Raf Battle Damage Repair

[Hman]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ah58lTSZvE

Perhaps someone could incorporate this into a build? 

[PR19_Kit]

Looks like my model bench after a hectic show. 

[Nick]

That Buccaneer XN983 is still around, the nose/cockpit section is now at the Fenland and West Norfolk Aviation Museum. It was broken up at Lossiemouth after a 25 year career with the Royal Navy and then the RAF.

I wonder if it had a serious fault, was taken out of service, and was regularly used for battle damage repair training. This would be why the nose survived.

[PR19_Kit]

There's a brief glimpse of a Bucc with a Sidewinder on the starboard outer pylon, around 1:15 on the vid.

I didn't know Buccs could carry 'winders....

[TallEng]

Apparently so Kit,
See here for more Gen. http://www.blackburn-buccaneer.co.uk/pages1_files/self-defence_index.html

Regards
Keith

[Captain Canada]

Great footage, and some interesting info as well !

[kerick]

Great article! Thanks.

[rickshaw]

Does anybody know how they simulated the battle damage?  Did they use small arms and explosive or did they drill/cut/etc?

[PR19_Kit]

At Shoeburyness Environmental Test Centre (ETC) in Essex they do it for real, but I don't think that's to evaluate repair methods, it's more to see how the aircraft structure stands up to gunfire and explosive discharges in the first place.

They were one of my customers and it's a trifle un-nerving having someone let loose with a 3 round burst of Rarden 30mm only 250 yards away when you're trying to fine-tune an accelerometer charge amplifier! Of course the staff who worked there didn't take a blind bit of notice, but they did tend to look up if they were fiiring something larger, like a 4.5" Mk 8 Naval gun.

[rickshaw]

Sounds a bit like the P&EE Port Wakefield in South Australia.  It was the proofing and experimental range.  Guns and shells were sent there for proofing (ie demonstrating they could do what was claimed as far as withstanding firing went) and some experimental work went on as well.  It's location was primarily chosen because it had mudflats that went out 20 km! Even then, when firing 155mm rounds at full elevation they had to close another 20 km to shipping. Only military establishment where you could get a hovercraft license in Australia.  I only ever visited occasionally but you'd hear bangs and thumps all day long from the range.  They had the oddest collection of guns I've ever seen.  Loads of extemporised mountings as well.   

[PR19_Kit]

Very similar I expect. Shoeburyness was were the various TSR2 airframes ended up, along with many other 'targets of oportunity'. When I used to go there, mid 80s to mid 90s, they had an whole Victor fuselage lying on the foreshore peppered with numerous holes of varying calibre!

[rickshaw]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFs3hvnyZ-w - video of one of their artillery open days at P & EE, Port Wakefield.  Note the odd weapons and mountings, military and naval.  Perhaps the oddest is the US 155mm M1 "Long Tom" mounting a naval 4.5in naval gun. 

While the Australian Army did operate a battery of US 155mm guns at the end of WWII, they were declared obsolete not long after and replaced with British 5.5in guns.  In the 1960s, they procured some 155mm mountings for Proofing work from the Italian Army.

[PR19_Kit]

Good stuff there, you can almost smell the cordite! 

Very little recoil from the 155 mm compared to the 5" naval gun.