The following text was posted on the "RAF Leuchars Memories" facebook page on 14th Julky 2024 by Steve Gyles;
A little insight to my routine training sorties with the Lightning F6 on 11 Sqn back in the late '60s.
We had a training requirement set by 11 Group Headquarters that required each of us to complete various types of intercepts each month. These would include supersonic head-ons, converting to stern attacks; subsonic intercepts at high, medium and low level; visual identifications (usually done at night); tanking; and electronic counter measure (ECM) intercepts. ECM is worth a mention. 360 Squadron flew the Canberra ECM variant and we did much work against them. They provided straight jamming of our radar; radio jamming; and window – bundles of thin foil strip that when ejected from a pod gave aircraft size returns on the radar screen.
Two stories come to mind, the first was their radio jamming.
Quite often this consisted of one of their crew on permanent transmit on our radio frequency reading articles from the Playboy magazine or a similar men’s publication. It was always more fun listening to the stories than using our radio homing capability! I never did ask what the WRAF controllers and assistants at our radar station thought about it all.
The Canberras would frequently land and park on our pan for a turnround and debrief. We would usually take the opportunity to obtain cartons of window from them. Each carton was about 9 x 3 x 1 inches. We would put them in our airbrakes and use them as a countermeasure when acting as a target during routine pairs sorties. Of course the inevitable would occasionally happen and a pilot would select airbrakes out just after take-off to hold station on his leader and the entire station would get a dose of metal confetti!
On one occasion I went out to the visiting Canberra with its navigator to replenish our stocks. The window was housed in a wingtip pod. I stood under one of the wingtips, as instructed by the navigator, with a cardboard box underneath while he went into the cockpit, switched on the battery master and the window eject switch. Nothing happened but I became aware of a thud, thud, thud. Bending down I could see the packets hitting the ground from the other wing tip, breaking open and window flying all over the place in the strong wind. It always reminds me of the ‘Only Fools and Horses’ chandelier scene!
Thanks, Steve!
