by Mike Brooke
‘Get all your ground work up to date and we’ll take a squadron lunch. Rendezvous in the bar at noon. First round on me,’ I announced. I rang the wing commander to let him know that I intended to stand RRS down for the afternoon.
‘Don’t blame you,’ he said.
About one hour into our beer and sandwiches one of my navs, Jack Stewart, said, ‘Boss, look out of the window.’ I did so to find the sun splitting the paving stones!
Jack continued, ‘The wing commander has rung, sends his compliments and wonders whether you will be launching any aircraft this afternoon.’ ‘Tell him that you can’t find anyone to ask,’ I replied. At which point the good wing commander walked through the door with a very large grin. I presented him with an equally large gin!
My first flight in 1979 took place on Friday 2 February, when I took to the air back in the familiar confines of the cockpit of a B6 Canberra. But this was a very historic aeroplane. Its military registration was WK 163. Built in 1954 by A.V. Roe at Woodford, Cheshire as a Canberra B2, WK 163 was taken on charge on 28 January 1955 but was immediately transferred to Armstrong Siddeley Motors Ltd at Bitteswell, Leicestershire for Viper engine trials. On 2 December 1955 it was transferred to Napier and Sons at Luton Airport, becoming a test airframe for the new Double Scorpion rocket motor, which was fitted into the aircraft’s bomb bay. WK 163 flew again after these modifications on 20 May 1956.
On 28 August 1957 Mike Randrupp, with Walter Shirley acting as flight observer, flew WK 163 to 70,310ft and took the world altitude record for Great Britain. Whilst at Napier the aircraft also tested the air-sampling equipment that was to be used during the Operation Grapple nuclear tests of 1958. The following year the Scorpion programme was cancelled and WK 163 was passed to RAF Pershore in Worcestershire. In April 1966 WK 163 was converted to B6 specification by replacing the wings and engines.
In those first two months I had got to know many of the scientific civil servants and company boffins that we worked with and for. The co-location of everyone involved was a real bonus. At Farnborough it was a ‘taxi’ ride to see any of our boffins and even to get to some of our aircraft. All that added time and distance to our relationships and schedules. Here in this self-contained and remote location everything was but a short walk away. Security, which was paramount for much of our work, was easy to achieve and retain and there was the opportunity to build good working relationships at all levels.
I had bought a house in the village of Harrold, about 5 miles west of RAE Bedford’s main gate, and had moved in during that ‘winter of discontent’, with significant amounts of snow on the ground and a lorry driver’s strike threatened. One oddity of the sale is that it included a motorcycle. When I had looked round the house with the lady owner I had spotted a tarpaulin-covered object in the garage.
‘What’s that?’ I enquired.
‘Oh, it’s my son’s motorbike. He was meant to finish rebuilding it before he went to university. He seems to have lost interest.’
As a motorcycling enthusiast, who hadn’t owned one for a good few years, I said, ‘Well if you leave it right there I’ll dispose of it for you.’ She seemed pleased with this offer; how she would square it with No. 1 son I couldn’t imagine. But that was not my problem. It didn’t take much to finish rebuilding the 650cc Triumph Thunderbird and come the spring I was commuting to work on it every day!
We on RRS were the nearest thing that the UK had to a ‘black’ outfit and perhaps in a tacit recognition of that our collective radio callsign was Blackbox. Uniquely we did not have personal numbers to identify each pilot but letters. I was to be Blackbox Bravo – B for Brooke, B for Biker and B for Boss!
25 A UNIQUE FLYING MACHINE
There was only one Buccaneer on the strength of RRS. It was the fifth from last to roll off the production line at the BAe factory at Brough, East Yorkshire, which it did in March 1976. Its tail number was XX 897 and, after its first post-production test flight at HOSM, it was delivered to RRS at Pershore on 21 April that year. Then this almost brand new flying machine was put on jacks and underwent an extensive set of modifications so that the Marconi AI.24 Foxhunter radar, destined for the Air Defence Variant (ADV) of the Tornado, could be installed at a later date. The airframe mods included mating the large ADV radome to the nose, which entailed building a special adapter ring and fairings behind the radome on each side of the nose, removing the in-flight refuelling probe, removing the bomb door tank and the wing-fold mechanism.
Then on 9 December 1977 XX 897 was flown to Bedford for the experimental systems to be installed, which included modifications to the front cockpit to allow the pilot to operate and navigate the aircraft autonomously. Civilian FTOs, who would be primarily occupied with trials work on the radar, would occupy the back seat, where the navigator usually sat. A Decca Navigator roller map was installed in front of the pilot, above the flight instrument panel, and the IFF control box was moved from the back cockpit to the front. Finally the A model (pre-production prototype) of the Foxhunter radar was fitted in the nose and all the power, control and test equipment was fitted into the rear cockpit and bomb bay. One important modification was to the fuel system, which was modified so that fuel could circulate through a cooling matrix to absorb the heat from the radar and its systems.
Another eight months went by before 897 broke the surly bonds of earth again, when it went back to BAe at HOSM for post-modification flight clearance, after which it flew back to Bedford, landing back just in time for Happy Hour on Friday 15 September 1978.
I had first set eyes on this sleek version of Mr Blackburn’s ‘Banana Bomber’ on my first day on RRS. She was finished in the two-tone grey and white FAA colour scheme and stood resplendent in the hangar with a few panels open or missing, but no personnel activity anywhere nearby. This would prove to be the case on most days. Once we had got a decent amount of flying activity I went to see the trials folk to find out at what stage the programme was and when I might get my hands on the beast. I then managed to spend some time in the cockpit and received lessons as to how to operate the rather odd navigation system.
I also met the two Marconi FTOs: Messrs Pete Batty and Terry Fletcher. The Marconi Company, along with the other civilian radar manufacturer Ferranti, had offices and laboratories nearby, in a four-storey tower block on the northern edge of the establishment, known as Galsey Wood. The building was notable in that its upper levels had radomes sticking out of the walls pointing east. These were used for research, often in conjunction with our flight trials. The main Marconi Avionics offices were not too far away, in the ‘new’ town of Milton Keynes, famous for its concrete cows and multiple roundabouts.
I was due to fly my first two sorties in 897 in mid March so I went to the Buccaneer OCU at RAF Honington, along with one of the RRS navigators, Flt Lt Pete Middlebrook, and FTO Terry Fletcher to ‘fly’ the simulator and go through all the normal and emergency drills and procedures. It was now over three months since I had flown a Buccaneer, so we ‘borrowed’ one of the Farnborough jets, XW 988, and I flew three training sorties on 1 and 2 March, two with Pete and one with Terry. It was then just a case of waiting for 897 to be made ready for its first flight, which would be a full shakedown and handling assessment as well as tests of all the on-board systems.
On Wednesday 21 March the news filtered through that Marconi were ready to go; the airframe and engines had been ready for ages! But such is the nature of flight trials. On the following day Buccaneer XX 897 got more than just a few inches off the ground for the first time in over five months. When I had signed the aircraft servicing document – Form 700 – I had been intrigued to note that 897 had logged just over eight hours since it had rolled off the production line; it was definitely the ‘youngest’ aeroplane that I had ever flown! It even smelled new. As expected it was much slicker than the standard Buccaneer; it was lighter and had that longer, more streamlined profile.Indeed, when I did an acceleration at around 36,000ft I had to throttle back at 0.98 Mach – I
didn’t want to go supersonic over Lincolnshire! The nice thing was that even at that speed there were no adverse handling problems. Pete Middlebrook was equally impressed. At the other end of the speed range I managed to slow down to just 110kt without the aircraft tending to do anything frightening. This was well below the minimum speed at which any future flying would be done. Overall there was nothing untoward and she handled much like any other Buccaneer.
At this stage the aircraft did not have the pre-production model of the Foxhunter radar installed; there was a big weight in the nose instead. The A model was due to get airborne later in the year. The Foxhunter was an advanced radar that was digitally controlled. Marconi had subcontracted the provision of the heart of the radar, its transmitter/receiver, to their rivals Ferranti. This bit was of the Travelling Wave Tube design, which gave all sorts of advantages over the older magnetron and klystron signal generators. The requirement for the production model included an ability to track multiple targets while looking for more (known as Track While Scan or TWS) and an anti-jamming capability. During the trials to come we would be testing all these areas of interest, as well as gleaning general performance data.
After this promising start we flew four trials sorties then 897 was grounded for the installation of the definitive radar and all its associated equipment. This took over six months culminating in several hours spent sitting on the ground with the engines running and Pete Batty or Terry Fletcher playing with the radar. To do this without hazarding anyone with the transmissions we had an area on the airfield to which I could taxi the aircraft and point the nose across open fields with no habitation in sight. The digitisation of the system was such that even the signal to the moveable phased-array antenna in the nose to tell it to leave its parked position and then scan left to right and tilt up or down was all done by noughts and ones. When the FTOs did start the radar scanning I could feel the aircraft react by swaying rhythmically left and right. The radar unit in the nose would spend a lot of its time being taken in and out of the aircraft and moved back and forth to the Galsey Wood lab for tweaking – a technical term I believe!
I was informed that the sleek machine would be ready to fly in December. Because it had been grounded for so long the ground crew and I decided that we should carry out a full engine and airframe test flight. I did two such sorties on 17 and 18 December with an old navigator mate who had moved to Bedford from the Weapons Flight at Farnborough, Flt Lt Mo Hammond. We were now coming close to getting the whole kit and caboodle airborne – we should have been – it had taken a whole year to get this far! I flew one more sortie in January 1980 and was assured that there were only minor tweaks to do to the radar.
Then something devastating happened. Not so much for us directly, but primarily for one crew, their families and friends and the squadron they served on. A No. 15 Squadron Buccaneer from RAF Laarbruch on a Red Flag exercise in Nevada, USA, had crashed on the Nellis Ranges during a manoeuvre that caused the catastrophic failure of the starboard wing. I learnt later that the pilot, who was killed, was Flt Lt Ken Tait, whom I had known at CFS, although not well. A tragic irony was that he was probably flying one of his last sorties in the RAF. The immediate upshot was a Board of Inquiry.
Subsequent investigation found that a fatigue crack in the front spar caused the wing to fail, as it was unable to withstand the loading experienced during the turn, which turned out to be frighteningly low. I think that it was just the last straw. As a result, the entire Buccaneer fleet was grounded until all had been inspected and a solution to the problem had been found.
One day, a week or so later, I went to look at my personal aeroplane, grounded yet again, and found a man in blue overalls drilling a hole into the lower surface of the wing! Horrified, I enquired as to what he was doing. ‘Looking to see if there’s any cracks in the same place as on the crashed aircraft,’ he replied nonchalantly, with that unsaid question, and who do you think you are?
‘This jet’s still got less than twenty hours in its logbook. If you want to find evidence of fatigue cracks you should examine around the jacking points. It’s spent years airborne like that!’ I said. He didn’t see the irony.
The upshot was that we now had a radar ostensibly ready to start flight trials, but with no aeroplane to take it into the air. My theory was that the RAF had not adapted their use of the Buccaneer from the FAA’s modus operandi. I had come to this opinion when I had first flown the aircraft during the Preview exercise at ETPS. There was no need to land on 9,000ft runways as if they were aircraft carrier decks with all the concomitant vertical velocity. With less flap and droop, especially in the unblown configuration (45/10/10), a landing with less impact was achievable. Neither was there any need to taxi for miles with the wings folded, so redistributing the weight and concentrating it on the wing fold line. In fact the only advantage to having the wings folded came when parking in a Hardened Aircraft Shelter, when two aeroplanes could be housed in each one. XX 897 didn’t have a wing-fold mechanism and I never used the fully blown configuration (45/25/25) on the 10,000ft runway at Bedford. The selection of 30/20/20, with the blow on, gave the best compromise. The landing speed was only 3kt higher and if an engine failed the aircraft was already in the correct configuration.
It would be a frustrating three months before Terry Fletcher and I would get 897 off the ground again; and that was in very special circumstances. Ken Tait’s accident had led to a gross over-reaction at the MOD. There was a fear abroad that all Buccaneers’ wings were going to fall off at the first occasion that they produced lift. Admittedly many of the aircraft inspected had the minor manufacturing fault, caused during the milling of the wing panels, which could have been the root source of a fatigue crack. Even 897 had shown that slight defect but, of course, no crack was detected using the usual Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) methods. The engineers at Strike Command and BAe worked on a solution that would involve drilling into the suspect area and blending out the defect. Any cracks detected would have to be either repaired or the wings scrapped. With the whole Buccaneer fleet to inspect it would take some time.
The Buccaneer squadrons in the UK and Germany and the OCU were declared non-effective. To keep the crews current Hunters were reallocated from other units to add to the few already established at each station for training and IRTs. In February 1980 no one knew how long the grounding would last, or even whether the Buccaneer force would ever return to an operational status.
Back at Bedford the inability to proceed with the Foxhunter trials, just when the radar was ready to go, was an enormous source of frustration. The Project Office in London was equally miffed. The days grew into weeks and the weeks into months. I kept pointing out to all and sundry that XX 897 was fine. There were no cracks. The preventative smoothing modification had been done. Moreover the aircraft had been used to test other potential areas of interest and nothing untoward had been discovered. Through contact with Don Headley, the BAe Buccaneer CTP at HOSM, I had discovered that the company were working hand-in-glove with all the essential engineering agencies.
I do not know who forced the issue, but I suspect it was those driving the Tornado ADV project. After all this was an independent move by the UK to develop the Tornado into the MRCA it was always supposed to be, so there was a lot of high-level national kudos riding on its success. An air defence fighter without a radar was as useful as a chocolate teapot!
In early April I was given the news that it might be possible that I would be given clearance to fly 897 ahead of any other announcement about the future of the Buccaneer. This had come from the ivory towers in London to COEF at Farnborough, Gp Capt. Chuck Charles, who had passed the news on to me via Alan Holbourne. The trials folk started making preparations in the second week of April. At the end of that week I was told that authorisation to fly 897 was forthcoming and that I should arrange for simulator training with the Buccaneer OCU at Honington. Terry Fletcher and I flew over there in Canberra B2/6 WK 163 on Monday 21st and ‘flew’ three hours
going through every possible emergency that the staff could dream up. Perhaps with the exception of a wing coming off! I then got hold of Hunter T8C XF 321 from Farnborough and flew three sorties to get myself back up to fast-jet speed. On Thursday afternoon I was informed that ‘ministerial approval’ had been given for COEF to authorise a flight in 897 the following day – Friday 25 April 1980. I was then briefed on the restrictions for this first flight. They were:
• Indicated airspeed not to exceed 300kt
• G to not exceed 3
• No flying below 3,000ft except to make an approach to land
• Only one landing
Overnight I thought of one variation I wanted to make and put it to OC Flying after the morning briefing.
‘Sir, could you ask COEF if I could make an approach, to go around of course, at RAF Honington? I think it would be great for their morale to see that at least one Buccaneer is flying again.’
‘OK, I’ll see what I can do,’ he replied.
The authorisation sheet, signed by Gp Capt. Charles, was to be flown up to Bedford on the lunchtime ferry and I would have to go over to the control tower to initial it. When I did so I got the approval for the approach at Honington, but I was told not to come below 1,000ft. I was also reminded that I was, at least for now, the only current Buccaneer pilot in the world. No pressure then!
Terry and I climbed aboard and I went through the start-up procedures. Then we taxied out and paused on our way to the end of runway 27 for Terry to wind up the radar. When he was satisfied we took smoothly to the air. I think that 897 was as eager as we were to get air under her wings again. I climbed to the east at 300kt and we levelled off at 25,000ft.
‘How’s the radar doing?’ I enquired.
‘Well, whatever else we’ve achieved it’s a good ground-mapping radar!’ replied my friendly back-seat boffin. I detected more than a little irony in his voice.