I’d be curious to know as to what year this happened. They mention Aegis Cruisers, but those barely overlapped in service with the Buccaneers for a few years.
War games are funny things.. stuff happens that is not supposed to. But there is no “stress/fear” factor of the real thing where death and destruction is a real probability and folks act more accordingly so.
buccaneer images mixed with Phantoms, wheels out sometimes….
Looks like a not so very good AI fantasy?
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Yeah, a bit of a puff piece with the “any old image will do” approach; however, the Buccaneer was flown at extremely low level by Brit pilots. Didn’t they also acquit themselves well in exercises in the States - was it Red Flag? Memory’s getting a bit hazy these days.
Hurtling over East Germany, Poland and the Western USSR may have been a different kettle of fish though, given the density and even efficiency of the Warsaw Pact AD; that said, they really could move.
As an aircraft it also had considerable presence. When driving back to Div HQ in the south of England one balmy sunny day back in the mid-70s, in no hurry to return to my desk after whatever errand it was I’d been on, at the wheel of my Mini, I was suddenly roused from my reverie by an absolute earth shattering roar. For a moment I didn’t even know what it was. The noise was so all-enveloping, it was nearly time to purchase a new pair of No 2 Dress trousers.
It was merely a Buccaneer flying over the A 345 en route to land at the nearby Boscombe Down airfield.
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@BootsDMS if you watch the video but pay attention to the comments section below you will find some interesting reading from the people who worked on or in the Buccaneer.
I loved the comment about the damage caused by a bird strike, only the bird was still in it’s nest at the time of the incident lol
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Some interesting comments, some questionable ones. The one about the RAF having non-folding wings and nuclear capability added is odd; the Bucc was nuclear-capable from day one, it was actually a design parameter. IIRC, there was some re-winging done because of metal fatigue, so I suppose the redundant wing fold mechanism could have been eliminated, at least on some aircraft. I think low-level over water is a particular skill, back in the 1990s I used to visit RAF Spadeadam where a public road was the (unfenced) boundary of the range, and there were a variety of aircraft that got down in the weeds. I was particularly impressed by a package of Danish Drakens, but I later met a chap who had been at Otterburn when one impacted in the target area, he hadn’t seen it go in so when he looked up he thought someone had dropped napalm… Otterburn was also the site of another fatality, a soldier standing on the cab of a truck enjoying the view was decapitated by a C130 Hercules. I also recall a Hawk flyinging down Bassenthwaite Lake so low it left a wake on the otherwise mirror-like surface.
Regards,
M
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The European air forces have shown repeatedly that they and european planes were not to be underestimated.
The Bucanneer buzing a strike group is one of these moments, but the same happend with french Etendards. The Avro Vulcan also managed to surprise the US.
More recently, Typhoons and Rafales have beatne the invincible F-35 as well in exercises.
But that is what it is: exercises. That does not say everything about real world encounters.
Still, US equipment has an auro of “simply the best” and once real data comes to surface, sometimes decades later, that auro often fades.
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The F-35 is certainly a mixed bag. As a replacement for the USMC’s Harriers, it is a quantum leap forward. As a replacement for F-16 and legacy F/A-18, it is a trade off of stealth for close in maneuverability. As a replacement for the A-10…. being an old ground pounder, I am biased…. but the lack of the big gun, loiter on station ability, lower payload, airframe hardening, etc. don’t put it anywhere near the league of the A-10. Bombing from 5 miles up is NOT Close Air Support.
But hey, I wouldn’t feel too bad on the Typhoons and Rafales occasionally coming out on top in an exercise. After all, the Mig-17 was able to beat out the top dog of its era, the F-4 Phantom in close in dogfights. Of course the stringent tactics and ROEs dictated by folks on the other side of the planet, far removed from the realities of that war did not help.
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yes I agree the ROE for the F4’s and lack of a built in gun cost the lives of many Americans during the Vietnam war.
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Talk about the fog of war, equipment malfunctions, etc., but in a real world shooting situation…
I agree, the F-35 is a quantum leap forward in theoretical capability: theoretical because it seems to spend more time in mantenance (if I can trust the figures released by the military) than being available for fighting.
But, a technology that requires air conditioned hangars, cooled fuel, helmets of $ ?? 000 , and an excessive amount of training seems very contradictory with real world war scenarios. Thinking about Belgum, we are building special hangars for these things so Russia knows exactly where our F-35 will be. It seems like the start of world war II all over again. In those days we had invincible fortresses that could stop any attack. Only, it took the Germans a few hours to bring them down by doing something unexpected.
Battle of Fort Ében-Émael - Wikipedia
And what is the point of an all capable airplane when the pilot inside can only remain current on one or two missions. If a unit specialises in e.g. close air support and trains its pilots for that mission, what’s the point that the plane they use has all the goodies on board for e.g. deep strike. It just looks like adding costs for no value to me.
191107_Dwyer_BeyondtheBuzzwords_FINAL.pdf
it appears that the US know all to well that their F-35 is a lemon, way too expensive, too complicated and too tender to fight. Hence the Pentagon push to accelerate the introduction of the F-47, the NAVY going for its own 6th generation fighter (away with the “joint” paradigm).
And by the way, even the Lockheed Martin public relations department agrees that the F-35 is useless. Any time somebody noticed that the F-35 was too slow, not sufficiently maneuverable, lacked firepower… the answer was: we don’t need all that old-fashioned sh!t because we have stealth.
Hence, taking that at face value, an F-35 can be easily replaced by a B-21 that is also slow and not very maneuverable, but carries 20+? tons of payload. That has 4 engines to deliver all the electricity needed, that has no problem with overheating electronics and has sufficient free space to add 4 F-35 worth of sensors, electronics, … and can loiter forever.
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olala, i just noticed this is not in the chenanigans page. 
let’s try and stay on topic al la RN/EAF Buccaneers