Flying the Tornado F3 at Red Flag | Derek "Grinner" Smith (In-Person Part 2)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2024
- Former Tornado F3 pilot, "Grinner", shares what it was like to fly at exercise Red Flag playing both red and blue air. We also hear what it was like flying on exercise "Blazing Saddle" from Davis Monthan AFB when a Red Flag was cancelled one year.
Plus, we get a glimpse into what the social life was like at RF.
Strap in and enjoy!
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12 F-15C's, F-16CJ's for SEAD, multiple attacking F-16's and 8 Tornado F3's. A powerful package which can kill at range, dogfight and provide self-defence capabilities. Little wonder opposing forces stood next to no chance. Great interview as usual.
Cheers
I was a project manager on F3 at Warton, mid 1980s.
My remit included running the Full Scale Fatigue Test, installing chaff/flare for Op Granby and many trips to Panavia Munich on BAe's 111 to stock up on beer.
I can still smell the dusty old carpet.
Brilliant stuff. "If questioned we are sewage workers on our way to a conference."
Cheers
Ordering without getting asked questions, that's a fun challenge! Great interview.
Glad you enjoyed it!
@@Aircrewinterviewis
29:00. Ordering without any questions = True, extremely difficult task
Great interview again. Great character 👏
I missed this video when it came out. What a mistake that was. This was an incredible interview, really good stuff.
Cheers!
Great interview Mike.......loved listening to Grinner! He's fascinating and engaging. Thank you to both of you.
Cheers, Dave.
Sounds like great times Grinner👌🏽. Another brilliant interview guys, Thank you. See you in the new year👍🏽
Thanks.
Hey Mike, I don’t know how to share the words properly. But, if anybody at the future argues that either:
1) Tornado was too expensive
2) It was never as good as an F-15
etc., etc., then please just remember the following.
You can search for one of many RAF Air Historical Branch Narratives, titled: ‘The Birth of Tornado’.
You’ll quickly read that Tornado ADV wasn’t even the primary focus, ever.
Also, it’s important to remember that a large portion of the Tornado programme even happening, was to preserve European, and indigenous British capacity for design, development, and deployment, of a complicated weapons system at an era of mass developmental shift. Germans and Italians at that point had comparatively little industrial / technological capacities as opposed to Britain, yet the distribution of design responsibilities were decided upon funding, pledge of future purchases etc. Germans and Italians were not as interested in ADV as Britain was, and this really hurt the ADV in my opinion, less so for the IDS. It didn't help that developmental ambitions for the AI.24 Foxhunter was a tad too optimistic for the time, some even say the contractual structures have motivated the company to be less-than-strict on keeping up with proposed timelines.
Anyway,
I’d say most people who argues that purchasing of another platform would have been a better choice for immediate military capacity only understands the very surface level knowledge leading to the Tornado. Despite the management troubles, cost over-run etc., the fact that Tornado is even popularly compared against one of the most successful fighter design programs, ever, astounds me, especially when the programme was hardly an effort of Britain alone to begin with, and comes with eventual characteristics of compromises within any multi-national development projects.
More or less, purchasing of an already semi-mature platform wouldn’t have achieved the industrial ambitions, within the initial funding limitations. Think that within the RAF service, the only plane with competitive avionics relative to its era, before the Tornado, was probably SEPECAT Jaguar. F-4M (FGR.2) was capable, but just like EEL, they were made obsolete long before the deployment of Tornado ADV.
So, a plane with a lot of design constraints to satisfy all three nations, disaffected by geo-political and economic uncertainties, that turned out to be capable of performing roles, which were eventually ranging from those similar to F-111 to F-15A/C, is quite amazing.
I'm sorry. The Tornado was a British led program in every way.
@@martinbayliss3868 It was led by Britain, yet some of constraints in its general configuration were only there to satisfy Germans. I think you might be misunderstanding me. I'll edit the comment so it sounds less confusing.
Love these chats.
Cheers
happy new year thanks for the channel this year
Same to you.
I never knew parts of red flag were designated as US only!
will you have a chat with any raaf ?
What do you mean?
The RAF could have had the F-15. An F-15 fleet would have been cheaper to acquire and operate than the Tornado F3 fleet. When the Tornado ADV was proposed some RAF officers presented the MoD with a careful cost analysis and proved that it would be cheaper to buy either a mixed F-15/F-16 fleet or an all F-15 fleet. This was in spite of not knowing about the expensive failures that would occur during the early life of the Tornado F1 and F2 and the absurd costs of fixing them. Even the F3 cost more to maintain than an F-15 and it was much more reliable than the F1 and F2.
The MoD pretended to take the proposal seriously but never really considered the cheaper and far better option.
You lost any credibility saying Tornado F1. There was no F1.
Take a look at how America is tying Israel's hands now to see the futility of that. Closer to home, the F35 effectively killed off a generation of UK manufacturing, with the massive costs, poor reliability, loss of IPR and the criminal ITAR system.
Same goes for FRES.
British jobs please with British knowhow.
What I read (many moons ago) was that the F2 was only meant as a stopgap as we were working on the EFA (now known as Typhoon) project at the time. So there was no point in wasting all of that money buying the F15, 16 or even 14, for that matter & all the infrastructure that goes with it, when we had a better platform on the way, along with all the added benefits of it being solely built in Europe. Unfortunately, nobody envisaged that the F2 would need sorting out, while in service 🙄 & the EFA project would run into massive delays. So we were forced to keep the now F3 much longer than originally anticipated, which was fine by me, as it, to is 1 of my favourites.
@@THE-BUNKEN-DRUM It still would have saved money to buy the F-15 instead of the Tornado ADV. That they then bought the more expensive option was obscene.
@@robertblay9179 There were two. One prototype and one pre-production test article. Maybe I should have left it out as it never went into service, but it still had to be paid for.
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