33SQN

“There have been some big milestones for us this year,” noted the Commanding Officer of 33SQN, WGCDR Jim Ghee.

Interim, Training Or Operational?

The RAAF’s first two 707s, both ex Qantas airliners, were acquired in 1979 as VIP/troop transports and cargo aircraft, and a further four 707s were acquired over the next decade. Two more former Qantas 707s were delivered in 1983, and a final batch of three, ex Saudi Arabian Airlines aircraft, were delivered in 1988 (one of which, affectionately known Hulksbury, never flew in RAAF colours and instead was used as a source of spares, while another was tragically lost in a training accident in 1991).

Four of the 707s (all ex Qantas jets) were later converted to tankers by Hawker de Havilland at Melbourne Airport using Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) kits comprising under-wing refuelling hose and drogue pods and a centreline observation camera under a $15 million upgrade to provide an interim and training tanking capability for RAAF F/A-18 Hornets. The first tanker was redelivered in February 1990.

The first two 707s were initially operated by 37SQN at RAAF Base Richmond before transferring to No 33 Flight in 1981. 33 Flightwas disbanded in 1983 and 33SQN was reformed to solely operate the 707.

In the past decade 33QN has deployed to the Middle East twice to provide refuelling to coalition aircraft; the first time to Operation Southern Watch in Iraq in 1998, and then again from late March 2002 when two aircraft were deployed to Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan for six months to support operations over Afghanistan.

“The 707 has been used in line operations several times despite being labelled an interim or training capability when the RAAF acquired it,” the Commander of Air Lift Group (ALG), AIRCDRE Brian ‘Jack’ Plenty, told Australian Aviation.

In the Kyrgyzstan deployment which was supported by more than 80 aircrew and support personnel from 33SQN, 84WG and other ADF elements, two aircraft offloaded over 2700 tonnes (six million pounds) of fuel to more than 800 coalition aircraft including US Marine Corps F/A-18s, French Mirage 2000Ds and US Navy F-14s in just six months. During the deployment, 33SQN’s maintenance personnel delivered a better than 98 per cent availability rate for the aircraft for the entire deployment.

“We sent B707 air-to-air refuellers to Kyrgyzstan and our people (did) a tremendous job keeping those older aircraft at extraordinarily high levels of serviceability,” then Chief of Defence Force, General Peter Cosgrove, said in 2002.

“This has been to the extent that they offered a remarkably high level of mission availability, refuelling allied combat aircraft patrolling the skies above Afghanistan. ” The then coalition forces commander in Afghanistan, Brigadier General George Patrick, also praised the 33SQN detachment, making special mention of the unit’s professionalism and their reputation for reliability during an Australian parliamentary visit in 2002.

Apart from the Middle East deployments, the ‘Seven Os’ have also beenoperationally employed in disaster relief work in the Asia-Pacific region, in regular transport missions to and from the Middle East and various peacekeeping missions closer to home, as well as supporting Red Flag exercise deployments in the US.

A Period Of Transition

A20-624 is due to be retired on June 30 after more than 29 years in RAAF service. But the work for the people of 33SQN won’t stop there. Not only does the physical element of the unit at Richmond have to be wound up, but the ‘new’ 33SQN at Amberley will be busy preparing for the arrival of the 707’s replacement, the KC-30.

“33SQN won’t be staying as a formal unit with the same people,” said AIRCDRE Plenty. “We have about 30 people at Amberley at present with the KC-30 stand-up team, and these people will form the nucleus of the ‘new’ 33SQN. The current CO of the transition team, WGCDR Guy Wilson, will be the new CO of 33SQN after July 1. The squadron at Richmond will cease to exist at midnight on June 30, at which time 33SQN at Amberley will stand up. Most of the people going to the new 33 will posted in to the squadron from elsewhere in Air Force, while the people from Richmond will either post to 84WG, Headquarters ALG, or stand up as part of a small disposals team to assist the Defence Materiel Organisation’s Air Lift Systems Project Office (ALSPO) in tidying up the 707 aircraft, hangar, headquarters building, and spares inventory. ” “I’ll be managing the drawdown here at Richmond and then the disposal of the aircraft and the buildings,” said WGCDR Ghee. “I expect this process will take approximately three months after July 1. The disbandment team will remain at Richmond until the end of the year pending posting cycles, while aircrew will be posted out to other positions or aircraft sooner. ” But in the lead-up to the June 30 handover, 33SQN’s remaining aircraft has a full program ahead of it.

“Up to July 1, 33SQN will concentrate on keeping their bird flying, something which they’ve been doing very well of late,” said AIRCDRE Plenty. “The aircraft is tasked right up to the end of the financial year. ” “We’ve got a reasonably full board up until to the end of June,” WGCDR Ghee agreed. “We’ve got an R1 and an R2 (maintenance services) scheduled, there’s Exercises Bersama Shield inMay and Pitch Black in June, and we’ll be making our last trip to southeast Asia for the Butterworth 50th anniversary as well. ” In preparation for the retirement, 33SQN has been in a period of draw-down for a couple of years. “We started drawing down the squadron in early 2007, so a lot of people have either transferred out or have gone to the transition team at Amberley,” said WGCDR Ghee. “The last 707 pilot’s course was conducted in 2006 but, for obvious reasons, we had difficulty attracting people to the 2005 and 2006 courses due to there only being a year or two left to run on the 707.

But we also had to be careful we managed our experience levels properly – we didn’t want to have too many junior guys, and in retrospect we appear to have come out of it reasonably well. ” The few remaining 707 aircrew who don’t immediately go to the ‘new’ 33SQN in preparation for transition to the KC-30 may instead transfer to other RAAF multi-engined types, while many of the engineering ‘techos’ will either transfer to Amberley or to another type.

“Under the AFOD (Air Force Organisation Directive), the squadron nominally has 143 positions, but we’re currently running at about 86 people here including reservists, and will have just under 80 by the time we turn the 707 off on June 30,” said SQNLDR Paul Knellwolf, 33SQN’s executive officer. “The ‘new’ 33SQN will have 153 positions under AFOD, and in the build up to IOC, people will gradually be posted in to the ‘new’ 33 and will then go and do their training from there. ” Much of this training will be conducted with Qantas, including three groups of engineers scheduled to begin their training with Qantas Engineering on the A330‑200 from July.

Aircrews will train on Qantas’s A330 simulator and may possibly conduct line flying with the airline to build hours and experience in the lead-up to the RAAF’s aircraft arriving next year.

“The workforce has been drawn down but is still tailored with the workload in mind,” commented SQNLDR Peter Tame, 33SQN’s senior engineering officer, or SENGO.

“Spares have been switched off and the supply chains drawn down, but this is a fine balancing act so parts are sometimes taken off the retired aircraft. With just one aircraft, the maintenance workforce is either working really hard to get the aircraft serviceable, or it doesn’t have a lot to do when it’s away. We take a fairly large contingent of maintenance personnel on exercises to ensure we can get the thing going, plus we’re doing preservation running and repairs on the retired aircraft as well to keep the aircraft alive as well as to maintain the competency levels of our staff. Any cannibalising of the old aircraft we’ve had to do has been meticulously documented for technical airworthiness and for the future owner’s benefit. ”

Disposal

Although the previously retired 707s were operated right up to their last remaining flight hours, Richmond Town will be retired with several hundred hours remaining in case it is required for a contingency. “The last aircraft will have some life left in it when it retires for contingency planning,” said SQNLDR Tame. “The other aircraft that were retired previously will all require various degrees of fairly major servicing or, at the minimum a waiver in order to be flown out of Richmond. ” “A company has put in an unsolicited proposal forall the 707 airframes, the simulator, and spares as a package, and the DMO is currently in discussion with them to refine the proposal,” said AIRCDRE Plenty of the 707s’ fate. “The aircraft are all in a ferryable condition depending on authorities and waivers. ” AA understands that Omega Air, a US based firm that provides 707 based tanking services to various militaries including the US Navy on a commercial basis, is likely to be the company to have made the proposal. Part of its bid reportedly involves restoring a 707 cockpit and forward fuselage section from one of the retired but un-airworthy aircraft for eventual donation to the RAAF Museum at Point Cook near Melbourne.

Of the other 707s in the RAAF fleet, Hulksbury (the name is a play on the Hawkesbury River which runs alongside Richmond), was stripped of all useable spares and disposed of some years ago; former Saudia 707-368C A20-103 Wilberforce was the aircraft which crashed off the coast of Victoria in October 1991 with the loss of five crew while performing double engine-out asymmetric training; former Saudia 707‑368C, A20‑261 Castlereagh was retired in August 2006 and was subsequently sold to the UK based Turbine Motor Works; former Qantas 707‑338C A20-623 Clarendon was retired in early 2007 and is currently at Richmond; former Qantas 707-338C A20-627 Windsor Town was retired in July 2001 and is located at Richmond but is unlikely to ever fly again and will likely be the source of the restored forward fuselage for the RAAF Museum; and former Qantas 707-338C A20-629 City of Sydney was retired in October last year and is also at Richmond.

“Many of us will be sad to see the ‘Seven O’ go, even many of the local residents despite the noise it makes – we get very few noise complaints these days,” said AIRCDRE Plenty.

“But we’ve got an excellent capability coming through behind it. ” “The 707 was wonderfully designed and beautifully made,” noted WGCDR Ghee. “What we’ve been doing to keep it flying just can’t be done on a modern aircraft – it’s a fantastic workhorse. ” “We’ll certainly miss 33SQN and the 707 from Richmond,” said AIRCDRE Plenty.

Raw Deal

The air-to-air refuelling mission isn’t often given the recognition afforded to the fighters and bombers at the ‘pointy end’ of the air tasking order, but in these days of constrained defence budgets, the force multiplier is no less important.

“The 707 sometimes got a raw deal for its unpredictable serviceability, but the fighters weren’t always able to get to us either,” said SQNLDR Knellwolf. “Our rate of effort lately has been very good but the aircraft has always been unpredictable – we changed two engines in a three week period during Pitch Black ’06, but at another exercise last year we didn’t drop a mission. ” “Historic missions like the RAF’s ‘Black Buck’ Vulcan raids in the Falklands and the USAF’s B-2 missions over Bosnia and the Middle East from the US have really demonstrated what air-to-air refuelling can do,” said WGCDR Ghee. “Even though tanking is a reasonably small proportion of what we do, our ‘customers’ always know that we’ll do everything possible to be there and that we’ll have gas for them. The KC-30 will greatly build upon the basics of what we’ve done with the 707. ” o 33SQN is inviting all current and previous members of 33SQN, former members of 33 Flight, previous members of 37Sqn or 486SQN who operated, maintained and supported the 707, and anyone else who can demonstrate a connection with the operational support of the aircraft, to a an ‘End of an Era Hangar Bash’ at Richmond on June 28. Visit www.defence.gov.au/raaf/b707farewell/ index.htm for details.