Tag Archives: royal air force

Rather Disappointing F-35B Appearance

The F-35 has been around for quite a while by now so I have shot them on plenty of occasions (although an F-35C is still on the wish list). My UK trip was one where I was hoping to get an RAF F-35B. It was scheduled to make an appearance at RIAT but the information did not make it sound like a display. On the first day of the show, the weather was shocking. Low cloud and rain got in the way of a lot of things displaying. Late in the day the F-35B was due in. Our initial forecast for arrival was extended as the cloud base meant an instrument approach was needed. It finally appeared and flew through the display line once. Then it powered away and a while later we were informed it had gone home.I was shooting video of that which is at the bottom of this page.

The next day had better weather so I was hoping for a little more. It did show up and we did get more than one pass. However, even then, it was a rather lackluster performance. I guess they have not worked up any form of display – not even a hovering portion – so we got some passes and a couple of configurations and that was it. I don’t think I was alone in feeling a little underwhelmed by what they put on. I guess in coming years, a more worked up display will be seen but I will have to wait a while for that.

A Sentinel Looks Glossy When it is Hammering Down

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Based on a Global Express business jet, the RAF’s Sentinel battlefield surveillance jet has plenty of lumps and bumps to distinguish it but the paint scheme is a different story. It is painted plain gray and, aside from one example I saw at Red Flag, it doesn’t have any interesting squadron markings. The Friday of RIAT was a very wet a dreary day but this had the effect of making the Sentinel look rather glossy. I have never seen them look too interesting before (aside from Red Flag) but this looked okay. I did shoot it departing too on an overcast day and it didn’t look too bad then so maybe this one was fresh out of the paint shop?

Farewell RAF Tornado

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There will be much online about the retirement of the Tornado from RAF service. Global Aviation Resource has been putting together some great information on the history of the jet in service and I would recommend you take a look there if you are interested. I am not going to repeat the information about the history of its service. However, I do have a history with the jet. It was entering service just as I was getting very in to aviation. Then I ended up working on the program undertaking handling clearances for different configurations and clearing urgent changes that were implemented for the first Gulf War.

I figured I would share a few pictures of Tornados. These are all the IDS version of the jet be they GR1 or GR4. I haven’t included the ADV jets since they went away a while back. Some of these shots are scans of old negatives and aren’t the greatest quality but they are part of the early life of the jet. Some others are more recent.

I will always have a soft spot for the Tornado. It remains in service in Germany, Italy and Saudi Arabia but for the RAF, the service that drove the aircraft to be a more complex jet than the other partners initially wanted, it is now history.

At Last a Voyager – But…

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The Royal Air Force has replaced its tanker force since I left the UK. The VC-10s and TriStars have been retired and there is a public private partnership in place to deliver tanking support. This uses converted Airbus A330s. They are able to provide tanking and transport services (with some of the aircraft configured only for transport). In RAF service, these jets are named Voyager. Red Flag 17-1 was my first real opportunity to photograph a Voyager in action. (Annoyingly my sister has shot them before me and has been on a refueling mission with them!) While an A330 might not be the most exciting jet to see, I was really looking forward to photographing it.

As the mission was recovering, the light was great. Low sun providing a warm and soft illumination on the returning jets. Then, the Voyager called up. Just as it did so, the sun went in. The Voyager came down the approach, its gray fuselage in the shade of some clouds. It landed, taxied in and then the sun came right back out again. Arghh! Sure, I can bump up the white balance a bit to warm things up but the jet was in shade and there is not much I can do about that. I had to leave before it recovered on the following day so no luck then. They will be around for a while so I guess I will get any crack at this at some point.

Typhoons are Back in Town

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The Royal Air Force was back at Red Flag and the Typhoons were a big part of what they brought. It’s always nice to see Typhoons up and about but, sadly, the RAF has adopted an approach of combining the squadron jets into a maintenance pool. This means that they don’t carry individual squadron colors. A couple off the jets still had markings – one from 6 Squadron and one from 41 Squadron – but, sadly, the rest of the jets were all plain gray. Nothing colorful about them at all. We did get some nice winter light to photograph them in but even that is not going to make them look that great.

: Two Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4 jets run in to break for landing at Nellis AFB NV.

Have You Been Playing in the Sand?

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Red Flag may be well known for the fast jet activity but the jets aren’t the only ones that get to play. The transports also get to have a role. One of the exercises earlier this year included the U.K. RAF. They brought along a C-130 Hercules. I got to shoot it a couple of times. One thing that was clear as the aircraft took off was that the bottom of the fuselage was very dirty. I think it was safe to say that it had been landing on some rough strips somewhere out on the range.

Tucanos Low Level (But I’m Not Prepared)

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The Lake District is an area that is known to be popular for low flying military aircraft. In all of the years I have been going there, I have hardly seen any jets coming through. Mainly that was because I was there at the weekend and the military don’t tend to fly much at the weekend. I was hopeful that we might see some traffic on this trip since we would be there midweek. We did get some traffic but it didn’t go quite as planned.

A few times we saw Hawks zipping over the town while we were outside. We were generally getting ready to go somewhere else and they caught me out as they came through. On one hike I took a long lens with me. Of course, this didn’t go to plan. Most of the time I was looking at some lovely scenery so I had a wide lens on the camera. This was the time the RAF chose to show up. No jets this time but a selection of Tucano turboprop trainers. I wasn’t expecting them when they came through so grabbed the camera with the lens I had on at the time and got a few shots. These won’t be of much use to me but they do remind me of the excitement of being caught out be a low flying plane of any type.

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!