The Buccaneer

 

It is now 51 years since I made my last Buccaneer flight when I disembarked from HMS Eagle on a 2-hour flight to Lossiemouth piloted by Lt Robin Cox of 800 Squadron. I had accumulated a little under 1500 flying hours, 294 catapult shots, and 295 arrests during my time in the Royal Navy, and was leaving as one of the few observers to pass the Air Warfare Instructor's Course, the British equivalent of what is now known in the United States as the Top Gun course, according to US General Chuck Horner who was the commander of US Central Command Forces in Desert Storm, the equivalent of a doctorate degree in Fighter Operations.

Only over the past few weeks have I been able to obtain a number of buccaneer pictures, hitherto unpublished, and so I am taking this opportunity of publishing them here in my blog. Those of you who are "in the know" will see that they are a mixture of squadrons, Navy squadrons 800, 801, 736, South African Air Force 24 Squadron, and RAF squadrons 12,15,16, 208, and 237. I have not attempted to discriminate between the various pictures.  

 

The Buccaneer was originally designed to be a low-level attack aircraft with the capability of approaching a then-Soviet warship beneath its radar dome in order to deliver its weapon load, be it conventional or nuclear, without being detected. Hence many of the sorties carried out were essentially low level. Examples of these may be seen in some of these pictures.

Very few people think that the buccaneer was capable of formation aerobatics - think again. Dave Howard ran a successful team as may be seen in the following picture

There was also a formation flypast for the launching of QE2 - not aerobatic though !!