A Super delivery

The 10 1SQN pilots and ‘wizzos’ (weapon systems operators) dismount from their aircraft, remove their life support equipment, and stride as a group towards eagerly awaiting wives, children, girlfriends and family. Some are reuniting for the first time in over five months.

Hugs, kisses and handshakes are the order of the day before the US and Australian national anthems play and politicians and dignitaries address the gathering.

“The Super Hornets will provide a bridging capability from the retirement of the F-111 through the transition to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, assuring Australia’s regional air combat capability edge,” says Defence Minister John Faulkner, as the rest of the official welcoming party bake on the dias in the Friday afternoon sun.

The RAAF’s Super Hornet era has begun.

Lemoore To Hickham – Feet Wet

Over a week earlier on the morning of March 18, the five RAAF Super Hornets, A44-202 to -206, idle on NAS Lemoore’s flightline surrounded by dozens of US Navy Hornets. Notably absent from the RAAF line-up was -201, currently at Naval Air Warfare Center, NAS China Lake, being used for further systems testing.

On an adjacent ramp Omega Aerial Refuelling Services KDC-10 N974VV, a converted ex JAL DC-10-40, has its nosewheel chocks removed by the ground crew and the copilot calls Lemoore’s ground traffic controller for taxi clearance for a departure to Hickham AFB on the Hawaiian island of Oahu – the first destination for ‘Super Hornet Delivery 1’ – SHD1.

Taxiing out to Lemoore’s runway 32R, the Super Hornet five-ship, callsigned ‘Aussie 821’ (with individual jets identified as -1 through -5), are a long way from home and are due to be overhead Canberra for a ceremonial flypast for the planned visit by US President Barack Obama in eight days’ time. His visit had only just been pushed back by 72 hours a few days earlier.

At 1005 local, the first pair of RAAF Rhinos rotate and climb into the Californian sky. Immediately behind, the remaining trio depart and together orbit overhead as ‘Omega 10’ thunders down the runway with 243,000lb of Jet-A1 and 20 or so RAAF and Boeing personnel on board.

Forming up with ‘Omega 10’, three Supers on the left side and two on the right, the SHD1 formation crosses the coast, ‘feet wet’, while making course for Hickham.

Because of cooler sea and air temperatures off the Californian coast, the Super Hornet aircrews wear unflattering but lifesaving immersion survival suits underneath their flight suits and life support gear.

Think the ‘Michelin Man’ as a fighter pilot! “It’s about balancing risk,” 1SQN’s commanding officer WGCDR Glen Braz later explains during an interview with Australian Aviation in downtown Honolulu. “The immersion suits takes away the risks of hyperthermia should we eject over cooler water but can potentially add a few risks.

The suits are cumbersome, you can get more fatigued in it as it makes you hotter plus it’s hard to move around in it. So we had to balance those factors but there was clear guidance that we had to wear them on this first leg. ” Spaced within a 1nm radius from the KDC-10, and cruising at FL300, the first of six refuelling ‘brackets’ commences 45 minutes into the flight.

Omega 10 slows to the predetermined refuelling airspeed of 290kt. Both refuelling drogue baskets and hoses unwind from inside the underwing mounted Cobham refuelling pods and trail behind the wings.

Faces and cameras press up against every available window on both sides of the tanker’s rear cabin to watch and capture the activity of the first refuelling bracket.

For the delivery ferry the Super Hornets are fitted with three external fuel tanks (‘bags’), each carrying 3300lb of fuel, on the centreline station and under the inboard stations of each wing.

Even though the Rhino is capable of carrying five fuel tanks externally this is not practical for a delivery flight. “Five is almost a party trick,” says WGCDR Braz.

“The US Navy use five often for their tanker missions with the aim of getting a whole lot of fuel in the air to give it off to someone else. In fact the US Navy will often transit or ferry with only a centreline tank. So it’s a bit of a balancing act – there’s a lot of pro and cons for each external tank configuration. We’re being slightly more conservative going for three tanks and that’s just us making sure we have enough fuel. ” Midway to Hawaii a session of briefed formation flying for the cameras is executed with precision. The spectacular ‘stack’ shot with all five jets (see opposite) is well and truly captured.

Autopilots do most of the work during the transit, but it’s a case of hands on throttle and stick when the aircraft fly through cloud. “For about 45 minutes to an hour we were in cloud and effectively flew close formation on the tanker and that was all hand flying,” says WGCDR Braz. “It’s hard work flying and tanking in cloud for that length of time, particularly on a long flight with multiple refuel brackets. ” On descent, the quintet leave the tanker and power ahead for sequencing to land by Honolulu controllers.

Arriving at Hickham having completed the first leg in exactly six hours, mobile phones are switched on and the chimes of text messages are audible. “Obama has cancelled,” someone reads from an SMS.

No doubt this will have some impact on the rest of the delivery journey in one way or another. Maybe we’ll skip Auckland and go direct from Pago Pago to Amberley? “Our arrival was going to be into Canberra and linked to that (presidential) event,” says WGCDR Braz. “Doing what we do in the military it always pays to be flexible. ”Technicians flurry to check the jets for any unserviceabilities. Five healthy Super Hornets have arrived in Hawaii and are bedded down for a few days.

“It’s only the fourth week of flying the aeroplane for us, so we built in some flexibility into the delivery plan. We’re still getting to know it so if something unexpected was to happen along the way, in terms of an aircraft system malfunction, then we’d have some time to work through it and fix it rather than having to rush. Our theme for the whole trip has been slow and steady and we’ll get there in a controlled way. ” During the two-day layover in Hawaii the remaining plan for the journey to Australia is set in concrete. We will head for Pago Pago, in American Samoa; then on to Auckland, New Zealand; and finally direct into RAAF Amberley. A homecoming welcoming is being planned for the arrival on the Friday afternoon.

Interestingly at Hickam, the Super Hornets are parked close by to one of the aircraft they will replace. A 6SQN F-111C, A8-109, is receiving some maintenance in a nearby hangar, having become unserviceable on a recent trip home from the US.

Another Amberley resident sits close by too. 36SQN C-17 A41-206 is providing airlift support for the SHD1 ferry, and has arrived from Lemoore as it trails the Rhinos and the tanker for the delivery.

Reflecting on the first leg of SHD1, WGCDR Braz recalls the 16 hour, nonstop delivery flight of the RAAF’s first ‘classic’ Hornets from St Louis to RAAF Williamtown in 1985. An ex F-111 pilot with 75 hours logged so far on the Super Hornet, he notes “It wouldn’t be the most comfortable flight you could do. The six hour flight we did to Hickham was fine, but you certainly had some sore spots at the end of it. ” As a Year 11 student in high school, WGCDR Braz remembers the classics’ arrival well. “It’s funny how quickly time passes because that doesn’t seem all that long ago. For me, the realisation that you are the commander of 1SQN, it’s quite humbling. I would never have dreamed I would be doing this. I was a kid from a little town on the Clarence River, in northern New South Wales, who saw jets flying overhead and thought ‘I’ll give that a go’, and here I am today delivering the next generation of Hornets to the Air Force. ”

Hickham To Pago Pago – Heading Down Under

Departure day and the Supers are fuelled up and ready to go. But getting out of Hawaii will not be as simple as it was from Lemoore.

“Our preferred departure is impossible to orchestrate at airports like Hickham/ Honolulu due to the amount of RPT traffic,” explains WGCDR Braz. “We have a different technique at these airports where the tanker will launch first, then followed by the jets. We can catch up by cutting the tanker off with track shortening or just run it down as we climb a bit faster.

“Generally you get treated like one big aeroplane by ATC in a big airspace reservation and they separate from our extremities. ” All the flightplanning, navigation and most of the ATC communication is coordinated by the Omega tanker aircrew using its HF radios, which the Super Hornets don’t have.

En route SHD1 crosses the Equator into southern hemisphere airspace. A few days before SHD1 left Lemoore, Cyclone Mick had passed through the area battering the islands of Fiji. “We’ve all been keeping an eye on the weather very closely. Obviously if the weather along our route is not suitable then we’d have to postpone the flight and try again the next day. And that’s why we have extra days built into the schedule, to allow for unsuitable weather. ” With up to 50 minutes between refuellings, and with nothing but blue skies above and blue waters below, the time between refuelling brackets gives the crews an opportunity to become familiar with the aircraft’s systems. “It’s a great opportunity to practice more of the obscure functions the aeroplane has,” says WGCDR Braz. “Exercising the link functionality by passing digital communication messages between the jets using the secure comms and using the radar to search the surface for ships and the sky for aircraft generally passes the time before readying for the next bracket of tanking. It’s an incredibly sophisticated weapon system, so we have a lot of time to sit there and get used to things we haven’t used in a while, or are still new to us – it’s a great opportunity. ” When in formation with the tanker the Supers fly a little slower than their optimum cruise speeds, making the trip just that little bit longer. “When you’re tanking with the hoses you have to slow down further,” remarks WGCDR Braz. “Ideally (for transit flying) you would go a bit higher, but tanking gets more complex the higher you go, as does flying in close formation at higher altitudes. ” There’s very much a technique, like most things in aviation, with air-to-air refuelling as 1SQN’s executive officer SQNLDR Dan Grealy describes. “We line up about 10ft behind the trailing drogue basket which is moving in the airstream.

Looking down the probe, which is offset to the right on the jet’s nose, you try and line the two up as best you can. With that, you look through the heads-up display and pick a focal point along the wing of the tanker – a panel or row of rivets for example – and focus heavily on keeping lined up with that point – this is key. If you look at the basket you’ll end up chasing it around.

“Using small inputs of power you move the jet in toward the basket at a walking pace, about 2kt of closure. As the basket hits the airstream around the jet’s nose it moves up and away from the probe. In your peripheral vision you’ll see this and with a tiny height correction and a bit of rudder you’ll see the probe go into the basket.

“Once it’s in you keep the closure going to make sure the two mate and the valves open. Using markers on the hose you continue moving forward and push the hose about 10ft into the refuelling pod on the wing of the tanker to enable the flow of fuel to pump into the jet. After that it’s pretty much flying close formation on the wing of the tanker.

“When you’re done there’s lights on the side of the pod that turn red indicating no fuel is being transferred and you back away at the same speed as you came in. The probe will uncouple from the basket and you move further away from the tanker and reposition into the formation. ” Varying quantities of fuel are offloaded with each ‘plug in’. The jets remain connected until reaching maximum fuel – around 23,000lb with their three external tanks.

Fuel burn for the Rhino is approximately 6200lb of Jet-A1 per hour giving approximately a 1600nm range.

On the longer legs like Hickham to Pago Pago, four brackets of refuelling keep the fuel loads high.

“We plan for a worst case being a depressurisation emergency that would dictate us diverting to an alternate airfield at 10,000ft,” said SQNLDR Grealy. “We have to plan to assume that we could be flying at that lower altitude and so we keep the tanks always topped up at a very high level.

If we have an emergency then we’ve got enough fuel to go low level to the alternate so we generally plug a lot more than we need to for that reason. ” Approaching five hours into the second leg of the delivery, the Rhinos again push ahead of the tanker for an arrival into Pago Pago – the capital of American Samoa on the island of Tutuila.

Pago’s very limited circuit traffic allows the Rhinos to perform their usual ‘initial and pitch’ manoeuvre as the quickest way of entering the circuit to get on the ground.

Landing to the northeast on runway 05 the Hornets park close to the passenger terminal and are shut down as Omega 10 flies a 10 mile final approach.

Stifling heat and humidity immediately fogs glasses and camera lenses upon stepping out of the KDC-10’s airconditioned cabin. Palm trees and spectacular mountains make an idyllic backdrop as the local AirBP refueller tops up the jets’ tanks.

The C-17 touches down a short while later, with Pago Pago having plenty of room to accommodate the five Super Hornets, the KDC-10 and the C-17, plus a US Coast Guard C-130 and several local RPT twins.

Under The Pump

Once refuelled, the Supers move to the adjoining runway 08/26 and park for the night. However, there is still work to be done.

One of the jets, -204, has indicated a minor issue after shutting down. “The Super Hornet is a very smart jet,” explains 1SQN’s senior engineering officer SQNLDR Stephen Hoadley. “We debrief the jet after each flight by plugging a laptop into the jet’s computers and it will tell the technicians what maintenance codes it has thrown and what has happened during the flight. ” A solenoid in a fuel shutoff valve, which senses the valve’s position, was giving a false indication. But a team of 1SQN maintenance and logistics personnel are at hand to fix the jets with tooling and spares from their ‘fly-away’ kits.

“We haven’t been using our jets long enough to know exactly what our flyaway kit should include, so we’ve pulled together our initial kit based on data from the US Navy, Boeing and from our own experiences working with the jet to develop a list of around 30 different types of repairable items, about 150 types of breakdown spares, plus some small test equipment. ” Onboard Omega 10, a spare nose and main wheel are stowed in a galley. But most of the engineers’ kit is carried on board the shadowing C-17.

“Pago Pago is a good trial for the guys in dealing with a challenging unserviceability issue while deployed,” says SQNLDR Hoadley. “For us this year is all about learning, testing and refining the maintenance process system we’ve developed for these jets. We’re already logging things on how we can improve for the next ferry. ” By mid morning the technicians, including three from Boeing travelling with the delivery, are able to troubleshoot -204’s problem down to a failing sensor. Remedying the fault, the jet is able to fly on. Aircrew, technicians and Boeing service techs wrap up the paperwork and SHD1 can continue on its way to the land of the long white cloud.

Job done.

“This platform is bridging more than the air combat capability, it’s actually bridging the support and maintenance capabilities as well,” notes SQNLDR Hoadley. “It’s getting our workforce used to working off full electronic publications – laptops rather than hard copy publications – everything with this aircraft is leading us towards the JSF. ”

Pago Pago To Auckland – Almost There

After their departure from Pago Pago the Rhinos form up and make a quick scenic lap around the small island before joining the tanker for the relatively short three and half hour leg to Auckland.

En route, a single bracket of tanking takes place while passing overhead the south Pacific island group of Tonga.

For noise mitigation and to help ATC with the flow of traffic the five Rhinos are sequenced onto Auckland’s runway 23L ILS in twin two-ship formations split by a mile of separation and with a single jet following in behind.

Arriving into Auckland with five fast jets, a KDC-10 tanker and a C-17 in concert certainly stops traffic . . . and the loading of bags onto RPT flights! There seems to be no shortage of interested onlookers, with many airside and landside welcoming SHD1 to an overcast New Zealand.

Parking on a parallel taxiway the Hornets are healthy, are refuelled and have their protective covers thrown on. Arrival into RAAF Amberley is only 72 hours away.

Auckland To Amberley – Home Again

After three years in the planning the dawn of a new era for RAAF air combat capability is now just a four hour flight across the Tasman.

“We don’t buy aircraft like this in Australia very often and it represents a huge investment for the country and weall should be incredibly proud to be a part of this delivery,” WGCDR Braz says as he addresses the assembled ground crew at the bottom of Omega 10’s airstairs.

“There’s many, many pieces that have all come together including administration, logistics, aircrew, operations support, maintenance and engineering, airlift and aerial refuelling support – it’s been a complex puzzle, but I have had a great team working for me that has made it happen, it’s really impressive. ” Onboard, the aircrew perform their preflight briefing in the VIP section of the KDC-10. Departure is imminent.

Until now the historical importance of SHD1 has been put aside to concentrate on the mission at hand.

“To be honest I haven’t talked about it much as the guys have had enough on their minds,” explains WGCDR Braz. “I just wanted them to turn up to work and do what they do, which is plan and execute really effective and safe operations.

“This first ferry flight is a huge moment in Air Force history and in the history of 1SQN at Amberley. As we get into Amberley, we’ll then start to reflect more on the significance of this from a historical point of view. It’s in the back of our minds, we know that it’s a big deal, but we’re pushing it back a little bit so we can focus on the job at hand. ” Before they ‘step’ to their jets the aircrew pose with flightline technicians for a quick photo (opposite) before strapping in. With the expected fanfare awaiting at Amberley, the chances of getting the group together there for this historic photo would be close to nil.

The KDC-10, Supers and C-17 taxi in turn for a runway 23L departure, watched by what seems like half of Auckland that has come out to farewell the Australian visitors.

Over the Tasman the jets all cycle through a final bracket of refuelling, this time using the KDC-10’s left side refuelling drogue only. A minor problem rendered the right refuelling pod unserviceable for the final leg to Australia.

In a scene reminiscent of the arrival of RAAF’s first pair of classic Hornets in May 1985 when four 77SQN Mirages accompanied the jets home into RAAF Williamtown, the Super Hornets and the Omega tanker are ‘intercepted’ and escorted towards Amberley by four F-111Cs from 6SQN. Two of the F-111s formate off the tanker with the Super Hornets for 20 minutes, allowing some truly historic, oncein- a-lifetime photos to be taken.

The Supers and F-111s then depart the tanker for the final run home, rendezvousing with a Hawk photo plane for a flypast overhead the Gold Coast and Brisbane prior to arrival.

The KDC-10 meanwhile tracks direct for Amberley’s runway 33 and lands well before the stars of the show arrive. Unfortunately for the ground crews onboard the C-17, trailing not far behind, that aircraft heads to RAAF Williamtown instead.

Passengers on the tanker are just able to clear Customs and Quarantine inspections in time to get to the 1SQN carports for the arrival ceremony and witness the arrival flypast, first by the five Super Hornets followed by the F-111s, each with varying wing sweep.

First to touch down is -202, later to be named the City of Ipswich and branded with the council’s crest on its nose’s left side, bringing to an end the historic delivery journey for the RAAF’s new air combat capability.

“The Air Force needs to go to the fifth generation – that’s where the future is and the Air Force is certainly committed to that,” comments WGCDR Braz. “One the RAAFs key attributes has been our technological edge. The Super Hornet gives us that certainly in the transition period and for the next decade at least.

The JSF will take Air Force to where it really needs to be. ”