Out of the Blue Too: More scary and often funny tales from the Royal Air Force and Friends by Cowie Ian

Author:Cowie, Ian [Cowie, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Halldale Group
Published: 2015-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

Credit: Cdanielsiv/Wikipedia

A Close Shave!

Once upon a time I used to fly single-seat, multi-role jet fighters that hovered. It was a tremendously exciting, highly competitive and demanding business. Life on a squadron was busy; we practised a wide variety of roles (just about everything you could do with a fast jet) and had regular deployments. Constantly changing personnel, along with a strict ‘qualification’ regime, meant there was always someone to be trained, a skill to be honed or a qualification to be renewed.

I was a senior squadron pilot, one of a few who had just about all the ‘boxes ticked’ after 12 years of almost non-stop, ‘front-line’ flying. Consequently, I found myself supervising a couple of newly-arrived pilots, who were progressing through their training towards achieving ‘Combat Ready’ status.

The Squadron had deployed for a period of intensive training to a remote airfield, in an area known for its constant mist and low cloud (as featured in a song by Paul McCartney); however, the low flying around there was great and we had no distractions. I was programmed to fly as Number 4 of a 4-aircraft formation, with one of the junior pilots leading. We operated in pairs, the Squadron Commander was Number 2 and my leader, Number 3, was another new guy. This was normal practice; the less qualified guys flew as the leader in a pair to gain experience. Our sortie on that day was a complicated mix of low-level simulated ground attacks and a high priority, timed, low-level run at an offshore weapons range, where we would drop a small practice bomb. This would be scored for accuracy and timing. We had also organised some air defence fighters from another base to intercept us en-route. Navigation was done on a map and stopwatch (GPS was still in its infancy) so, as you can imagine, the planning and briefing for such a mission took many hours.

We eventually walked out to our aircraft and strapped in, with the canopies closed to keep out the rain. The weather was awful, but we were told it cleared up a few miles inland, so we had briefed a pairs instrument departure. Eventually we lined up, me and my mate at the threshold, the other 2 about 1000 feet further along the runway. Each aircraft was equipped with 2 radios (Boxes). Box 1 was normally used for external communications, while Box 2 was used for internal formation messages. The Air Traffic Control folk at this airfield were not used to the way we operated and tended to let us get on with things. Although, on this occasion, they could not actually see us through the mist (it subsequently transpired), they cleared us for take-off and waited for our ‘going en-route’ call on the tower frequency.

Just as we were about to go, the ‘Boss’ (up front) called on Box 2 that his aircraft had an anti-skid failure, and he was going to taxi along the runway and return to the dispersal. However, our young leader had briefed a ‘loser’ plan which meant we were to get airborne as a 3-ship in ‘V’ formation.

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