Plane Tales Capt Nick

Form 414, my RAF Logbook continues with me leaving Australia and the Hornet unhappily in my rear vision mirror as I was heading back to Blighty and a cold winter in Lincolnshire.  No 229 Operational Conversion Unit was the training unit that would give me my first taste of the Mighty Fin, the Swing Wing Super Jet, Mother Riley’s Cardboard Aeroplane otherwise known as the Air Defence Variant of the Tornado.

 



Not just a British aircraft, the Tornado was a project involving Germany and Italy as well.



 



A cutaway of the ADV Tornado



 



Just some of the multitude of limitations that Tornado pilots were required to memorise



 



The Tornado cockpit showing the wing sweep lever



 



The Mighty Fins of 43 and 111 Squadrons



 



The RB199 lacked sufficient thrust to allow the F3 to perform adequately at medium and high level but it did have a way of going backwards!



 



Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Surruno, Panavia, BAe, the RAF Museum, Mike Freer, Kevan Dickin, Chris Lofting and the RAF.

After I landed my aircraft I clambered out of the Hornet with the cold realisation that I might have flown my last sortie.  The spinning sensation had ceased and the sortie had gone beautifully, it was almost as if it had been a bad dream. A continuation of tales from the Old Pilot's logbook, RAF Form 414.

 



Was the sun about to set on my career?



 



The surgery span round and round



 



Promotion



 



Exercise K89



 



One of our opponents, the F16



 



Firing off live missiles like the AIM 7M Sparrow



 



Landing in a thunderstorm



 



A week on Song Song island acting as the Range Safety Officer



 



The RSO and his crew of Malay troops



 



My final flight and the boys renamed my aircraft Nick The Pom!



 



 

The year is 1957 and the space race is underway.  The major powers around the world, mainly the Soviet Union and the United States, are all striving to develop the technology that will allow them to reach outer space. The Soviet Union’s Academy of Sciences prime aim was to beat the Americans into Earth orbit and their top secret Sputnik project was about to reward all the efforts put in by a generation of scientists and engineers.  Sputnik 1 was soon to be placed atop an R-7 rocket and launched into a low orbit to become the first artificial Earth Satellite. But what if they hadn’t been the first?

 



Sputnik was fired into a low earth orbit on the 4th of October 1957 atop an R-7 rocket



 



Some months before the Sputnik launch the US were conducting nuclear tests



 



The Pascal I underground test caused a huge blue flame to erupt from the desert



 



Very high speed cameras were used to film the tests



 



The Horizons spacecraft



 



People wonder what became of the manhole cover and if anything was written on it?



 



Images under a Creative Commons licence with thanks to the Atomic Heritage Foundation, the Federal Government of the United States, NNSA and NASA.

Let me take you back to the dim distant past and Captain Jeff’s start with his legacy airline, ACME, I mean Delta, no ACME, Delta, Acta, Delme… oh whatever. His career started, not in the Captain’s seat but somewhere in the bowels of flight deck, sitting sideways with control panels in front of him instead of windows, that stretched to the ceiling!  Jeff was an engineer on his favourite three holer, the Boeing 727. The loss rate for this iconic airliner was, unhappily, quite high.  As of 2019 the aircraft had suffered 351 major incidents of which 119 resulted in a total loss.  The loss of life resulting from these bare numbers has risen to over four thousand souls.  One addition to those sad statistics came from Flight 600.  This is the story.

 



The Boeing 727 Flight Deck



 



The 727 on its maiden flight



 



The famous S bend



 



With tail mounted engines the wings could be fitted with full span lift devices



 



The B727 was the first first airliner to have an APU



 



The 727 had rear mounted stairs that were used by the nefarious DB Cooper



 



Which resulted in the fitting of a Cooper Vane



 



The mechanics of a microburst



 



Our Captain Jeff



 



Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Felix Goetting, Alex Beltyukov, Boeing, Tank67, Daderot, Juras14, Aero Icarus and NASA.

Two of the Saratoga’s F14 Tomcats were tasked to defend the carrier against a simulated attack during Exercise Display Determination 87. The leader of this small formation included a senior pilot and skipper of a newly arrived Junior Grade Lieutenant Timothy Dorsey. Many years later, Dorsey would be nominated for promotion to a one-star Rear Admiral, an appointment that required Congressional approval.  What stood in his way was an incident that occurred during that fateful day in 1987.

 



USS Saratoga



 



Timothy Dorsey



 



F14 Tomcats on deck



 



An F4 tanking



 



HUD film of the engagement



 



US Navy wings



 



Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the US Navy, US Air Force and the US Gov.

Part 2 of my interview with my mate Matt, steely eyed rocket man extraordinaire.



 



Goonhilly



 



Gyros and spacecraft in Telstar



 



The interior of Telstar



 



The magnitude of space junk around the world



 



The first live TV pictures transmitted via satellite



 



Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to NASA, I Alison, Rama, NASA, US Gov, the BBC and Andrew Bulko