TOMCAT Pilot Talks About His Exchange Tour Flying the Tornado F3 with the RAF | Interview Clips

yeah and i'm like well how do you know how high you are he's like oh mate that's easy sheep have legs at 100 feet cows have legs at 200 feet oh okay so if you see the sheep you're at 100 feet closer perfect it works so there wasn't i mean a whole lot of options but and i had been kind of looking at these what we call a pep tour personal exchange program um and i got a list and started deciphering it and the detailers that that they don't like to send you to those because it gets you you know off your yeah yeah which i you know i didn't care i just wanted to stay in the cockpit i want to stay flying that's why i you know came in and so i was looking pretty hard at these things and i found one actually initially i was supposed to go um to france to go fly the super he had to land a business oh yeah bonjour have you ever seen sky fighters they're pretty the french air force is pretty nice i was pretty juiced about that and we had to go to dli get the language training and everything everything was on track and uh and the french wasn't playing well they weren't playing so well anymore that's what freedom fries and all that kind of thing so state department shut it down so it was like oh you're not just gonna you're not going there okay sorry yeah yeah so there's another one tornadoes uh and it was in the uk and that's all the info i could get nobody had any info it had been gapped the guy that uh hitter was the guy's name that was there before and he had left like a year prior and it was gaps and i started inquiring about it and you know i had to sign a waiver you're going to go off track you may not be part of command i was like it's fine i don't care i'm here to fly yeah you know so it worked out and uh it turns out the squadron had moved they were down in conningsby but they had just moved up to scotland up the raf lucas caught lunch it's even better yeah uh but it was kind of funny i mean that was i mean my wife was all for it we're all for the adventure but i mean we pretty much had to do everything ourselves yeah the uh detailer didn't have any info they eat nobody you know i had a i had a look up on google to find the squadron's phone number and called in and say hey nobody knew where they were at you know everyone's like you know the day as far as the navy's was concerned they were down in the accounting video i'm like they're not they left yeah there's no one there so i finally got a hold of you know some people and i got a hold of the uh there was a chief that was in the embassy in london that he was worked for the defense attache there he actually had the info so he was my main point of contact and eventually it all worked out we moved over there my stuff showed up and i was there for three to the right place yeah right place okay it actually showed up to where you were yeah and we actually paid our own dime to go out there and just to go meet the squadron and just to find a place to live and because we were getting zero help because that was the only navy guy so as an exchange tour that you're with the air force right not the navy or anything you're flying with the royal air force with the royal air force yeah what was their checkout process like to get you flying so they had a uh they they had quite a few exchange piles that would come through so it was me there was a marine um and then a uh air force guy they were we're all in separate squadrons there uh i was in the ocu or their training unit the other guys were in the front line squadrons uh so they had a whole course set up i don't know that they totally did so we would go it's called the uk orientation course you can figure out that acronym uh it was down [Laughter] i got flu we flew hawks uh we had to go fly hawks mark one hawks like you got called in one yeah all right i got to update the slide dude i'm running out of airplanes for you [Laughter] yes we flew hawks and we got like i think it was 15 hours in one we didn't sell them um but we uh we had to go through the whole ground school course and all the simulators and all that stuff so i mean that was a month long course but that was a that was a lot of fun in the fly i think and uh in it's basically it's it's essentially it was like a t-45 that's what the t-45 based off so uh but it was very old school i mean there was digital nothing in that thing it was all analog um like a t-38 yeah we did a ton of low levels no radar altimeter we do low levels yeah and you know they don't have roots they have low flying areas that you check into and i'm like well how do you know how high you are he's like oh mate that's easy sheep have legs at 100 feet cows have legs at 200 feet oh okay so if you see the sheep you're at 100 feet closer perfect it works all right so he did that first and then you went back well at the squad and i was going to stay in the ocu and he did i did the full i was in a normal student class i had you know normal first ab initio guys with me and we did the whole full course and then i had to do an instructor work up course after that and then off you went you were an 03 at this time like a lieutenant yeah yeah and then you went to the is it tornado or tornado i'm so confused everybody yeah it's tornado okay tornado i showed up saying tornado and the other like looked at me kind of funny like it's tornado mate why would you change it all right so tell me about that airplane because i don't know anything in fact you made me change the slide because i had to google it i'm like it's a gr4 you're like no no no it's an f3 oh no that those are fighting words whoops so i flew the f3 which was their air defense bearing nice so that that was uh it was a derivative of the gr4 essentially um so it was dedicated air to air defense it had had carried more fuels a little bit longer fuselage completely really long nose for the foxhound radar that was in it and uh it uh still had everything else was very similar uh so it looked a lot like it unless you knew the difference between the nose the nose was the biggest telltale uh sign that you could tell the difference on but it was uh it was an interesting aircraft yeah it was uh it's two seats right here seats yeah so they had a navigator just like the tomcat dedicated guy around the radar um it had zero strike capability um he had a gun um but that was that was it um you know but uh it was i would call it a very mandrake airplane so a lot of manual uh it says where tomcat had auto wing sweep or you could go manual as well in the tomcat but normally just flew around and auto this thing was all manual sweep so you had a lever down next to your throttle and she had to sweep the wings uh you had maneuvering devices uh that was on the throttle as well that was all manual tomcat that was an auto like a leading edge flap or something like uh yeah the flats and the flaps would droop a little bit but you had to do them on your own you had to do them on your own holy crap and yeah and then the other crazy thing is they it would have two speeds for everything so you'd have a normal operating speed then it never exceeds speed you're like well which is it never exceed speed obviously yeah right so so you had all these you had to memorize two speeds for everything for like the wings so there was actually more than that so you had a mock and then you had an indicated airspeed and there's two of those for each so you had all these speeds you had to remember and for each wing sweep detent you know because it would go 25 all the way back to i think it was 65 wow and you had all these different detents you go i think there's 25 35 55 and then there was a combat wing in there and you know it yeah it was it was and it would the jet would talk to you if you were starting to get close to over speeding it you feel it kind of starting to shake a little bit as far as the wings or you definitely knew it if you forgot to put the maneuvering devices down yeah was it more maneuverable than a tomcat oh no no just absolutely horrible i mean would you get your ass kicked every time you went and did dissimilar with anybody yeah you just it wasn't i mean it's an interceptor right i mean that's the whole point it's it's kind of the get high get fast do good work kind of thing i mean the rate wasn't bad but the single circle it just wasn't good and the other problem was it had that huge tail on it you were limited to like 20 alpha and you had no limiter so you had to manually oh you right through it and you know it if you pull it through it you look it back in the window without try else is doing so you try you know it it was kind of scary you know you never wanted to pull the shelf but it was just very that was just very underpowered so it had turbo jet engines didn't have turbo fans oh wow um it would it would scream down low though i mean it was a fast did you do the mock loop yeah yeah we did down there yeah awesome down south you get on there do it um the other crazy thing with the engines that because it was designed it originally was an air to low level airplane now they're trying to make it a high altitude airplane so one engine was tuned for a high altitude one engine was tuned for low altitude one engine had strikes down the intake to help with the airflow yeah so theory being you would only snuff one engine if it works it's a lot it's logic i mean i guess i follow the logic that's that's awesome how many hours did you end up flying it um i think i had a little over 500 hours almost 600 hours in like five years four years years three years you're flying your ass off yeah it was a lot of fun so is it like the rag i mean that's what you ended up like teaching at the rag over there and and they how did they culturally you know i mean what was it how is it different than being in an american fighter squadron it was extremely similar just different accents a little bit different flight you know um i'd say the biggest difference was how they conducted themselves like as far as the in and outs and the formality as far as dining inns and oh yeah wells and they had all these parties you know that they would very did you yell tomcats at their dining ends as well yeah you don't have any mutual support on that yeah but they were you know and and i was warned when i come over there i had a ambiguous you're going to need a tux and you're going to need all sets of your formal wear and i did because i we used them all the time all the time wow did they have roll they didn't really do roll calls per se oh they like to get fancy they don't like to just hang out in the bar and yell at each other i mean they would kind of have some impromptu ones like that in their oakland and their messes but um it was just a lot more formalities um but it was fun you know they had a lot of fun you still keep in touch with any of the the dudes oh yeah across the pond i mean what what are they doing now i mean did they all go to like the airlines oh the typhoon typhoon is where most of them went so my about my only claim to fame is i am the last navy swing wing fighter pilot nice another thing for the slide you didn't do i mean let me like i said so the tomcat was gone in 2006. yeah and then i was the only last navy guy to fly the tornado because the new guy that guy was following me he went to the typhoon did they call you oral pleasure in the queensland and they had no problem with that no problem at that at all their call signs are very very boring like like what's what's a typical british call sign like steve uh no it would just i mean some would just play on their name a little bit yeah and some would be have a funny thing behind them but most of them were just were very plain um not nearly as creative as the navy was like a space yeah excuse me oh [Music] don't be a douche that's rule number one

Channel: C.W. Lemoine

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Id: pq-_IXBfIqM

Length: 14min 24sec (864 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 02 2020