by Nick Anderson | Jan 18, 2022 | Plane Tales
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Despite their obvious differences, Sidewinders and Sparrows often went together because they aren’t just the names of flying creatures and slithering serpents… they are weapons of war.
The Sidewinder
House Sparrows
The Rapier missile system
Chinese Fire Arrows
The Tipu Sultan’s artillery rockets
The RS-28 rockets fired by the Polikarpov I-16
The German R4M unguided air to air rocket
The nuclear AIR-2 Genie missile
A Genie launch
The AIM9 Sidewinder
The rotating reticule
The rolleron
Guidance
The warhead
An AIM 9 warhead effect demonstration
The AIM7 Sparrow
A QF4B killed by a Sparrow missile
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to images in the Public Domain, UK Defence Imagery, Wubei Zhi, NASA, Juergen Schiffmann, the USAF, David Monniaux, RoyKabanlit, U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation and the USN.
by Nick Anderson | Jan 6, 2022 | Plane Tales
Podcast (pt): Download
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 government supervision and control… the result was fierce commercial competition amongst the new airlines with little or no oversight.
Competition amongst the many start up low cost airlines was fierce.
The incident Adam Air Boeing 737, ready for boarding.
An Adam Air B737 taxies out.
Debris from the flight is washed up.
The USN ship Mary Sears.
Adam Air flight 172.
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to FLasset for logo, marlborotosca, Dmitriy Pichugin. the NTSB, the USN, the NTSC and ERRORHUNT.
by Nick Anderson | Dec 30, 2021 | Plane Tales
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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, Glen, a USAF exchange pilot.
Flying in the Hawk
The laying on of hands by Central Flying School
The Hawk T1 trainer
The horrible Spinning explanation
The laziest A1 QFI in existence
by Nick Anderson | Dec 21, 2021 | Plane Tales
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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 the Basket” Sqn at RAF Akrotiri
The SR71 Blackbird
The Riedelanlasser starter for German BMW 003 and Jumo 004 turbojet engines
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the Library of Congress, Jeff Dahl, NACA, US Patent Office, bomberpilot, Jeff Dahl, the IMW, the RAF, the USAF and Kogo. Attribution not possible for some images.
by Nick Anderson | Dec 16, 2021 | Plane Tales
Podcast (pt): Download
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 least I believe so! Their names were Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders, the crew of the Apollo 8 space mission.
Saturnalia
Victorian Christmas
Father Christmas
The Apollo 8 Crew
The Zond 5 spacecraft
The emblem and launch of Apollo 8
Stage 3 jettison
The surface of the moon
Earthrise
A safe return
Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Antoine-François Callet, Joseph Lionel Williams, Robert Seymour, Josiah King, Alfred Henry Forrester, the USSR Post and NASA.
