Display Season 2009. An interview with the Display Pilot. Lt. Cdr. Matt Whitfield. RN. June 18th 2009 at RNAS Yeovilton Air Day.
Click here for the interview with the display pilot 2009.
Submitted by Gary Stringer of Global Aviation Resource.
archive of Andrew Gamble
A gloomy weather day at RNAS Yeovilton. The clip still captures a mean looking noisy machine.
A gloomy weather day at RNAS Yeovilton. The clip still captures a mean looking noisy machine.
The Sea Vixen had to land using aerodynamic breaking when shore based as the braking system had little energy absorption. The nose was raised and kept high until tailplane effectiveness was reduced for the nose to drop. Some times booms contacted the runway causing a spectacular sparks display at nightime. A local modification for 766 Sqn (student pilots) was to weld lumps of metal on the boom ends for them to practice and finness the landing run. The idea was not to contact the booms.
www.seavixen.org would be most grateful for any photographs of this aircraft in display. Particularly video clips or footage.
Seen in Display Colours of 899 Sqn. The Flying Fist.
The S227 was a Fleet Air Arm assessement report for Royal Navy Aircrew
David Green was awarded this honorary assessement (tongue in cheek) with the highest possible grade of 10.
Signed by the Squadron Commanding Officer of 899 Squadron. Cdr. David Dunbar-Dempsey RN and Commander Air of HMS Eagle. Cdr. Ted Anson RN.
November 2007 ...." so, having spent most of my Naval career maintaining Sea Vixens, the memories came flooding back when viewing seavixen.org.
Above my desk there is a picture of Sea Vixen XN655 of 899 Squadron (#121) along with my S227 Record. This was presented to me by Sub.Lt.Kim Sharman for the 1Hr and 10 min. that I flew in it with Kim in the fall of 1969 from Gibraltar. I see that Kim is still around and has made a contribution to the website. Attached are pictures of that momento, the quotation below the picture is "Sublime Faith".
After completing the Aircraft Artificer apprenticeship at Arbroath I was drafted to Yeovilton in January 1960 and other than a few months spent on 766 Venoms and the Admiral's Vampire the next 3.5 years was spent servicing Sea Vixen’s with time on 766B and 899 Squadrons.
The decision to convert to Elecrical Artificer (Air) was probably due to the time spent in the fuel bay or replacing the No. 1 or 1A Tank liners. One could never quite get rid of the smell of avgas or hydraulic oil.
After completing the EA(Air) conversion course it was back to Yeovilton and the Sea Vixen, now the Mk 2. Prior to joining 899 in January 1968 I completed the Sea Vixen SAMCO at Lee with special emphasis on the Red Top missile and the armament systems.
One of my early tasks on 899 was to fulfill Cdr. McCullough's mandate and make all aircraft Red Top ready. One aircraft in particular I recall, kept roasting one of the missile boxes, this we traced to an aircraft wiring error. That aircraft was probably miswired on conversion and may never have had the Red Top system operational.
In 69 we were in the Med and I found great satisfaction working with the Senior Pilot and Air Weapons officer fitting the Sea Vixen for the more unusual weapon options. This led me to request a flight in a Sea Vixen, before leaving 899, with the Senior Pilot. On the night before the flight I discovered my pilot had gone from the Senior Pilot to a very junior pilot, S/Lt Kim Sharman, not surprising since we had a Divisional Officer/Chief relationship, but my determination to fly didn't waiver.
The experience was one not to be missed, takeoff and climb out were quite a bit faster than my first ever flight, a Blackburn Beverley. Then, it was great fun handling the aircraft via the autopilot and going through the sound barrier.
I did make a couple of novice mistakes; the barf bag goes in the lower pockets, not required thank goodness. The other was looking down, when doing a low level pass on a destroyer; this was in spite of tapping the altimeter to ensure that it really read zero feet, should have looked up. The rest of the flight and landing was uneventful, although the air around the Rock was turbulent. All told Kim , it was an experience I will never forget, you did a great job and I never doubted your skills. Not sure though, after working on the Mk1 as an AA, whether I would have flown in a Mk1.
Sea Vixen Citation for David Green. Electrical Artificer.
It was policy of training for all Fleet Air Arm Pilots to experience a catapult shot land based before embarking on an Aircraft Carrier. This was practiced at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) Bedford.
This was conducted for all Sea Vixen pilots and later for Phantom F4K pilots.
The custom built steam catapult was constructed a few meters high at the threshold of the short runway, approximately aligned 240 degrees for the prevailing winds. The aircraft would taxi up a steep ramp on to the catapult. A lot of power was required to do this and the pilot had to be very quick to throttle back on achieving the horizontal, thus avoiding disasterous overun consequences.
The Flight Deck Officer (seen here in his Dress No 5 Uniform) would marshal the aircraft to the correct position. The hold back would be secured and the aircraft would be connected to the catapult with the wire strop (seen on the ground).
The shore based catapult shot was a hard and severe ride for large and heavy aircraft such as the Sea Vixen. It was however a much smoother ride that the original hydraulically powered catapults of the earlier Naval Aviation era. Aircraft carriers had wind over the deck as high as 50 kts or so. Here at Bedford the catapult had to achieve flying speed (130kts or so) from zero, with little or no natural wind. The aircraft would sometimes sink and glance main wheels on the runway if end speed was not sufficient.
"At the time it was installed the catapults on all RN carriers were to be 150ft. The Bedford catapult was 200ft long and was raised to allow the correct launch speed to be determined by finding out at what end speed the aircraft sank below the catapult. This was carried out before any type of aircraft carried out trials on a ship. No pilot that I had spoken to in my time at Bedford thought that the boost was harsh compared with an actual carrier launch, indeed many considered it to be smoother than the previous hydraulic catapult design."
(personal testimomy of George Ray. ex Bedford Catapult Team)
Interesting to note here in this film archive is the civilian catapult crew and onlookers who are apparantly unaware of the dangers of jet engine noise to hearing. Only one is wearing ear defenders. The noise was enough to make ones insides rumble and vibrate.
