Plane Tales

It was New Year’s Day, 2007 and the 96 passengers booked on Adam Air Flight 574 from Java to Sulawesi boarded their Boeing 737-4Q8 for their 2 hour trip. The Indonesian government had adopted a policy of deregulation in the country’s aviation industry which had resulted in a boom of start-up airlines, many of which were low cost carriers. This decision wasn’t matched with an equivalent ramp up of...

Another installment of tales from my RAF logbook. I’m about halfway through my 4 year sentence at RAF Valley instructing those RAF pilots destined for the fast jet world. The first couple of years had been far from without incident and I should probably mention that I nearly lost my greatest friend to an accident but someone was watching over him that day and he survived.   Our great friend,...

How do you get a pilot going? Well, in the old days it started with a hand crank!   The Hucks Starter   … Cowboy Land!   The Coffman Starter   A cartridge starter on the RB-57A   The DHC1 Chipmunk   The Arnold Benz Velo   The cycle of a jet engine   RN Seahawks simultaneous use of their cartridge starters   RAF Lightnings of No56 “Chicken in...

Waiting for the arrival of the December flying roster was always a tense time. Those with big family gatherings are anxious to ensure they are at home with their loved ones whilst the more carefree crew, with fewer ties, might want to be down route somewhere exotic knowing that a bevy of party goers would be flying with them. I know of one crew who flew over Christmas with great excitement… at lea...

And so Plane Tales was born with the story of the mixologist Joe Gilmore… well, kind of. There had been a few bits in the Show pre the Farnborough special but it hadn’t become part of APG like it is now. The number of Tales will never catch Jeff’s impressive half millennium but they have now passed the 300 mark and these are a few of the memorable ones. The mixologist, Joe Gilmore   Tumble Do...

In the United States the Coast Guard is a fully paid up branch of the military. Its men and women have served with valour in many conflicts and I’m going to tell you about one such event, the rescue of Misty 11.   The badge of the US Coast Guard   An F100 Fast FAC Misty crew   An OV10 Bronco   Spads escorting a Jolly Green Giant   The jungle penetrator.   Landing in d...

Year two of Porridge… that’s an old term used by prisoners to describe their time inside jail but was very apt as many of my fellow flying instructors and I had not volunteered for this particular job and it was a long one.  As I leaf through the pages of my log book I recall memories from my flying career. Flying with the Air Officer Commanding   The badge of No 4 Flying Training School, pal...

Suddenly the black of the night that surrounded them was split open by bright tracer cannon fire that streaked by the windows with loud cracks and then came the shock and thud as some struck the aircraft. The lights were all extinguished… so in the dark, tense and alarmed, everyone waited to see what would happen next. It was the 24th of October 1956, and the first shots in a war over the Suez Can...

About this time of the year, I like to do a tale that turns our minds to those who gave their lives for their countries in the many conflicts that have plagued the world.   In the past in tales such as, “In Flanders Fields and Lest We Forget” I’ve talked about the poppy, used as a symbol of remembrance in many countries, and the poem penned by the Canadian doctor, Lt Col John McCrae.  There was a...

Within a few days of detonating their first nuclear bomb, to the dismay of the Soviets, President Truman announced that they had the evidence to prove that within recent weeks an atomic explosion had occurred in the USSR. How the United States had obtained that knowledge was highly classified but we now know the story of the secret snoopers who sniffed the stratosphere and their spooky sorties! Th...

This is the concluding part of my interview with Mike Wildman, an amputee pilot who has had a fascinating career in aviation. The first part covered Mike’s life in the Royal Air Force flying, the second concerned his life changing decision to have part of his left leg removed and his fight to lead the world’s first disabled formation display team. In this final section Mike tells us about creating...

This is the second part of my interview with Mike Wildman, an amputee pilot who has had a fascinating career in aviation. The first part covered Mike’s life in the Royal Air Force flying, amongst other aircraft, the C130 Hercules. In this part we hear about his life changing decision to have part of his left leg removed and his fight, not only to get back into the cockpit of an aircraft but to lea...

Mike Wildman is an amputee pilot who has had a fascinating career in aviation. This tale is about his time in the Royal Air Force flying the C130 Hercules in some very challenging theatres. His story will both amaze and inspire, particularly in the later parts when we will cover his work as the leader of the world’s only fully aerobatic amputee formation team… TeamPhoenixAir.com  ...

The Old Pilot ventures back to the little airport where his career in aviation began nearly half a century previously, meets the young lady now doing his old job and recalls some adventures from his early days.   Many thanks to Nev of Plane Talking UK for providing the audio visual equipment   Grace talks about Synergy Flight Training   The Old Pilot does his thing!     Th...

White’s is the oldest and most exclusive Gentleman’s club in London its members have included more Earls, Dukes, Lords, Barrons, Princes, Knights, Viscounts. Marquesses, heads of industry and notable politicians than you could shake a stick at. The name we’re interested in, though, is that of Lord Edward Grosvenor, the youngest son of the 1st Duke of Westminster. It was in White’s that...

The world of a pilot is different to any other. They see things from a different perspective and view the world from places that even the mightiest birds cannot reach. All their faculties of sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing experience sensations unique to their position whether they are manoeuvring a mighty airliner or sliding through the air on sheets of silk in a slippery sailplane. When t...

We all have our favourite flying movies, whether it’s a black and white classic with biplanes wheeling around the sky flown by actual World War One flying aces, comedy cult movies from which we can quote our favourite lines (Shirley you don’t mean that) or modern thrillers which employ state of the art computer generated imagery. This is a story of a much loved actor who didn’t just act in a...

The work the Young Tiger crews performed during the Vietnam War was monumental. With an average fleet of 88 tankers over a 7 year period they performed nearly 180 thousand missions offloading 8.2 billion lbs, thats over 3,700 million tons, of fuel. A staggering achievement only surpassed by the hundreds of aircraft saves they achieved, preventing many of their fellow aircrew from falling into enem...

Forty years ago, four RAF pilots graduated from Central Flying School and became fast jet Qualified Flying Instructors. They hadn’t been together at the same time since then. When they did, they shared some more stories. Four QFIs then   Dave   A typical course photo   How Dave’s Hawk might have looked!   The Hawk canopy showing the lines of Miniature Detonating Cor...

Sadly there are also many who think that ‘Boy Scout’ honesty is something that should be left behind in childhood but luckily not many that do take on the responsibility of becoming a career pilot. When I discovered recently that there is a name for this capacity to openly admit guilt for one’s mistakes, it didn’t come as a surprise that it was named after a pilot. Captain Asoh. Tokyo airport &#16...

Forty years ago, four RAF pilots graduated from Central Flying School and became fast jet Qualified Flying Instructors. They hadn’t been together at the same time since then. When they did, they shared a few stories.   Four QFIs back then   The Hawk in close formation   The English Electric Lightning   The Lightning F3   Loch Ness   Four QFIs now!   Images...

Defenceless, it relied on its unmatched performance to provide vital data for the USA and NATO on some of the most sensitive parts of the globe. One of the regular missions flown by the SR71 Blackbird out of a base in the United Kingdom, RAF Mildenhall, was East across the North and Baltic Seas towards the territories of the Soviet Union; these flights were known as the Baltic Express. All went un...

The crew come clean on some of their layover hotel experiences. After Part 1, the Good, comes Part 2, the Bad and the Ugly!   Capt Nick’s hotel in Mong Kok, the epicentre of the SARS pandemic.   The New York hotel nicknamed the Transylvania!   The Kentucky Derby.   ACME B-727 Flight Engineer Jeff.   His room resembled a monk’s cell.   Stouffers in its heyd...

Over their careers, airline pilots, and doctors come to that, will have stayed in a myriad of loggings during their overnight stays and the vast majority will have merged into a conglomeration of memories but every now and then one or two will stand out from the rest. In this tale, the crew have kindly shared some of their experiences starting with the Good… the Bad and the Ugly will follow on nex...

It was the 19th of January 1915 and the people of the English towns of Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn were woken by an eerie throbbing sound from above them. No-one there had ever heard it before, this deep rumble of powerful engines in the sky, slowly approaching in the darkness. People left their homes and looked into the inky black sky but nothing could be seen. The noise grew and, now alarmed...