Another, what did I see?

[Johnnybee]

I’m in Cornwall at the moment and was enjoying a walk on Crantock beach earlier today.

You do get the occasional jet noise around here from St Mawgan and on hearing a jet I casually glanced upwards looking for whatever was making the noise. Quite high I spotted a tanker/transporter with two fighters loosely in formation on each wing and then two further behind. There may have been more but they kept diasappearing behind cloud cover. I had my phone on me but they weren’t showing on ADSB exchange.

It’s a long shot but does anyone know what they could be? I’ve searched around the forums but nothing has cropped up, I suppose they could have been passing over the UK so not on the spotters radar.

[nellystew]

Johnnybee said:

I’m in Cornwall at the moment and was enjoying a walk on Crantock beach earlier today.

You do get the occasional jet noise around here from St Mawgan and on hearing a jet I casually glanced upwards looking for whatever was making the noise. Quite high I spotted a tanker/transporter with two fighters loosely in formation on each wing and then two further behind. There may have been more but they kept diasappearing behind cloud cover. I had my phone on me but they weren’t showing on ADSB exchange.

It’s a long shot but does anyone know what they could be? I’ve searched around the forums but nothing has cropped up, I suppose they could have been passing over the UK so not on the spotters radar.

There’s a group on Facebook called 360Radar, if you join it they’re very helpful with identifying planes, or you can signup to their tracking service https://signup.360radar.co.uk
They don’t block military aircraft like most tracking sites.
(i’m nothing to do with the site, just “feed” them from my Pi)

[DavieBNL]

Tanker was a KC-135 and the aircraft were F-15s from Lakenheath, don't know what was going on but there were lots of them exercising down there yesterday.

[Johnnybee]

DavieBNL said:

Tanker was a KC-135 and the aircraft were F-15s from Lakenheath, don't know what was going on but there were lots of them exercising down there yesterday.

Thanks, I think there was supposed to be an exercise out of Lakennheath but had read it was cancelled.

Nellystew, thanks for the link.

[yellowjack]

Quite possible that F-15s over the north Cornwall coast might be on a gunnery exercise over at Pembrey. The RAF maintain a ground target range over there, at the western end of Pembrey Country Park.

There's a camp site I used to stay at on the Gower peninsula that faces Pembrey and you'd often see F-15s doing repeat attack runs using various attack profiles. No doubt it makes sense to combine such training with refuelling taskings for the tanker crews too, as it also keeps the F-15 pilots on station longer?

All just a guess, mind you. It might have been nothing of the sort.


ETA: Link for the targets at Pembrey... https://www.google.com/maps/place/Crantock,+Newqua... ...follow the 'road' up and you'll see two Sepecat Jaguar airframes and a small gaggle of CVR(T) family armoured vehicles too.

Edited by yellowjack on Thursday 3rd October 16:18

[Tony1963]

Aircraft don’t only fly on exercises. Even when you see half a dozen aircraft together, it can just be regular training.

For example, in 1985 ish, I had a nice day from Marham over the North Sea, in a VC-10, refuelling Tornados and Phantoms, while a few Hawks watched. And that was a run of the mill day.

The flight engineer on the 10 that day became a workmate at Wattisham in 2009!

Small world

[baldy1926]

Freedar is very good for tracking military stuff.
As the name suggests its free and is available on desktops and andriod sets there is slight problem with apple downloads i believe.

[DavieBNL]

Could be simply training but out of interest look at this list of exercises that go on, enormous. Seems to be 2018/19 and into 20.

http://qna.files.parliament.uk/qna-attachments/964...

[eccles]

yellowjack said:

Quite possible that F-15s over the north Cornwall coast might be on a gunnery exercise over at Pembrey. The RAF maintain a ground target range over there, at the western end of Pembrey Country Park.

There's a camp site I used to stay at on the Gower peninsula that faces Pembrey and you'd often see F-15s doing repeat attack runs using various attack profiles. No doubt it makes sense to combine such training with refuelling taskings for the tanker crews too, as it also keeps the F-15 pilots on station longer?

All just a guess, mind you. It might have been nothing of the sort.


ETA: Link for the targets at Pembrey... https://www.google.com/maps/place/Crantock,+Newqua... ...follow the 'road' up and you'll see two Sepecat Jaguar airframes and a small gaggle of CVR(T) family armoured vehicles too.

Edited by yellowjack on Thursday 3rd October 16:18

I grew up and went to school on north Gower and we used to see Hawks, Harriers Hunters A10's etc doing their stuff with the old Sneb rocket pods. The A10's made a distinctive noise when they fired their gun. You used to get unexploded ordnance washing up on Whiteford burrows beach quite regularly.

[Some Guy]

Been to Pembrey a few times. Was told in no uncertain terms that if the traffic lights are red, then stay put unless you want your car showered with hot brass.