Interview with Tony "Pax" Paxton on the Tornado GR1 & F2/F3

[Music] I am like and welcome to Edgar interview this episode we chat with Tony Paxson on his time to find the tornado gr1 and f2 and f3 he me only chats about the differences between the two no saws rules on both air defense and air-to-ground so if you like what we do here head over to patreon calm or slash acronym you help us out for as little as $1 per month also visitors at air creative new TV fall of our world interviews and to sign up to our newsletter enjoy [Music] well it was when I was seven years old we're on holiday down in Colville and my father said shall we go to the Scilly Isles and we didn't fancy the boat because both he and I suffer from travel sickness and from sin just Airport which is Lands End you could go in a de Havilland dragon Rapide and that was my first ever flight out to the serials and I loved every second of it I was seven years old and we had a day in some marries and then flew back and that was it I was hooked I joined the RAF in 1968 I was lucky enough to learn to fly while I was still at school well I didn't fly any piston engine airplanes while I was in the Royal Air Force because I already had a PBL it straight home to the jet Provost Mach three and then four then from there down to volley to fly the gnat for various reasons I ended up holding on the gnat as well so quite unusual for a non-key fi I got nearly 250 hours flying than that from the nap we went to Shyvana on the hunter which was quite exciting because it was the first single seater plane he'd ever flown and of course him it was used as a trainer them it it had been a front my fighter and that was quite exciting and that was just weaponry and tactics finished there in summer of 1972 and then we're not to coal to shore to learn how to fly the Lightning delighted because in those days we were expecting new aeroplanes we were expecting they have been expecting tears are too and that got delayed and though there was the f-111 and that didn't happen phantoms were going to come but we didn't have the airplanes and so people going through fast jet training weren't getting fast jet postings so I went through was said other guys through the NAT training and we only got too fast yet postings one to Harriers and one to lightning so consider myself very lucky to get fast yes at all it wasn't really an issue because there is no sound barrier that's a myth from the the movies of the 50s it's just a indication on a dial and so the main thing with the lightning was the all the instrumentation as far as speed and height was concerned was designed for when the airplane was supersonic and so you have a massive health meter error as you approached Mac one it's so much so that it was your Mac number +2 was the error so Mac point nine and two is 1104 error in the altimeter and then as you went supersonic they asked me to wound up to to read accurately doesn't sound too bad but when you were down at 500 feet at night over the sea with the altimeter reading and negative I can get your attention it was a lovely airplane to fly it was actually a very easy airplane to fly once one got used to the approach speed which was a hundred and sixty-five knots coming down the glide path what was difficult with the lightning was operating it because it was a single-seater day/night radar the radar controller had 14 separate controls or to be manipulated with your left hand whilst you're trying to fly the airplane it did have a fairly decent autopilot in fact it would do an auto ILS would you believe at 4 in 1960s airplane wouldn't auto land but it would do quite a good approach it's a much maligned airplane for two reasons is it's got a reputation for only having half an hour's fuel and it was under armed if you like except I only had two missiles the early marks at which I flew in Germany the FTA had two guns and then they in their wisdom the government and the mo D decided that guns were no longer required there would never be any more dogfights so the mark three and mark six were designed just to have two missiles of course eventually they realize no you are gonna have to dogfight at some stage if you get into into hostilities and the mark six has two Aden cannons in the front of the fuel tank which poses a couple of problems cooling tanks with calling guns rather with fuel seems a bit hazardous the other thing is that the guns are a long way from pilots eyeline whereas the marked array if you imagine this were a lightning cockpit mark one and the Toria the guns were just here just behind you so the the difference between sight line of the pilot and the actual muzzles of the gun was only about two feet or so in the mark six with the guns in the belly tank it was nearly eight feet which of course and adds all sorts of problems to the to the sighting solution I did thoroughly enjoyed it it was a great airplane to fly then the environment was cramped and hot and the view over the one shoulder wasn't terribly good but it was a delight to fly and a very capable airplane we were we had a thing in Germany called dialer lightning which was as a number that all the NATO squadrons in Germany had and if they wanted us to bounce them they called tell us roughly where they were going to be and off we go it was a very successful thing and we were fine until the f-15s arrived yeah in fact when they first arrived if it - v2 or four before we actually did very well because had a great airplane but they didn't have much in we're tactics yeah one on one forget it absolutely forget it I remember the first time I got behind fifteen we just bring in the sight to bear and then I didn't actually see it turn it just seemed to change shape and come back at me for so packs then you moved on to the toilet or how did this happen well the Lightning was coming to the end of its in-service life and I really didn't want to go and fly the f4 on their defense so I thought well how about a new airplane I didn't fancy camping so I didn't want to go to the Harrier and tornado was coming along I'll give this mob moving marker a try and fly a new airplane so that's how I got into that was a common to go from air to air not very some guys had gone from the Lightning to the Jaguar and a few of us did go on to the gerawan in those early days but no it wasn't common obviously must have been a massive difference coming from the Lightning to the tornado cockpit how did you get your head around that well it was rather pleasant for the cockpit it was a quiet environment it was temperature control was very very good and there was a huge amount of room very comfortable the biggest thing I had to get used to was the guy sitting in the back of course could you tell us about your first trip well you're asking me to remember back over 35 years now that I think I was impressed with as I say the quietness of the aeroplane it was nice crisp aeroplane that the controls was fine it was easy to fly very pleasant aeroplane there were some maintenance issues I'll talk a bit more about that later but no the instruction was good dip all the instructors were pretty well standardised between the three nations and although I looking in my logbook it was quite a few trips before you actually went off with an out for the first time I think it was eight or nine trips oh we did with an instructor pilot we did the basic conversion the emergencies of course because you had to be able to land the airplane with the wings stuck back in 67 which was an interesting approach and something like 210 knots I think was the approach to be formation so it's quite a lot before he actually went off with the first nav and you had to get used to the terrain following radar which was a whole new ballgame yeah so could you describe some of the training sorties he actually did and like how did you find it coming from air to air well we did a lot of low-level in the air defense world chasing the mudmovers so I was quite happy and confident down at low-level comfortable down there it didn't cause me any major problems just getting used to the Navigator getting used to crew cooperation working with him right instead of against him single-seat flying is absolutely lovely but if we need to go to war you really want that guy the extra pair of eyes in fact I did suggest they really should have the seat facing backwards but I didn't go down too well I did when we got to the squadron in fact that was quite unusual I think with a mudmover normally you drop maybe half a dozen thousand pounders during a tour while we dropped dozens of them because we were sort of an extension of a trials unit if you like and I must have dropped a dozen or 15,000 pounders in the first year flying the airplane on the squadron but I dropped four for a photograph for a publicity photograph for BAE thousand pounders we used to go up to Garvey for the live thousand pounders yep there's an island off the north coast of Scotland called Garvey Island and is a proper range and the island is about the same size of the Navy destroyer and so a thousand pound as it dropped off mates had a lot of bombs on it so the aircraft at this stage was it actually combat ready always a quite new to the Air Force it was brand new I was privileged to be on the first-ever squadron out of all the three nations nine squadron was the first of all we had not problems with serviceability but as I understand it the Air Force when they bought the Phantom's they bought a spares package and they ended up with warehouse full of spares they never needed so there's a different strategy for the tornado the idea was we'd fly it see what was often going wrong and then buy the spares we needed and so the it was a bit frustrating those first year or so because quite often aeroplanes are unserviceable so he didn't have the spares but it was a great airplane to fly and of course I was not only learning to find new airplane I was learning a complete new job as well oh yeah so how long before you Sagat sent to your first important well I think we did about four months at trippity cut small and then three or four months on the south side of the airfield at Huntington before moving across to nine squad which were in hardened aircraft shelters it was new to us all because the airplanes weren't on the line so it was I would guess about a year from being told you're going on tornadoes report to north afternoon for the aeromedical training it's probably a year to go to the school so it was the main role of 9 squadron well we were strike attack no QRA four strike airplanes in the UK of course and the big thing was that we suddenly had an airplane that was all-weather capable for attack at low level and there is something quite eerie about flying around at night hands off with the hilltops going by in the late district it's a bit unnerving and there was an area in North Scotland where we could actually go and do it IMC as well it is in cloud low level on autopilot so did the air following read I did that work every time and was it was failsafe and it was very good in fact when we first got it was too good it was too sensitive and it's designed if it sees a big target I am a hill or a mast or anything like that it would fly you over it at whatever level you'd set and the lowest level was 200 feet and the highest was 1500 feet but it had a flaw in as much as if it saw a large return as in a lot of energy it would try and fly you over it so for instance if you're flying over a marshalling yard full of rails and metal coaches and locomotives it would see that as a hill and try and fly you over it so in the end they tweaked it and ended up with the sensitivity that was only 10% of the original well it was quite sufficient to know was yeah worked very well so going to the cockpit could you describe it for us and how long did it take you to get used to it we sweep well the cockpit was as said before very very comfortable had a head-up display and so all the flying was all the instrument flying was done head up and the speed attitude and everything was available head up they were all all the ped down instruments as well of course and right in the middle of the instrument panel was a moving map display which was absolutely magic and there were three settings you could either have an Airways chart for flying high level or a half million topographical map which was just like flying wrong with the map in your hand except it was down there and you had your accurate position and so you just fly along and you say oh there's an airfield ahead I'll go left ten degrees to avoid that there was a town over there we avoid that it was absolutely magical and completely new to me the head-up display was marvelous and it was not attitude most aeroplanes even modern airliners today you fly on attitude so on the approach you have to fly maybe three degrees nose-up or five degrees nose-up depending on the configuration but the tornado head-up display was flight path so if you wanted to go three degrees down you put the aircraft symbol three degrees down and you went three degrees down fly level whether it's at a hundred and fifty knots or five hundred and fifty knots aircraft symbol on the horizon and the instruments in Newfield level we did have one problem with it when we first got it which was the rady radio altimeter the display for the radio altimeter in the head-up display it was just numbers it was either plus or minus and if you were descending or climbing just the numbers just tumbled around and very difficult to work out what was going on so we went back to him said look we really do need a dial here so after a while the software have changed and we had a dial going round so you could tell which way it was moving in the rate at which it was movie as well which was much more comfortable you also flew the tornado in Germany could you tell us about this well I was lucky enough to be on the first ever squad and at Huntington and then they were setting up tornados in Germany at La Brock and brueggen and I was posted with a colleague of mine from nine stupid she was currently the chief of the Defence Staff and we were both like tenants and we were sent out to brueggen to set up 31 and in fact we were called desert times 31 designate because 31 Jaguar was still going and the Wing Commander OSI 31 was a navigator so I had the privilege of being the first ever tornado squirrel pilot on 31 scrubber and it was busy and frustrating work you know because you're Dez you're not 31 and no one really wanted to know and so we're trying to get this organized and get that organized and we're in the strange situation where steer and I would strap a tornado to our backside and go fly around at 250 feet for 20 knots to relax get away from it all well we were still strike attack but of course in Germany we had qra which was very different from air defence QRA because we're working to fly in peacetime never got airborne with a nuclear weapon in peacetime and it was a 15 minute readiness we're as good as where it was a five minute ready and been broken and Lucas all the UK air defense was a 10-minute radius and to be absolutely honest some of the guys didn't really take it that seriously the hooter would go and they run out maybe not completely dressed if you know what I mean get in and check in say oh I checked it in 3 minutes 10 seconds wasn't that good I said well yeah but were you strapped in did you have your a lifejacket on dude could your phone well we knew weren't going kidding but they we had target study to do all the time and I actually did what we go into a secure environment in a bunker and we were given a package the navigator and pilot sit down and look at the route and there will be bearing in mind this was actually when war who kicked off this the qra as opposed to a tactical phase and along the route there'd be a little note saying something like look left and the reason you were looking left because there might be a big bang and flash on the right and you didn't want to be blinded they're being satellite photographs of the target know that something and we I can't remember the exact amount I think we had to do for our study a month on the targets I was at brueggen for about 20 months just less than two years by that time I'd realized that mud moving wasn't really for me and I wanted to go back to our defense yeah and because I was an air defense qw I and I now had quite a bit of tornado experience I don't know if they were keen to have me but they were happy to have me so but they there wasn't really a slot coming up for me so I was lucky enough to go to cots more as an instructor there which was a great time I really enjoyed that it's going back a bit and boy any flag exercises yep I last during my last month on 31 at brueggen we were out in Nellis near Las Vegas for exercise green flag yeah which was quite an experience as well there's an area of desert there where no one is allowed in apart from the green flag participants all the red flag the difference between red flag and green flag is that green flag is heavily involved with electronic countermeasures whereas red flag there's very little of that in comparison yeah and I remember once we were I was an eighth ship need of them we were going into wards to target an eighth ship of tornadoes down at about 200 feet doing 500 knots because we were just about to cross the flotte which is forward line own troops and so you want to get across there quickly and timed perfectly timed to go in with us was a EF treble one Raven and we were doing 500 knots at low level and this Raven came across the top of us wings back as if we were standing still I don't know what speed he was doing but perfectly timed just as we crossed that line he was there going in jamming ahead of us he was having wings back at us oh yeah some of the strengths and weaknesses of the GR one I think it's main strength was that it was comfortable so the crews were happy it was very capable it had very accurate navigation system with multiple ways to fix the kit as the Harrier guys would call it it could be fixed by the radar guy was something prominent the weapon accuracy was very very good you could use offsets radar offsets or visual offsets to drop weapons for instance a strike delivery for a nuke or even conventional thousand pounders if you didn't want to go too close to the target you could find an offset on the map which could be anything up to about 10 miles away if you knew where that was and you knew exactly in terms of northings eastings and the height difference where the target was you could put that into the computer which people would laugh at now there is a capability in this computer 64 bits anyway you could put the the offset in mark that either visually on the radar and the computer will work out when to pull up and you could pull up the air I think we started at 500 knots and you just follow the directions in the head-up display and the weapon would release automatically and then you could turn and go away particularly if it's a nuke you want to get out the way very very quickly and we were getting accuracies in terms of 50 60 feet that sort of delivery which is quite remarkable because if you think of the wind the computer only knows the wind when you either flying low or when we release the weapon of course it's going to go up into different winds that was very impressive and the TF of course the terrain following that was impressive as well it was a very similar may have been the same system as was in the F double one I know that ground mapping radar was the same but it wasn't quite as quite as good as that you know as the F double and the Americans weren't going to let us have a standard AK it they had that well it was fantastic actually it was very good there was a great social life we were training RAF pilots and navigators pilots and navigators for the Italian Air Force and pilots and navigators to the German air force and German Navy so there actually four forces involved although none of the three nations of course there hadn't been very many navigators if any in the Italian Air Force or the German air force and so quite a few of the navs were actually pilots who've been re mustard which they weren't very happy about but I was instructor on a squadron which was commanded by a German major a mix of students and pilots but I remember two students in particular one was a Italian pilot called Sergio and it was his first tour he'd just come out of training and they'd both been trained in the States and we were flying in formation one day they'd been come from Arizona and come on to the tornado hadn't it I don't think they'd even been back to it to me they'd just come straight across and we used to do formation approaches 1 speaking unit so very close formation we were going downwind for a GC a ground controlled approach which is like an ILS but you talked down by the controller anyway we're number two sitting on the wing of this I'm in the back and surgery of course is in the front understood the Italian voice says yes sir yes sir yeah he said there is a cloud add I said yes sir sure he said sir we are going to go into the cloud said yesterday that's why we're in formation okay because coming from Arizona had seemed very little poor weather he was very good actually a very very good guy and the German nav was quite funny as wrong they'd trained in the states that they tracked had a Boeing 737 over there with tornado rear cockpits in I don't know how many four or five down the back and so he he was actually very good using the nav system very good at it and we were going high-low one day up to Scotland and we were crossing the Great Glen it was a glorious day we were about 24,000 feet and you could see the whole of the Great Glen right down from la colline you all the way up to Inverness it was absolutely lovely anyway I said to him Mike I remember his name I said so where are we I'm watching in the mirrors and he goes to the TV tab displayed says 23 miles from very point Charlie awesome we I know that but where are we look out get your chart out look out at what you can see on the ground and tell me where are we so I look in the mirror and you go back to the TV tablet oh yeah 19 miles from very foreign Charlie no look at the ground look at the chart match the two where are we I mean we're crossing the Great Glen it's pretty easy question to answer so same thing again head right head left back to the chart back to the TV tab yeah 14 miles from the very point bro so in the owners right turn the TV tabs off his eye huh turn them off no no I know he's right don't worry you haven't failed this trip I'm going to show you how to navigate I rolled it on its back and flew him around Scotland for 45 minutes at low level on a map and a thumb and he was absolutely amazed how did you do that well how do you think we used to do it before we have the tornado it wasn't his fault it was just the way that he had been trained did you enjoy your time energy I want I did it was a different experience it broadened my experience obviously and it got me used to flying with her with a navigator it also gave me the chance to do some more training because triple te was the only place in the Air Force where you could train other pilots without being a qfi qualified weapons instructor because the Italians and the Germans had this IP qualification instructor pilot I did a 10-day course called competent to instruct and I was able to instruct other pilots on how to fly the tornado but it was a qualification that I lost as soon as I left because you had to be a cure if I to do any pilot training otherwise in the Air Force but now I did so I really enjoy it but I was happy to get back to our defense there was a fundamental difference between mob moving in our defense strike attack the target is always on the ground it's generally stationary and it's there when you get was three hours before you took off when you started the planning the other thing is everyth dearly everything in strike attack happens behind you you drop a weapon and it goes off behind you or you throw loft you disappear and it goes off behind you nearly everything in air defense is out the front absolutely and the other thing is you get scrambled that's all you know scramble vector this heading climb to this level you don't know what you've got to do you might have to go high you might have to go low it might be fast it might be slow you might have to kill it identify it shadow it or escort it might be something in in distress so the variety in air defense is what appealed to me I did enjoy the mud moving but it was very limited the other thing is you in bad weather particularly at low level the mudmovers don't go yeah whereas as long as the weather is good enough to land air defenders were always so then went back to air defense how did this happen well I was a qualified weapons instructor on the Lightning when I left the lightning force so I had a qualification which was valuable to the air defense world and by this time I had over a thousand hours experience on the airframe so with the f2 then f3 coming and I think it was useful for me to go back and apply both sets of experience to the air defence role how much training table well actually for training on to the flying the airplane was very quick of the seer I had plenty of time on it getting used to the weapon system and all my air defence flying have been single-seat of course apart from when I was instructing in the t-bird so again I had to get used to doing it rather differently with the Navigator having complete control of the radar but it didn't take too long at the time we didn't have a tornado f3 simulator at Coningsby we did have a trainer for the radar which was called the Tait the Teredo air intercept trainer and we use that we have procedures trainer for emergencies and all the rest was done on the airplane then we had a few f2 s I think though less than 20 were built I think they have to is they rapidly moved on to the f3 so I flew the f2 a few times whilst I was on the OCU which I've been on before funnily enough twice two to nine OCU was where I flew hunters at Shivan ER and 65 squadron which was the reserve plate who had been the squadron I flew at coltish hold on to to 6oc or the lightning so I've been on both outfits before we did quite a varied lot of training actually we've learned to fly the airplane learn to use the radar and then went out to decima mano for the ACM I rains out there which is the air combat maneuvering instrumentation range and did dact with f-16s and Jaguars and phantoms whilst we were on the course that was quite interesting and then back to Coningsby and we actually did air-to-air gunnery on the course as well and the gun was very good very accurate the system was very good and I think everyone qualified in matter of two or three sorties so that was very good and there was a strange anomaly whilst I was there because I'd been an instrument rating examiner on the tornado gr1 and it's an anomaly of the system where one is an examiner on a type not a mark and so whilst I was still a student on the course I was actually doing his front rating exams on other students to help them out because it was a new airplane and they did the staff at the OSI you didn't have many instrument rating examiners so that was quite unusual for a student to do that famously it had the blue circle radar was just just the f2 yes and in fact by the time we got there there were only three or four airplanes with with no radar in so it wasn't too much of a hindrance for us but I know when they first setting up the OCU and when the guys went through 429 squadron which was the first atv squadron they did have trouble with the concrete ballast yeah so coming from the g r1 what they're the first initial thoughts of there what were the differences basically well the airplane was very similar and the flying controls and the systems were all almost identical there was a much longer nose on the airplane for two main reason was to accommodate for sky flash on the belly of the airplane and the radar the radome was longer as well so the whole airplane I think was something like 50 inches long but nearly 5 feet long and that gave the opportunity to put an extra fuel tank in which was called the Oh tank just behind the navigator so it had quite a good endurance even clean we flew the airplane clean for a long time yeah a lot more the GR one I don't think it was actually it had a system called spills now I honestly don't remember if the airplane had it originally or it came later during the time I was flying it but suppose were has spin an instant limiting system which automatically was supposed to stop you spinning or stalling the airplane but being a fly-by-wire airplane it was easy to buy that into the software but every now and then you did get the idea at the limits of the envelope with you maybe weren't actually flying the airplane that was being flown for you which was a bit strange well I was on number 5 squadron at Connie Smith which was the score denied been on before as a lightning rod and at bin Brook and in fact the two squadrons were side-by-side in Brook 5 squadron of in Brook with the Lightning's and 5 squadron designate I suppose at Coningsby together for about five or six months I think and then eventually when we were combat ready the the 5 squadron Lightning disbanded we were it can you describe some of the training sortie well mostly once we were on the squadron I've already told you about the OSI you once you're on the squadron it was practice intercepts caps combat air patrols and high-level low-level just the whole gamut as I said before the fundamental difference between their defensive love moving was he had to be able to cope with anything from sea level to 70,000 feet hundred lots to mach 3 and so constantly training for that sort of thing so obviously you flee the lightning on five what was was a big difference coming to the tornado could you see the capabilities were a lot better the radar was much more capable of course it had crack real sky much greater range had a look down capability and the aeroplane when we were flying it initially had six missiles as well for sky flash and two Sidewinders on the inboard of the inboard pylons the f3 didn't have the outboard pylons it only had the inboard pylons and so yes it was more capable from terms of radar and the weapons the semi-active sky flash could be fired very long range long before you got to what they called the merged when you actually get to see the targets visually however you can't really take a bomber and turn it into a fighter the tornado ADV was never a an air superiority fighter it was a bomber killer really great air display airplane superb power down at low level but take it anywhere about fifteen or twenty thousand feet and the Lightning would see it off easily no trouble at all so how did it fare in dact against there like the best sixteens on her 13th well it had to be tactics really you certainly couldn't hold your own against an f15 or f-16 in close combat it just wasn't that sort of airplane the it did turn well with the wings forward and full reheat but that was a huge penalty and in fuel whereas the Lightning you could fight fly fight it quite well in cold power certainly up to 20,000 feet or so only using the reheat when you needed it but as soon as you got above about 10,000 feet in the tornado you needed reheat all the time only on the lightning that's intercepted a bear on the Lightning on QRA on the tornado the only Russian I intercepted was a coot which is the transport airplane which the Russians it's a four-engine turboprop aeroplane which I think the Russians are using for reconnaissance and surveillance / I think it was a naval exercise in the North Sea however I was lucky enough to intercept some mig-29s when they came to Farnborough in 1988 they were the first Russian fighters to come to the UK since the Second World War and it was deemed appropriate that we should go and meet them Oh somewhere over the English Channel and escorted them into Farnborough which was a great idea and we were clean had no tanks no weapons on the airplane so we didn't want to frighten them but we did have a tanker two of us we came off the tanker and went off to intercept these Russian MiGs now as I said earlier the tornado was not a high-level airplane and these makes were at 43,000 feet so in cold power because it's designed as an air superiority fighter so we got vectored onto them came around the back intercepted them but we were in almost full reheat to stay up there with him at 43,000 feet and luckily they were on a different frequency because the Russians didn't have UHF they only had VHF so we asked London military to invent an air traffic reason to get them down which they did they got them down to about 28,000 feet and then we were happy there lucky enough to get promoted while I was still on 5 squadron so I spent five or six months over born as a squadron leader on five and then went up to leaming to set up my fourth tornado miss Gordon from scratch 11 squadron rawdy up and running Italy me and we arrived 23 squadron as the second squadron a third came along later which was 25 so there were three squadrons actually looming well as the a flight commander OCA I was responsible for most of the pilots on the squadron OCB flight was responsible for most of the navs not entirely but that was the turn to because so Steve B was a navigator there was a Wing Commander boss was a pilot I as OCA was a pilot and OCB was a navigator we also had a weapons leader who was a squadron leader and a navigator who was a squad need a nap so there were five execs on this one and on top of that we had this one need a engineering officer quite a few elder Forest elder JAUS which were big air defense exercises also one of our jobs since the demise of the fixed-wing carriers was to defend the fleet at sea and so we got involved in quite a few maritime exercise as well where we caps combat air patrols overhead or near the fleet to protect them from any airborne attack well I did fly in the Gulf I didn't actually fly in the shooting war what happened when Saddam Hussein invaded Iraq I was actually an Air Display down in Cornwall that's a Morgan and in the middle of the afternoon there's a Wednesday if I remember rightly all of a sudden things started to to move and they stopped the display for a while and the Victor tanker that was there was dragged out of the static display and off he went and disappeared what's going on here and of course there were no mobile phones then so someone asked me to ring the squadron and he said ah right well Iraq of invaded Kuwait and it looks like we're going to have to go out and defend Saudi well Lebanon squadron were already on a PC out in Akrotiri and they went straight out to dark ran in Saudi Arabia as the initial people when I got back to Lima we were told that we'd be working up for what became Operation Granby or Desert Shield before the shooting started and after the shooting it was Desert Storm that was in the August and we've been told we've been asking for some time for chaff and flares and we've been told there was a new improved radar in the pipeline but we've been told it was a long way off so the next day I remember we were in an HS 125 being flown from leaming to cruise down to Dunsfold which everyone will know now from Top Gear Fame but then it was British Aerospace out there where they used to build the Harriers anyway we landed at Dunsfold in the taxi taken down to Shoreham which is near Brighton to a big building walked inside and there was a tornado f3 simulator in there what's this so well it's got the new radar in it you come down to Train the new radar that you're gonna have in the Gulf what new radar so anyway the two crews were trained up over a three or four day period on this new radar which was quite different much more capable don't ask me the specifics but I think the track well scan and the look down was a lot better from what I remember and also the ECM resilience was much better than the one we had so I asked for what why have you got this radar in this simulator down here is it now well it's actually it's for the Saudis they haven't got a building to put the simulator in yet it was supposed to go out last month we're just lucky it's still here so the Saudis we're going to gather more up to the heat radar than we had on the front line in the UK anyway having trained with it we went back to leaming and then we found that we've been asking for chaff and flares on the airplane I've been told no no no lead-in time of two years you can't have him yet there's not enough money can't possibly have that well they were on the airplane in just over 14 days and we were training with them and the back end of August I think of 28th 29th of August we went out to Darin to relieve 11 squadron people out there it was I was a flight commander on 23 at the time as I said but the squadron that went to Darwin initially was 11 desert Eagles commanded by OC 11 and it was a flight of crews from the 11 squadron flight of crews from 23 and a flight of crews from 25 Gordon went out there but we were known as 11 squadron Darin at the time and we were flying combat air patrols up on the Iraqi border we were out there until just before Christmas obviously saw no action but we did have some interesting moments we were on capp one day and my navigator had seen a target and it was nighttime actually a portal day and he called it to the the AWACS and said we've got a target crossing the border and this is all on secure radio and the controller in the AWACS said no you haven't and the Navigator was quite insistent said we have he said no you haven't oh okay so we surmised it was Special Forces helicopters or something like that crossing the border don't we most of those sorties were for four and a half hours with tanker support from VC tens at Bahrain fully armed all the time and when we weren't on cap we were doing training but again fully armed with live weapons and there were only two outfits who were trained with us the US Marines with their f-18s they were quite happy to join with us the US Air Force didn't want to know because we had live weapons and our own British Jagger's and tornados it was a very interesting time did a lot of flying then went back just before Christmas as I said I think we replaced by 43 who were there when it all kicked off in January but as karora latest at the end story if you like all the deep maintenance was done in UK so the airplanes had to be rotated from UK through darin as the months went by and I led a four-ship of tornados out to Darin to him to swap over and bring some back for maintenance on the day that the war ended and the ceasefire was over on the 28th of February which was exactly the moment that we took off from leaming and that was the longest flight I did in it today there are over nine hours direct leaving to darin we landed there we gave the airplanes to the squadron had a night sleep and then went back to you to you okay but because the engineering fraternity weren't comfortable about the wear the engines had had not just because of the lot of flying they've been doing but also that the sand in the desert and what was going on they were weren't confident about the nine-hour flight back so we staged rejecting the mono which was about five hours I think from Darwin Tedeschi and we landed there and we were fated by everyone on the ground oh you've just come from door around the war's over let me have a beer and we've got a barbecue organised for you because they thought we've been out there for the war they didn't realize we've gone out the day before so we didn't didn't enlighten them we just enjoyed their hospitality and the next day flew back to UK yes I did I enjoyed going back to the air defence environment very much as I said earlier on the challenges are different you don't know what's going to happen when you go I have to save for its role the gr1 was a much more capable airplane than the f3 I really much rather had something like an f15 or an f-14 for the air defence euk but we made the best of what we had and I think we did a pretty good job having said that it's notable that none of the f3 saw any action out in the Gulf I did yeah I did I got used to the two-seat environment realised that it was always good to have someone else helping you to operate the airplane it was a good time so that's what happened after you left the re f well bad timing I left in June June of 1991 which of course was just after the first Gulf War and British Airways had just bought Danny air for a pound and air Europe had just gone bust so there was a glut of very well qualified pilots out there guys with ratings on 737s and Airbus 320s I did have a ATPL license but my type was a little piston twin and so getting a job was never really going to happen at that stage so I ended up going out into Africa and I flew like twins in Africa for just on two years which was great fun a wonderful experience I thoroughly enjoyed it from Nairobi we used to fly to schedule services a day into the Masai Mara we did Flying Doctor work well we did aid work and charter work as well so it was great fun I did a lot of flying and some wonderful scenery lots of safaris and nights spent in the bush it was great fun well when I came back from Africa things were starting to pick up but it still wasn't easy to get a job so I did take the first one I was offered which was Boeing 727s flying cargo for hunting cargo airlines and the seven-two was a lovely aeroplane and I really thoroughly enjoyed that the airplanes were on the Irish Register funnily enough because although hunting was a British airline and there were already 72 sevens on the British register with done air or had been with Donna they had never had a cargo airplane and the CAA said well if you want to put a 727 with a cargo door on the register you're going to have to go through the whole certification process so hunting thought this is going to be silly so they set up hunting cargo airlines Island and they had Electra's and 727s we had ten seven to seven we worked for TNT and DHL and flew all over Europe the airline was sold to the South Africans and eventually became air contractors but the 727 was coming to the end of its life because of noise the airplane was still very capable with the regulations in Europe meant it could no longer fly because of the noise made by the jet engines and DHL had just bought 40 to 75 sevens from British Airways and half of them went on the Belgian register and the other half went on to the British register and the airline was based at East Midlands Airport and initially we were seconded from their contractors to DHL and then given the opportunity to leave one airline and join the other and I went straight into DHL some 5/7 of the captain and saw out the rest of my career that well I spent 23 years in the Air Force and I spent 23 years flying 7075 s and I'm hoping to spend 23 years flying general aviation their planes as well so classy hot well flying still we have a share in a light airplane and you Lana enjoy why she started a training and did eight solos so we share the flying and that's good fun I'm into photography and I've taken up gardening and a more proactive way than I used to I used to just be the labourer the loner would direct and I would dig rake or whatever but I've actually got a little rose garden now returned my trying to get to grips that is a very tricky question I've been lucky enough to fly lots of different types and I thoroughly enjoyed flying the tiger moth that was good fun and I thoroughly enjoyed the gnat when I was in training of the air force from civilian airplanes the 727 was great fun as well so it would have to be a choice between either the Tiger Moths the chipmunk is a light aeroplane the gnat as a fast yet if you like and a 727 but making a choice is a bit difficult I would very much like to affirm the f15 or the f-18 that would have been great and I did try to organize a trip in the front seat of a two-seat Spitfire but unfortunately that came to nothing elana did offer to buy me a backseat ride but if I'm going to fly I want to fly it's anyway no and thankfully people don't seem to get sick of me talking about it [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Aircrew Interview

Views: 48,526

Keywords: Tornado gr1, tornado gr4, tornado gr4 takeoff, tornado gr4 documentary, tornado gr4 cockpit, tornado gr4 fsx, tornado gr1 cockpit, tornado f3 flyby, tornado f3 cockpit, tornado gr1 fsx, panavia tornado documentary, tornado f3 top speed, aircrew interview, airshpow display 2017, tornado gr1 for sale, tornado gr1 walk around, tornado f3 walk around, typhoon display, raf lightning takeoff, tornado gr1 takeoff, riat 2017, aviation documentary

Id: DPCa1wsnjBM

Length: 57min 0sec (3420 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 30 2017