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Hi gents,

 

Another update from yesterday. I actually booked a day to go to Lakenheath and see if the dedications to the crew of 'Mi Amigo' from last weeks Sheffield memorial were still on the 494th FS jets, but no such luck and it looks like they had been removed pretty quick. With Lakenheath quiet, two out of three sqn's are away I actually more time at Mildenhall. With another day or clear skies I moved back to Mildenhall mid afternoon in the hope that the Special Ops guys would launch before dusk for their usual night time work. They responded to the challenge with both MC-130Js and CV-22s launching, although they nearly left it too late.

 

The CV-22s of the 7th SOS had unusually been quite active during the day, with two pairs out prior to the night sorties, that's certainly the best sortie rate for a single day that I've seen, perhaps they're getting better. Unfortunately, they don't seem to use the old 'Alpha' pad much nowadays that was just across the runway from the gate that you could shoot their departures from. 'Knife 73' flight here departed on the main runway, which is still okay, but not as good as the pad.

 

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'051, the second aircraft in the flight still carries a rudder in the USMC MV-22 grey, one of two like this at Mildenhall.

 

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Regular 'Quid' flight from the 100th ARW rolling out and turning past the gate. It still carries partial 22nd ARW marks but is now on the bloody hundredths strength. Hope that don't change the serial number on this one! I was rather surprised to see the basket and hose fit on the boom, when the jet is a MPRS bird with the pods on the wings - any idea why that would be necessary?

 

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Finally, right at sunset a three ship of MC-130Js from the 67th SOS taxied down the far end and departed with minimal spacing. The light was pretty much gone then to try and get them normally, but then when they went round, landed again at minimal spacing and taxied straight back down the other end I had an idea. I quickly drove down a couple of country lanes, pointed back towards the approach at the departure end and waited for them to come out again, hoping they would repeat the performance - worked pretty well; 'Strix 61' flight on the climb.

 

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And a final one.

 

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A bit quiet but not too bad.

 

Gary

 

 

 

 

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I was rather surprised to see the basket and hose fit on the boom, when the jet is a MPRS bird with the pods on the wings - any idea why that would be necessary?"

 

Perhaps the crew needed to perform a routine qualification with the "Iron Maiden" and the MPRS bird was the one available to do it in?

 

BTW - fantastic pics as always! The MC-130s landing is especially great. Thank you so much for sharing these.

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Hi gents,

 

Good point about needing to qualify on the basket on the boom, that never occurred to me. Wednesday was a funny day for tankers, as it sounded like the 100th was refuelling quite a few non-US aircraft. Whilst I was sitting over at Lakenheath listening to the radio, one 'Quid' callsign who was heading back in was suddenly re-tasked to turn around and go out and refuel another type, which surprised the crew who said they only had 5k of fuel available to off load. When they asked what the receiver was they were told it was a RC-135, which was also odd as both TDY RC's were on the ground at Mildenhall and hadn't moved all day - then I remembered the RAF operates RC-135s now.

 

A couple more from Wednesday, I managed to clean up a couple of the MC-130Js streaming out on there first departure as well as another of them turning in the circuit.

 

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Gary

 

  

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  • 4 weeks later...

 

One of three P-3s that transited through Mildenhall this weekend - unfortunately heat haze is already becoming a problem, even in March.

 

2G5A0937.jpg

 

Gary

 

 

 

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On 3/30/2019 at 7:11 PM, gary1701 said:

 

One of three P-3s that transited through Mildenhall this weekend - unfortunately heat haze is already becoming a problem, even in March.

 

2G5A0937.jpg

 

Gary

 

 

 

I believe that is the last of the Active Duty P-3 squadrons, VP-40, returning home. BuNo 162776, I have 45.3 total hours in that one.

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1 hour ago, 82Whitey51 said:

I believe that is the last of the Active Duty P-3 squadrons, VP-40, returning home. BuNo 162776, I have 45.3 total hours in that one.

I think I have time in that tail as well.... BMUP bird?

 

Collin

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Hi gents,

 

Thanks for the info guys, and pleased that I have taken the pic - badly - of a bird that you've flown in. Somebody at Mildenhall with more experience of the local scene than me said that this was the last USN P-3 deployment but that these P-3's were heading both out to deployment and also heading home. So it looks like there's a little time to go.

 

Gary 

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  • 4 months later...

 

Gents,

 

I haven't updated this long running thread for months because I haven't been over here since March. That changed this morning although I wasn't planning on making the trip after two days in a row out with the camera. Unfortunately, well fortunately I suppose  word went out this morning that a E-4 was due in at Mildenhall as part of the presidents visit to the G7 in France. I haven't seen or photographed one of those for over 25 years so it was grab gear and make a straight run over as I had less than two hours lead time.

 

Got to the field at the end of runway 11 to find it filling up nicely - for something like this word would soon get around. Nice early bonus was RC-135S 'Cobra Ball' coming back from a marathon mission, having departed around 19:30 last night and having emptied two tankers. Nice to get the right side with the black painted wing and engines.

 

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'Edge 99' the E-4, was filed from Wright-Patterson to Mildenhall and was clearly running late, but soon showed up on the various flight tracking sites coming in over Ireland. Nice blue skies on a white aircraft...

 

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It brought a few spectators in...

 

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Heat hazed I know, but a quickie shot through the fence as it taxied onto the AMC terminal and parked beside what is now a long term resident - a very broken B-52. This is the one that diverted in on June 17th with a engine fire during a long distance mission to Europe direct from Minot on that day. Nobody knows when it will be fixed but they have supposedly had the engines off. Although NOTAMed closed this bank holiday weekend, Mildenhall also had two USMC MV-22s come in for a quick fuel stop yesterday afternoon as I was driving back from Coningsby. If they'd been 30 minutes later I could have got them as well. Mildenhall needs to close for holidays more often...

 

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Gary

 

 

Edited by gary1701
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2 hours ago, Tomcat Trebor said:

Fantastic shots as always Gary. Is there any significance regarding the black painted wing and engine on the RC-135 ?

 

Regards

Robert

IIRC they needed the flat black to cut glare off the wings (cameras are on that side) and it was the top of the wing and top of the engine, at some point they painted the entire engine black and I believe they keep the paint scheme for historical reasons now.

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Nice pics of 676. I have a bunch of hours on her and I managed to fly on all four in my 2 year tour (thanks to a single flight on the fourth right before I transferred as she came out of maintenance). Nowhere near my number of hours underwater, but I loved my job with Nightwatch.

 

Dave

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On ‎8‎/‎29‎/‎2019 at 3:02 AM, parche said:

Nice pics of 676. I have a bunch of hours on her and I managed to fly on all four in my 2 year tour (thanks to a single flight on the fourth right before I transferred as she came out of maintenance). Nowhere near my number of hours underwater, but I loved my job with Nightwatch.

 

Dave

 

 

Thanks for that. I find it quite interesting that I can post a pic on here and find somebody has flown on a particular airframe that I have photographed. I was a little disappointed that I wasn't there when he left as he left on the bank holiday Monday as he went right up to the underrun on 11 and turned - would have made for some fantastic close up images as he would have been about 50 feet away!

 

Gary

Edited by gary1701
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One thing I always wondered about was the apparently open knowledge of every military flight in/out of bases in the UK.  I would think that this could conceivably put the US military at a disadvantage.  

 

Is there anyway to restrict this information for certain military activities?    Is every flight public knowledge?  

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7 hours ago, 11bee said:

One thing I always wondered about was the apparently open knowledge of every military flight in/out of bases in the UK.  I would think that this could conceivably put the US military at a disadvantage.  

 

Is there anyway to restrict this information for certain military activities?    Is every flight public knowledge?  

 

Hi Bee,

 

That's a very good question and I had to think a little before answering it as over here what we see and hear is kind of taken for granted. To take the questions directly, it's not US specific, any and all military flights in and around the UK are pretty much monitored by the enthusiast community. Outside the UK services,  US types would obviously be the next most common to be seen and photographed purely because of the numbers and bases here. The current Cobra Warrior exercise being hosted by the RAF up in Lincolnshire starting today has German and Italian EF-2000's and a first ever UK appearance by the Israeli Air Force in an exercise in this country - F-15 'Baz' x7 for the next three weeks. The IDF crews have found out today what that means - hundreds of photographers on the fence! They would have been forewarned as they're attendance was known about months ago.

 

The information comes from various sources. Obviously radios, the small hand held sets similar to mine, but also your serious amateur radio enthusiasts that can monitor comms thousands of miles away. The ability to track the transponder codes and the international sharing of that information means that flights can be tracked in real time via a mobile or PC. I often use one on my phone if I'm at a base to give me an extended heads up. The other Friday I was at the RAF Typhoon base of Coningsby waiting for a flight to come back before they packed up for the weekend and I watched them on the screen go to the tanker over the North Sea, then head up North to Yorkshire for some low level work, then back to the tanker, then down South to Norfolk for a FAC exercise at the training area down. After three hours I was getting rather frustrated! The point though is that with these tools you can build up a picture of what is going on if you are familiar with how they operate. About a week ago three B-2s deployed to the UK at night, going to Fairford and they were known to be coming when still tanking in US airspace, hours before getting this side. Combination of the above tools, the officially published NOTAM information that is available publicly and the locals down at Fairford 'knowing' a deployment was due! You put all that together and it's hard to hide something as complex as military aircraft movements.  When Lakenheath or another UK/US base hosts aircraft somebody always seems to know, not sure how but many serious UK enthusiasts spend a lot of time in the US and locals to Mildenhall/Lakenheath always seem to have a network of contacts that they can approach for info.

 

I don't see a problem with normal routine/training operations being observed or photographed, as there's little or nothing there to give away. The fleet sizes  and aircraft external configurations are pretty much public info anyway. Obviously different nations have different standards, what is considered normal in the UK or the Netherlands (two very aviation enthusiast orientated nations) would not be allowable in the US or Israel, even though frontline types from both nations can freely be photographed close up here in the UK at the moment. What I would expect to be quite closely guarded is operating tactics and capabilities that can not be gauged by somebody watching from the fence. The USAF has exercised it's abilities to keep deployments concealed if it chooses to in recent times - the first F-35A deployment to Lakenheath in Easter 2017. What became public after the deployment was that it also contained a security exercise in the build up and planning to see if they could keep it from the public prior to the jets arriving and the press release. They largely succeeded so it does show that they can keep it quiet if they choose to do so but with most routine deployments and exercises there is no need. That Easter weekend we only knew they were coming to a location in Europe on the Friday evening with a DoD press release saying that F-35s would deploy to a European location that weekend - where and exactly when was not released. Saturday morning I woke up to find that two flights of F-35s were outbound Hill and on the way, with the comms, especially when refuelling  being the main give away.  I went over to Lakenheath still not knowing that they were going there, just speculation but got there to find that the base had opened up and was expecting them. The pics when they arrived were posted here but it did show that they can keep it quiet until quite late if desired.

 

That'll cover it for now as I gotta go, link below from somebody else showing the shots from the first day of the Israeli/German/Italian exercise. I bet that was a eye opener for the IDF crews. I do have plans to get up there next week though.

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/157906543@N04/

 

Gary

Edited by gary1701
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Thanks for the detailed info Gary, quite interesting.   I guess my concern was a scenario like the US bombing of Libya in 1986.   If the US today decided to launch a strike using assets based in the UK, could they do so without the details being shortly being posted all over the internet?   

 

Great pictures as always, thanks again (as always) for taking all the time to post these. 

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2 hours ago, 11bee said:

Thanks for the detailed info Gary, quite interesting.   I guess my concern was a scenario like the US bombing of Libya in 1986.   If the US today decided to launch a strike using assets based in the UK, could they do so without the details being shortly being posted all over the internet?   

 

Great pictures as always, thanks again (as always) for taking all the time to post these. 

 

Hi again Bee.

 

Your question above concerns something that I meant to cover on my long post above but was out of time last night as I was up against the clock. The short answer is no the US military could not if using UK facilities, but the genuine enthusiast community is quite self regulating when it comes to circumstances like these. I'll explain. In the old days prior to Internet, mobile phones, social media...etc...and using Libya 1986 as an example it was difficult for the word to spread in real time because the technology wasn't there. You still had the same level of interest (arguably more than now given how much more activity there was), but although enthusiasts and photographers were out at the fences of Mildenhall/Lakenheath during the raid, they didn't have the tools to spread information. In the run up to that raid the locals knew something was happening as half the USAF KC-10 fleet deployed to Mildenhall and Lakenheath ran through an intense work up and then a stand down from flying for preparation a day or so before the actual raid. If you were familiar with how they operate, those indications are impossible to hide.

 

Nowadays it's different obviously, as with all the tools previously mentioned, it becomes difficult, and in the case of operations from UK bases, pretty much impossible to conceal.  That's where the responsible and knowledgeable enthusiasts themselves know what to comment on and what not to. For example, the main UK source for information gathering and posting is a forum called Fighter Control. It's a very active and busy forum, I've been a active member for years. The vast majority of the site - general discussion, pictures, they have a sub-forum for each and every base in the UK - all that is freely available to any guest or member viewing the site. However, the sub-section that covers real time aircraft movements, exercise info, NOTAMS, UK, US and globally is hidden unless you are a member and have five forum posts elsewhere to your name. It's done to prevent casual viewers - especially the media when there's a breaking aviation story - from accessing information that is better kept in the serious community to avoid 'misunderstanding' shall we say. Also if there is a ongoing event that public discussion is probably not wise in the interests of security, discussion of that event is banned and removed from the forum by moderators until it's no longer time sensitive. Classic examples would be the bombing sorties flown direct from Lakenheath and Marham during the Libyan war of 2011. Although Tornados and F-15s were deployed closer to the area a small number of sorties were flown direct, with massive tanker support, from the UK bases. They couldn't hide the aircraft departing with live ordnance - assuming you know what to look for - but as soon as it became obvious what was occurring, and it doesn't take long, no discussion or logs were allowed on FC during the length of the operation. It was fair game afterwards, as even Lakenheath itself posted the pics and info on it's social media accounts, but it's off limits during the operation. It was the same when B-1s deployed into Fairford for one of the Middle Eastern operations, can't remember if it was Afghan or Iraq. The fact a certain number of B-1s were there, the aircraft serials was all fine, but as soon as they flew live bombing missions no movement information was allowed. The problem was that the mainstream media didn't care and quite happily filmed and reported bombing sorties departing from the fence as access around Fairford was still quite easy.

 

So without going into a book again, the answer is that it would be pretty much impossible to mount operational sorties from the UK bases without the community knowing what was going on in considerable detail, but the majority of the community is quite responsible and self policing. If you take a sensitive picture (for example, certain aircrew showboating through the Mach loop, or an accident) and sell it to the national press, you won't be popular amongst your peers, and word soon gets around. Obviously, there's always going to be some irresponsible or inexperienced types who don't care what they're doing, so in this scenario it would leak somewhere, especially in the wild west of social media rather than a controlled format such as a forum like FC.

 

Hope that helps a bit more.

 

Gary

Edited by gary1701
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  • 3 weeks later...
On 9/2/2019 at 8:21 PM, gary1701 said:

 . . .    I don't see a problem with normal routine/training operations being observed or photographed, as there's little or nothing there to give away.  . . .

 

Gary

 

Few years ago I was reading the Red Eagles book on those MiG’s in the US. There is an interesting part in the book describing how a group of US analysts were able to deduce a hell of a lot of things from just monitoring flights over on the other side of the iron curtain. Number of flights, given flights data, duration of training flights . . . It is a fascinating story on how one can make out far, far more than what the other side thinks they can.

 

All this was back in cold war with far less sophisticated equipment and monitoring techniques. I think there is little that one can hide and there are tons of info made from otherways grey looking data.

 

The other side I am sure is also using analysts to look into this kind of data. 

 

 

Best regards

Gabor

Edited by ya-gabor
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Gary, semi-OT question:  Just read that the US has launched some airstrikes against ISIS in Libya over the last few days.   

 

Assuming it's something that can be discussed open-source, any idea if these were flown by LN Strike Eagles?  

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Hi Bee,

 

Unlikely to be 48th FW jets. All three squadrons are at home, which is rare. They did fly missions direct from Lakenheath to Libya back in 2011, but there's no indication over here that has happened recently. As I've said previously, we wouldn't publicly monitor that in real time on the web, but the indications would be there and there's been nothing. Lakenheath has actually been closed and stood down for the last couple of days, not due to reopen until middle of next week. It usually goes very quiet in late September as I believe their fuel budget runs October to October and they normally cut back training at this time of year. There is a Seymour-Johnson F-15E squadron deployed and the six month swap over is imminent with them coming home - through Lakenheath - and it should be a Lakenheath squadron next in the rotation, probably the 492nd as the 494th went last time. Be interesting to see if there's any flamboyant art work on the nose of the transiting Seymour-Johnson jets.

 

Gary

Edited by gary1701
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  • 2 months later...

Hi gents,

 

Big gap from the previous visit but having finished for Christmas I thought I'd pop over and see what was going on as it was a bright (but cold!) day. Lakenheath was NOTAMed as open but a drive past at 8 this morning and it was clear that nothing was going to happen so I turned for Mildenhall which ended up being surprisingly good on the last day before closing for Christmas.

 

'Mario 64' was on a early dawn launch to go snooping out East. This was more difficult to get than usual as some strange reflections were dancing around the forward fuselage and engines that ruined most of the shots. Never seen that before and I've shot plenty of glossy RC-135s at this exact spot at dawn. Maybe it's some new anti-photographer device! 

 

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Strangely, the other RC-135V in came down the same taxiway an hour later, this time heading home as 'Hoover 55' with no photography problems.

 

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Local MC-130J went up for a little local circuit work.

 

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'The Jester' from the 100th sitting down by the Folly Rd dispersal. No tankers moved all day.

 

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I hit the jackpot with the 7th SOS and 'Knife' section of CV-22s. Having gone off the other end earlier for a sightseeing Dover tour I waited for them to come back. 'Knife 71' just flew down the other side of the runway and headed for their usual 'Alpha' pad.

 

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'Knife 72' was up for it though. Landing on the runway opposite my viewing spot, he then did a quick circuit before running down the runway very low and fast with an F-15 style break at the other end. Finally got a shot of one in the forward flight configuration.

 

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Not too bad for a day when I wasn't expecting much. If I don't post anything else before Christmas, which is unlikely, then Happy Christmas too all.

 

Gary

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by gary1701
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Great pictures as always Gary.  Question - I just noticed that dome-shaped antenna on the aft fuselage of those two CV-22s.  Never seen that before and it wasn't present on the aircraft you photographed earlier this year (at top of page).   Any idea when this first appeared and what it's purpose is (my guess is that it's an upgraded SATCOM rig)?

 

I really like the way the CV-22 looks with the nacelles configured for high speed flight.

 

 

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