Plane Tales

Over their careers, airline pilots, and doctors come to that, will have stayed in a myriad of loggings during their overnight stays and the vast majority will have merged into a conglomeration of memories but every now and then one or two will stand out from the rest. In this tale, the crew have kindly shared some of their experiences starting with the Good… the Bad and the Ugly will follow on next week so be sure to tune in!

Capt Nick landing in Hong Kong

The Langham Place hotel

The amazing vertical mall.

The original Tim Ho Wan dim sum resturant

The Bird Market

The C141

American Samoa

The Rainmaker Hotel

The Boeing 767

The Intercontinental Tahiti Resort

The Leeward Island of Montserrat

Olveston house

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the Langham Place hotel, the USAF, NOAA, Jerry & Roy Klotz MD, Intercontinental Hotels and Olveston house.

It was the 19th of January 1915 and the people of the English towns of Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn were woken by an eerie throbbing sound from above them. No-one there had ever heard it before, this deep rumble of powerful engines in the sky, slowly approaching in the darkness. People left their homes and looked into the inky black sky but nothing could be seen. The noise grew and, now alarmed at this strange roaring, they began to run but nobody was sure which way would be safe… they didn’t know if they were running towards danger or away! Then the blackness was cracked wide open by a bright flash, soon followed by the thunder of an explosion as bombs dropped on the defenceless people below. The full horror of aerial warfare had been unleashed on the people of England and when the smoke cleared, the first deaths revealed.

The bombing of Kings Lynn and Great Yarmouth.

A British recruitment poster.

A commemorative wall plaque.

Newspaper headlines of the day.

The Buckingham bullet.

Lt Warneford’s downing of the first Zeppelin by a fighter aircraft.

The L23 capturing the Norwegian bark, Royal.

Using Zeppelins in support of the German Navy was a primary mission and crashes became commonplace.

The world’s first deck landing on an aircraft carrier, the converted Battlecruiser HMS Furious.

Sopwith Camels onboard HMS Furious prior to the Tondern raid.

The aftermath of the Tondern raid on the Toska hangar.

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to The Library of Congress, Christopher Braun, Geni, Crosby F Gordon, The War Illustrated, the Imperial War Museum, Marshall Everett, the Ministry of Defence and for images in the Public Domain.

Lieutenant Colonel Rob Sweet, after a 33 year career flying the Warthog, completed his final flight on the 5th of June 2021 at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia. As he climbed out he was met with a shower of champagne. I don’t regret going over there, fighting and getting shot down, Sweet said, that’s what I took an oath to do. The Air Force Chief of Staff, General Charles Brown said, with your retirement, it will be the first time in the history of our Air Force that we will not have a former POW serving. Thank you for all you’ve done.  This is the story of Rob Sweet.

The venerable Spad (the A-1 Skyraider).

General Electric GAU-8/A beside a Volkswagen Beetle!

A comparison of size between a .303 round and that of the GAU-8.

The smoke created by the GAU-8 could be a problem when ingested into the engines.

An Iraq Republican Guard armoured vehicle.

The SA-3 Strela.

Rockeye bomblets.

Lt Col Sweet is finally released.

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the USN, USAF, Samf4u, Defence Imagery, Department of National Defence, Vitaly V. Kuzminand and Johnny Saunderson.

Another foray into the log book as the Old Pilot starts work as a Qualified Flying Instructor at No 4 Flying Training School, RAF Valley.

Another course of newly minted QFIs

A Hawk T1 over RAF Valley on the island of Anglesey

Hawks in close formation

The Reds doing it properly in cloud and everything!

Flying solo in the Hawk

The Hawk doing aerobatics

The RAF Valley Summer Ball

Yours truly, B2 QFI

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the UK Ministry of Defence.

Looking back on the final years of the second world war its easy to forget that nobody knew quite when the conflict would end. Many aircraft were constructed and flown and were thought to be the pinnacle of fighting science at the time but we know little of them nowadays because the war ended and they never made it into service… they were no longer required. Here are a few.

The Supermarine Spitfire

The Republic Rainbow

The Martin Baker MB3

The Martin Baker MB5

The CAC Boomerang

The CA 15 Kangaroo

The HO 229

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the RAF, SDASM, USAF, Insomnia Cured Here,  RAF, Martin Baker, IWM, Australian War Memorial collection John Thomas Harrison,  US Army, Tomás Del Coro and the NASM.

A favourite old tale of the checkered history that brought about the Phonetic Alphabet and Op Brevity Code… retold.

A early radio

Send three and fourpence!

An early Army signals book

N for November

The NATO Phonetic Alphabet

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the US Army, an Unknown cartoonist, US Mint, Matthäus Mérian, Daiju Azuma, Screenland, Elmer Eustice Bucher, Generali, Master of Jean Rolin II, Mcj1800 and the Auckland Museum.

Air Law is something that all pilots must have some knowledge of or they wouldn’t be awarded a licence or certificate… it’s required knowledge. Having said that, it’s a long way from being simple and even a qualified Air Transport pilot will only have scratched the surface. In the Air Force, one might have assumed that things would have been pretty tight and mutiny unheard of.

Let me set you straight!

Early balloons

An aircraft Commander

The Signals Corps in a balloon basket

The Freeman Field mutiny

Lt Bill Terry

The RAF in Karachi

The RAF mutiny

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Library of Congress, US Army,the RAF and the RAF Museum.

The Vulcan bomber only had ejector seats for the two pilots… the rear crew made do with an escape slide, a level if inequality that killed many and resulted in questions being asked in Parliament. This is the story of the Vulcan and a look at the USN Skyknight which had a similar escape system.

The rear crew compartment of the Avro Vulcan

Malta

Malta

The Vulcan

The Vulcan air brakes

The crash site

Avro Vulcan XV770

The Vulcan rear crew escape hatch

The F3 Skynight

Skynight bailout trials

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Isaac Bee, Anton Zelenov, NASA, DFST, RuthAS, the RAF, Roland Turner, US Navy, Ultra7 and the USAF.

The noise of flying machines can be a source of joy or annoyance. Let’s have a look at what makes that noise and how much progress has been made over the years!

The F-84F Thunderbirds team

The XF-84H ‘Thunderscreech’!

The Boeing Dash 80, prototype of the B707

Noise creating vortices coming from an airliner’s flaps

The Bypass section of a RR Trent

A possible Airbus blended body design

An APU exhaust

The Gyrodyne Rotorcycle

Images are displayed under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Dreamstime.com – Airbus, the USAF, Boeing Dreamscape, David Monniaux and the US DOD.

The final few letters of a look at aviation through the alphabet.

A model of the original Flettner 282 Helicopter

Flettner helicopters have the unfortunate potential to decapitate the unwary!

A cutaway of the Spitfire with it’s remarkable Rolls Royce Merlin V12 engine.

The Allison V-1710 V12 engine

The Daimler-Benz DB600 V12.

The X Planes

The Napkin ring

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Raobe001, Ball wallpaper, the National Archives UK, the Smithsonian archive, the USAF, NASA,