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Aviation History
1967
1967 - 0681.PDF
fUGH' International, 27 April 1967 665 flying low combat air patrol. He can switch control of the Vixens between the ADR and the Gannets according to who is the better placed to control an interception. Another officer is responsible for identification, while the recovery position is manned by an air traffic control officer, who takes aircraft at the marshalling position 25 or 30 miles astern and feeds them at the right intervals into the carrier-controlled approach "gate," of which more later or into the visual circuit. When fully manned, eight or ten officers and up to 40 ratings are working in the cavernous gloom of this place, dimly illuminated with the phosphorescence of displays, and pinheads of light. Normal manning involves 20 ratings. Somewhere in the adjacent ocean the three RFAs and two frigates comprise one convoy, running between North and South Keeling Islands opposed by the two submarines. Vic- torious is cracking on with exercising her air group, flying anti- shipping strikes and accompanied by the guided weapons destroyer Hampshire, as planeguard, and the frigate Arethusa. The original plan had been to proceed north-west, running over the submarines but as the weather is pretty awful in that area we are steaming into clearer skies due south. While she is nearby, the 984 radar picture can be pumped by HF from Victorious to Hampshire, making her of very good value in air defence against the Buccaneers. Her oppor- tunities of working closely alongside a carrier are none too frequent and she gets little direct practice against aircraft. This opportunity is being used to the full, therefore, before she sheers off later to join the URG and exercises her ship- and heli-borne capabilities against a group attack by the submarines on the auxiliaries. Buccaneers are flying strike sorties and Vixens interception missions. Hot and pungent blasts of burned Avtur wash over one on the breezy viewpoint of the gunnery direction platform atop the bridge, swept up in that direction by the jet blast deflector of the starboard catapult For the passive observer the noise is fantastic and the battering of the 30kt-plus relative wind, further stirred by jet blasts, is enough virtually to stop all thought. What, one wonders, is it like working down there? For down there, on the flight deck, the launch takes place with all the carefully rehearsed precision, the total co-ordina- tion of many minds and bodies, of a weird modern ballet. The Vixens go first, taxying forward under the guidance of the yellow-shirted flight deck directors. In a second or so the air- craft is automatically centred left or right as its mainwheels meet the inset centring rollers, and after a few more seconds the flight deck crews have the strop in place. The noise below reaches a banshee shriek as the FDO, standing in the centre of it all, winds up his flag, and the pilot opens up to full power. Down goes the flag, and after four seconds the aircraft shoots forward, reaching its relative 98-1 OOkt or so within the impos- (Above) Kitted and all ready to jump: a diver aboard the plane- guard Wessex. (Below) Flying-in the mail is the carrier on-board delivery Gannet, a converted Gannet ASA. In the foreground is the arrester howdah Maintenance by floodlight as dusk descends on victorious"
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