I just realized, its the 40th anniversary.

[Sbob]

Operation Corporate and Blackbuck.

Get your Vulcans and Victors tuned up, I did a repaint of XM607 for the Alphasim Vulcan if anyone wants it.
Also check your scenery, you'll want at least some AFCADs for RAF Waddington (Vulcans), RAF Marham (Victors), RAF Brize Norton (optional, B-N was the planning and logistics hub), and Ascension/Wideawake.

Blackbuck 1 was composed of two Vulcans (XM598 and XM607) and eleven Victor tankers. Take off time from Ascension was close to 9 PM with an arrival over Stanley some time between 4 and 6 AM the next morning., local time. Things started off on a sour note on the night of April 30th. XM598 (Reeve's crew) were supposed to be Primary for the raid on Stanley airport but a leaking window seal meant they couldn't climb above 20,000 feet without freezing and using up their oxygen. Primary duties then fell on Wither's crew in XM607. As it was, XM598 had taken off slightly over-loaded with bombs and fuel and had to improvise to get back to Ascension quickly (other systems were starting to fail, the bird was sick and getting worse). Prior to this, the crew in XM607 thought they were only going to the first refueling point (they also took off fully loaded with bombs and fuel) then turning back for home, but that wasn't how it worked out.

Flight planning- VERY straight forward. All the flights for Blackbuck 1 were Point A to Point B then back to Point A. Due to the distances, there were no margins for fancy flight plans.
Refueling areas were at 20 degrees S, 32 degrees S, 40 degrees S, and a final, pre-bomb run point at 50 degrees S. Like I said, this is about as basic as it gets. Don't sweat the longitude, just keep the nose pointed at the runway on Stanley. There was also a final, post raid, refueling near Rio de Janeiro (approx. 20 S, 35 W). This was also back in the days before GPS, navigation was limited to dual channel INS and star shots. Radar was useless due to the entire flight taking place over water.

Altitudes- Again, VERY straight forward. All the planes took off slightly over loaded and efficiency was the name of the game. Altitudes mostly depended on weight at the time, so figure on a maximum altitude somewhere around 30,000 feet. Refuelings were done at approx. 25,000 feet, depending on the weather. XM607 dropped down to 500 feet or so after its last pre-strike refueling for the run to the target then did a shallow pop-up to 10,000 feet for the bomb run. Think Old School jet engines and maximum distance and you'll get the idea.

The margins for Blackbuck 1 wound up being incredibly thin but there were two other Blackbuck missions flown out of a planned five missions.

A very good resource for this historic flight is the book Vulcan 607 by Rowland White (ISBN 978-0-5521-5229-7).

 

[leuen]

HI,

Some years ago I was wokring on Operation Black Buck and intended to recreate these flights as AI traffic. At least I could establish a resembling of air refueling over the South Atlantic.

It already was very struggling to know the position where the the Victor is met the Valiant. There I had to add the waypoint for returnng to Asencion.

So finally I gave up the project rather too fastidious.

Bernard

 

[Desert Rat]

Tried something similar myself back in the day.

 

[ian elliot]

Or you could have a couple of Sea Harriers armed with iron bombs

 

[Sbob]

Or you could have a couple of Sea Harriers armed with iron bombs

That's what Argentina thought.

The whole idea of Blackbuck was that no one thought it was possible.
Tankers refueling tankers to refuel a bomber? Give me a break and keep an eye out for their Navy.

The screenshots are great.
That does bring up something I'm still wondering about:

I have two repaints of the Alpha Vulcans that I've kept around for many years.
XM607 flew the actual mission, but I also have XM597 for Reeve's crew.
The book says it was XM598. Did the Parrot get it wrong?

 

[Desert Rat]

A very good resource for this historic flight is the book Vulcan 607 by Rowland White (ISBN 978-0-5521-5229-7).

Great book, also recommend Storm Front and phoenix Squadron by the same author, also great reads. Haven't got round to reading Harrier 809 yet though and not sure about Into the black, shuttle doesn't interest me that much.

 

[ChristopherT]

I do have AlphaSim's Avro Vulcan B.2 Running under Fs9! The Sea Harrier's are the UKMil Package!

Date 2 April – 14 June 1982 Location Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and the South Sandwich Islands Result British victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom	Argentina
Commanders and leaders
Margaret Thatcher Terence Lewin Henry Leach John Fieldhouse Sandy Woodward Jeremy Moore Michael Clapp Julian Thompson Tony Wilson	Leopoldo Galtieri Jorge Anaya Basilio Lami Dozo Juan Lombardo Ernesto Horacio Crespo Mario Menéndez
Casualties and losses
Casualties: 255 killed[SUP][1][/SUP] 775 wounded 115 captured Losses: 2 destroyers 2 frigates 1 landing ship 1 landing craft 1 container ship 24 helicopters 10 fighters	Casualties: 649 killed[SUP][2][/SUP][SUP][3][/SUP] 1,657 wounded[SUP][3][/SUP] 11,313 captured Losses: 1 cruiser 1 submarine 4 cargo vessels 2 patrol boats 1 naval trawler 25 helicopters 35 fighters 2 bombers 4 cargo aircraft 25 COIN aircraft 9 armed trainers
3 Falkland Islanders killed by friendly fire

This a WikiPedia article about the War! I wonder how many things we could find in Fs9?


Christopher Tarana

 

[Sbob]

If the Alphasim Vulcan has one weak spot, its the taxi performance. It handles like a snowplow in a blizzard on the ground.

A quick fix to this is to increase the steering angle of the nose wheel, as shown in red:


[contact_points]
static_pitch = -0.1
static_cg_height = 12.35
max_number_of_points = 7


point.0 = 1, 26.9613, 0, -12.7, 2000, 0, 1.15, 30, 0.268, 2.5, 0.685, 5, 5, 0, 260, 325
point.1 = 1, -6.3, -15.7847, -12.2, 2000, 1, 2, 0, 0.5, 2.5, 0.786, 5, 5, 2, 260, 325
point.2 = 1, -6.3, 15.7847, -12.2, 2000, 2, 2, 0, 0.5, 2.5, 0.786, 5, 5, 3, 260, 325

 

[ChristopherT]

I have UkMil's Harriers and Nimrods running also!

Christopher Tarana

 

[Motormouse]

Great book, also recommend Storm Front and phoenix Squadron by the same author, also great reads. Haven't got round to reading Harrier 809 yet though and not sure about Into the black, shuttle doesn't interest me that much.

Couple of things.. 1) reason for Black Buck was Navy did not want to expose Sea Harriers vital for air defence of the fleet, to Argentine anti-aircraft defences

2) Into the black is a really good read.. lots of skulduggery by CIA and NSA..

Ttfn

Pete

 

[ian elliot]

1) reason for Black Buck was Navy did not want to expose Sea Harriers vital for air defence of the fleet, to Argentine anti-aircraft defences

I always understood that some of the FAA pilots resentment of the BB raids was the beefing up of defense's around Stanley, making life more difficult for the Sea Harrier force. As far as i know, the Navy never had any say in the mission's, it was a political decision from London.

 

[Motormouse]

I always understood that some of the FAA pilots resentment of the BB raids was the beefing up of defense's around Stanley, making life more difficult for the Sea Harrier force. As far as i know, the Navy never had any say in the mission's, it was a political decision from London.

It was the Navy that pressed for them; ACM Sir Michael Beetham was not convinced the Vulcan would achieve a 'hit' given the bombing accuracy of the 1940' s kit on board the Vulcan ( good article in Aeroplane magazine recently) . The Buccaneer was considered, but ruled out due to its engine oil consumption/ hour vs the size of oil tank on engines.

Ttfn

Pete

 

[Sbob]

I started playing around with the voice files, and you can get XM607's radio call sign (1QD or One-Quebec-Delta) for Blackbuck 1 as follows:


Edit the aircraft config file for your repaint of XM607 and add the following-


atc_id=XM607
atc_airline=1Q
atc_flight_number=1QD

In the [GENERAL] section below that, use the following-

atc_type=AVRO
atc_model=VULCAN



While most of the mission was flown under radio silence, they did use their call sign at the early re-fuel points and later on, close to home.
These edits don't require any extra .vpcmod files.

Why it works- "atc_airline=1Q" is a dummy. FS9 will try to use it but there won't be anything close to it in the voice file. It will then skip it and settle on "atc_flight_number=1QD" with no issues.

 

[Sbob]

Meanwhile, let's not forget the Victors. There were a lot of them.

I'm using Alpha's Victor and a repaint by Jason Sparkes of UKMIL for Tuxford's crew which wound up as the "Long slot" tanker prior to the actual bomb run. I'm not 100% sure that it was XL189, but the radio call sign for "White 2" is accurate.



atc_id=XL189
atc_airline=2M
atc_flight_number=2MM



atc_type=HANDLEYPAGE
atc_model=VICTOR

 

[Desert Rat]

From what I remember, going by your wikipedia losses chart, there were some Harrier Gr.3 losses that were on board the Atlantic Conveyor when it was sunk? Was a long time ago, I was 9 at the time, lol.

I use the Just Flight Vulcan, which has the Black Buck Shrike load-out, alas without the hastily applied black wiggly camo lines applied (which I added myself). iirc that load is incorrect, two Shrikes on each pylon. I think it was two Shrikes on the port pylon and a hastily, and secretly, supplied jammer pod from the US on the right pylon. ALQ-191 iirc.

Jamie

 

[Desert Rat]

I initially played this scenario due to my interest in the flights, and all those related to this conflict, due to being glued to the television as a child as this all unfolded.

I did revisit when Rob Barendregt wanted beta testers for his IFR module he developed. Whilst his module worked in essence (and brilliantly), it required one heck of a lot of end user manipulation to make it function, the more complicated and in-depth the aircraft FM, and autopilot, the harder it was to setup. It was a crying shame, it was brilliant when it was set up correctly. It was just to complicated for release to the public. Poor Rob would have been drowned with requests for how to get it working with 'x' aircraft, etc. I offered to help, but even then, it was beyond two, and very many more, to facilitate.

Reminds me of when I got involved with an 'app' to scan your aircraft folder to automatically install A2A/shockwave 3D lights on all your aircraft. It simply couldn't work due to end users already customised aircraft. As soon as you edited the name/cfg/air/etc it wouldn't work. End of story.

Pity.
Jamie

 

[Sbob]

From what I remember, going by your wikipedia losses chart, there were some Harrier Gr.3 losses that were on board the Atlantic Conveyor when it was sunk? Was a long time ago, I was 9 at the time, lol.

I use the Just Flight Vulcan, which has the Black Buck Shrike load-out, alas without the hastily applied black wiggly camo lines applied (which I added myself). iirc that load is incorrect, two Shrikes on each pylon. I think it was two Shrikes on the port pylon and a hastily, and secretly, supplied jammer pod from the US on the right pylon. ALQ-191 iirc.

Jamie

Blackbuck 1 only had the jammer added to an angle iron pylon. The Shrike missions were the two follow on missions.
The only purpose of Blackbuck 1 was to crater the runway so Argentina couldn't stage fighters out of Stanley.

 

[Mick]

I’m reminded of that day so long ago when I opened my morning newspaper and saw the headline, “ARGENTINA INVADES BRITISH ISLES!”

An accompanying photo showed troops marching along an urban street and one had to read the story to learn that the picture wasn’t of Argentine troops parading through London.

 

[Priller]

From what I remember, going by your wikipedia losses chart, there were some Harrier Gr.3 losses that were on board the Atlantic Conveyor when it was sunk? Was a long time ago, I was 9 at the time, lol.

I use the Just Flight Vulcan, which has the Black Buck Shrike load-out, alas without the hastily applied black wiggly camo lines applied (which I added myself). iirc that load is incorrect, two Shrikes on each pylon. I think it was two Shrikes on the port pylon and a hastily, and secretly, supplied jammer pod from the US on the right pylon. ALQ-191 iirc.

Jamie

That would be ALG-119!

Priller

PS: a bit startled that the Brits lost 10 Harriers!