The Woracle

This is my last blog post for Flight, and I've realised I never introduced myself. I'm Graham Warwick. I was brought up in the Scottish Borders, on a hill farm, in a low-flying zone, where I learned to hate sheep, but love aeroplanes. I then studied aeronautical engineering at Southampton University, which was as far from Scotland (and sheep) as I could get.

My first job was as a graduate engineer at Hawker Siddeley Aviation in Kingston, outside London. I learned a lot about designing and building aircraft, but an engineering career was not for me. My second job was as a reporter and editor for Flight International. That one lasted almost 30 years - very enjoyable years, working alongside some great people.

The Woracle is the nickname given to me by my wife as a gentle (I think) jibe at the encyclopedic knowledge of aerospace I have accumulated over the years at Flight. Now I am moving on, and you will see my name appearing somewhere else. Thanks to all of you for reading Flight and visiting The Woracle. Till we meet again....

"Of course I know what I'm doing..." (Canadian Forces photo)

"Lizard-skinned Warthogs flit through German valleys en route to a rendezvous with tree-hugging Cobras." Okay, that was definitely one of my more lurid feature intros. It was written in 1979, shortly after the Fairchild A-10, aka the Warthog, arrived in Europe. And in those days they carried the European 1, aka Lizard, colour scheme. But I'm not sure now where the Cobras came in...

I wrote the feature after visiting the A-10s' forward operating base at Sembach, Germany. The trip involved a couple of days being driven around in a NATO car listening to news and music on the radio, in the course of which I discovered there is no German for "Kentucky Bluegrass" or, it would seem, "100 call girls". I wish I had understood the rest of what they were saying.

Continue reading "Warthog hyperbole - what was I smoking?" »

Early in my career on Flight I developed a fascination with fly-by-wire and the possibilities it offered for advanced configurations and new modes of flying. I wrote in excrutiating detail about a series of advanced flight-control demonstrators with extra bits attached to "relax stability" and basically fool the plane into thinking it was way more manoeuvrable than it really was.

They included MBB's F-104 Control Configured Vehicle, British Aerospace's Active Control Technology (ACT) Jaguar, and the USAF's Advanced Fighter Technology Integration (AFTI) F-16. Two that particularly caught my imagination were Rockwell's unmanned HiMAT and Grumman's forward swept wing X-29.

Continue reading "Confessions of a flight control freak" »

It didn't have foreplanes, or thrust vectoring, but one of the most enjoyable aircraft I've seen on the airshow circuit was Northrop's F-20 Tigershark. I remember sitting in a traffic jam outside Le Bourget, watching the F-20 literally skid sideways above my head - powered by sheer marketing exuberance...or maybe desperation, as the Tigershark was that strangest of beasts - a private-venture export fighter.

When I joined Flight in 1978, the F-5 was already viewed as a fighter from a previous generation (although the last one was not delivered until 1989!) That changed when Northrop announced the revamped F-5G, later redesignated as the more marketable F-20. It was definitely an F-5, but with distinctly modern touches: the shark nose, the reprofiled canopy, the muscular F404 engine.

Red, white and whoo!

Continue reading "Tigershark, Tigershark burning bright, but briefly" »

While at Hawker Siddeley, in 1977, I worked my way into the Future Projects office. I arrived just as they were submitting a proposal for Air Staff Target 403, for an advanced STOVL fighter to replace the RAF’s Harriers and Jaguars. After I joined Flight, I returned to Hawkers to interview my ex-boss. I was recognised and waved through by security, only to meet a couple of former colleagues carrying a windtunnel model of the latest secret ASTOVL design down the stairs! (It was the P.1216, for secretprojects.co.uk afficionados).

My post-Hawker honeymoon ended when I displeased Harrier chief designer John Fozard by saying the UK should join the US in developing the AV-8B Harrier II rather than pursuing the homegrown “Big Wing” Harrier. But I’m quite sure the AV-8B cemented the UK-US V/STOL relationship and paved the way for the Harrier’s eventual replacement, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

STO-ing in the rain (US Navy photo)

Continue reading "Harrier fans still do it vertically" »

Confession time: I am prone to irrational, unjustifiable dislikes when it comes to aeroplanes. More often than not it is an aircraft about which more fuss was made than the aircraft was worth - in my opinion, I hasten to add. Usually that fuss was being made in the pages of Flight and getting in the way of what I wanted to write (3,000-word features on ring laser gyros, that sort of thing).

Top of the list has to be the BAe 146, which must have appeared in the pages of Flight more frequently than any other aircraft over my 30 years. Why? Because it's British and because a former Flight editor had an obsession with the 146 and the Royal Family....

Rule Britannia! (Crown Copyright)

Continue reading "The ones I love to hate" »

Ed Heinemann is a hero of mine. At Douglas, he designed some of my favourite aeroplanes: the A-1 Skyraider, A-3 Skywarrior, A-4 Skyhawk and F4D Skyray. I got the chance to interview Ed in 1979, when I was researching a feature to mark delivery of the last Skyhawk, an A-4M to the US Marine Corps.

I interviewed Ed by phone from Flight’s office, then on Stamford Street in Central London. He was recovering from a stroke, but the interview was going extremely well, I thought, when the fire alarm went off at my end…

Heinmann's Hot Rod (US Navy photo)

Continue reading "Heinemann, his Hot Rod, and the fire alarm" »

Here's the thing, after almost 30 years I am departing Flight International for pastures new. I have seven days until The Woracle's last post. So how best to mark this momentous life change? With pictures, of course. You know The Woracle: a picture is worth 1,000 words delivered after deadline.

And where best to begin than with the first aircraft I worked on as a rookie aeronautical engineer: the Hawker Siddeley (now BAE Systems) Hawk, the last aircraft to carry the hallmark, artfully curved, Hawker fin:

Ahhh, Hawker (Crown Copyright - a Geoff Lee picture, I think)

Continue reading "The Woracle looks back" »

Any fellow alumni of Hawker Siddeley Aviation in Kingston out there? I have a call for help from the man who owns the only private Sea Harrier. After an emergency vertical landing late last year, owner Art Nalls (nallsaviation.com) is having some difficulties repairing the nose. He needs some help with rebuilding the radome ring and wants to know more about the alloy used for the nose skin as it is resisting being worked back into shape.

Art's Shar is an ex-Royal Navy FA2, but is actually the second Sea Harrier built - XV439. I was working at Hawkers in Kingston when the first Sea Harrier FRS1 was assembled - I even worked in the sheet metal shop for a while. Produced a lovely aluminium fruit bowl using the English Wheel. But I think Art needs more than my rusty skills.

Nose job needed (photo from 800nas.org.uk)

Interesting what you find when you are looking for something else. Like what the US Air Force has in mind for the F-22, whether or not it gets more aircraft. Daniel Darnell, USAF deputy chief of staff air, space and information operations, plans and requirements, lays it out succinctly in recent testimony to Congress.

Shutdown of the F-22 production line will begin in November as vendors early in the build process complete delivery of components for the 183 aircraft currently planned. The USAF expects to issue a shutdown RFP this summer, he says, and to incur $40m in shutdown costs in fiscal year 2009 (the budget now being debated). Darnell also puts a cost on keeping the line open:

"If we want to keep the line open and deliver an additional F-22 lot, then the Air Force would require $595.6m in FY09 for advance procurement of 24 aircraft. In either case, we are at a critical crossroad: we must make a decision by November to avoid increased costs and a break in the production line before our suppliers begin to exit the market."

Into the less than clear blue yonder (USAF photo)

Even if it stops at 183 aircraft (the USAF wants 381), Darnell makes clear the Raptor will continue to evolve:

"The Air Force has accepted 113 F-22A aircraft to date, out of a programmed delivery of 183. Most of these aircraft include the Increment 2 upgrade, which provides the ability to employ supersonic JDAM and enhances the intra-flight datalink to provide connectivity with additional F-22s. The F-22A fleet will be upgraded under the JROC-approved Increment 3 upgrade designed to enhance both air-to-air and precision ground-attack capability.

"The Increment 3.3 upgrade is currently unfunded. It plans to include Mode 5/S, which is the next generation identification friend or foe and advanced air-traffic control transponder; radar auto search/auto detect, which gives automated target cueing using fourth-generation AESA radar; and a ground moving-target indicator and tracking capability."