by Mike Brooke
‘Have you pushed the button, Mike?’
‘Yes.’ By now I was stabbing at the left brake to try to initiate a turn, but the little machine was reluctant to go where I wanted it to. Then we stopped – Horst had applied his brakes.
‘You have to push the button and hold it in.’
‘Oh – sorry I didn’t realise that!’
‘OK – try again,’ said Horst with a chuckle in his voice. Sadly he wasn’t the only one chuckling; all the students and staff watching were falling about in mirth at my struggle with the jet. Banana skins came to mind! Once that had been sorted out, I could steer the F-104 easily; I had assumed that it was a one-press activation, like the Jaguar.
When we arrived safely at the end of the runway Horst went through the pre-take-off checklist with me, called for departure and asked for entry into the supersonic corridor.
We lined up, I applied full power, let the brakes off and rocked the throttle outboard and further forward (just like the Lightning) to get the afterburner lit. When the thrust from that kicked in we were motoring well and at 150kt I eased the stick back and she unstuck at about 180kt. Gear and flaps up, accelerate to 450kt and then point at the sky. It wasn’t quite as sensational as the Lightning but the F-104 was no slouch. Horst was doing the radio and at 20,000ft he asked me to turn from our westerly heading onto a south-easterly one. I initially put on 60° of bank and held 0.9 Mach. The jet virtually stopped climbing, which was a bit of a surprise. Ah, its those tiny wings, I thought. They don’t work so well at subsonic speeds. So I backed off the bank and G and we started up again, but not so fast.
Eventually we got onto our heading, levelled at about 36,000ft, left the ‘burner’ in and swept through the ‘sound barrier’ with barely a murmur. At 1.4 Mach I cancelled the extra power and, under instruction, carried out a couple of 3G turns. Now the little wings were working well! After that bit of handling we descended to 12,000ft and Horst was brave enough to invite me to do some aerobatics. Rolls, both rapid and slow, were relatively easy, the handling was good, but the stick forces for pulling manoeuvres like loops and barrel rolls were a bit heavier than I was used to. But that was generally normal for US aircraft, especially of the 1950s. Moreover, a loop took up almost 12,000ft of vertical airspace!
After cavorting in the southern German skies we descended to low level so that I could experience the F-104 in the role it was procured for: low-level fighter-bomber. With those small wings it rode the air turbulence very well, steady as a rock. The ease and precision with which I could roll the aircraft made it easy to turn down valleys and minimise our exposure. We were doing 450kt and I noticed that the fuel-flow gauge was showing 4,000lb per hour. That was about the same as my old Canberra B(I)8, but at 150kt faster. But it was a bit more than the twin-engined Buccaneer at the same speed.
Thankfully, Horst was on top of the navigation and after fifteen minutes or so cruising round very attractive parts of Bavaria we climbed to a couple of thousand feet and made our way back to Manching. We still had enough fuel to do a few circuits so Horst demonstrated one and then let me have a go. Like the Buccaneer the Starfighter used air from the engine compressor blown out through thin slots at the rear of the wings to give them more lift when the flaps were down. The speeds I had to fly around the pattern were similar to those of the Lightning or the Jaguar, so were not too unfamiliar. However, I noted a definite need to use rudder with roll once the blow was operating, otherwise the jet seemed to want to carry straight on instead of turning. I had also noted that Horst had used a shallow approach angle. This helped him to keep the power up so that the blow pressure stayed high enough to make the magic work. I therefore followed his example, although on the first attempt I probably overdid it, creeping up on the airfield using all available cover. The only forward view that Horst had for this bit was through an extendible periscope and he was coaxing me not to go any further below the glidepath! Like all the modern jets that I had flown, it was desirable not to throttle back until the wheels were on the ground – so I didn’t. Touchdown speeds were about 160kt so the braking parachute was streamed once I had the nose wheel firmly on the ground.
What an experience it all had been. What a brilliant aircraft designer Kelly Johnson of Lockheed was. To go against the grain and not use swept wings for his supersonic fighter typified his genius and willingness to push the envelope. He invented the concept of the ultra-secret Skunk Works, from which came the U-2 (which was a Starfighter with very long wings), the SR-71 Blackbird and the F-117 Nighthawk stealth bomber. My friend Tom Morgenfeld would end his career as a test pilot by flying for Lockheed’s Skunk Works for about twenty years – lucky man! For me the future would be quite different but similar, in that I would spend another ten years as a test pilot bringing my total in the flight testing world to twenty. But that was for the as yet unknown future. Now it was on with the ETPS motley!
35 OPERATION CORPORATE
On Friday 2 April 1982 Argentina invaded and occupied the self-governing British Overseas Territory of the Falkland Islands. This action was the culmination of seventeen years of diplomatic interchanges between the British and Argentine governments, overseen much of the time by the United Nations. The Argentines had, throughout, maintained that the territory, known to them as Las Malvinas, rightly and historically belonged to them.
During the weekend that followed the surrender of the small force of Royal Marines on the islands, the UK Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, authorised the dispatch of a naval task force to the islands. The UN also passed Resolution 502, which demanded the immediate withdrawal of Argentine forces. In an amazing show of effort, ingenuity and sheer persistence the initial component of the task force was assembled and sailed south only three days later. The operation was given the codename ‘Corporate’.
Over the following three weeks more elements of the task force sailed south, initially to Ascension Island off the west of Africa, while frantic diplomacy involving the two belligerent governments and the USA continued, with the UN playing referee. When it was clear that there was to be no solution without conflict, the UK Government approved military action to retake the Falkland Islands; the task force and all its logistical support headed into the South Atlantic.
During the war the only offensive air assets available to the British operational commanders were twenty-eight Sea Harriers and fourteen Harrier GR.3s on board the aircraft carriers HMS Invincible and HMS Hermes. There were also Wessex, Sea King, Lynx and Gazelle helicopters embarked with various seaborne elements. Additional helicopter support, vital for the operation, was to come from five Chinooks, which were being carried aboard the Cunard container ship Atlantic Conveyor. The ship was hit by two air-launched Exocet missiles and sank with four of the Chinooks still on the deck.
As the war developed, long-range bombing missions using Vulcan bombers were conceived; these missions were to be air-to-air refuelled on the way to and from the Falklands by Victor tankers based on Ascension Island. More thought was then given to extending the range of other aircraft, such as the Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft, by installing a flight refuelling probe, and modifying some Hercules and Vulcans to become tankers. Then there were operational modifications required for the Harriers, even including the use of a jettisonable pod for dropping mail to the troops on the ground.
At Boscombe Down the work quickly ramped up for the test squadrons as the urgent operational requirements flowed in. The usual timescales were cut, so much so that the Nimrod in-flight refuelling system was designed, installed and tested in five days, and that included pilot training time. Of course we on ETPS were aware of the increased work going on, especially as the airfield working hours were extended, even to some flying taking place over the weekends. We did not avail ourselves of the latter, but we were able to catch up with the syllabus deadlines by flying into the early evenings.
Then we were brought into Operation Corporate. Initially by making our Andover and a crew available for specia
l and short-notice transport tasks that were within the remit of the R&D business. After a couple of these rather ad hoc sorties, taking people and equipment from one place to another and then often others to a third destination, we named ourselves ‘Ruskin Airways’. This was in homage to a TV series called Airline that had been screened in January and February of 1982. The programme starred Roy Marsden as Jack Ruskin, a post-war ex-RAF pilot, using surplus DC-3s to start an airline. However, the Boss wouldn’t let us get the paint shop to put the Ruskin Airways logo on the nose of the Andover!
I flew one of these trips on 4 and 5 May. The brief was to fly to Southend Airport, pick up some civilian personnel and some ‘special’ kit and fly them all to RAF Kinloss in northern Scotland, one of the two UK Nimrod bases. We were to stop there overnight and then check in with base the following morning for the next task. After arriving at Kinloss I met up with a pilot from my CFS course in 1967, Ernie Banfield, who had been training to do in-flight refuelling with the Nimrod’s new air-to-air refuelling probe. While there we first heard the news that an RN submarine had sunk an Argentine cruiser called the Belgrano.
The following day we were told to take something from Kinloss to RAF Odiham and then come home. It was all fairly routine stuff as far as the transit flying was concerned; but it was a bit odd not being told who and what we were carrying!
Another task for the Andover was to fly to the South of France, pick up a ‘special’ classified cargo and take it to Gibraltar. The crew included Lt Cdr Keith Crawford, US Navy, as co-pilot. Not long after they had disappeared over the southern horizon someone said to the Boss:
‘Do you realise that you’ve just dispatched an American citizen, whose country is neutral in this conflict, on a British operational sortie?’
The Boss, as was his wont, smiled broadly and said, ‘Oh yes – what a shame – will you tell?’
We also flew photo-chase sorties in our Hawks, often in the evenings. I chased a Nimrod over Salisbury Plain as it dropped 1,000lb dummy retarded bombs – a new role for the Mighty Hunter. We also chased a lot of refuelling sorties using a plethora of tankers and receivers. On one occasion the modified Vulcan tanker had refuelled a Hercules tanker, which then gave some fuel to another Herc tanker. Then a Harrier appeared, flown by Tim Allen of A Squadron, to take fuel from the second Hercules. As he closed up on it a voice came over the air, ‘I wouldn’t touch that fuel if I were you, Tim, you don’t know where it’s been!’
The author’s cartoon of a Pucará done at the Farnborough International Air Show of 1978. (Author’s collection)
Operational sorties should be entered in one’s logbook in green ink. It was a little bizarre to be doing that while I was on a training tour, 8,000 miles from the arena of war!
A footnote to Operation Corporate was that two Argentinean FMA Pucará twin-turboprop, attack aircraft were captured pretty much intact and were shipped back to Boscombe Down. From these two airframes an airworthy one was assembled and flown by A Squadron test pilots on a variety of assessment and evaluation sorties. This aircraft was officially taken on charge with a military registration of ZD 485. There was discussion as to its possible use as an ETPS aircraft to broaden the experience of the test pilot students on a variety of exercises. I was to have been the ETPS Project Officer for the introduction of the Pucará and actually did fly it once with the A Squadron project pilot, Sqn Ldr Russ Peart. I was very pleasantly surprised with the Pucará’s handling and performance, the only drawback being increasingly high forces when rolling the aircraft at much over 200kt; these became distractingly objectionable at 250kt. But it flew well enough on one engine and had a good STOL capability and I did all the landings on the grass strip.
Despite the fact that the 1960s conventional airframe construction and instrumentation were simple, the Astazou engines were almost identical to that in the Gazelle helicopter and so the Pucará was very economical to operate. However, the engineers argued, succesfully, that too little was known about the two airframes’ histories, hence the fatigue life could not be calculated. Pucará ZD 485’s last flight was from Boscombe Down to RAF Cosford where it went on display in the RAF Museum there.
Another knock-on effect of Operation Corporate was that the C-130 Hercules that had been earmarked for joint B Squadron and ETPS use was returned to operational duties at RAF Lyneham just as it was ready for us to take it over. Again I was the project tutor and I had, along with Ron Rhodes and our air engineers, spent many happy hours in the C-130 simulator at Lyneham. And this time I didn’t even get to fly the real thing!
The search for a new ‘heavy’ aircraft then continued and I went to Hatfield to fly in the prototype BAe 146 four-jet regional airliner. I only got to watch my erstwhile ETPS tutor, Graham Bridges, as he flew it around. This machine was now surplus to requirements at Hatfield and it was on offer ‘as is’. This meant that it would come with the water tanks for varying the CG and all the usual suite of flight test instrumentation. It seemed ideal to me but the appropriate ivory towers were not impressed with the asking price. Eventually a BAC-111 was purchased for the job. The real irony, however, is that as I write this in 2014, ETPS now operates a BAe 146 – just thirty-one years later!!
The ETPS 40th Anniversary First Day Cover flown at 1,000mph by the author and Allan Wood in Lightning T5 XS 422 on 25 April 1983. (Author’s collection)
36 ANNIVERSARY
April 1983 marked the 40th Anniversary of the formation of ETPS at Boscombe Down. So by late 1982 plans were already afoot to celebrate this milestone in a suitable fashion. As I was now the PTFW, the Boss passed the baton to me to get things going. I recruited Sqn Ldr Mike Grange, our Aerosystems Tutor, to give me a hand. One of the early suggestions was to see whether we could win some sponsorship to help with the inevitable costs of such a ‘do’. I remember making trips to London with Mike and visiting Shell House, among others, to talk over the possibilities with the appropriate PR folks. We also travelled to Newport Pagnell to talk to the people at the Aston Martin car company. We were shown around and allowed to sit in their latest luxury and futuristic driving machines.
Many of our targeted sponsors came up with the goods, so we now had a budget. Various meetings narrowed down the format for the day as well as actually choosing the date on which we would hold the celebration, whom we would invite and how we would allocate responsibilities around the staff and student body. The programme evolved into an afternoon static display and open house in the school premises with a ‘home-grown’ flying display. The evening would be a dinner in the Mess followed by dancing and socialising over drinks. During the afternoon many ‘Old Boys’ turned up and I was privileged to help a US graduate of No. 2 course to climb into and spend time in reverie in the cockpit of one of the Harvards. Some members of my old course turned up along with many distinguished test pilots from around the world. It was a fitting and enjoyable day with much fun enjoyed by our visitors and families.
Earlier in the year an approach had been made by the BBC Children’s TV programme Blue Peter to do a piece about the school in its 40th year. After discussions it was agreed that the presenter Simon Groom would fly in a Hunter to do an inverted spin and in a Scout helicopter to experience an engine-off landing. I was tasked with completing the fixed-wing bit and Sqn Ldr Dave Reid with the rotary-wing adventure. I suggested to the producer that Simon should come and fly with me in a Hawk first, to see how he got on with high performance aeroplanes and all that goes with them: this was agreed. So on 4 May I met up with the tall, rather willowy young presenter and proceeded to get him ready. While I was flying during the morning Simon was checked over by our doctor, Charles Macallister, kitted out by Tony Gee and shown how an ejection seat works by John Eatwell. All this was filmed for the eventual broadcast. Simon and I met up again after a light lunch and I briefed him for our flight. It would be a general handling sortie on which we would try a few aerobatics and a spin or two to see how he got on. In the event it went very well until about five minutes
before I had planned to land. We were just descending to join the circuit at Boscombe when Simon alerted me to the fact that he was feeling unwell. I told him to get his sick bag out, take off his mask and turn his microphone off. I then told him to use his bag if necessary, that I would fly as gently as I could and land straight away. He came back ‘on air’ as we rolled down the runway saying that he felt a lot better and asked me what he should do with his bag. ‘Just give it to the man that comes to help you unstrap,’ I said. ‘There will probably have been a few bets riding on that!’ Simon was due to come back for the Hunter trip a few days later. However, during his next show he had done some sort of unarmed combat and got injured. So we were put on hold. He was eventually fit to fly with me in the Hunter on Tuesday 14 June. I had asked the ground crew to leave the drop tanks empty as I planned to go up to 40,000ft and carry out the inverted spin directly, so giving Simon’s tummy the minimum disturbance while still getting the job done. The camera crew were stationed around the aeroplane and cockpit as we strapped in and I was asked to point out the spin panel and say a few words about what we were going to do. I hadn’t been briefed on this bit so I made something up. I ended with words that would come back to haunt me via all the old buddies who saw the eventual broadcast: ‘You may or may not enjoy this, but don’t worry, Simon, I’ll have it all under control.’ The folks from the photographic section had fixed a couple of cameras in the cockpit; one facing Simon, so that he could prove that it was really him doing this crazy thing and one looking across the cockpit at me. I had the switch that would run them both when the time came. We took off and climbed to 40,000ft. This was much higher than we had flown in the Hawk and Simon was impressed by the view. I cleared everything with the radar controller and the ground pilot for the spin and made sure that Simon was ready. Then we went into an inverted spin via a rolling entry and I held it until the JPT was reaching its limit. ‘Isn’t it incredible?’ I said for posterity. Simon replied with a higher pitched ‘Amazing!’
