Interview with Phil Keeble on the Hawker Hunter

[Music] [Applause] could you tell if I'm been interested in aviation I've been interested in aviation since I was a small small wifey my dad used to take me to the beach at West wittering down on the south coast of uh England and while I was there um the black arrows where the hunters used to come and practice off the beach with their 12 ships and um nine ships and things like that and I used to watch them doing the loops and amazing stuff and I thought to myself then yes that's what I want to do that was my heart's desire also my father was in the Air Force he flew catalinas and Wellington's in the war and he used to tell me stories that he got up to and so really I've always been infused with the desire to be a part part of the Air Force and and to go flying and then when I passed by 11 plus which is going back a little bit now um as a treat I was uh given a flight from eastle airport in Hampshire Southampton um in a dehon repeat and from there on I was just hooked absolutely hooked so I joined the Air Cadets and um BW the chip Mark at handle and um then when I got to 16 I was at grammar school in Hampshire and um I decided to reply to the Air Force for a scholarship to keml now in their wisdom they decided that I wasn't of the right material so they said no but you can come back in 2 years so I had two years to fill basically so I joined the southern gas board as a chemist in pool Gas Works and after about 3 hours of that I realized this was this was not going to be my future so I did six months while I looked for another job and I decided that I wanted something that was similar to the military but not quite so I joined the police force I joined the Hampshire and is white police force which I I really enjoyed I I I I thought it was a great great career and but I still wanted to fly that was still and I wanted to travel as well the those two things were impossible in the police so I was at eastley Technical College during day release and um I went downtown Southampton and I was passing the RF recruiting office so I walked in and I spoke to the recruiting sergeant and he said what can I do for you so I said I'd like to become an RF policeman so cuz I always fancied a great big dog to protect me you know so he said uh have you got any o levels I said yeah I've got five he said have you got maths in English I said yes I've got math in English he said do you got any science subjects I said yeah I've got three he said do you want to be a pilot so I said yeah okay and that was that was as easy as that he gave me the forms I filled him in I went to ban Hill for a second time um which was a lot easier than the first time because I knew what was going to happen and also I'd had the 18 months experience in the police so when they asked me about my views on life and interesting things had happened I was able to you know spin a few stories and I got selected and I joined the Air Force in November 65 and rest of it is here here we are today some three centuries later when you first joined the RF what was your training like for yourself training um I thoroughly enjoyed it I was with a great bunch of Bloks and that always helps a lot if you've got your buddies to support you and because you're going to go through tough times and good times and you know if you can all go down to the bar and have a beer and and chat about it afterwards and and just basically you know um just just so relax a bit that helps a lot um I did have one very big weakness which was mass I don't know how I passed my my masso level but I did uh and so I was reced U from the first 5 weeks of square bashing uh because I failed the mass exam went on to pass it the second time but that made me super fit because you know uh we were doing like every morning we were doing long runs and PT and all that stuff uh then we went on to the leadership phase which I really enjoyed um trumping around Hills and swimming in rivers and you know in fact I think secretly underneath there's there's a there's a bit of AR there's a bit of cabbage in me a little bit of Army in me you know because I've always enjoyed firing guns and all that sort of stuff as well so and then we went on to the final five six weeks which again was academics and guess what I failed them a second time so instead of doing 15 weeks I think I did 25 26 weeks um but I didn't mind it it was down in South Cy in the cot walls which was a marvelous place to be marvelous place so once we' uh got our um our commission then obviously uh a lot of us who hadn't flown properly I mean PPL type properly were stayed on to fly the on the Chipmunk um primary flying Squadron so uh and that was another 5 weeks of flying the Chipmunk learning the basics effect controls handling spinning stalling aerobatics and um that was just unbelievable cuz it was sort of flying in the morning and then either cream teas down to some nice little cafe in the cck walls in the afternoon or out to the pub for a couple of pints and chicken in the basket in the evening so for me I mean I was a square peg in a square hole I just adored the Air Force and uh I wouldn't have wanted to do anything else as it happens um and then from there um I got uh through that quite successfully then I went to AR of siston and through the jet Prov 3 which is my first experience of a jet and the smell of a jet oh it's just unbelievable it's just a a smell you it's like Marmite you love it or you hate it and I loved it um did the first initial part of the course um on the three and then we went on to the slightly uh faster and more equipped four uh and at the end of that I got my wings they don't get their wings so early now but I've been in the Air Force about 18 months maybe a little bit longer and I got my wings which was the proudest day of my life you know I still got pair they RF ones well they are actually um and my parents came up for that and that was just a wonderful day and then uh from there we were streamed and depending on how well you done on the course you rather sent to ARF Valley here on just cross the sea at Angley or you were sent to a of hington um near Cambridge to fly the varsity so it was either the that or the varsity in those days and I think uh places 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 went to Valley to fly in that 11 to goodness knows where in the bows of the earth went to workington and me for some reason right down the back of the course got sent to valy which was a real surprise because I thought I was heading for the monties so I said to my instructor why are you not send me to monties like the rest of the guys around me said no no no no no we going to kill anybody kill yourself not not other people I hope it was joking uh so I then came to Valley um as I say it only about 10 m 20 M across the water and flew than that which was a fantabulous airplane oh it's just a dream and up until the 80s it was my favorite airplane of all time you know it was responsive it was fast it was Nimble it was Tiny you strapped a knat on you didn't sit in a knet you pulled it on like a Baro and climbed in and the way you went and the rate of roll was phom it was about um 360° a second which is fast the Red Arrows had a limiter taken out and they could do even more which must have been amazing I really wanted to go to the hunter that was always my sort of uh aim my ambition uh and I would have accepted the lightning um as an alternative but uh no I mean they'd seen through Me by this stage my position on the course was never going to get me to a fast jet at that point in time so I went to the pr camera which was a bit of a um a bonus over the I don't mean this unkindly bomber guys but recky was always that Cut Above you know where where the better guys went and I know people are going to hate me for that so I went to the rcky training school uh with the camber U at RF bassing Bor again in Cambridge which I enjoyed but the cber is a different Beast allog together it's uh it's a a tricky airplane to fly in certain uh conditions especially asymmetric and um the camera is a bit of an unforgiving aircraft as I'll probably say later on but uh if you mistreated or mishandled it it was a killer on one engine and I have lost a few of my friends by that very problem so um at the end of the cambera of course and you know the biggest problem I had on the camera was taxiing I couldn't taxi it out to the runway and my instructor was tearing his hair out and he said Phil if you can't taxi it you can't take off you can't go solo so to speak and and you won't pass the course and do you know something I had a dream one night on how to taxi the camera and I woke up in the morning and it was a slightly different technique to what he was teaching me now we had hand brakes so you squeezed the brake and that slowed you down and then you applied a differential Rudder to actually give you left or right braking on each wheel and basically what I was doing is I was putting full Rudder on squeezing the brake and then lurching left or right in a zigzag so I dreamt which was actually going back to the Chipmunk technique put a tiny bit of handbrake on and then just feather the the the rudder and I went out straight down the taxi way straight around the corner straight onto the threshold and took off and my instructor said to me what the bloody hell happened there Phil I said you're not going to believe it but I dreamt on how to do it last night he said well good for you you know that's the only time that's ever happened I could have done with that help in the you know time's future but uh that didn't occur anyway I was posted to Germany on the pr7 which I was looking forward to but my navigator uh guy called Jim Smith was going to RF malter to fly the pr9 which again in terms of aircraft the pr9 is the definitive camra in the Royal Air Force for sure so I went to the postings people and I said is there any chance I can join my navigator in in Malta and they said yeah of course you can so I went to malter on 39 goton and had uh two wonderful years there flying the cam around the world um it was a dream job when I looked back and why I joined the Air Force to fly and see the world it just ticked all the boxes I mean we went out to I mean I was very young I was just over 21 really and we went out just the CH us went out to Kenya self-supporting there was an RF Detachment out there who helped us refueling and any problem chocking the aircraft and things but uh we did the Ser or part of survey of Kenya uh which was just fantastic and the weekend off we obviously went up country and saw the uh you know the Safari Wildlife I was in heaven again um and we went out to Singapore quite a lot to photograph borne do the survey of boria which was marvelous um and we went out to Hong Kong and and all over the world and of course the Middle East and Europe as well so um just did an awful lot of traveling in fact one year uh I worked out I was a away more often with my navigator than I was at home with the family you know and I mean we would get regularly 400 hours a year which in the modern Air Force is as much as some guys are getting almost in a tour you know so we do a lot of flying and of course the pr9 if I can talk about the pr9 for a minute I know I'm standing next to my beloved Hunter but the pr9 was just a dream airplane it was everything the camra was and more it had uh bigger engines same engines that they used on the fg9 um rollsroyce a 206 I think um it had hydraulic aerons and Runner which were made it a lot easier to fly it had a much bigger surface area wing it was longer by about 4 ft in Span and is also longer in depth so it flow a lot higher whereas the ordinary camber would get up to about 4950 the pr9 would get to 60 plus it had very good Suite of um of cameras to do the onboard filming and of course it had an autopilot which meant that when you went on these long fogs of four hours out to the Far East you had an autopilot to uh you know to take some of the strain away and Joy Of Joy it had an opening canopy which the other cameras didn't have the other cameras had a bubble canopy and you got in through a door at the side which meant that when he got hot it got it was like a greenhouse really hot what was your first fighter squ my first fighter squ right can I just fill in the gaps then I hope you don't mind from there I I got sent to um uh CFS flying uh instructors qfter where you saw the picture I I flew the Chipmunk at B uas and then later the Bulldog I then for various reasons uh again tied into being academically challenged I ended up on a ground T at the uh at the Jaguar R ARF lossy and I was a Sim instructor there ground school instructor and I managed to bag as many trips in the back as I could on bombing sorties and formation and combat sorties and I did about 40 hours and one day the boss came into the crew room and um there were two of us uh who were there um a guy was X Vulcans and myself X cameras and he said do you two want to to fly the Jagua and we said how long have we got to think about it and he said said well as long as you like he said yes we do and that was it so he took the two of us and he put us on a mini course and we did about three trips on the two-seater and then he sent us Solo in the single seater which again which is why I got the uh the Jaguar patch cuz I flew it solo and you enti return and um his plan was to circumnavigate short circuit if you like the training system rather than go to tactical weapons unit he said that the Jager was such a good airplane and it was a very good trainer as well as fighter bomber um he could Short Circuit the system and take us through the ocu spit us out the far end straight into a jagular squad brilliant so he said right after solo you'll do a bit of formation bit of if bit of low level and then we'll pick up the course from there um someone obviously got wind a bit higher up the chain and put a stop to it and he came in and said I'm not allowed to do it Bruce L was a great New Zealand uh wi Commander um and so I went back to the simulator anyway one day the group Kev cwell came in and he said Phil I've got some good news for you you posted onto the tww which for me uh was was really lucky because there were two twws going at the time to try and pick up the backlog one was down at chiver on the I think they had hunters and Hawks uh and the other was at lossy mouth which was on the fga 9 and so uh I didn't have to move or anything I just moved across the Airfield to the the uh Hunter number two uh Hunter tww and I did 6 months uh learning to fly the hunter tactically combat low level and of course the one thing I've always wanted to do since I joined the Air Force weapons so um you got to fire the gun first of all the Aiden which uh marvelous machine you know I was saying about the smell of of um jetfuel kerosine well the smell of cordite is even better the smell of cite wafting through the cop is just a high in some ways so I I fired the gun which was great then you got to drop the fractur bombs yeah yeah bombs yeah I'm not really a great bomb F and then of course we um there's a Harrier next to us just across there we got to fire the SNB rocket the 88 mm SNB which is just an awesome weapon it went off virtually suic it might have onone Supersonic in the latest stage of the flight and you could actually follow it till it hit the target so that was a joy um um when I finished that course there was another short hold and so I I said to the uh the poers to be on the uh tww how about I hold on the simulator the uh the Hun simulator if you give me some some freeb flying so I'll do the job and then we' got a spare jet or a spare trip so they said fine so I did another short period flying continue to fly the fg9 and in fact some of the air defense guys took me under their wing and said come on we'll teach you some of the stuff you've not done on the course which is not just combat but the um you know the geometry of of air defense interception and actually I enjoyed that and I love combat combat is the sport of Kings um and as much as I like low level certainly for my camera days where I've done a lot of it um combat I've always felt was where it's at so although I was posted to the Jaguar I asked if I could transfer to the Phantom and again they said yep that's fine so I then went down to AR of conningsby uh in about 1981 or late 80 and uh started on the uh Phantom ocu and now to get to your cuz I'm a qfi and I I spent hours talking about the same question but to get to your answer uh my first one was the mighty 43 Squad in RF Lucas yes I was waiting for I waiting for the building to erupt but it's not going to 43 Squad is there a fighting in the house you bet your sweet ass there is you know um and of course across the road was our sister Squad and they were a sister Squad a bunch of girls you know trouble one and because the Rivalry between fighter squads is just awesome I mean almost like two separate gangs you know uh and but I love the Phantom the Phantom I've used the word Beast of other aircraft but the Phantom was just a an animal just an animal again an aircraft which you didn't treat with respect would bite you in the B um great medium speed and high speed it was a very effective weapon platform four side winders four Sparrow stroke Sky Flash and uh the Gatling gun underneath so it it was it was a it was a good weapon but when you started to get slow because of all it wasn't designed by um any known aerodynamicist I know it had anhedral it had dedal it even had a tou of cathedal in it I'm sure it did because it flew like one at times um and if you got slow and you put the wrong inputs in you couldn't use Alon at low speed because of that adverse on and there were all sorts of things going on with it but you had to use Rudder so you rolled the aircraft using secondary effects of roll um of your rather which would be R uh and I remember doing a trip with a test pilot from America and he didn't believe me and I he said uh can I see how it works and I said It's Tricky he said no no no no I'll be F I'm a test B so we went up to height and uh I said right you have control so we brought it back to very slow threw in a whole bunch of stick and this Phantom just departed in about a millisecond into this tumbling massive IR am mungry so I took I knew it was going to do it so I took control recover it and he went bloody H he said that should never been released to service and he said as much when I went to his presentation in bosam down um he gave a presentation on the Fantom and he said this aircraft would not be released to service these days because his handling characteristics were awful it's not my favorite aircraft because it is so you've got to be on the ball all the time it's not an aircraft you can relax and enjoy bit like driving an early 9/11 Porsche you know too much throttle or too much steering wheel and you off the road and the Phantom was just like that now you were asking earlier about my favorite aircraft well my favorite aircraft is this girl here this is the hunter F1 which is fairly rare Beast these days 1947 49 it was uh conceived I suppose on paper started to go into uh prototypes in 1951 and eventually Saw Service as a fighter in about 1953 this one uh first went to 54 Squadron and then to the day fighter uh Leadership School and um it's a it's a good Beast the more modern Hunters have got a lot of extras uh they've got more wet points for carrying Fuel and weapons um the six is strengthened bigger engines and then of course you got the definitive Hunter the FDA 9 uh which has got the aen 200 series engine which was about 10,000 L of thrust um which is actually strangely the same engine uh that they used in the cameras as well I think the pr7 had the early 200s and the pr9 had the upgrated 11 quarter engines um in the 206 I think 207 um and so that was the that was S Hunter inter serviced in early 53 and then Neville juk took it to the world airs speed record in September 53 I think it was at 727 mph which is Shifting but the nice thing about the hunter was it wasn't Supersonic in a a straight line it was uh only Supersonic in a dive um but if you got a hunter up to speed at low level it made the most fantastic sound called the Blue Note and that was the noise that the air whistling through the gunports uh would would would howl it was a band sheer the noise and I can remember taking one across RF lugas one day just to show the Phantom boys that uh this is what a real jet sounds like and it was a beautiful airplane the nine um bigger engines i' say tail shoot uh strength and wings again uprated uh air conditioning system and more oxygen so it was a much more capable Jet and I think there was something like uh 120 122 fga 9 and of course it was in service all around the world with the Indians um the swedes and the Swiss mainly and then I think some like 27 other countries flew the hunter the Lebanese FLW it right up until oh only about 2 or three years ago when they finally retired the Navy had uh and the Air Force had a couple of uh uh t7 t8s which they use for training Crews on the buccaneer and for training Crews on the Harrier um so it Saw Service certainly with the Air Force for over 30 years and with overseas for over 50 years and it really is a wonderful airplane now my dad works in the car industry and he said never buy a car that's just come off the production line a new model said always buy it as it gets to the end of its life cuz that's when it gets good and he's dead right about airplanes as well the fj9 or the F fr10 this Rec equivalent was superb the camera pr9 superb now the Americans took the pr9 and they turned it into the uh B-57 the rb-57 F and the p57g which had tandem compet seating um were just excellent uh Productions of a of a stormw aircraft so that's the hunter I had no incidences in all my time on the hunter so I can't tell you any real good stories about it except I like to think of airplanes sometimes times as cars and if you said to me what was the hunter like i' say it was a bit like driving something like um a Jaguar e type you know not perfect bit clunky in places you know panels perhaps didn't fit as well as they could rattled and rolled over bumps but when you got the hang of an e type it was just a joy to drive and I think the fj9 is the sort of the aviation equivalent of any type I was also lying in bed the other night thinking well what would the others be I Str think of aircraft type for uh for for the Phantom and the tornado the the the tornado was a funny airplane to fly it was a very good weapon system very good radar certainly towards the end rubbish at the beginning but good at the end uh it was very capable it had some good good kit on board and some good tactics um but technology dilutes The Experience no doubt about it both in cars and in airplanes if you are flying through a computer uh you're not going to get the same feedback and feel as if you're flying you know almost directly link to the controls so I can't say I ever really really L flying the tornado I enjoyed operating it but flying it no it wasn't a pilot's Delight uh friends of mine I did have one trip in the lightning which I thought was a PO um friend of mine in Singapore said come on we'll go up and we'll show you what the lightning did and and uh that was that was just a blast from start to finish literally a blast um and I had to trip in an F-16 now again you've got two aircraft very similar rols air defense close air support that sort of stuff um oh sorry combat and the F-16 yeah with a little side stick there n couldn't take to just felt that I wasn't in control uh I enjoyed it don't get me wrong it was a lovely lovely airplane to fly but the lightning you know you are connected to everything and it it just makes you know you make it do what you want to do so there we are that's uh that's about most things are FL by gun this takes me back the smell oh it's just got a smell all of its own it's gorgeous maybe it's old bits of leather or all bits of charred wiring or I don't know the thing about the hunter was that when they introduce a mod you would have a panel here which which would have switches which would be added you know as a post mod and it could have up for rockets and down for judges and fuel tanks and on the next aircraft you could have up for judges and fuel tanks and down for rockets and there been quite a few times on the Range where guys have have selected what they thought was Rockets press the pickle button and fuel tanks dropped off so the hunter became a bit of an ergonomic nightmare but it was a wonderful air as I say it big limitation was fuel uh especially without the slipper tanks and there was a very um sad case you I think it was the late 50s where uh a squad in the hunds were going back to an East anglian Airfield the weather was poor uh they couldn't get in I think it was West Ram actually and they had to divert well I think eight of them diverted um six crashed and one guy died and it was known as Black Friday and it's one of the worst days in the Air Force so but as you can see it's got no naads at all in there I'm just looking around it's got all the standard flying instrument panel it's got a compass which is nice it would have had a stopwatch there a Monte Carlo stopwatch and basically navigation um was just Compass speed watch and map and that's all you did and you just flew around um at low level just with a very primary and basic um in instruments using techniques which which go back to sailing days um but I know someone uh a chap in Australia was asking how do you navigate uh a lowlevel aircraft on your own at those sort of speeds well you're doing in this aircraft about 420 knots at low level uh which is 7 m a minute which is quick but the thing is you don't start at 7 m a minute you start on a chipmunk which is 90 knots M and a half a minute and then you go into the jet PRS which is probably 4 m a minute then you go on the hawk which is probably 6 m a minute uh maybe 7 mes a minute and then you come on to the hunter which may be seven and then later and of course in the typhoon or sorry in the uh tornado you could be doing a lot a lot quicker as much as 9 m a minute something like that so you start off slowly like riding a bike like ice skating whatever it's a skill you learn the other thing is as you get faster you look for bigger objects ahead so instead of looking for a farm a mile or two ahead you're looking for a mast maybe 5 Six Miles Ahead uh so you're looking for big objects hopefully with some vertical extent something that's fairly unique if you got an area with a lot of MKS then you don't choose a mask you might choose a railway Junction or a lake or something like that and from that major point you can then say from that Lake I can find a river intersection from that River intersection I can then find um a Bridge or a railway Crossing whatever and that's my target for the day so you start off big and you and you like cone it in until you're down to the very narrow stuff now mental dead reckoning is something you get used to there are tricks of the trade using the one in 60 rule so if you're a mile off in 30 Mi you know what the error is you know how to correct and that's probably because the wind error so you correct for that in the opposite direction one thing which I I know I told you about was flying against US Navy and their f-14s and their Fs in March '89 we went out with a Detachment from the ocu of tornadoes to aeran Cyprus and we were there for our uh APC Armen and practice Camp uh where we learned uh to qualify uh NATO standard on the gun uh and so we went out there while we were there often we were get in touch with with the US Navy headquarters and say do you want to do some dis similar combat with your guys off the carry and in '89 I think uh the USS Theodore Rosevelt was out there which is a big nimit class number four in its class called the big stick and uh that was out there and they said will you work with the f14s and f-18s so we said yeah we'll be delighted well um it was an unfair fight really the tornado four tornadoes against two of those f14s and two f-18s was never going to work uh our tactics were good and but the Americans obviously they had the Phoenix missile 100 m Over the Horizon uh vertical down Mac 5 U was going to wipe you out so we tried to ignore them or or agree the rules of combat were that once they had fired their Phoenix we would then close to close quarters and of course the F-18 was a wonderful Close Quarter aircraft and we held our own but wouldn't say with any any hugee success I feel a bit more disappointed about that flying than my navigator who who seems to remember it with slightly more Rose Colored Rose tinted uh spectacles than I do but the following year we went out in the April 90 with a Detachment of students cuz we were behind because of the bad weather so we went out with our students and while we were there we said to the US Navy would you like to do some more da and they said yes please 14s and 18s off the oh um Midway class um po Harbor that's right so we' got a Detachment the Hawks out with us um acting as targets uh which is a cost effective way of of generating extra targets so we went in what we known as mff mixed fighter Force so there would be two tornadoes and two Hawks one tornado with a hawk on its wing against 24s and 218s so day one we went in and what we would do is we would find the targets on our radar tell the Hawks where they were drive as fast as the Hawks could go till they were close and they could see the 14s and 18s once they were tally we would then plug in the burners far our Fox ones uh Sky Flash and we would run away safely to about 12 miles and then come back the Hawks bit I think the Hawks like a Jack Russell Terrier small tenacious aggressive and it was snapping at the hill Hills of the 14s and 18s and tying them up and of course the hawk had the um am9 lean ROM as well which which was a good weapon so it was getting its own share of kills we would then go out to 12 Mi turn around come back in lock up and in the Target designat box in the headup display if you could see the target it was a big Target therefore it was a 14 or an 18 if you couldn't see the target it was a hawk so you broke the lock and locked to one that you could see You'd then shoot that in the face with a with a fox one and then we'd run away bravely and do the same again so at the end of the day 40 to the Brits Americans lose terrific next day we decided the Americans wouldn't wouldn't wouldn't stick for this they would probably do something different so we decided Well I didn't decide but the uh Fred who was the qy in charge decided that we would come in 10 m split one Hawk one tornado 10 Mi apart rather than normally 3 to 5 Mi visually we were 10 Mi uh laterally separated and we would come in on a slight angle which meant whichever package the Americans turned towards they turned towards them and therefore the other package was free and they just came up behind him and shot him in the tail with their sers or whatever at the end of that day Brits for Americans NE tick in the Box go home day three new tactic Americans came up 10 mil split surprise surprise we were now 20 M split which meant that when the Americans then tried to commit to package J or package B the other package was then free to go and wreak havoc in their 6:00 which is what we did again um again 4-0 to the Brits uh uh and that was a much better Detachment the the big thing about the Americans is and I was saying in this book I'm writing the the the Russians is that they're very much more constrained to the tactics that they brief they don't um think as freely or they're not as allowed uh not not allowed to be as maneuverable and and tactical incline as the Brits were um uh and so although they were on a steep learning curve we were one step ahead of him all the time so of course Friday night we went we landed 40 so that was what 12 n for the week we went to the bar and um infused our students with Tales of Daring Do and of course the bar beer the Americans dry ship they lose again don't they so I'd rather be in the Royal Air Force and who wants to land on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the night when it's blowing a gale no thank you so so that was um uh tactical um uh deployment um using dissimilar combat of course uh as NATO we flew against everything we flew against Mirage 3es Mirage uh bombers fives uh um oh I can't even think now everything that's in the inventory f-15s f-14s a10s f-111s do you know I'm a very lucky person I think anybody's who's flown in the Air Force whether it's helicopters or transport they've all got their Tales to tell they've all got their their pleasures of rescuing people or or taking Aid into uh relief into a country um anybody joins the military I I think um has got themselves a terrific career has not probably gone that way recently with things like Afghanistan which has brought a lot of the heartache and I appreciate there is a downside to every conflict but um me in particular and my fighter friends think we probably have the best of the Air Force and we are very lucky people indeed and I'm very grateful for having been allowed to do it you know you forced me to talk about the book which I'm very very reluctant to do um I know there are certain other authors that talk about nothing else but their book but my book is still a work in Pro progress at the moment uh it started about 20 23 years ago writing down a few sort of memories of what went on during my flying career sort of anecdotes ripping Yarns if you like uh and then I met um an author U who persuaded me to actually get more of a grip with it which I did and then um I put it on the back Bur and it was about 18 months ago when I uh left work that I decided it was time to get the book from off the backat boiler and uh get it going again so for the last 18 months I've been writing this book I'm up to about 105,000 words now which is good um they're just really extracts of of stories like you've heard today and a whole load more um which I've just put down in print uh with some nice photographs um done my friend of mine is in aviation uh photographer and um I did have a book deal going with a a major publishing company but when I saw the contract I thought it probably wasn't as Equitable as I would have liked so we've gone our own separate way so if there are any Publishers out there that um want a really good rattling read it's funny it's uh thrilling it's poignant in places when I start talking about people who are no longer with us or incidences that were really nasty um and um it's in about its fifth iteration at the moment it's started off um I think I'm about the sixth rewriting of it uh and the trouble is as I've saying to you earlier you put it down for a month you pick it up and you you read it again who wrote this rubbish you know um the English is poor but it's getting better slowly I've probably got two more rewrites before it's anywhere near ready to be sent to a publisher again seriously um uh and so that's what I'm working on at the moment so I normally have a Splurge for about 6 weeks about 5 hours a day then put it down for a month or two uh let my brain cool down go back and look at it with fresh eyes and start the whole whole process again I think we're just coming up to uh the X list at the moment which those of you who know the tornado Radars um wasn't a very good list so I've just got the Y and the Zed to go once I've done that then I'll either self-publish it or I've already put bits on Facebook on the Phantom and the tornado websites on Facebook and one or two other places um and it's been well received I've sent it to all sorts of people my dentist a farmer friend my son who was a teacher um even even even the ladies uh so I've tried to send it to a wide selection of people a lot lot of my military friends have read sections from and contributed as they remember things that I've forgotten so so I'm trying to appeal you've got Dave Gledhill who does the very excellent technical side with some with some Tails uh and then you've got other books which I won't mention the authors but they're a bit sort of Flowery a bit poetic a bit prosaic mine is sort of the sort of stories you would tell after a couple of beers in the bar on a Friday night when you go do you remember when we were doing this so I'm hoping it'll it it will meet both both needs um and um yeah I've also put a lot of technical stuff in it started off at about 70,000 um but I decided it needed some more technical stuff for the Enthusiast so I've taken that in two directions a bit more about the aircraft and the missiles and what they're capable of um and also a bit more about the Cold War cuz as I was writing it towards the end I suddenly realized what a massive thing the Cold War was really even though we trained for every day of the week with that exercises uh and so on um you you sort of blotted a lot of it out really it's the only way you could survive but of course the Cold War was there it was the the elephant in the room every day all day um 24/7 certainly when you were on qra it was uh and and so I've put a lot more about the Cold War in and the implications of that so that's the book I'm sorry you had to force me to to to part with that but there you are I hope it'll be out or certainly find a publisher in the AU and I was hoping for Christmas but that's too soon so maybe maybe Easter next year buy one I'm a member of the uh Royal National Life boat Institute uh institution and I'm an opt manager for them bit like being QA Commander I'm on the end of a a pager and when a 999 call comes in they speak to the Coast Guard who then Pages me I speak to the the Coast Guard directly and then I give him permission to send the page out to the rest of the crew uh as to which boat we're going to launch whether we're going to launch the the big boat or the inore uh and then once that boat's launched I go down and I do the management side of things the paperwork keep an eye on the weather keep an eye um on the early days about where we're going to go and refuel so that takes up sometimes if we're shorthanded as we were a couple of months ago two three 4 days a week now we've got almost back to a full compliment uh and so it's probably one or two days a week um 24-hour shift you know on on the pager so I do that I've got five dogs uh four jet Russell uh who are laugh and a labrador use soft thing she she runs around other dogs barking to distract their attention while the jack russell get stuck in and nip it their High leg so that takes a lot of walking um I play a bit of golf uh occasionally I gave it up for a long time but I just started again uh I play table tennis twice a week now because I was just um yes I had to lose a bit of weight so I play table tennis um I was very involved for the church for many years I still am to an extent um uh and so basically you know I've tried to fit in with a local community in North Wales um and so yeah and of course I got family as well that take up some of that time and I love reading do L reading do you have a favorite tip favorite Tipper oh yes oh yes I love real I love uh Jennings best bitter I love Timothy Taylor landlord if anybody from Timothy Taylor's watching I'll send you my post code cuz you know there's a plug uh I like bait's from Lincoln ship some of their beers were fabulous so yes I like Realo and um there's been a couple of breweries have started in your CL since I've been here which which uh which a brilliant brilliant yeah to chose any what would be do you know it's funny um I was thinking about uh one of the things I did that when I decided that I was going to join the Air Force and leave the police force um whether they were trying to persuade me to stay in or what I don't know but my last 3 months I was AED to C which was a completely different to the rest of the police force un regimented both in uniform and in attitude and I think C was more like dealing with their crew uh than than anything dealing with my normal Bobby and I think I would have probably wanted to go back into the police force at one stage they were looking for uh superintendence in Hong Kong um for with people with ex service commissions and I seriously thought about going out to Hong Kong as a Police Superintendent um cuz I love Hong Kong as well and I thought yeah this this could be this could be fun dealing with the drug Triads and that sort of stuff boys own stuff but I had a family of them so I didn't go so yeah I probably would have gone back into the police force cuz it's a good life uh it's an honorable life in the main uh and I enjoy the the freedom and the flexibility of C yeah so do you ever get sick and talking about Aviation no I don't no once it's in your bloodstream it's uh like hepatitis C or something you can't get rid of it it lingers with you till death um and so although a lot of my friends at the moment are civilian well I call civilians they're not Aviation people uh I still talk to my some of my friends on Facebook uh and occasionally we get together in reunions and go down the pub and have few bears and of course the sole topic of conversation is flying and incidences and accidents so no I love talking about flying I wish I could do more of it but um sadly uh my wife is born to death it so I don't do a lot of it at home that's for sure thank [Applause] you

Channel: Aircrew Interview

Views: 26,228

Keywords: RAF, Tornado F3, author, interview, aviation, Hawker Hunter (Aircraft Model), Royal Air Force (Armed Force), Book, Flying, Hawker Aircraft (Aircraft Manufacturer), Footage, English Electric Canberra (Aircraft Model), Fighter Pilot (Profession), Pilot (Profession), McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II (Aircraft Model), phantom, Panvia tornado, Aircraft museum, Grumman F-14 Tomcat (Aircraft Model), Panvia, pilot interview, Hawker hunter pilot, hawker hunter interview, aircrew interview

Id: YZ81X-c4Oyk

Length: 47min 17sec (2837 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 18 2015