Plane Tale‪s‬ Capt Nick

This is the final part of the Red Flag tales which carries on directly from Part II where we heard some exploits from participants of Exercise Red Flag. If you haven't listened to the previous taleson this subject, it would be worth going back them.  My thanks to Jaguar Pilot Nij, Tornado pilot Gasher, Tomcat RIO Scott and RAAF F111 Nav Abs.







 







 







 







 







 



The E-3 Sentry AWACS.



 



Break Right Chuck, there's one in your 6 o'clock!



 



A Smokey SAM.



 



Live weapons being dropped during Red Flag.



 



A Tornado drops flares.



 



An RAAF F111 puts its wings back and goes!



 



The Jaguar pilot's favourite dance.



 



Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the USAF, Photo-Concepte.de, the RAF, the USN,

In the first part of the Red Flag tales we talked about the reasons for the formation of the USAF Fighter Weapons School and the subsequent creation of Exercise Red Flag. Now we get a chance to hear from some of the participants.  Firstly there is Nij who took time off from his Nuclear QRA duties to fly his RAF Jaguar in Flag exercises.  Then we have a Tornado GR1 pilot, Gasher, who also participated on behalf of the RAF.  Jack was an F15 pilot who took part as a wingman, formation leader and also as a Fighter Weapons School graduate.  Scott was a Tomcat RIO who was part of Red Air during Flag exercises and Abs, a navigator from the Royal Australian Air Force flew with the F111 force and was even a Blue Force Commander during the exercise.



An RAF Jaguar



 



An RAF Tornado at Nellis



 



The mighty F15 Eagle



 



The USN F14 Tomcat



 



The RAAF F111



 



The Nellis ranges with Area 51 marked in red



 



The Nellis Air Force Base



 



A Red Flag briefing



 



The symbol of Exercise Red Flag



 



The EF-111A Raven



 



Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Steve Lynes, Finlay McWalter, the USAF, USN, Ken Lund, the National Museum of the Air Force and the MOD.

The Korean War had been a successful period for the US Air Force but a decade later in the Vietnam war their success rate had gone from 10:1 down to 1:1. Something had to be be done.  This is the story of the creation of the USAF Fighter Weapons School and Exercise Red Flag!



 



The F86 in Korea



 



The F4 Phantom II



Wreckage of a B52 in Hanoi



 



The Weapons School graduate patch and an example of dissimilar combat between an F16 and Mig21



 



A Soviet Surface to Air missile system



 



A captured Soviet Mig in USAF markings



 



The F5 Aggressors



 



Richard Suter



 



The Nellis Ranges



 



A 'Smokey SAM'



 



IAF F15s, one of the many nations that are invited to take part in Ex Red Flag



 



 



Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the USAF, Mark Limb, US DOD, US Gov, US Defence Imagery, USMC, Finlay McWalter, National Museum of the Air Force and Srđan Popović.

It is the beginning of 1981 but for me it was the conclusion of my first front line tour of duty. When my posting came I was devastated. I had been sent to instruct at No 4 Flying Training School, RAF Valley on the island of Anglesey in North Wales. A remote corner in the middle of nowhere doing a job I didn’t want.



An F4 Phantom FG1 of No43(F) Sqn.



 



The Hawker Harrier GR1.



 



Survival Scramble.



 



 The A10 Warthog.



 



The BLC Malfunction emergency checklist.



 



Greek Gunboats!



 



My posting to become a QFI loomed!



 



My much loved Yamaha along with our poo coloured Rover!



 



Climbing Mt Snowdon.



 



Dave would perish during Exercise Red Flag when he crashed his RAF Jaguar avoiding a simulated SAM engagement.



 



Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Mike Freer, Senior Airman Matthew Bruch, CC BY-SA 3.0, the USAF, the RAF and myself!

The Sound Barrier was first broken in 1947... by 1949 Convair had submitted its initial bid for the USAF's first supersonic bomber. So much had to be learned in that time… the aerodynamics of supersonic flight, the construction materials that would be required and the engines that could power it were only part of the technological challenges that would be faced. It was truly a remarkable effort. The pilots that were chosen to fly this tricky Mach 2, 70,000 ft capable aircraft that could climb at over 45,000ft a minute, were highly skilled and Lt Col Henry, John Deutschendorf was one of them.



 



The opposing sides of the Cold War



 



The first generation of US and Soviet ICBM nuclear missiles



 



The B-58 Hustler



 



The Hustler's escape pod



 



The three B-58 cockpit hatches



 



John Denver



 



The Long EZ



 



Ghostbusters II



 



Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Kingkingphoto, the USAF, NOAA and Impawards.

Whether the weather be cold,



Or whether the weather be hot,



We'll weather the weather,



Whatever the weather,



Whether we like it or not!



Nowadays, however, we are blessed with more ways to get the weather than one can shake proverbial sticks at and, certainly in the world of aviation, it's all remarkably accurate even if it’s presented in a rather archaic code. Of course even that is pretty advanced when compared with the early days!



Hippocrates



 



Galileo's thermometer



 



Early weather forecasting equipment!



 



The wrecking of the Royal Charter on the Island of Anglesey



 



Robert Firzroy, the father of met forecasting.



 



Gp Capt Stagg who forecasted the weather for Operation Chastise



 



The US Bureau of Metrology



 



An early radiosonde met balloon



 



A decode aid for aviation forecasts



 







Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, NOAA, Fenners and the RAF.