Only the armoured type, and those were on ranges in Germany; and they
were empty ...
Strafing is enormous fun, by the way. It's not easy, especially in
the Tornado, which requires 3 switch operations before the trigger as
you point the gun (aircraft) at the target -- Master Arm, Late Arm and
trigger safety. In the F16 those Yanks make everything live on the
first pass and leave it like that until they depart the range, much
easier.
But with all that hassle out of the way, you place the sight just
above the target at 3,000m and accelerate from 400 to 450knots, start
tracking at about 1,200m and fire until 900m; release the trigger
before recovering from the dive (did I mention the dive, about
10deg?). You normally just have time to spot the fall of shot kicking
up dirt around the standard strafe target (around 5m wide). But if
you're loaded with high-explosive ("HE") you start firing a good deal
further out and "walk" the shot onto the target (if you weren't
hitting as you opened fire).
But this was all practice during the Cold War. I used only solid
rounds on my last tour, and always on the range.
Chris
On 26 Feb 2009, at 08:49, Andrew Fildes wrote:
> Did you strafe any trailers then? Or even caravans?
> Andrew Fildes
> afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
> On 26/02/2009, at 7:37 PM, Chris Barker wrote:
>
>> In a former, more hectic life. Last flight Dec 99 ...
>>
>> ... halcyon days!
--
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