Tornado GR4 & Typhoon | Will Cambridge (Part 1)

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and then that interest just carried on through right through my formative years growing up and then going to university and it was after I was finished with university that I then the party RAF and was lucky enough to get yeah so what year did you actually join the RAF I've joined in 2006 is when I started my officer training mm-hmm and Pete Ellis of the aircraft he started training on yes why I came straight through training so at the times the co-op tutor so did my elementary flying training on that from now extreme fast jets they went on to be Takano and from there the hawk we did a advanced positive training on that and then it's had weapons side of things as well we learn how to fight the aircraft fighter jet and initially from there when I was transferred a string to the tornado gr4 did a couple years on that and then following that I then went through was transferred over to the typhoon mm-hmm so let's talk a bit about the gr for what were your first thoughts on the aircraft I was very happy to be strained gr4 and going back to one of the things that got me interested in RF actually aside from air shows I can still see quite vividly the images of the tornado in Gulf War One and especially nighttime images and their afterburners coming in thinking the aircraft looks amazing so to them be strange y'all for given that it's such an iconic aircraft as well I was really looking forward to going on flying and flying the big go flying in so can you talk us through some your ground training on the tornado yes all the training for the tornado is done up RAF Lossiemouth and you do about four or five weeks in the classroom and in the simulator learning the basics about how the aircraft works how you're going to fly a big thing as well as how you're gonna work as a crew because I've been to at that point most of your flying training really is about a single-seat mindset clearly tornado twin-seat so you need to transfer to how you're then gonna interact effectively is occurring at the most out of each other and the aircraft in that way can you talk through your first flight in the tornado yeah so my first fly you do it with two pilots because at the time without get longer ones yeah this but there's a number of twin stickers so you can't roll it from the front and the back and I remember one of the things that really stood out to me aside from the power of it on the takeoff in the sim when you move the wings you don't get any real feedback from that you just see the gauge move down by your left knee to show you where the the wings are indicated in the aircraft there is a big clunk that's my the wings move and that was a bit of a shock around me because initially as you take off there in 25 wing when you get to a certain speed you then bring them back and that initial that initial clunk through the aircraft actually made me wonder if something was wrong with the aircraft but the pilot in the back seat you showed me there that was purely normal for tornado and I'd get used to it which other mmm-hmm so did you fit in your first flight to do fly a clean wing jet always always tanked up always tanked up so just because of I think the burden on the engineers by taking tanks off and putting it back on generally in fact through my whole time on tornado we would only fly clean jet if we were practicing specifically BFM okay which I did only a couple of in the front line yeah so that was pretty much it but on the OCU tanks were always on what we say the strengths and weaknesses of the GR fault were the strengths are it was it was operated very effectively and it was upgraded so there's a weapons platform really really effective and great for what it was being used for and the sort of operations that it's been used for the weaknesses of it progressing through fairly underpowered as an aircraft so low level it's great that's what it's designed for but up in sort of above 20,000 feet especially when you've got a fall yeah weapons load on full fuel load with the big tanks as well so they can take small jugs or or big jugs so when it was fully loaded up it would really struggle up above 20,000 feet so yes or underpowered I would say was was the biggest issue with the Java I heard it couldn't go actually supersonic when it was all you know weaponed up in tanked up was that for a while I would not know about that I never tried it but that wouldn't surprise me anything ever actually went supersonic once energy or and that was a clean jet I was taking from our room up to leaming where they were being taken apart of the town and that was at low level so I I can't say for sure whether that's true but it wouldn't surprise me yeah it's what kind of weapons could the gr4 carrier and the time you flew it the time I flew it so we had quite a number of them actually so terms of missiles had alarm as ran and then DMS brimstone in the air-to-ground role and also legacy brimstone and in terms of weapons a large number of weapons actually it's in fact one of the strengths to jail for is the weapons carry say we had paid way for ep2 enhanced paveway ii sorry and then in AP threes as well and I'm just trying to think we were still we were still training for done weapon II Azores no no we're sorry yeah on the ACG we tried up weaponry so and freefall bombs they still lofting them dropping them just in a level pass atlona or so a number of different bonds and did you enjoy working with an app I did it so it's actually really quite nice a lot of the time aside from operating the aircraft it's quite nice if you're a single turn you're off low level or something having somebody to chat to as you're going along and especially actually on the operations because a lot of the flights were quite long so it's nice to have somebody to chat to but in terms of operating the aircraft it was quite quite a satisfying experience to be able to focus on your job in the front know that they were focusing on theirs and then only interacting really when you had to so the sign of a good good relationship and good crew cooperation was when you watch the tape back actually there was minimal conversation going on between the two pilot just saying what he needed to say nay of doing the same and then it all happening as it needs to did you fly the gr4 in combat yes I did a couple of different operations and that's how come I know it was really nice to be able to a lot the time we would work in constituted crews she'd build up a really good working relationship with your navigator and that was that was really nice so how long did you spend on tornado and how many hours did you get on it I spent just over two and a half years and I got about 750 oh not bad walls not too bad yeah then you mentioned earlier that you moved on to the typhoon can you tell us did you ask for this transfer or was it just built in that's where you were going so at the time there were a few crossovers from a tornado to - but not not a large number so I actually went via the typhoon sim so it was one of the rooms that was available at a time so I spent about seven months working the typhoon Sammy instructing in that which I know sounds a little strange but you could go through yeah do the ground school of the typhoon and then instruct on the typhoon sim just the emergency some sort of things often not the operating side of things because I had no knowledge of that mud neither but it did give me a good opportunity to speak to the other guys who worked in the sim who a lot of which were air defense background and have a bit of a play in the jet myself such that when I came to then start the typhoon ICU I had a bit more of an idea about a defense and also working the radar mm-hmm so what were your actual the first thoughts of the typhoon everyone says it's absolutely magnificent but what were your first yeah is a fantastic aircraft absolutely and the performance of it is staggering especially I think going from a Geo focusing in some ways if you go straight through to typhoon and I saw this with some of the AB initiators who would complain sometimes about its performance really up high I'd kind of turn around to them and say well you don't really know you're born because y'all can't do any of that yeah there but the performance of any cake you get take off the carefree handling of it as well and the maneuvers and the manoeuvrability of it is really staggering so can you tell us about your first performance takeoff in there typhoon what was that like yeah so performance takeoff was and is actually every time you do it a lot of fun so much there you go to full reheat which you don't ordinarily do for a typhoon takeoff we normally just take off in max dry because it doesn't need a central it doesn't need it doesn't need the power so to save the save the air drums of the locals we only generally take off in dry powerfully normal takeoff but you need the power for a performance taken so to start with the kick you get in the acceleration is a lot greater than you'll use so that's impressive and then when you pick the nose up and then you just keep raising the nose yeah that's very impressive and you're accelerating the whole way as well until you get writing those up and then you're just climbing away and leaving the airfield below you is it true that I can actually go supersonic in a claim it can very easily go supersonic if you're in really the jet will very easily go to supersonic in in a fairly nose up climb actually so can you tell us some about some of your flying train you conduct on there than the typing yeah so top velocity which is down at Coningsby as a as a retread you don't go through a short term of course at all you just do the normal Oh see you that the ab initio is would do so the difference between that and the tornado is you obviously lot more air-to-air focus got a lot more BFM focused as well so that was really nice from my point of view because I spent three years on the G or four kind of felt like I've done the ground attack side of jet flying and it was nice to come on to something different and find out what it's like in the air defense well so did you ever conduct dear cetea air in the typhoon and how did it fare against you know the f16 f-15s and you talk like that so I've bought a couple of different jets dact so couple of different marks of f16 mig-29 actually darling oh wow yeah which was how did you fare against that I was cool that was very cool like thinking of those kids so did you ever go up against the f-15 that Lakenheath and how did they do it thought I didn't get to directly CT with their 50 myself I know a number of pilots that have and it fares very well against the f-15 I think if you had a particularly wily f-15 pilot and the entire guy wasn't on his game potentially f15 would do okay but generally the typhoon did very well against the f-15 so do you ever fly on any large exercise like red flag in the Taiping yes I was like after a couple of big exercises so red flag in 2016 which was fantastic for anything really the the highest-end training you can do especially in the air defense side of things and also an avid Avenue and a TLC so sort of equivalent sort of exercises and yeah really good training I'm really nice to be involved in such a big exercise with that many chess airborne mm-hm yeah it's really good how do the Americans view the typhoon and the RAF itself when you're been wrecked like so clearly one of the focuses of something like a red flag aside from putting our own performance in is the interoperability with other allies as well and might been getting that getting that effective and as efficient as we can and certainly we should be able to and red flag enables this to swat in to a big American package be that with fighter support tankers v3s any of the logistics so I think we've got a good reputation with the Americans and certainly the red flag but I was on we were getting some great feedback and the social is great as well so you get to go and meet the other crews have a chat about them and really find out what they're up to how they're doing things so yeah we've got a good reputation with the Americans so can you talk us through the cockpit of the typhoon is it a modern cockpit so it is more modern tornado but it's certainly not swept up for something like an f-35 so I guess by modern standards you would call it a legacy cockpit but going to it from the gel form I certainly thought was great I appreciated the fact it's a little modern anything but effectively just to describe it you've got mostly standard set up throttle stick in the middle three screen yes which you can choose what you want on each of the displays but traditionally we'd have sort of radar on the left moving back in the middle and then your miscellaneous screen on the right ready so you can check your fuel yeah we'll bring up your hides or weapon systems or any of that sort of thing got a nice big wide angle hug directly in front of you which is a big change to the tornado actually exhibit quite a small one but obviously the big thing about typhoon is you've got the have advantage sight so when you've got back on never needed the hard anyway because you can look anywhere you've got your even cut symbology just right there in front of you inside in terms of flying it it's a nice big they're very comfortable and you've got a few switches around you not quite as many as as in the tornado mm-hm really you just turn those on at the beginning of the flight turn them off at the end you're not really you're not really touching those throughout the rest of the flights or hotel system yeah so it's quite user friendly man yeah very user friendly so we'll job any memorable stories you can share with as well flying the typhoon probably my most memorable flight was my first red flag mission so it's it's obviously a big big package of aircraft and you look down the line and there's all the American aircraft getting ready we had some Australians there as well so just so many different aircraft all around to make sure everyone gets a ball on time you have your taxi time as well and you see all these Jets get an airport in front of you and it's just a real feeling that you're playing in the big leagues at the air point because all in Maryland back at home getting everyone is a four-ship you might get to four ships if you're lucky and there was like tens of aircrafts all getting airborne at the same time all high-end aircraft and all the pilots and everybody at the top of their game on the most important biggest LFE that you're going to do in NATO that was a very memorable experience the first time I did yeah commotion that was a sight to see dissolving their craft different types or and 7:15 and stuff like that how many hours did you get on typhoon and how many years you spend on it so I spent just under just under three years on the front line then I did about eighteen months and his shot from the ACU at Khan has been and all of that combined I got just over 700 hours on the target [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Aircrew Interview

Views: 16,181

Keywords: tornado gr1, tornado gr4, tornado gr4 takeoff, tornado gr4 low level, tornado gr4 display, tornado airshow, typhoon, typhoon fighter, typhoon display, typhoon cockpit, raf typhoon, typhoon intercept, typhoon fgr4, bae sytems, typhoon airshow, fighter pilot, pilot interview, red arrows, red arrows display, airshow, rait 2019, raf documentary, panavia tornado documentary

Id: Cwq66IINwBs

Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Sun May 03 2020