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Aviation History
1972
1972 - 0051.PDF
FLIGHT International, 6 January 1972 35 mounted above each skid at a pre-set convergence angle and the sighting arrangement no more complex than a chinagraph pencil mark on the pilot's windscreen. In this installation the guns are fired by the pilot—-with no provision for selecting only one—and the task of the crew man is to reload and clear jams which, if not serious, can I be done as he leans out of the open side doors on a dispatcher's harness. An alternative Scout mounting is a sideways-firing swivelling mount, aimed and fired by the gunner. Both port and starboard mountings are available and the air craft can, in fact, carry two guns and two gunners, though in action it would get hectic in the back. The Sioux arms , kit is also a sideways-firing, swivelling gun. I Another installation for both Scouts and Sioux, which we were unable to see, is the "Night Sun"—a 3-5-million candlepower blue-neon swivelling searchlight with a beam 1 of variable width. This is role equipment purchased from an American manufacturer specially for the Ulster job. Presumably the installation of Dectrak, permitting very precise navigation, will go hand-in-hand with the wider operational use of Night Sun. The ability suddenly to illuminate a precise patch of rural Ireland in the depth of night in which suspect movement is taking place is one which will render terrorist movement and cross-border arms smuggling more difficult. It is claimed that the arrival of a Night Sun Sioux caused the IRA to break off a recent ambush of a Ferret patrol. Another recent use was at the Long Kesh internment camp, where some internees rioted and sabotaged the electrics, causing perimeter floodlights to fail. A Sioux hovering at about 400ft bathed the compound in even brighter, baleful, Night Sunlight until the normal lighting could be restored. Students of aircraft markings, numerous among Flight's readers, will note in Tom Hamill's pictures a Scout of the Royal Marines, previously equipped only with Sioux. With drawn at the end of November and replaced by a three- Sioux detachment of the RM's 3rd Commando Group Air Squadron, this was one of the Marine's first three Scouts, two of which were stationed in the province. They are normally part of the 45 Commando—the RM Commando of Arctic warfare specialists whose normal winter training in the mountains of Northern Norway is being curtailed this year by their having more urgent preoccupations in the less cold but more dangerous streets of Belfast. Because of the Arctic role, with its savagely low tempera tures, 45 Commando's flight has exchanged its Sioux for more suitable Army-standard Scouts. At present the Marines are strong on the ground in Ulster, with two full Commandos at Belfast and Armagh. Night operations will become more effective as "Night Sun" airborne searchlights are introduced more widely Operationally their token air strength, three Sioux, is completely integrated with the AAC's 666 Sqn, which shares RAF Aldergrove with the 72 Sqn Wessex detach ment, an armoured car squadron and the peacetime resi dents, No 23 MU. The Army and Marine aircraft, pilots and maintenance crews are pooled in the one unit. Such are security precautions now in Northern Ireland that Flight was not allowed to visit RAF Aldergrove in preparing this feature; while the Army is reticent the RAF positively declines to discuss its role in the UK's domestic war, save for a passing, obvious, remark that the Wessexes are employed in various pasenger and freighting roles. One passenger role in which they have been involved is the transfer of detainees between HMS Maidstone, the accommodation ship which is used as a preliminary detention centre, the interrogation centre at Palace Barracks, near Belfast, the city's Crumlin Road jail and, for those detainees on whom internment orders are served, the camp at Long Kesh. With the IRA's demonstrated facility for releasing men from Crumlin Road jail—an ability now the subject of a stable-door inquiry into security precautions there-— Wessexes are the preferred and most secure means of moving key prisoners around the province. For similar reasons of security, and not simply to save time, they have also been employed to convey on their lightning tours the very few senior politicians from Britain who have chosen to visit the province during the three-year emergency. At Aldergrove 666 Sqn, AAC, operating about a dozen Sioux, five Scouts and a Beaver, functions as a divisional air squadron, performing in the rest of the province with its Sioux tasks similar to those flown in the border areas by the air recce squadrons from Omagh and Long Kesh. With its Scouts it provides an essential liaison net through out the province. Much was made of the Scout's suitability as an airborne command post during its inauguration into Army service in the early 1960s. Airborne command posts have been used in Northern Ireland since 1969 but more so in the days of major inter-communal rioting in Belfast and Londonderry than at the present time, now that catch-as- catch-can guerilla warfare has superseded big crowd conflicts. In the ACP role Sioux rather than Scouts have been preferred because of certain deficiencies in the Scout's Nimbus engine. These made the Army reluctant to fly Scouts over the densely built-up areas where the occasional need for ACPs existed. But recent modifications to the Nimbus have solved the problems, it is claimed, and no reservation about flying Scouts over towns now exists. At least, the authorities willingly consented to fly Flight over Belfast in a Scout, and the type is now quite fre quently seen traversing the city. I like to think they weren't taking avoidable risks with my neck in Belfast where, with those of all other citizens, it is already subject to adequate random hazard.
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