Royal Navy Buccaneer | with Tom Eeles (Part 1)

welcome to every interview I'm making your host and this is part one of our interview with former Buccaneer pilot Tom eels in this episode tom chats about what it was like to fly and handle the aircraft living in the operating from a carrier what weapon is Lord the Buccaneer could carry and much more if you enjoy our videos and podcasts and would like us to continue putting our regular quality content head over to patreon comm forward slash aircrew interview where you can donate monthly and in return you will get rewards ranging from early interview viewings bonus clips credited as of a juicer and much more thank you and enjoy so Tom when did you first become interested in aviation when I was about six or seven years old because my father was an RAF officer he was the station commander at RAF Thorney Island in Sussex home to two squadrons of meteor f Falls cutting-edge technology of the time and we lived right on the edge of the airfield jet fighters all over the place I never wanted to do anything else other than fly them so what air year did you join the RAF and can you tell us some of the aircraft we started training on I joined the RAF in 1960 as a flight cadet at the Royal Air Force College Cranwell it was a three year course in those days and for the first year there was no formal flying training at all but you did get a little bit of air experience flying in the chipmunk once a week and if you were lucky and had a flying instructor with you you could sit in the front and be taught actually how to fly so I was lucky I managed to get flying instructors and I went solo in the chipmunk off the grass airfield at cranville in my first year after about seven and a half hours training second and third years we trained on the jet Provost up to wings standard the mark 3 and the mark 4 so at the end of the three years not only did we get our wings but we also got a degree from an external universe Wow so that was quite a hard challenge to do both I can imagine so what was your first front-line aircraft first front-line aircraft was actually the Canberra the b8 the one with a little bubble canopy based in Germany in the nuclear strike and conventional ground attack role armed with four 20 millimeter cannon thousand pound bombs and a great big American based nuclear weapon so what was a camera like to fly camera was very nice it's very straightforward airplane and very simple no powered flying controls nothing like that very honest airplane the only time it could bite you was if you got too slow with too much power on in a symmetric flight and then you lost control airplane would roll over and that was probably the end yeah so how long do you spend on the camera I spent nearly two years in Canberra in Germany and did you enjoy that too it enjoyed it up to a point we were lucky and that we were deployed out to Singapore to the Far East where we lived for five months under canvas at a remote airfield in Malaya bolstering up Far East Air Force during the Indonesian concentration that was tremendous that was purely in the conventional ground-attack role and that was fantastic fun when I got back it was a little bit boring compared to what identity yeah and that's when I made the change mm-hmm yeah so obviously we're here to talk about that your time on the bookaneer with the Royal Navy tell us how this air exchange came about a signal came around the squadrons one day in nineteen eight 1965 saying looking for volunteers to go and fly with the Royal Navy on loan to the Royal Navy Buccaneer or sea vixen naturally being a strike pilot I was a Buccaneer man so in spite of everybody on the squadron thinking I was completely mad I applied to go to the Navy and my application was accepted Wow so what were your first thoughts of the bookaneer arriving on the Buccaneer up at Los seemeth 1966 it was streets ahead of the Canberra in fact it was streets ahead of anything the Royal Air Force had a good time yeah a fantastic aeroplane amazing design very big airplane nearly as big as a Canberra is looking to operate from an aircraft carrier the course itself actually flying the aeroplane was fairly straightforward because I've got six seven hundred hours of front-line flying already the big challenge of course was hard to get it to land on an aircraft carrier and of course the handling technique was totally different to the handling technique which I had spent nearly 800 hours now learning how to fly the old technique is to point the aeroplane with the control column at where you want it to land on the runway and adjust its speed with the power that does not work on an aircraft carrier it's the other way round you have to adjust the speed with the control column so that you hold a nice constant steady speed and you adjust the glide slope with your left hand on the throttles and that gets you into the right place at the right speed but that took a little bit of learning however once we mastered that didn't have a further problem let's just go back a bit sort what was the ground training light coming from the camera was it very similar very similar there was a simulator for the Buccaneer but only a simulator for the mark one version of the Buccaneer it was a very primitive simulator no visual fixed-base it was good for learning the procedures how to make the airplane work properly how to deal with the emergencies but as far as the handling was concerned forget it it didn't handle at all yeah there was no dual control version of the Buccaneer so there was no chance of getting airborne and being shown how to fly the airplane but I qualified flying instructor the only dual control airplane that we used was the hunter which had the Buccaneer instrumentation in the left hand seat so you could practice instrument flying but the handling of the hunter was completely different to the Buccaneer mm-hm so your first ever flight in a Buccaneer was your first solo Wow with a flying instructor in the back with no controls and minimal instrumentation and all he had was his gift of the gab to tell you what to do hopefully successfully and the learning curve was very steep as you can imagine yeah so where were you best for your ground training we did it all at Lossiemouth the operational conversion unit or operational flying squadron at 7:36 Naval Air Squadron was based off at Lossiemouth it was equipped with a mixture of mainly Mark 1 Buccaneers in 1966 because the mark 1 was still in front-line service on HMS eagle and a scattering a few mark 2 Buccaneers which were of course rolling off the production line at that time the mark 1 interestingly the mark 1 was a nice airplane to fly in some respects the mark 2 it handled better and it would actually it would actually go faster because of the small air intakes but the engines were terrible it was underpowered it was a major problem operating off ships because it just wasn't enough thrust the Jaron junior engines were terribly unreliable and once she lost one really you were going nowhere in amount one at a mark two with the Spay was fantastic but it did handle differently because of the big air intakes different center of gravity it was Justin it was a lovely airplane to fly but it wasn't quite as sweet if you like a smart one yeah when you were going when you were going at normal operating speeds so just on that what are the main differences between the Mach 1 and Mach 2 the mark two's main differences were spay turbofans instead of Jaron junior Jaron junior produced about 7,000 pounds ish of thrust without boundary layer control removed spay produced 11 and a half thousand pounds of thrust without boundary layer control so huge difference in thrust available the mark 2 had an improved electrical system an AC system which was much better than the mark ones and there were other minor refinements to the weapon system but really not a great deal of difference okay The Buccaneer too had extended wing tips as compared to the mark one and that caused a few problems in the years ahead which nobody knew about so essentially was this the same engine in the Phantom the spear was active yes now the same engine but unreal yeah so can you remember your first trip in a book in here your first flight yes and you explained what that was like Tom terrifying so can you tell this talk us through some of your initial training what kind of flying would you do there was it just basics or would you start with weapons for air where it followed a typical operational conversion unit learn to fly the airplane learn to navigate the airplane with your navigator in the back or observer in Royal Navy firms formation a little bit of close formation little bit of tactical formation we've done all that before so it's just what was lacking in Buccaneer quite a lot of weapons system work on tain and Rosati ranges so that you knew how the weapon system work then a few operational profiles perhaps bounced by the squadron's hunters something like that the big big difference though was two events one was going down to the royal aircraft establishment at bedford to be catapulted of the static steam catapult that was fitted there The Buccaneer launched from a catapult was hands-off you did not put your hands on the controls you set the tail plane angle to give you a little bit of a climb the aircraft was tensioned up in the flying attitude with the nose wheel off the deck you wound the airplane up to full power check that everything was satisfactory you put your hand up in the cockpit to indicate that you were happy to accept the launch and then you sat with your hand like that on your knee left hand fully braced to hold the throttle certain head back on the ejection seat the flight deck officer would drop the green flag two or three seconds later off you went naught to about 130 knots in 140 feet fairly impressive acceleration was that did that feel unnatural I had not been able to take control of the control column it felt strange but it worked yeah worked very well as soon as the aircraft was airborne I'm slowly accelerating away you gently took control and cleaned the aircraft up once it was going at a reasonable speed the reason for that was that the airplane was very sensitive in pitch right and if you over rotated the airplane off the catapult had a really low indicated airspeed you were going to stall spin crash die so catapult launch something completely new and then of course getting back on the ship we were during my course HMS Hermes arrived in the more Firth and so off we went to do deck landing practice no hook ons wasn't room for us on board yeah so just touching goes off the ship the day started badly for the squadron because a chap in a mark 1 Buccaneer suffered an engine failure turning around finals and they ejected so they came back by helicopter rather than by Buccaneer but we did two or three sessions of deck landing practice on armies and that effectively was that so yeah was it was it quite tough getting through that I mean guessing did you have like three landings you had to make two out of three or was it have you had to get to the point where commander on board would have said to you okay hook down right and that was a couple of sorties worth probably before you got that mm-hmm and it was a skill that you had to keep keep current we could practice to a degree on the airfield where there was a runway painted like the flight deck and a projector sight on the side of the road but it was completely different you had nine thousand feet of runway 200 feet wide which never moved it just didn't look the same as a carrier when you saw a carrier for the first time from the what they called the low weight it looked about the size of your thumbnail and you thought there's no way I'm gonna get back one with that but of course you had to do it what's essential yeah so can you remember your first landing on the carrier was that like was it her my first landing was on Victorious because by now I've joined this squadron which is based in Singapore the Christmas New Year period 1966 to 67 was spent by us bachelors in Singapore so we'll draw a veil over that activity but then we go the ship goes back out to sea and we we have to go and join it and we all flew out but as luck would have it or not have it the ship found itself in the one area of strong winds with a pitching deck and we did a little bit of we had a few goes but nobody got on board not even the experienced board so we all went back with our tails between our legs to Changi to wait for the next day next day lovely day calm sea no snacks having been told to put my hook down we just did another approach landing tremendous deceleration as soon as we stopped the ground crew are out in front of you indicating fold the wings hook up taxi off the landing area as quick as you can we were briefed if they taxi you over the side that's their fault it's not yours tax it into the parking area are thinking I've done it now normally when you when you land and you shut down on an airfield the world has sort of stopped moving in relative to you and you climb out of your aeroplane and everything's nice and still I'll never forget climbing out of my airplane coming down the ladder taking Mohammed off by now the ship is turning out of wind so the horizon is going past if you can imagine and it was so disorientating I had to clutch hold of the aircraft ladder to stop falling over so talking about they had been on the Navy on the ships and what was it life like in general and living conditions you know life on board HMS victorious was a world war two aircraft carrier that had the chop chop chop the top chopped off and a new top foot on so down below I'm the Neath number one day she's pure World War two the boardroom itself was recently comfortable there was a bar and easy chairs where you could sit and read the magazines newspapers remember this was a time when there was no internet no mobile phones nothing like that once sole communication with the outside world were ml letters which would arrive occasionally life was quite pleasant there my cabin was on six deck it well six q6 it was about the size of a large wardrobe it had one bunk a small bookcase one shelf to put a few books on and that was about it but we were all bachelors we didn't worry too much if we were flying of course we were busy during the day if the ship was what we call on passage yes there was not a great deal to do but we used to play deck games go to lectures grounds ground training activities that sort of thing and most of the time spent on passage was quite reasonable quite honestly was it back to between the RAF guys like yourself in the Navy guys oh yes we used to banter the Navy they used to banter us we used to call the the deck the floor that the deck head the ceiling the round things the windows and that used to get them quite exciting oh yeah but yeah by and large the relationship between the junior officers of which we were all part of the team was was very good because after all we were all doing the same thing together we're all facing the same challenges the same dangers so there was no great inter-service friction at that level yeah let's talk about a bit about the book Mia how in the aircraft handle how did the aircraft handle well at low speed it was quite a difficult airplane to fly it and it needed a lot of high-lift devices to not only allow it to get launched from the carrier but also to recover to the ship so the whole of the rear of the wing the ailerons the main plane flaps were all drooped down high pressure air will be blown from the engines along the leading edge of the wing and over the ailerons in the tail and main plane flap this high-pressure air was also blown over the underneath of the tail plane to increase the lift so once you've done all that the airplane was quite heavy to handle in the circle and quite quite demanding to handle in the circuit once you've cleaned it up brought all the flaps and ailerons cleaned up all the boundary layer control off and you're operating in your normal speed range between sort of four hundred to five hundred and fifty knots it was a delight to fly beautifully balanced you could really fly low and fast one of the great things we used to demonstrate to new navigators was to set the airplane up at 550 knots at about 50 feet over the sea and say look hands off we're too scared them a bit just to keep them on the more mark but no it was a lovely airplane in that respect now unsurprisingly it's its handling was a little bit deteriorated a bit when you've got a real high altitude but then we didn't go to outdo to great new so overall it was well designed for the job that it did mm-hmm so just a bit of stats here huh what was the top speed the booking me I could go to the the top speed was 580 knots or mark point nine five it could go supersonic but the company said don't do that because the tail plane might fall off Dorn idea No so how did you find working with the navigator and what was the navigators role well no problem tour really because remember I'd come from a Canberra where you had a navigator anyway the big difference in the Buccaneer was that not only did the navigator have a decent ejection seat just like you he could also see out because he lived under the nice perspective P he had full control of the onboard radar he also had the navigation kit the Doppler Doppler system called blue jacket he also had most of the weapons selection switches so he would select which pile on or which weapon station the bomb would come off from and the fusing systems you in the front had the type of attack you were going to do dive attack level attack and radar locked on attack whatever so it was very much a crew cooperation between the two of you obviously he was responsible for the navigation by and large most of our Overland navigation was traditional and map and stopwatch stuff because the the Doppler blue jacket wasn't particularly good and the radar was optimized for over the water operations where it would pick up it would pick up big radar discrete targets like ships it wasn't a terrain-following type radar for Overland navigation yeah in those early days we didn't have any precision guided munitions like you see today we just carried conventional 1,000 pound bombs ballistic we didn't even have tails when I first joined 801 squadron so ballistic bombs two-inch rocket projectiles which lived in a canister you could carry four canisters of rockets one on each of the wing pylons and that amounted to 144 total rockets so rocket projectiles conventional bombs the Redbeard british tactical nuclear weapon which entirely filled the bomb door there in a monstrous piece of kid and unique to the Navy the bullpup missile which was an American air-to-surface missile pretty primitive by two a standard guided by what was called command to line-of-sight guidance which meant that once you launched it the pilot had a little control input a little control column with a little swerve always switch on the top and he had to keep the Buccaneer pointing at the target and he wanted to hit and there was a flare at the back of the missile and you either went up down left or right with a little switch and that sent a radio command to the missile to do whatever it needed to do but it was quite a tricky business not only flying your airplane but also guiding this weapon onto the target it was fairly primitive it gave you a sort of standoff range of about four miles there or thereabout and if you got it right yes you could hit the target but the big problem with the bullpup was that every time you gave it a command input and flood the control surfaces on the missile went to full deflection and so that was called the bangbang system and it tended to make the missile really quite difficult to control especially as it started to decelerate when the motor burn time really yeah we did have a primitive simulator onboard which is a bit like a sort of fairground Tory really big screen you press a button a little light would come on on the screen you had a little controller and the the little light was sort of mimicking what the missile was going to do and so you have to keep the light out of the screen all the time we could carry for Bullpups and I did fire off quite a few Bullpups and once you got the hang of it it could be quite accurate but I think it was very limited really and what I was able to do yeah I think the most interesting event was I'd been sent off to fire off some a bullpup and the weather on where we were going to fire it was unsuitable so I come back to the ship with this bullpup unfired I'm still on the starboard in a pylon I landed on board and much to my astonishment after coming to a grinding halt in the wires as this huge plume of water in the water in front of the ship and a pretty brisk radio command over the over the radio from the bridge saying pilot of two-30 to the chief like Oh at the rush and I thought oh what's all this about when I go out to the airplane there was no bull pup on it any longer so I went up to see fly Coe who was not impressed because he said he accused me of not making my switches safe if you couldn't imagine what I mean and inadvertently pressing the trigger on landing and firing off the missile well every landing was filmed so we sat there waiting the outcome of this me in some considerable trepidation and of course it took time for the film to be developed eventually the film's run-through brilliant no problem there's no smoke plume behind the missile it literally just broke off the pylon fell on the deck bounced over everything and landed in the CA and I've still got some photographs in my photograph yes we used to work occasionally out in the Far East with the United States Navy it was the era of the Vietnam War so they always had about two or three aircraft carriers out there they had a huge naval base facility at a place called Subic Bay in the Philippines fantastic facility where you could bring a carrier alongside lift aircraft off the ship by crane onto the dockside started up and tacks it to the airfield so we used to do a little bit of work with the with the Americans we used to practice air-to-air refueling from there from their aircraft occasionally and one or two people actually went on board landed on and were launched off an American carrier I didn't actually do that I was too junior to be allowed to do that did you ever practice air dact in the bookaneer dact yeah well yes I mean we had a resident civics and squadron onboard and yeah they try to bounce us over now and again and we did well I mean the balcony I could look after itself at low level we'd in those days had no form of self defense weapon but interestingly the Scimitar in which the Buccaneer had replaced did have the m9b Sidewinder all right and the Navy hadn't got rid of their stocks of aim-9 Sidewinders so not long after we got back to the UK in the summer of 1967 our aircraft had a small modification and we were able to carry a single Sidewinder which of course changed the odds very much in our favor fighter aircraft had to be now a little bit careful about ending up in front of us [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Aircrew Interview

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Keywords: buccaneer low level, blackburn buccaneer low level, blackburn buccaneer, blackburn buccaneer documentary, blackburn buccaneer gulf war, blackburn buccaneer red flag, pilot interview, aircrew interview, buccaneer airshow, buccaneer pilot, blackburn buccaneer war thunder, blackburn buccaneer south africa

Id: aYaN6N_kvbw

Length: 25min 52sec (1552 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 19 2020