Blackburn Buccaneer: A Cold War Legend
Experience the thrill of Cold War aviation history with the Blackburn Buccaneer, a true legend of the skies. Designed as a strategic response to the growing Soviet naval threat, the Buccaneer was a marvel of British ingenuity, boasting low-level, high-speed penetration capabilities that outmaneuvered enemy radar and defenses.
Join us as we delve into the fascinating story of the Buccaneer's development, from its conception in the face of Soviet naval expansion to its eventual adoption by both the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. Discover the innovative features that set the Buccaneer apart, including its streamlined design, boundary layer control, and unique miniature detonating cord for safer ejections.
Follow the Buccaneer's journey from its initial prototype flights to its operational debut, where it proved its mettle in missions ranging from maritime patrols to bombing operations. Learn about the challenges faced during its service life, from engine issues to mid-air breakups, and the remarkable adaptations and upgrades that kept it flying.
Witness the Buccaneer's pivotal role in historical events, from the Beira Patrol to the Gulf War, where it played a crucial role in laser designation for Tornado squadrons. Explore its legacy, from retirement in the 1990s to its preservation in museums and collections around the world.
Join us as we celebrate the Blackburn Buccaneer, a Cold War icon and a testament to British engineering excellence. Subscribe now to dive into the thrilling world of aviation history!
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A bit of history for you if, like me, you like all this stuff. I was originally a Tornado G1/1A navigator in the RAF. My last tour was at A&AEE Boscombe Down where we had a Buccaneer, which was used for test flying. I was sent to the then very small OCU up at RAF Lossiemouth and given a short course so I could fly our test specimen, which was painted in bright yellow! This was between 1992 and 1994, during which the RAF got rid of the Buccaneer to save money under the 'Options for Change' defence cuts after the first Gulf War. Boscombe Down kept our 'flying banana' in service, but it was eventually given its marching order. I had the privilege of being the last navigator to fly it on its final flight, which was a low level flight around Wales. The pilot was Major Rick Husband of the USAF, who was serving on Fixed Wing Test Squadron as a test pilot. Rick would later go on to become an astronaut with NASA. Sadly he was killed as the commander of the Space Shuttle Columbia on 1st Feb 2003. Despite his hi-tech background flying the F15C/E in the States, he loved flying the Buccaneer and thought it was great. It was a fitting end to a wonderful machine. Funnily enough, there was always a lot of banter on squadrons between the Tornado guys and the ex-Buccaneer crews who ended up on the Tornado (they were known as 'WIWOBs' due the fact many of their stories would begin, 'When I was on Buccaneers'!). The WIWOBS were always saying that if only the Buccaneer airframe had been fitted with the Tornado avionics system, it would have been the perfect aircraft. Having been a nav on both, I am not sure I agree. The Tornado was better in so many ways than the Buccaneer, but the Buccaneer had an amazing bomb bay that meant you could take a huge load without the massive drag caused by stores on the Tornado. I imagine both groups of people never changed their mind, but it was always a great discussion!
Thanks for this. Always good to hear informed opinions.
Ground effect is amazing 😊 as was the Buccaneer. Seeing one dust a runway off and I would say at times at 5 maybe 6 ft under full control opened my eyes to aerodynamics in a big way. British and brilliant 🇬🇧👏👏👏👏
My father was one of the avionic designers. He was seconded to the SAAF at Waterkloof AB when the UK government sold a number to SA.
Love the Buccaneer, my favourite UK jet.
I love the Sea Vixen & the Scimitar too.
Quote from a Buc. Pilot at Red Flag .( We realised we were leaving sand trails at 10 feet, so we climbed to 20 feet ).!!
Because a higher altitude interceptor could track the trail and plan an attack.
I used to watch Buccaneers beating up Loch Ryan in the late 70's at Stranraer in Scotland , They were something else to See..Later into the 80s in the same Place I stood inside the severed Hull of the Ark Royal when it was Scrapped , I only ended up there after a Massive argument with my Girlfriend at the time , Long before Mobile phones all confined to Memories..Great vid.
Much under appreciated kite. Glorious. 😊
Blackburn had actually proposed a larger, supersonic version of the Buccaneer as a substitute for the TSR.2. If the RAF had take up that idea, the RAF would have by the early 1970's a very capable low-altitude interdiction platform that would be half the cost per plane compared to the TSR.2, with about 120-150 airframes built. And it would have given Soviet war planners nightmares.
If it had worked and met budget on time. Sound familiar?
@@bfc3057 The RAF rejected the idea because they were so obsessed with the TSR.2. The design work of the TSR.2 dates from around 1956!
@@Sacto1654 it was nothing more than a drawing that nobody knows whether it would have worked, been on cost and on time. We know the TSR2 didn't meet any of these.
Jaguar entered service in 1973 and it was supersonic.
@@brokeandtired short range and low payload
love the buc , britains answer to the intruder
A legend. Around the Highlands it was not unusual to be driving near a loch and find oneself looking down at a Buccaneer or have one fill the rear view mirror for a couple of milliseconds. My former colleague, retired CPO Tyler, used to tell stories about having to remove fence wire that had become embedded in Buccaneer wings.
Probably the most effective low level attack aircraft ever made it would be supreme even today.I know
Worked on these and still have the scars on my hand to prove it -- brilliant tank of an aircraft
3:11 A good video! one thing I was told a few years ago is that low level fast jets have det cord in the canopy simply because when they're flying low level at high subsonics speeds, they don't have time to wait for the canopy to clear the aircraft before the seat is ejected, so they go through it instead. Milliseconds count when you're doing 550kts at 200ft.
The det cord also weakens the canopy, so, should detonation fail, the pilot can still be ejected through it with comparatively minimal injury, just imagine the bolts failing on a one piece canopy...
Hi, a superb history of one of the best Aircraft made in the UK. Cheers, Paul.👍👍
No it’s not. It’s full of inaccuracies
May I suggest mentioning the NATO flying competitions when making your content. I have worked with RAF medics who told me an interesting story about one such competition, where the RAF arrived with Buccaneers and were laughed at by the USAF pilots for flying such slow and cumbersome aircraft. The laughing stopped, however, when one of the RAF crews flew their along an electricity transmission line, under the cables and weaving between the pylons!
Wow! Thanks for bringing me up to speed on this aircraft that I have lost track of over the years. (79yo) Great Red Flag quote, also. 🙈🙉🙊 😎 🇺🇸
Hi was on 700Z NAS/736 NAS trials unit at Lossiemouth and then on 801 NAS on the Victorious, the thing I remember most was the bleed ducts in the wing roots -they were a nightmare. We didn’t have det cord on the hoods, there were blades on top of the ejection seats. The cockpits were ergonomic slums and as the RAF (who didn’t initially want the Buccaneer) said the only thing that could replace a buccaneer was a buccaneer with a new cockpit.😊🇬🇧
Wasn't the Buckaneer the last aircraft Captain Eric " Winkle" Brown R.N worked on developing as the head of Naval test pilots at RAE Farnborough ? He said it was a magnificent aircraft I remember. And if he said it was great then it certainly was!
Are people still looking for the BBC Nationwide operation blue flag article? One of the most amazing pieces of film I've ever seen. Sadly, apparently, lost.
if anyone ever finds it I think we wil all be so grateful.
The sadf also made extensive use of buccaneers and in a book about rhe Border War in the africa at war series it was stated it was more potent than even the mirage.
In 77 I competed in RF against the Brit’s This was the first time we had all seen aggressive low flying. There was no way we were going down that low and it was next to impossible to get a lock on in those days as AAW was very limited by the weapons of the day and suicidal to fly down to join them with guns.
Great story.
During joint exercise in the 70s, the Bucks were playing red forces attacking the USN Navy carriers and came in below flight deck height, leading to the complaint 'we are supposed to be shooting at aircraft, not submarines'
York Aircraft Museum at Elvington have 3 on display along with 2 training cockpit set ups.
So many cool features in this aeroplane. Thank for the video.
The marvellous film showing the production of this excellent aircraft show the ejection seat test on a rocket sled where the helmet of one of the dummies falls off (with the head !) slowly bouncing after the sled........
Dill about in the falklands and a bit later too , loved the artic kit when I was a laddo
very informative and enjoyable, many thanks
You won't see them at Bruntingthorpe. Cox's Motors have taken over the site and all the aircraft are gone. Its been like that for a few years.
Wonderful, thank you.
One of the finest aircraft we ever built I was in inverary was coast of Scotland with my father.Two bucks approached us slowly the rear one did a left roll then a right roll I remember thinking flash got but what an aircraft.
Great video - tons of interesting, well presented information. Thanks for posting. Say 'aitch emm ess', not 'haitch emm ess' Please kick me, and all best.
Excellent stuff bro
The flag of South Africa was not the one shown. 1994 saw the adoption of it. The ANC was not ruling that's why England cancelled further export. Harold Wilson's govt. cancelled the further export and TSR2
Interesting side note was the picture of the partially cut up TSR2 at 9:20 showing the air intake duct geometry.
I noticed that you had the logos for 15 and 16 Squadrons transposed at 14:40, otherwise an excellent video.
Struggled with the 'Squadron 208' terminology - I've only ever heard it the other way round i.e. '208Sq' etc. Otherwise a good review of the type
Yep bloody annoying throughout the script and makes me doubt the knowledge/credibility of the author…
Shame the Bucc never received a TFR upgrade for night ops.
Interesting video. RAF squadrons are always number first, not squadron first.
Well said - its irritating to keep hearing this despite the videos other good qualties
Good film, although my understandimng is that the video of the lost aircraft overboard is that of a Supermarine Scimitar, piloted by the late Cmdr John Russell from 1958 and not a Buccaneer.
Yes it’s awful footage literally watching the Scimitar crew drown. Thankfully I don’t think the Bucc accident was so “well” filmed.
The legend of the 80's was how 2 had hidden under the wing of a Vulcan in a redflag excerise - when the yanks picked up the barn door blip of the vulcan on radar they sent a single F15 to intercept - the Buccanier's came out and intercepted the F15 as it moved in for the kill on the lone vulcan - the vulcan carried on and hit it's target .
That sounds so implausible as to be more than faintly ridiculous I’m afraid.
@@neilturner6749Till implausable becomes plausable . Apparrently actually occured , same implausable occurence as when the Vulcans bombed America 3 out of 3 times in excersises even with everything in the air looking for them sneaking into American airspace - apparently the last time this occured the Vulcasn landed after bombing Washington just to make sure they knew they were there .
@@neilturner6749 Oh - and when it comes to America - Implausable goes out the window - WW2 could have ended over 12 months earlier as the RAF Lancaster squadron sat waiting to go drop " The Bomb " on Japan - BUT NO - American ego meant the war raged on and thousands were killed as America built a plane so they could do it themself . Imagine , politicians ego's overiding " life " .....
Leave it to uncle Sam to lose for fighting on the cheap.😂😂😂
@@DaveMorgansghost It gets worse - WW2 could have ended a year earlier but the Americans wanted to build their own plane to drop " the bomb " on Japan . RAF had a squadron of Lancasters waiting to do the job for them but they had to do it themself at the cost of 1000's of lives ...
Submareen serenely submareening and something climbs to the hight of your periscope. You've just met a Buccaneer.
Still think the SAAF livery was the coolest
Ah! the Blackburnana....
18:05 -> How low have we fallen by just adding one letter
An upgraded Buccaneer would be far better than an F35
Well, it would have had to have been heavily upgraded indeed - but, yeah, your point still stands!
🤣🤣🤣🤣
What about the Buccaneers v P51 during the Belize emergency
Looks like it could take literal hits from ground to air weaponry & still make it back! Very rugged plane.
the Royal Navy . . . once considered the largest navy in the world is now nothing more than a mirror image of it's former self . . . post 1945 - 1948 saw the rapid decline of Her Majesty's Navy, a legendary maritime fighting force that was second to none . . . a shoe string defense budget is not something you expect from the world's largest navy . . .
The Buccaneer, an aircraft designed for pilot that got nose bleeds if they flew over 50 feet.
Side by side? Did you mean tandem?
No… Tandem is ONE BEHIND THE OTHER as in the Buccaneer. Side by side is you and a passenger in a two seater car… side by side…
Was supposed to be side by side but ended up being built with a tandem arrangement. Just the opposite of the B-52. The XB-52 has tandem seats, like all B-47s.
use in real war deployments? or just cold war games?
Great video, however the squadron crests that you displayed showed 15 Sqn RAF Regiment, as far as I'm aware, the Regiment didn't fly the Buccaneer 😂 That said, I enjoyed the video and I shall now step down from my pedantic soap box.
What's a Bookeneer.
Unfortunate the Brits abandoned their homogenous aircraft industry. The govt servants responsible must’ve been given marching orders to dismantle British industry…
As always, the answer isn't some daft conspiracy. Its political short-sightedness, corporate incompetance and an inability to adapt to a changing world. The 1957 defence white paper that proposed that figher production should be cancelled in favour of ground to air rockets is in hindsight profoundly stupid. But its also easy to see why that was enticing as a cost saving measure to politicians not versed in pros and cons of air defense and wanting to look like they're trimming some unneeded 'flab' from the budget for the general public. The UK industry was also slow to modernise, meaning slow production and raised production costs. The Comet has coach built. Each airframe slightly different. An issue that would later plague the Nimrod MR4A program. (Also unlucky finding out the hard way about pressurisation cycles and fatigue) Leading to another issue in that its UK aircraft companies were small. Bristol would have sold its Brittania airliner to TWA but it just didn't have the capacity to fulfill that potential order. Merging many to form BAC was probably a smart thing to do (in concept at least) but then the lack of political will to see a project through -and constant problem in the UK where politicians fail to look beyond the next election- killed any long-term strategic planning to short-sighted cost cutting that often turned out to be more expensive in the long run. (*cough* TSR-2 to F-111K to Spey engined F-4 *cough*) This also meant that the UK had little to offer the outside world. Gone were the days it had a big empire that would slavishly buy its products (or the need of a big airforce needed to police it) and because its domestic market just wasn't big enough to sustain the increasingly high development and production costs per airframe, the UK had to go toe-to-toe with other countries to survive. Or rather, one big one: The USA. The USA has the size to sustain its own domestic aircraft industry and the wealth to fund it and politicians willing to fight to keep production. It had companies that were large enough to fulfill large production runs, tilting the economies of scale in their favour. And as the Lockheed scandal shows, they didn't always play fair.
@@chrishartley4553 you’re right. England is small. As far as daft conspiracies, I do find it counterproductive and outright suicidal, for a once homogenous nation, to lay down their children’s future to alter of multiculturalism by flooding the nation with individuals who will never assimilate.
@@chrishartley4553In fairness when we ( Britain) joined the Eu we were told ‘ You get banking , France gets agriculture and Germany get industry . It didn’t help that Germany and Japan were totally decimated after the war and rebuilt with state of the art industries with the latest most productive capacity while we were still using Victorian age machinery we could not afford to upgrade and had been patched up too many times .
@@pincermovement72 Divviying up agticulture, banking and industry like that makes no sense and was just some glib nonsense, referring to the percieved strenghts of those countries, served up for the press and public. The UK's finances post-war were atrocious and yet, still better than Germany's and Japan's. The modernisation would be something that would happen over a few decades, spreading the cost. But ultimately, with no empire left, our small national market isn't big enough to sustain a large industiral base. So we became reliant on exports. And in our own complaicency, we became uncompetative. All it takes is some investment. To make a pound you need to spend some pennies. Something the UK continues to be awful at.
Also available in pink.
Didn't realise this even existed, British had some great jets what happened)/?
The Americans took all our money while forgiving Germany and Japan theirs .
It’s complicated world “power-play” economics but in a nutshell we were perfectly legally but quite deliberately bankrupted by the US.
ARTF
Mate, you need to pay more attention to detail with your graphics. At 14.21 where you display several RAF Squadron crests, the one labelled "15 Squadron" is actually the 16 Squadron crest. The one labelled "16 Squadron" is actually 15 Squadron "RAF Regiment"..... a ground Squadron, not a flying Squadron. Later at 16.05, you get the 16 Squadron correct this time but the 15 Squadron crest is 15 Squadron RAF Regiment, not the RAF flying Squadron which incidentally is always written as "XV Squadron. Also your habit of referring to Squadron 12, Squadron 15, Squadron 208 etc is completely the wrong way round. It's 12 Squadron, 15 Squadron etc. The number comes first.
Have you any other criticism for the poor chap, have you actually tried to create anything and post it for the enjoyment of others..
@@alanwayte432 Nothing wrong with correcting someone. It’s important to get names and forms of address correct especially regarding the armed forces.
... boring!
Yes Alan, I have. I hosted a technical aviation website and when I did make factual errors, I was glad that people pointed them out and gave me the opportunity to correct them.
It's ai generated BS
Why r u trying to repeat the history of this aircraft which has been done many times by pilots who have flown the Mk1 & 2
I get annoyed by people who say haitch instead of aitch. Sorry.
That's sad
Jos is a as….. hol…… his son is a big driver, Jos was nothing, I understand Max is close to his father, but here he has to be neutral and forgets his father, otherwise there is only Dutchmen there will support him , all others will ditch him… tell your father to get of the scene…..
Wasted on the crabs
shore got the taxpayers money worth with the plane
Misuse of the word impact!
Nobody, but nobody refers to RAF or Naval squadrons as e.g. 'Squadon 12' !!! Two digit squadrons are named as number first, i.e. 'Fifteen Suadron' three digit squadrons are ALWAYS designated as i.e. 'Eight-Oh-Nine Squadron' and NEVER as 'Eight hundred and ninth Squadron'. Obviously you have no service background or have not researched things very well. Reading a script does not excuse this.
Poor journalism, a Sea Hawk is not a Buccaneer. Back to your Mum’s house son.