76 FLYPAST June 2018
Bottom
A line-up of 64
Squadron FGR.2s
after the unit’s
arrival at Leuchars
on April 22, 1987. VIA
ANDY THOMAS1918 2018When acquired, a small green
luminous ‘blip’ appears on the scope.
First task is to tell the pilot: “Contact
20 degrees right at 55 miles, 2,000ft
above.” Now he knows where you are
looking, and you try to build his air
picture as well as yours.
The target’s height and heading
need to be accurately measured
and a calculation made to bring the
Phantom into the ideal displacement
for an intercept. Closing at 18 miles
a minute, a pick-up at 54 miles gave
three minutes until you both crossed –
not long to get all this done.
The radio was kept standard so that
you could communicate with the
front-seater in a clear way – so “Come
Port” meant a 45° banked left turn.
“Harder” meant increase the bank 15°
or “Ease” was reduce by 15°. “Wrap
it up” told the pilot you’d probably
screwed it up and you wanted him to
pull up as hard as he could!DOWN LOW
Having mastered the medium-level
intercept phase, there was a whole
gambit of other profiles to be tackled.
High flyers – targets over 40,000ft,
simulating perhaps a MiG-25 Foxbat- required careful interception due to
the lack of performance in the thin
air. The British Phantom was not
suited to high level as its Rolls-Royce
Spey turbofans were optimised for
low altitude.
Supersonic attacks – targets flying
in excess of Mach 1.5 – needed huge
amounts of airspace and a judicious
eye on the fuel gauge.
Low-level intercepts were the most
demanding aspect of the course –
they took place over the sea, near The
Wash. Down low, the performance of
the RAF Phantom was exceptional –
this required the radar to be operated
in the pulse Doppler (PD) mode
which enabled the target’s velocity
to be detected accurately in contrast
with a raw blip that would have
merged into the surface returns.
The most demanding intercepts
were left until the end of the course
and fell into the ‘search unknown’
category. Here the fighter was
positioned at 2,000ft, normally
against another
Phantom at 250ftflying at
420 knots. The target[s] would
then adopt random headings under
the guidance of ground controllers,
giving the fighter
trainees anadded headache as they tried to track
them.
Having completed the course in
around six months yet achieving
only around 45 hours of day and
night flying, it was time for posting.
With three UK bases and one
overseas it would be easy to think
that the most active venue would
be West Germany, but this was not
to be.
At the height of the Cold War,
Leuchars in Scotland was perhaps as
close as it got to being on the front
line with almost daily, certainly
weekly, scrambles to intercept Soviet
bombers day or night. Leuchars also
offered access to unlimited airspace
over the sea and excellent low-level
flying over the Scottish mainland.
The squadrons located further
south were less busy, but offered
the attraction of being based closer
to London and its nightlife. With
my bags packed for my posting
to 43 Squadron at
Leuchars, a short-notice
opportunity arose
in Germany and the
lure of a tax-free life was too
tempting to turn down. Three years
of low-level AD was perhaps the
ultimate flying job in peace time – be
that front or back seat.“Supersonic attacks – targets fl ying in excess of
Mach 1.5 needed huge amounts of airspace and a judicious eye on
the fuel gauge”