Just after 6am on a chilly summers morning, the regular dawn chorus of rural Gloucestershire was accompanied by the sound of 8 × Pratt & Whitney TF33s powering this mighty B-52 Stratofortress (60-0002 callsign BUFF01) out to another Baltops mission somewhere out in the Baltic Sea.
This aircraft comes from the 2nd BW United States Air Force at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.
These two jets screamed their way into RAF Fairford on June 1st 2017 under the callsigns MYTEE96 and MYTEE51. They were indeed mighty! 96 arrived from the Middle East, while 51 made its way to the UK from the United States via Northern Europe.
This C-5M (callsign RCH965 – 87-0036) had just offloaded its cargo at RAF Fairford before departing to a local airfield. I was expecting a flat, slow climb out, and set myself up at the 09 end of Fairford’s runway. As you can see, this particular aircraft was clearly light, and by the time it got to the runway threshold was at least 1,500ft.
This was a stunning landing in what were marginal crosswind conditions for this notoriously difficult to land aircraft.
This particular jet is from the 9th RW at Beale AFB in the USA, and was flying with the callsign DRAGON21. In this video you can hear the chase car talking his colleague down, which is standard practice in U-2 ops. Fantastic to hear some personality coming across the airwaves too! ‘Good Job Dragon, Welcome to England. The wind was a bit dodgy up back there”!
Apologies for the text overlay titles. I’ve had to add it since some people have been ripping off my work on YouTube and elsewhere. If you want to use any of my footage in a project please just ask.
We were treated to a 6 passes by these Tornado GR4s from RAF Marham on April 21st. Quite rare to see three together in a low level sortie, it was difficult to know which one to pan with!
A graceful pass of an A400M Atlas from RAF Brize Norton through the Bwlch in spring 2017. Lovely seeing these becoming a regular sight in North Wales.
Video 6 of 6
We were visited by the 494th FS from the 48th FW (RAF Lakenheath) on April 10th who treated us to 27 passes in the Mach Loop in Wales. One of the best days we’ve seen.
I decided to separate out each flight of jets into a different video, so that crews and enthusiasts could decipher the action. This flight, CLAW41, was a two ship and did two passes at Bwlch Spur. The jets were 91-0334 and 91-0309 and are here in order of appearance.
Video 5 of 6
We were visited by the 494th FS from the 48th FW (RAF Lakenheath) on April 10th who treated us to 27 passes in the Mach Loop in Wales. One of the best days we’ve seen.
I decided to separate out each flight of jets into a different video, so that crews and enthusiasts could decipher the action. This flight, DAWG61, was a two ship and did two passes at Bwlch Spur. The jets were 01-2004 and 92-0364 and are here in order of appearance.
Video 4 of 6
We were visited by the 494th FS from the 48th FW (RAF Lakenheath) on April 10th who treated us to 27 passes in the Mach Loop in Wales. One of the best days we’ve seen.
I decided to separate out each flight of jets into a different video, so that crews and enthusiasts could decipher the action. This flight, GREMLIN21, was a four ship and did two passes at Bwlch Spur. The jets were 91-0320, 91-0603, 01-2001 and this time were also joined by 01-200(?) and are here in order of appearance. We couldn’t get the serial of the last jet as it was pretty much directly above us!