P-3 50 years

Over the first weekend of December 2018, 92 Wing of the Royal Australian Air Force celebrated 50 years of Australian operations of the P-3. Formed in 1977, 92 Wing is younger than some of the Orions themselves.

The event meant the men and women of 92WG and 10, 11, 292 and 492 Squadrons could pay tribute to the aircraft they have known and loved for so long through a mixture of formal events and informal gettogethers with old friends.

‘This story must start with the aircraft itself.’

The highlight was a three-ship formation flypast on a glorious day around Adelaide landmarks, to thank the local community for its contribution. Watching from the ground at RAAF Base Edinburgh, the approach of the three venerable aircraft in vic formation at low level, with the characteristic smoke trails winding behind them and the low thrum of 12 T56 turboprops, was nothing short of awe-inspiring.

The P-3 Orion is easy to love. Each airframe is an individual, with its own character and idiosyncrasies. To deploy with an Orion is to get to know her personally, to have the aircraft form part of the crew. That’s why a recounting of facts was never going to be enough, and why this story is as much a love letter to this magnificent aircraft as it is a story about her halfcentury of service.

The contribution

Australia is a maritime nation. Our national character and concerns are heavily influenced by the fact that we are surrounded by the sea, and our dependence on it as a defence barrier as well as a treasure-trove of resources and a primary mode of trade. It follows that this maritime nation has always turned towards its maritime patrol assets to protect the things that matter. The P-3 has answered this call with distinction.

The P-3 fleet has flown a large proportion of its hours on operations, usually from deployed locations. The commitment of RAAF maritime patrol to protecting Australian waters is best exemplified by the 12 years and more than 36,000 flight hours in support of Operation Resolute, the ADF’s contribution to protecting Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone; or the 37 years and thousands of flight hours in support of Operation Gateway, an enduring regional maritime security operation in South-East Asia.

The Australian search and rescue area of responsibility covers around 10 per cent of the Earth’s surface. With its legendary range and endurance, its sensor suite and ability to accurately drop stores, the P-3 has been the asset of choice for search and rescue operations throughout its service history, from the famous Southern Ocean rescues of Tony Bullimore and Thierry Dubois in 1997, to the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in 2014.

As a weaponised warfighting platform, capable of delivering torpedoes, mines and anti-ship missiles if required, the P-3 has a deterrence presence that contributes to rules-based order and stability in our region. On the flip side, the P-3 and her crews also excel at providing humanitarian assistance in disaster situations, and exercising “soft power” through international engagement and assistance to regional partners.

But more about missions later. This story must start with the aircraft itself.

From airliner to hunter

Designed to replace the P-2 Neptune, the Orion was based on the first large turboprop airliner built in the United States, the Lockheed Electra. The third production Electra was modified into the YP-3A, the prototype P-3 Orion, easily distinguishable from its airliner elder by the addition of the bomb-bay to house torpedoes and the distinctive “stinger” – the long tail boom housing the magnetic anomaly detector (MAD), a supremely useful sensor for submarine hunting.

While the mission systems underwent successive updates through the years and eventually entered the digital age, the airframe and engines, marvels of mechanical design and engineering, remained largely unchanged. I have often referred to the Orion as “an intricate system of ropes and pulleys”, which achieves functionality that is still remarkable today, largely through analogue and mechanical means.

One part of a test pilot’s skill‑set is the ability to look at an aircraft, critically assess it and predict how it is likely to fly. I didn’t fully appreciate the beauty of the Orion until I returned to fly her with this skill‑set. It was then that I noticed how clean the lines were, that there were no wing fences or strakes or any of the other aerodynamic band-aids I had seen on other aircraft, added as an afterthought to resolve this issue or that.

It was then I understood how remarkable the Orion’s handling qualities really were. The Orion’s top speed, the Velocity Never Exceed or Vne, is 405 knots at sea level, comparable to the top speeds of the great propeller fighters. I have had the pleasure of flying the Orion to Vne on a number of occasions; there are few things as fun as flying such a large aircraft to the edges of its envelope. The lowest landing speeds are around 115 knots. Throughout this massive speed range, the aircraft is a study in control force harmony, which is remarkable given the flight control system is fully mechanical. An intricate system of ropes and pulleys indeed.

The Orion is a real “pilot’s aircraft”, the last one in the RAAF inventory. The autopilot is rudimentary by modern standards – no coupled functionality to fly your approaches for you – which means Orion pilots actually fly the aircraft, especially at low level. And the Orion is in its element at low level. The RAAF flies the Orions down to 100 feet above sea level; the aircraft has a wingspan of roughly 100 feet. Rolling to 45 degrees angle of bank at low level, with your lower wingtip clearing the water by a mere 60 feet, is perfectly safe in the hands of a qualified pilot, but always sure to result in a gasp from any passengers lucky enough to witness this from the flightdeck.

‘There are few things as fun as flying such a large aircraft to the edges of its envelope.’

But as much as it was a pilot’s dream, the real genius of the Orion was always in the mission systems. As Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The sensor suite of the P-3, updated throughout the aircraft’s life to keep up with technology and new mission sets, was all science but sometimes appeared as magic. To watch an acoustician pick out a submarine signature from the noise, a needle in a stack of needles, is to watch a magician at work.

Successive variants of the P-3 have seen navigation systems ranging from astro-navigation to the GPS age. Imagine being a navigator on an aircraft that is bouncing around as it carries out its patrol, set the task of getting three star-shots through a sextant to plot the crew’s position. Why? Because when you fly over featureless water for many hours, you need astro-navigation to back up the wandering inertial navigation system. How long ago? As late as the 1990s. There are people still operating the P-3 Orion, and its successor the P-8 Poseidon, who have done just this.

Then in 2001, the RAAF received its first AP-3C, or Australian Orion. These aircraft were comprehensively upgraded, and outfitted with a modern sensor suite including digital multi‑mode radar and powerful electro‑optics. For a long time, the AP-3C Orion was the most capable maritime patrol aircraft in the western world.

The missions

The Orion is a true multi-role aircraft. In the 11 years I was lucky enough to fly them, I have hunted submarines off the coast of Southern California, chased pirates off the coast of Somalia, and provided overwatch to stricken yachts in the Southern Ocean, to name a few. And my record pales in comparison with the records of many people I have worked with. To describe the full scope of the Orion’s roles would consume most of this magazine, so here is the highlights reel.

The pinnacle is anti-submarine warfare, or ASW, which was once an overturned yacht or a single person in the water, to mass-SOLAS (Safety of Life at Sea) incidents, with hundreds of people in the water following a ferry capsize. The crews have air-dropped everything from heliboxes containing radios and vital medical supplies, to air/sea rescue kits comprising life rafts and essential survival equipment.

My personal experience ranges from looking for a single man overboard, reportedly wearing blue jeans and green t-shirt, about 400 nautical miles off the coast of Townsville, to conducting a mass- SOLAS search alongside USS Winston S Churchill in the Gulf of Aden after a skiff began taking on water, then capsized and sank, leaving 85 passengers in the water.

The Orion is most at home over the water, but for almost 10 years of operations in the Middle East, from 2003 to 2012, the men and women of 92 Wing conducted described to me as a chess game at 200 knots, against an opponent you can’t see. Years later, the description still rings true. When combined with an anti-surface warfare, this chess game forms the core of the Orion’s high-end warfighting capability. ASW requires supreme crew coordination, with the tactical coordinator (TACCO) acting as the conductor of an orchestra, and the sensor operators as his musicians. In the hands of a swept‑up crew, the P-3 is a deadly hunter, capable of locating and tracking multiple submarines and attacking them with torpedoes.

Fortunately for all of us, we have never had to exploit the full deadly potential of the aircraft in this role, but crews were always ready to go if the call came. A good ASW mission is pure euphoria, and ASW is highly addictive. Having flown many other amazing aircraft, I can honestly say that flying an Orion on an ASW mission is the most fun I have ever had in an aeroplane.

Search and rescue (SAR) operations have always been a sacred duty of the maritime patrol community, and the Orion is ideally suited to the role. SAR tasks vary wildly in complexity and intensity. The Australian P-3 fleet has gone out looking for everything from overland intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions over both Iraq and Afghanistan. This required significant adaptations of both tactics and mission equipment, such as the introduction of electronic warfare selfprotection systems to allow operations in the contested environment, and tactical data links to allow streaming of full motion video.

While it was not the most challenging flying, it was a vital mission set that provided overwatch and protection to troops on the ground, a friendly “eye in the sky” ready to render assistance in a moment of need.

Proficient in its many roles, the Orion is the queen of re-tasking. It was not uncommon to head out on one kind of mission only to be redirected while airborne to something completely different. In particular, we always had to be ready for SAR, so much so that we often carried air/sea rescue kits loaded in the bomb-bay while carrying out completely unrelated roles. The ability of the Orion and her crews to switch tracks at a moment’s notice is a real testament to the versatility of the platform and adaptability of its operators.

Teamwork and camaraderie

The remarkable aircraft notwithstanding, the most special thing about flying the P-3 is the maritime crew. This motley collection of disparate individuals, all technical experts in their own right, ranging from “bograts” in their 20s to senior airmen in their 50s, have always made life both challenging and fun. Nowhere else have I encountered the camaraderie and close teamwork environment that characterises life on a maritime crew, and nowhere have I learned more about leadership and followership.

Maritime is full of colourful individuals, with colourful nicknames. There are countless stories of exploits that have entered into myth, and get passed on from generation to generation in hushed tones. Some of these stories are about missions, like the story of the crew that hand-flew the aircraft at an altitude of 100 feet for hundreds of miles and popped up to allow the TACCO to loose no fewer than six exercise Harpoon missiles, changing the course of the (pretend) war. Some are about people, like the story of the Orion pilot who stole an elephant to save it. The people and the aircraft intertwine with these myths, inextricably linked by shared experience. The maritime crew centres around three lead operators – the aircraft captain, the tactical co-ordinator or TACCO, and the sensor employment manager or SEM. The captain is responsible for the safety and efficiency of the mission, the TACCO is the sub-hunting mastermind and mission commander, and the SEM’s job is to wrangle the sensor operators and get the right information to the TACCO. The balance of personalities of these three leads is everything on a maritime crew.

In addition to pilots and navigators, sensor operators and flight engineers make up the remainder of the crew. Being that intricate system of ropes and pulleys, the Orion is the last aircraft in the RAAF inventory to require flight engineers. A special breed, always from an aircraft technician background and with a reported ability to “feel the aircraft in their bones”, they will be missed when they are gone.

But to only talk about the crews would be to tell half a story. There would be no great flying, no successful missions, without the men and women who maintain the aircraft and keep them serviceable. Just as the intricate system of ropes and pulleys requires real “hands and feet” pilots and flight engineers to fly it, it requires a multitude of skilled engineers and tradespersons to maintain it. I have been blessed to work and deploy with some of the best.

‘Thousands of people have touched the mighty P-3 over the last 50 years.’

And the story doesn’t stop there. Without a veritable army of support staff, including operations and intelligence officers, various analysts and mission system technicians, and many others, the Orion wouldn’t be much more than an Electra, a slow airliner. In large part, it is the contribution of these supporting roles that has allowed the Orion crews to successfully carry out their missions for half a century.

Thousands of people have touched the mighty P-3 over the last 50 years. They have toiled alongside each other all over the world, sometimes in wonderful places and conditions, and sometimes in awful ones. They and their loved ones have sacrificed birthdays, anniversaries and family Christmases in order to serve this great maritime nation. They are what made flying the P-3 the best job in the world, and I salute them one and all.