P-3 Orion - The Story of an Extraordinary Aircraft

well this is an Orion 03 sitting here at the Air Force Museum actually awaiting final assembly just been a couple of weeks putting the wings on which was done by Airbus coming down from woodbin that's been their [Music] task uh this airplane's probably the best airplane I've flown I think it was built as a pilot's airplane it would turn on a 6 bit you could pull 3G in it you felt almost Unworthy of wielding the capability of their iron it was a purely beautiful aircraft to fly they've performed a really important service in not only protecting our economic borders but saving countless lives in acirc rescue the one photo I have in my log book is 03 I couldn't think of a better airframe to have here it's got the most hours of all New Zealand p r and it has served us well fixed swing fly in Air Force has really been the herk and airon so to have a piece that is so representative of a significant error of the Air Force it's [Music] huge for me joining the Air Force my goal was to make it to the Orion I kind of saw the Orion as offering such Variety in the roles that it does anything from search and rescue which is some of the most rewarding work that you get to do in the IR but also the combat capabilities that it holds and there was a very varied role and that was quite attractive number five Squadron locky or Rion aircraft at tailor made for maritime surveillance New Zealand industry has refitted the aircraft with some of the most modern detection equipment in the world we had this amalgamation of what was a fairly rugged warhorse on the outside with a really sophisticated system in the back up front it still felt like you were thrown around the 1960s airplane that it was in late 65 early 66 the Air Force was embarking on a major upgrade program we were still flying essentially Second World War aircraft I was on five Squadron I was flying in the Sunderland flying boat at the time in a matter of minutes the Sunderland is off the deck and on its way to a very small island in a very large ocean while the sundland had spent a long time in the air it was painfully slow New Zealand's Maritime responsibilities extend north of the equator and down to the South Pole we are actually responsible for a vast amount of ocean in terms of search and rescue resue for monitoring what's going on in those areas the leading submarine power in the world today has many of these and is building more the Cold War was really warming up the Soviet Union at the time had a huge submarine Fleet and we needed some way of keeping tabs on that so we needed an aircraft that also had a capability to find and track the generations of submarines that were there at the time we needed an aircraft that could do that and the decision had been made that we would purchase five or the first thing we did was head off to San Diego where we went to anti-submarine Warfare school we then did a week of instrument flying and then we moved back up to Mofford field and that's where we actually started the flying training that was a real experience so get in this Arion Tex it to the end of the runway and the pilot who was in the right hand seat the American said you know go so set max power and off we went and my brain was still sitting on the tarmac you know and we were airborne and and we were Airborne at 115 knots you know rotate we were at the cruise speed of a Sunderland on liftoff know and this thing just continued to Exhilarate and I was just ended up so far behind this airlane but you know I was still trying to sort out getting the gear up when we were sort of halfway downwind and so I have to say I did not cover myself in glory on my first ever trip iner IR I just had to speed up the work rate to be able to cope with this thing that just at training weights would just you know was amazing it was powered by four Detroit Diesel which was the parent company Allison which was the maker of the engines t-56 turbo prop engines a environment giv your Instant Power both ways to stop you accelerating too much or to accelerate if you need it I produce about 5,200 shaft horsepower each but the aircraft mountings are only capable of absorbing 4,600 you had absolute excess of power there was even a graph in the natops manual for flying on one engine so you know they you some idea of what this aircraft was capable of it's robust it will take a hell of lot of punishment when we used to go around to antartic and do Deep South patrols and roaring you around roaring 40s and that sort of stuff traditionally we put about I think it was about 9 or 12 counts average on a flight on RG meters and that sort of thing we put 2,000 counts on it it's very tactile very hands and feet driven you can really feel what you're asking the airplane to do and that's quite a nice feeling as a pilot it was fast so we could do over 400 knots we could accelerate very quickly we could out accelerate an A4 so it was an incredibly capable aircraft getting it off the planet wasn't the hardest bit putting it back on wasn't to much fun something like 80% of the wing is Sweat by the prop wash so you needed quite a bit of coordination between thrust reduction and uh pitch control to put it back on and wasn't the most forgiving airplane to put back on luckily had plenty of advice from the other 10 guys on the crew about how to do it in the front there is a massive radar and a similar one in the rear underneath the Mad boom so these two Radars operated in sync with each other so as far as their radar operator was concerned he just saw one sweep go around mad boom magnetic anomaly detector it can detect a submarine under the water that lives inside of the tail there often referred to as the Stinger it has to be right at the back of the aircraft so that the aircraft's magnetic field doesn't influence it when it's hunting out there and looking for steel or furus irons below the sea back in 1966 submarines were mostly conventional submarines they ran diesels and when they would start a diesel we could hear that for 60 Mi so we could surveil an extensive patch of water with list devices [Music] here's the Bombay for the Orion and it starts at this point here and stretches right back to here when it flies with the Bombay open it makes a lovely howling sound too us still love that on beat ups and flybys the lower rack would be fitted with like four depth charges the idea was to get two relatively close to a submarine and the underwater shock would be enough to split them in half or at least knock his instruments out completely such that he could no longer do his job the upper wreck carried Torpedoes and these were homing Torpedoes quite apart from its War load we also carried life-saving equipment in the Bombay we could throw medical supplies and all sorts of things out the back door which we did routinely it really took the whole crew compliment to actually put together a successful outcome on the P3 it wasn't just a couple of bus drivers and then a few people running some sensors down the back that relied on the cohesion to get a huge amount out of it even just flying it let alone operating it so here we can see NZ 4203 is mentioned as one of the aircraft evolved in the Queen's birthday Rescue of 1994 Quinn's birthday weekend is the characteristic weekend where the fleet leaves from New Zealand to head up to the the islands for the season the development of this balb was was quite sudden unfortunately this thing moved in a way which wasn't predictable moved down on top of the fleet in in a way which no one could predict the swaye of the storm was quite narrow it just picked up probably about seven or eight boats there was a breaking sea that hit us and picked the boat up and and and rolled us down and dismasted us we went upside down 30 times flew across a fist boat about four times before I could see it was blowing probably about uh 90 knots sea Stak was in excess of 12 at that stage we knew then that there's very little chance of my wife was going to get to them in a hurry so we sort of just provided emotional support to the lady Paula got pretty hectic um who do I call over uh you can call us anything you want uh by is Bruce or Mike is my technical coordinator in the back or you can just call us kiwi or whatever you like there were two or three other boats by that stage and in considerable trouble and we're trying to look for a boat called quartermaster um which we couldn't find and then we went and found quarter Master's life raft and had a look at that and realized it was empty yeah options started to run out that's when the discussion was here amongst us all eerb we've got an eerb or would there be a response we we really didn't know we had no idea you know and for that Ry to you know those guys to be on board and and turn up there and checking on us um yeah that was that was that was pretty important to our mindset of the time and the thing with this is that everyone part part sit sideways down the back right so it's like sitting in and cold coffin rolling around them so they were pretty unwell boys in the back oh were they oh yeah come yeah I never realize the number of crew that are on board those planes it's so there's a lot of people putting their lives on the line you to come out and and you know and help us so here we've got the commanding officers comments at the time it was remarkable that 21 people were rescued and only three lives were lost I certainly wouldn't have a jet in the environment we put that in gives you lots of options in terms of high level lowlevel and endurance [Music] few years ago now the pH item was selected to replace the Ron I think it's certainly been a big change going to an airplane that you don't have to fold the stairs out yourself uh you don't have a big deep fryer down the back um but you also don't have ashtrays and you don't have pencil sharpers and um and you have a flushing toilet so there's quite a bit of technological advancement along the way I got along to the retirement dinner everyone shared the same sentiment and it's hard to understand how people can be so emotionally attached to a flying Hunker middle but carried a lot of people together brought a lot of people together and saved a few lives along the way what's it like being reunited again oh it's so lovely actually I love to see it back here now um beautiful aircraft deserves to be here this particular one as well we got a 56y old airframe here and it's still in remarkably Nice condition I love to see that that's for sure I don't think anyone could have estimated uh just how many lives that would impact um not only in a search and rescue context but also all of the jobs that it does for New Zealand um you know Fisheries Customs holding that kind of redundant combat capability as well I don't think anyone would have thought you'd get as much out of it as as you have as a capability yeah [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Air Force Museum of New Zealand

Views: 19,705

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Id: IFzp9YtA-2Y

Length: 13min 36sec (816 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2024