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Aviation History
1968
1968 - 0069.PDF
fUGHT International, II January 1968 71 next two years Lyneham will have a dual role, as a main base for the strategictransport force and for two squadrons Lf 38 Group's Hercules force. When (terminal facilities become available at tgrize Norton the strategic transport activities will be transferred there (always assuming that, with impending withdrawals from the Far East, they still exist) and two other Hercules Squadrons will move in from RAF 'Fairford. [Luftwaffe Crash Rate Drops THE WEST GERMAN LUFTWAFFE achieved a drop of almost one-third in its accident rate during 1967, the Defence Ministry in Bonn reports. This decrease occurred despite greatly increased flying opera- tions. In Starfighter units the record was improved by as much as 80 per cent. The ^Starfighter crisis" thus appears now to be over (the latest crash, of a TF-104G, -was the Luftwaffe's 74th), thanks to a combination of measures including modi- fications to airframe and equipment, improved maintenance and growing flying experience with the type. Reworked Lightnings for Germany THIRTY Lightning F.2s of the RAF are to be modified to a new configuration, designated F.2a, which incorporates the much enlarged ventral fuel tank of the ; F.6 or, alternatively, the mixed fuel tank/ twin Aden gunpack ventral bulge. These • aircraft will be deployed to RAF squad- irons in Germany. Remaining unmodified I F.2s will be used in the training system [and, probably, to equip a supersonic | target squadron, replacing Canberras. More ECM Aircraft for Vietnam THE SMALL FORCE of Grumman EA-6A electronic warfare aircraft—a specialist development of the A-6A Intruder strike aircraft—ordered for USMC use in Vietnam is to be more than doubled. A repeat order for 15 aircraft, worth $21 million, has been placed with Grumman, raising to 27 the number ordered. Brazil Negotiates for Mirages FOLLOWING THE RECENT FRENCH SUCCESS in Peru, the United States hold on the South American arms market is being further loosened by the French. The Brazilian Air Ministry has confirmed that formal negotiations have been opened for a quantity of Dassault Mirage 3s to modernise the ageing Brazilian Air Force, whose main fighter equipment is Meteor 8s. The contract is hkely to be worth $30 million. Attempts have been made to sell the Northrop F-5 in Brazil and it is reported (though strongly denied by US diplomats) that the US Embassy in Brasilia hasClr culated a document purporting to show the Mirage 3s in an unfavourable light when compared with the F-5. Saab Missile Deliveries Begin PRODUCTION DELIVERIES of the Saab Rb 08 coast defence and ship-to-ship missile system recently began to the Royal Swedish Navy. Power is a Turfoo- meca Marbore turbojet and the missile is a distant derivative of the Nord CT20 target drone. Launching weight is approximately 2,6401b. The recent Eilat sinking by Russian Styx ship-to-ship missiles highlighted the relative neglect of this category of weapon in the West, and the Royal Swedish Navy becomes the first to equip with a specialist ship-to-ship missile. Hastings Stands Down LONG IN THE TOOTH but still not short of admirers, the Handley Page Hastings tactical transport formally bowed out from RAF squadron service last Friday, January 5, after a 20-year service life— one of the longest on RAF record. The last operational Air Support Command Hastings squadron, 24 Sqn at RAF Colerne, held the wake. Four aircraft were to make a formation fly-past over Lyneham, Fairford, Brize Norton, Abing- don, Benson, Greenham Common, Odi- ham, Aldershot (to mark the long association between the Hastings squad- rons and 16th Parachute Brigade based there), Andover and Command head- quarters at Upavon last Friday morning •—the last of over 155 million miles flown —but this was cancelled by bad weather. Forty-one aircraft are being retired; 27 of them will be retained for ground training purposes:> including use as fire- fighting hulks. Fourteen are being offered back to the makers. Another 17 Hastings remain in ad hoc service with Bomber and Signals Commands; MEAF, which retains one VIP Hastings operated by 70 Sqn at Akrotiri, which has otherwise re-equipped with Argosies; and with Mintech establishments. The Far East Hastings squadron, 48 Sqn at RAF Changi, has completed its re-equipment with C-l 30s. The Hastings first flew on May 7, 1946, and jumped off the top board on its introduction into RAF service in October 1948, for the Berlin airlift was in full swing and it was immediately employed in hauling coal—ten tons a time—into the blockaded city. The type made 9,698 flights into Berlin with 55,000 tons of coal in just one year. The airlift over, the Hastings began operation on the strategic route to Singapore—a hard five-day grind com- pared with the 20 hours which Air Sup- port Command's VClOs now take. A big trooplift to North Africa followed in 1951, to replace units moved eastwards into the Suez Canal Zone during a time of crisis there. Kenya, during the Mau-Mau emer- gency in 1953, was the next Hastings hot-spot and in the same year the type flew Operation Sandbag, bringing mil- lions of sandbags from Europe to Britain to repair breached coastal defences after the disastrous February 1953 North Sea floods. In 1954 the Hastings first operated in the Far East, supporting operations against the Communist terrorists. Two years later it was back to Suez again, with the airborne assault against El Gamil airfield during the fighting of October 1956. In all these years the Hastings was doing sterling work else- where—carrying servicing parties to South America in support of Canberra flights to that continent, operating far north of the Arctic Circle in support of the British North Greenland Expedition and flying daily weather reconnaissances far out over the Atlantic in the service of Coastal Command, in a specially adapted version. The last battle honours were won back in Malaysia during confrontation with Indonesia in 1964-66 and it is in this context that the writer retains special Hastings memories—of terrifying supply- dropping flights up to forward positions in the densest, hilliest jungle terrain, of tight turns in narrow denies, the wingtips seeming to scrape the very trees, and of moving back aft—to see the sweating Army dispatchers sending supplies out of the inconvenient side doors, because it was less frightening back there without a forward view over the pilots' shoulders of the tree-clad hills looming up straight ahead. And through the whole campaign, the Hastings served with complete relia- bility and total safety. It was on July 6, 1965, that the Hastings' safety record was marred by an accident at Dorchester, Oxon, in which all 41 occupants, crew and para- troopers, were killed. The fault proved to be fracture of two elevator bolts and called for reworking of the Hastings fleet very late in its career. This pro- gramme was preceded by a refurbishing programme over a period of several years which was made necessary by the fact that no successor to the Hastings had been planned by the Government at the due time, the mid '50s, and the type was required to serve for years after its retirement would have been reasonable. R.R.R. The Brazilian Air Force—which is negotiating for Mirage 3s—is evaluating an AOP variant of the indigenous Neiva C-42 Regente light aircraft. Designated L-42 it is intended to replace Cessna L-19 Bird Dogs and Neiva L-6s operated by liaison and observation units. The underwing attachments are for light ordnance or smokt-marker rockets
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