Tag Archives: RAF

Special Weapons at Cosford

I have twice been able to visit the museum at RAF Cosford outside Telford in the UK. On my second visit, I had a very surprising experience. I was looking at a Buccaneer that was on display in one of the hangars. As I walked around it, I saw something that I had not expected to see. They were some bombs but not normal bombs. When I worked on Tornado many years ago, some of the handling clearances we wrote were for what were euphemistically called special weapons. Even the outline of these stores was highly classified and anything we did that included clearances for them had a higher security rating than normal weapons. I never saw one for real. Only the drawings showing the shapes were available. Once I finished working on them, I figured I wouldn’t see them again.

Turns out I was wrong. The RAF retired their weapons as part of an overall strategic weapons reform and, once they were withdrawn from service, the classification was downgraded. This included allowing the weapon shapes to be declassified so they could be put on display in a museum. When I first saw them, I thought that someone must have made a big mistake but it turns out that everything was above board. I doubt many people walking past them were even aware of what they were and they certainly won’t have been as surprised as I was.

Night Launches

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When the daylight flying activities are over, there is still the night and Red Flag has a night mission that is flown on most days. Therefore, after dinner, you can head up to a spot north of the speedway where there is a great view over the base with Las Vegas in the background. It is dark up there so there are not many good chances for shooting the jets but you can sometimes get some shots of stuff flying over if it lights itself up.

However, you can get some shots of the base with the launching jets showing up either from their afterburners or from the heat distortion they leave behind.

The other thing is to run a time lapse and see the jets moving around on the base and then streaking off into the sky. I ran a couple of them over two nights. Below is the result of one of them. Two things to note. First, the launch was very spread out. The main jet launch was actually quite late and I was tired and cold so cut short the sequence while they were still heading out. The second is that a weird optical effect shows up in the video. It is a movement of the image a bit like heat haze. However, since the shots are taken over such a long period of time, you would think that would not be an issue. Something is going on though so if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to comment with your thoughts.

Typhoon Time

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One of the reasons I was keen to cover Red Flag this time was the presence of the RAF Typhoons. I worked on Typhoon many years ago and, while they are a common sight in Europe these days, I don’t get to see them very often. These aircraft had also been upgraded with the latest capabilities which they were testing during the exercise.

Getting close to them during the launch, recovery and from outside the base as they were in the pattern gave some good chances to get some shots and to enjoy something I had a tiny hand in many years ago.

Red Flag Launches

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I was back at Nellis AFB recently for another Red Flag exercise for Global Aviation Resource. Chris Wood and I were there to cover it and the piece we put together can be found at this link. After the last visit to Red Flag when a security issue resulted in all of the media being escorted off base just before the launch, I was hoping for better luck this time. Fortunately, we did pretty well. The launch went well and, while the light was a bit poor for the departures, it got better as the day went on.

Standing between the runways as the aircraft go off each side is pretty cool. We had a lot of USAF assets this time but also some Navy Growlers and RAF Typhoons. An RAF Sentinel was a nice addition – particularly as it was the aircraft with the squadron markings. One unfortunate element was that the launch was earlier than had been scheduled for our visit and the early aircraft off included the B-2s. We were still on the bus when they launched. I managed to get a shot with my phone out of the window but that was it. I do actually quite like the shot so all is not lost.

The feature has many more shots but here are a few to give you an idea of what was there.

Desert Pink Jets (and not jets)

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My friend, Ben, put some pictures on Facebook of a Jaguar being restored in Arizona that is being painted in the desert pink colors that were used during the first Gulf War. I worked a little on Jags in my days at BAe and have always thought it was a cool jet. It is nice to see one showing up in restoration over here. It triggered a discussion between a few of us about the colors that were used at that time.

In 1991, I went to Mildenhall for the, then annual, Air Fete. The Air Fete went away a while back and now it looks like Mildenhall itself will follow into the realms of “once upon a time”. However, there was a time when the Air Fete was possibly the premier military air show in the UK. For a while it was a regular feature of my year. (The weekend before my university finals started was I a) studying hard at college or b) at Mildenhall for the show? I was studying aeronautical engineering so surely it counted?)

This was the first big show after the end of the war in the gulf and a lot of the aircraft that were on display were pretty much unchanged. This included the desert colors that had been applied in a hurry along with mission markings and less official images that the crews had painted. One of the Tornados on display showed how quickly things had been done. They had painted the jet with the flight refueling probe still attached which, when removed, left a grey patch amongst the pink on the front fuselage.

Not everything was pink. The tankers that went over had already adopted a hemp color in the previous years so they were already quite well prepared. Also, a Chinook was on display that had a mottled finish that was supposedly the result of being used for special forces missions.

Needless to say, most of these colors were pretty quickly removed as the aircraft where cleaned up after their return and put through some deeper maintenance and the rapid war modifications either removed or upgraded to a clear condition. (Lots of mods were done under a “war only” approval. They were less likely to kill you then the opposition but hadn’t gone through the full clearance process. They weren’t approved for peacetime use until a more thorough evaluation had been done. Of course, we had a fair bit of testing experience to do the clearances with given how much they had flown in theater!)

The pictures are scanned from old negatives so not fantastic but they are a snapshot of an interesting time!

Bye Bye ADVs

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In 1993 I was working at BAe’s plant in Warton when we had a special event. It was the last delivery of a Tornado to the RAF and the aircraft was AT051, a twin stick ADV (or F3 in RAF parlance). We all received a print of a painting of the aircraft to celebrate the event and trooped out to watch the aircraft depart. I don’t have pictures of that since cameras were not permitted inside the security perimeter at Warton.

It therefore feels slightly more personal to read all of the information online about the demise of the RAF’s ADV fleet. They have been on the way out for quite a while but the end has finally come. Since I made it across to RIAT last year, I did get some final shots of the remaining aircraft and I am glad that I did. My transition to digital shooting coincided with my move to the US so I don’t have many ADV shots that aren’t on film and I certainly didn’t shoot as many shots before going digital.

I only have a limited number of shots which amazes me given how often I saw ADVs over the years. I guess when they were common I didn’t make much effort to shoot them when film was something I treated as precious.

So here are a few mementos and good bye to a plane I liked working on.