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It is not often that any of us get a
chance to photograph a brand new military aircraft overhead our
home but that’s what happened at Prudhoe, Northumberland on
Wednesday 1st October 2014 when a Boeing P-8A
Poseidon overflew en route to Durham Tees Valley Airport (DTV) .
I was sat at the computer doing a few bits after a clear sky and
busy day at Newcastle Airport the day before that had produced a
lot of aircraft activity including two jurassic AN-12s and I had
forgotten that the SBS and radio were still connected. Suddenly
and very loudly “Navy LN045” called Newcastle Approach with
flight details and inbound information to DTV. A check on the
SBS showed a plot about 10 miles north of the house heading
south east and going to pass directly overhead and at that
moment thinking it to be a P3 Orion and with complete cloud
cover overhead I almost did not bother to go outside but
something told me to try. To my astonishment a 737 broke through
the solid cloud cover directly overhead and with camera at the
ready and on full telephoto a poor quality shot was taken before
the aircraft again entered the cloud but it was good enough to
make out the Navy title on the rear fuselage – talk about luck (168756). All that had happened quickly in a few
minutes and things fell into place thereafter and the 737 was
identified as the US Navy P-8A Poseidon 168756 c/n 42252 going
into DTV for its deployment as part of the exercise Volcanex.
This is a European Air Group (EAG) exercise taking place near
RAF Leeming between 4-17 October and focuses on tactical
interoperability and is designed to test, validate and refine
EAG products and maritime aircraft are also operating from
Leeming. This is the first time that a UK multinational maritime
exercise, that was once the JMC (Joint Maritime Course), has
moved away from the Moray Firth coast and Lossiemouth and
Kinloss so it will be interesting to see how this exercise
develops in the future with the introduction of modern net
centric operations and more capable aircraft like the Poseidon.
The DTV aircraft is probably the sixteenth production machine
and was delivered to the Jacksonville Naval Air Station, Florida
on the 4th January 2014 and is one of three delivered
this year under the Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP). A
programme of this type allows the gradual production and
introduction of new aircraft and systems to meet hardware and
software developments and the inevitable budget constraints.
Although no unit marks were carried the LN code has been used
for many years by VP-45 squadron “Pelicans” at Jacksonville and
the Poseidon using that callsign may be allocated to them.
With a family trip down to York on
Friday, 3rd October already planned it gave me the
chance to visit DTV to see if the Poseidon was around knowing
that it might spend a lot of time hangered but to my surprise it
was parked out on Stand 1 where reasonable but not brilliant
photos were possible (168756). The markings carried were
756 on the nose and on top of the tail with a full colour star
and bar and Navy titles on the rear fuselage but no squadron
markings were visible on the port side. The Bu number and type
were under the tail in the usual small text and an equally small
NAVAIR (Naval Air Systems Command) logo. This command is based
at Patuxent River NAS, Maryland and has personnel stationed at
eight
locations in the USA including
Jacksonville NAS with its mission to provide support to naval
aviation and weapons, including research, development, test and
evaluation. I am sure there will be many DTV locals and others
will get much better photographs during the aircraft’s
deployment time and I look forward to seeing them.
It was when photographing the
Poseidon tail assembly (168756) that some deep down
sub-conscious memory was triggered that I had done something
similar many years ago and it took the ageing brain cells a few
hours to make the connection back some 50 years ago to 13th
March1963. The occasion was the first reported visit and
Atlantic crossing of the brand new P-3A Orion to the UK shores
(149671) at a time when it was replacing the ageing US Navy P2
Neptune fleet. The aircraft was
149671/LC1 of VP-8 Squadron that was the Fleets first
operational unit based at Patuxent River NAS and was visiting
RAF Turnhouse, now Edinburgh Airport, on route from Northolt to
Fornebu in Norway. It had also been reported at Ballykelly
in Northern Ireland that was the base of 204 Squadron with
Shackleton MR2s another important part of the NATO anti
submarine defence structure during the Cold War. The Orions
visit to Edinburgh was probably linked to the role of nearby
Pitreavie Castle in Fife that was then the UK co-ordination
centre for maritime based search and rescue missions. The
aircraft colour scheme was the dark sea blue and white that most
of the US Navy patrol aircraft carried at that time and was
being gradually being replaced by the grey and white that came
to be standard in the latter 1960’s. Up to that time the Neptune
squadrons were also frequent visitors to Turnhouse with P2V-7S
148355 of VP-21 squadron and
Prestwick P2V-7 147960 of VP-11 on
regular patrol missions and for JMC type exercises, but from
1963 onwards the visits declined as the Orion rolled off the
production line and entered widespread squadron service in the
Atlantic Fleet.
In the modern way of recycling
resources a number of these Neptune and Orion aircraft have
found their way back on to the civilian market as fire bombers,
having ended their US military career after spending some time
in the AMARC storage facility at Davis Monthan in Arizona. A
visit there in 1986 found the Neptune storage area to be vast
but by 1992 only a few remained and an overflight photo (ED_p3
aerial) of a small part of the Orion storage area showed how
quickly things had changed in only six years. From storage both
types went on to their new careers as fire bombers in a variety
of different and gaudy colour schemes operated by a number of
companies doing work for the forestry services in North America.
When I first encountered the fire bombers at Alamagordo in New
Mexico during November 1986 the Neptune conversion programme was
well underway and twelve aircraft were present,
including ex US Navy P2V5-Fs N96278 and
N98555 and in addition to converted aircraft a number
recently from storage at Davis were present including P2V-5
N13859. In a more recent visit to
the Forestry Service facility at Lancaster, California during
October 2011 it was good to see the Neptune very active during
the fire season and turned out in superb condition with and ex P2H N4235N parked out, fuelled up with retardant and all ready
to go to the next emergency. So all in all a good link between
the brand new Poseidon at DTV and its predecessor maritime types
a number of which are still around carrying out important tasks.
Tuesday 7th October 0920 - 1404 callsign " Six Mike Zulu"
Friday 10th October 1421 - 1859 callsign "Zero India Quebec"
Saturday 11th October 0958 - 1626 callsign "Oscar Four Alpha"
Monday 13th October 0941 - 1545 callsign "Papa One Papa"
Tuesday 14th October 0938 - 1615 callsign " Nine Kilo Oscar"
Wednesday 15th October 1041 - 1645 callsign "Nine Foxtrot Delta"
The aircraft returned home on Friday 17th as Navy LN-45 departing at 1138
Eddie Douglas 10.10.14
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