick to complete the task successfully. Every now and then we had found that we had launched the missile before we had locked the laser to the target, or locked the laser onto the target but then omitted to launch the missile by pressing the wrong button. After a few days we sat down with the rest of the team and came up with a scheme that rationalised the previously somewhat random layout of the switches and buttons of the Hands On Throttle And Stick system.

  Because there was just the one cockpit and the mental demands of more than two one-hour sessions each per day started to lead to induced errors we did find ourselves with some spare time. However, I was starting to pick up on the American work ethic. It seemed to me that one was expected to be at work from 8 a.m. until whenever the boss said ‘quit’, but not necessarily doing any work.

  One day I decided to take a walk outside and found a sandy track leading down through some scrub and pines. It was, of course, sunny and very hot. Being around lunchtime the threat of the daily thunderstorm had yet to materialise; that happened at 4 p.m., as regularly as clockwork. As I strolled along the bright yellow trail I first heard and then saw hawks and buzzards circling around in the vivid blue above my head. Looking down I then spotted strange elongated curved depressions in the sand. They reminded me of something that I had seen on TV or in a book. It then came to me – sidewinder snake tracks. I started to walk a little more briskly and with a much firmer stride. I had read somewhere that snakes are very sensitive to ground vibrations and that they will tend to slither away unless you confront them. After seeing more of the ‘S’ shapes in the sand I decided to loop around and head back towards the simulator building. Anyway the daily delivery of burgers for lunch had probably arrived by now. Sure enough, when I was munching my way through my ‘hold the mayo!’ burger one of the company guys asked me where I had been. When I told him he was visibly shocked and warned me quite sincerely never to go out there again on my own. ‘That’s real bad country – no-one goes moseying about in those woods – you take a truck!’

  On the other hand when we did go to the company restaurant (‘Chow House’) for lunch we discovered that quite nearby, in one of the many lagoons on the site, lived a huge alligator. People apparently often went to feed it, probably with burgers and doughnuts, and they had given it a name – Herbie or Walter or something of that ilk. I never saw the creature but it was reputed to be at least 3m long and quite docile. I supposed that it might be if its diet was mainly from the Chow House! It was there that Rich spotted a sign over a line of microwave ovens that he wanted to take back to put in our crew room, for the advice of the more mature members of B Flight. It read, ‘If you have a pacemaker please do not stand near these ovens’!

  When we went to the head honcho’s house for a meal he reinforced my view of the American work ethic by telling us, quite proudly, that due to this project he had only been able to take one weekend off since the beginning of the year – that was in five months! I noticed that his wife said nothing. On the other hand we, much against the British work ethic, had by then worked six days straight so it was a very pleasant surprise when we were given free tickets to Disneyworld and told to take a day out. Martin Marietta had an allocation of these because they had designed and built the monorail that transports people from the vast car parks to the gates of the Magic Kingdom. So on the following day we set off, like four kids to Walt Disney’s version of Utopia.

  It was like a childhood dream come true. I had often wondered what it would be like and, on the whole, the experience did not disappoint me. I’ve always maintained you can either grow up or you can be a jet pilot – you can’t do both! It was hot but not overcrowded. The queues were bearable and my favourite ‘ride’ was the Haunted Mansion. However, the Runaway Mine Train and Space Mountain were pretty awesome too. Much of the place is filled with money grabbing tourist tack, but it is done in very clean and friendly surroundings. We also visited Sea World where much was being made of the bicentennial celebrations, with frequent references in the commentaries at the Killer Whale and Dolphin enclosures to the evil, Redcoat Brits! We let it run off our collect
ive backs, just as we had when splashed by the Orcas.

  On another day the simulator was unserviceable – someone had talked about a large snake being found under the floor amongst all the cabling – as a result it was agreed that we could take the rest of that day off. So we set off on the one-hour’s journey to Cape Canaveral to visit the Kennedy Space Center. That turned out to be even better than Walt’s Magic Kingdom – but in a very different way. The scale of the place was awesome. After we had parked the car we naturally headed towards the enormous Vertical Assembly Building – the VAB – which in those days the public were allowed to walk through. The freshly painted Stars and Stripes on the outside was the world’s largest painted flag, put there to celebrate the bicentennial. The stars are each 6ft across, the blue patch is the size of a standard basketball court and the stripes each as wide as a single carriageway road. On the right side, opposite the flag was the specially designed red, white and blue Centennial Star; that has now been replaced by the NASA logo. The VAB is so big that it forms its own clouds inside and huge birds of prey circle its upper regions, soaring at 500ft above the ground.

  When we set off from the car park I remember thinking that it didn’t look that far away. But as we strolled on, with the other visitors, the distance did not appear to reduce – the big white shed just got bigger and bigger. Then I spotted the people who were about to enter through the huge open doors – they looked like ants entering an upturned shoebox. It was another fifteen minutes before we were in that position, open-mouthed with our ‘wow-meters’ at full deflection. There was not much inside because the Apollo Mission Saturn V rockets were no longer being assembled; the programme had come to an end four years earlier and the Space Shuttle programme was still several years in the future. The VAB covers an area of 3 hectares (8 acres) and its interior space makes it the ultimate cathedral of the scientific age.

  As if that was not enough we then made our way outside to view the Mobile Launch Platform mounted atop the world’s largest tracked transporter – The Crawler – and a Saturn V Apollo rocket laid on its immense side. It was all totally mind-blowing. The final part of our visit was to stand at the back of the Launch Control Room while a simulation of the events of the last minutes before the release of a typical Apollo mission took place. The audio sequence of the many controllers giving status reports and the final echoing, ‘Go,’ ‘Go’, ‘Go’ from each console to the Launch Director’s prompt was only outdone by the chest-shaking roar of the simulated launch itself. What a programme that must have been to be a part of!

  But it was soon ‘back to earth’ for us. Back in the simulator Rich and I became quite good at the tasks we were presented with. So much so that later and later acquisitions of the various targets were simulated by the simple expedient of defocusing our view of the ‘outside’ world until we were at a given distance from the targets. This gave us a sensible minimum flight visibility for our recommendations.

  In the final analysis the calculated average error of the simulated missiles that we launched after the system had been optimised was amazingly small at around 18in. This compared very favourably with that for any bomb, including laser-guided ones. There was a big presentation up in London on the Sabre project to those with the operational and financial clout. Rich went up and reported back that there was much negativity from the Harrier Operations folk about ‘Our guys rushing about at low level looking at a TV screen in the cockpit.’ My impression of all the Harrier pilots that I had met was that they could walk on water and that this system offered them a realistic chance of being a much more effective close air support force. Ours not to reason why …

  Note

  23 Under legislation signed by President Bill Clinton the airport was renamed Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on 6 February 1998, President Reagan’s 87th birthday.

  22 BECOMING A ‘TRUCKIE’

  A ‘Truckie’ is the not so polite but very descriptive sobriquet that non-transport pilots give to their passenger and freight carrying colleagues. RAE Farnborough had its own small airline, a flight of three de Havilland Devons and three crews of a pilot and navigator each. They occupied what was known as ‘A Shed’, which was just opposite the control tower, in the base of which was a small passenger waiting room.

  The number of aircrew on the RAE Transport Flight was such that it was de rigueur for other aircrew to be checked out on the Devon and so become what were known as ‘Guest Artists’. The number of these had to be limited so that all could maintain sensible currency and that the supervisory load did not become too large. Two of these guest artists were always COEF and OC Flying so the other slots were taken up by invitation of OC Transport Flight from those who had volunteered and who had plied him with sufficient ale at Friday Happy Hours.

  Eventually, in July 1977, I was invited to join the hallowed ranks of the local ‘Truckies’. My part-time status, quite correctly, did not preclude me from passing through, or rather over, the same hurdles that all RAF transport pilots had to negotiate: conversion to type, instrument and night ratings and RAF transport pilot categorisation tests. We guest artists would only be awarded C Category, which I believe meant that we could not fly as captain with nominated VIPs. That was OK by me!

  The conversion and route familiarisations went hand in hand. Two sorties with an instructor, covering the entire required training syllabus, were followed by several route familiarisations as co-pilot and then an IRT and, finally, the Categorisation Check Flight. It was all very correct and proper, unlike the very brief conversions to type I had become used to in the test-flying world. But that was just as well because I would be carrying precious scientific people around the country on national aerospace research business. They might not have been fare-paying passengers but they still deserved the best service that our tiny airline could give them.

  The de Havilland DH.104 Devon C Mk 2 was a military version of the de Havilland Dove commuter airliner, one of Britain’s many successful post-war civil designs. The Dove was a response to the Brabazon Committee report that called for a British designed short-haul feeder for airlines. It was powered by two de Havilland Gipsy Queen engines, each giving 400hp, and standard accommodation was for eight to eleven passengers. The aircraft had been produced in large numbers for a variety of nations worldwide. Surprisingly Doves and Devons were built over a period of no less than twenty-one years from 1946.

  Access to the cockpit was through the passenger cabin, which had single seats on each side, and the entrance door was between the wing and the tailplane on the left-hand side. Once in the rather comfortable pilot’s seat, which was a bit of a squeeze in the tiny cockpit, everything fell easily to hand. The overall impression was one of neatness, however the centre console was a bit hedgehog-like with a multiplicity of levers arranged vertically below the instrument panel. Starting the engines was relatively straightforward, electrical power being provided by a plug-in, mobile ‘trolley-acc’ with its bank of batteries. The usual piston engine tricks of priming first and gentle warming up afterwards applied, as did the checks of rpm, oil pressure and magneto-drop before take-off, along with operation of the propeller pitch controls.

  Taking off was a straightforward exercise and the Devon lifted easily into the air with only a light pull on the control yoke at the correct speed. It was usual not to retract the undercarriage until the speed for safe control of the aircraft following an engine failure had been exceeded. Before that speed the action in the event of an engine problem would be to land immediately and try to stop on the remaining runway. Personally I found this the hardest thing to get used to. For many years in jets I had retracted the lading gear as soon as I was sure that there was air between the wheels and the ground.

  One very rarely had to climb to a great height in the RAE’s Devons because most of the routes were flown at around 2–3,000ft clear of cloud and at a cruising speed of about 140kt. The Devon was a delight to fly in this mode: light on the controls and easy to trim. As to the approach and
landing, nearly always completed visually, that was easy too. There were no large trim changes to cope with and the engine handling was conventional. In fact the very nice longitudinal stability and control made it possible, in the right wind conditions, to make very smooth touchdowns in just the right place.

  The routes were varied and some overseas flights were called for; I went to Alderney in the Channel Islands and to the French Navy’s airfield at Landivisiau in Brittany. However, the Transport Flight aircrew snapped up most of the further flung destinations long before they were offered to us ‘guest artists’.

  The standard route, flown three times daily and five days per week, was from Farnborough to Bedford and return; always known as the Bedford Ferry. The first of these departed Farnborough at 8 a.m. and the round trip took just over an hour. Thus it was possible to fly a Bedford Ferry and be in the EFS crew room ready to start a normal day there by 9.30 a.m. Some folk weren’t too keen on starting their day at 7 a.m., but if you wanted to fly regularly, which was often not the case with trials aircraft, then it was a great way to ‘keep your hand in’.

  The Bedford Ferry route was normally flown at heights not above 2,400ft and the route went overhead the old Miles Aircraft Company’s airfield at Woodley, just to the east of Reading. There was a VOR (VHF omnidirectional range) beacon at Woodley, much used by airliners flying into and out of the London Heathrow Control Zone. In fact our track took us along the western edge of that zone, into which we were not allowed to stray, and we worked that part of the route with Heathrow Radar. It was very interesting to watch the airliners either departing or arriving to land at Heathrow right over our heads; they were supposed to be at or above 2,500ft as they went over the Woodley VOR.

  But on one very hot day in that amazing summer of 1976, when I was flying north on the midday Bedford Ferry, the nice man at Heathrow called me and asked me if I could see a Boeing 747 to my right. I was at 2,300ft at the time so my nav and I looked out towards London. We were both looking above the horizon and we could not see a Jumbo Jet. I told the controller. He said that it was now in our 2 o’clock position and below us. We were now closing in fast on the Woodley VOR and then I spotted it. The 747 must have been 500ft below us, its nose was very high and, at least to me, it did not appear to be climbing. I told the Heathrow controller that we would orbit in our present position, about 3 miles south of the VOR, while the struggling Jumbo had gone further west. As we completed that orbit we saw the light blue and white airliner passing from right to left ahead of us, its nose still unnaturally high and apparently just hanging in the sky. I wondered what was wrong and whether the passengers were aware of the predicament they were in. I never heard any more about it but I did wonder if the light aircraft operating from and around the grass airfield at White Waltham, about 5 miles west of Woodley, found themselves a bit too close to a huge aeroplane passing through their circuit! Other regular routes included destinations such as Cranfield (for the then Aeronautical College), Boscombe Down (for A&AEE), Gloucester-Staverton (for Smiths Industries), Bristol-Filton (for Rolls-Royce or BAC), East Midlands (for Rolls-Royce Derby) and Warton in Lancashire (for BAe). Then there was the West Freugh Ferry. I think I recall correctly that this epic trip was flown three times a week and was a ‘grand day out’. Depending on the passenger requirements en-route destinations between Farnborough and ‘the Freugh’ could include stops at RAE Aberporth and RAE Llanbedr, as well as including some of the places I’ve already mentioned.