Here are the details of where you can see it. https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/when-and-where-for-the-final-raf-hercules-flypast/
Spent 3hours a in the back of one flying around, horrible noisy things and you don’t get any in flight meals
When I was in the CCF at school, we were flown from RAF Woodvale, Southport, in a Hercules, down to RAF Lyneham and back for a day visit. At Lyneham I got to crash a simulator, and we saw a huge scale model of Reunion Island that it used, no computer graphics in those days. During the flight we played footy in the back of the Hercules, and took it in turns to go on the flight deck. From the cockpit I saw Liverpool from above, and the landing back at Woodvale. Whenever I’ve seen one on the telly I can’t resist saying ‘I’ve played football in one of those’ much to everyone’s surprise except the wife, who’s heard it 1000 times before.
If anyone is tracking it, it's flight name is OMEN1, just about to fly over RAF Valley in HollyHead Looks like it flew through the Mach Loop before heading to RAF Valley
I used to see them twice a week flying quite low through the severn valley where we lived, they used to set alarms off if the weather conditions were right!
Not heading our way , boo. However a couple of stories to relate. I worked on vc10s at Brize and quite often , if it was quiet, we would ask the Herc boys if we could have a jolly when they took the paras for training. They never said no, great fun. Now folklore or not There was a tale that once the pilot walked backwards from the the flight deck, through all the seated army lads, with a bit of rope in each hand.Got to the back of the kite pulled the left rope and the plane banked left, pulled the right rope , plane banked right.This was done to the complete horror of the brown jobs who probably transferred from Para school to logistics. Next tale Army officer was invited on to the flight deck. The skipper said I will be operating the aircraft by voice control. " bank left" the plane banked left , " bank right" the plane banked right. The pilot asked the army guy if he would like to try. He sat up front and barked out the orders army style, no response. Try again, barked again , no response. Listen said the skipper you have to talk to it nicely , this is the Air force. Little did the army zob know that the air air eng was trimming the plane from a desk behind him. The toilet were on a sliding rail which you could push up the fuselage to load freight.these were held in with pins.Someone must have upset the crew this day because the lavvy was occupied , a crew member removed the pins and the pilot went into a dive, the loo slid up the rails covering the occupant with ...... True story One came into Brize with nose wheel steering problems. Civvies came out to fix it , but when they taxied they found that it was connected wrong ( cables) turn left go right etc. 4 am I,m out there sorting it out, thats bloody tight for space in there I tell ya. Anyway , I hope one of you manages to see the flypast today, history in the making.
I didn’t have that many Baz, I’m not a keen fisherman unfortunately. I could tell you the tales they told me of their fishing trips but I’d have to ban myself
I once landed in Cyprus tied to the cargo net on top of a load of equipment at the back of the herc I’d gone for a cheeky Kip mid flight and the other lads had tied me to it. It certainly made for a different landing experience than being sat down.
What have they replaced it with? Or is it the usual government policy for armed forces and they've replaced it with brand new SFA's? I'd occasionally see them dropping sticks (thank you 'The Paras') practically on top of the Oxford A34 Junction of the M40, 20+ years ago now.
Swerved around us.. We get a lot of military over us as we're on the radar corridor.. 2 b1 lancers just drifted over, heading for fairford..
