Flight International, Nov 1974

[john_p]

GF bought me a stack of FI backissues at a bootsale and I've been idly flicking through them

Nov 74 issue - (..an interesting article on the first ever 747 hull loss and the flight testing of the MRCA..)

Then an article on military crashes - guess how many aircraft the UK armed forces lost in crashes/accidents in 1973 ? Bearing in mind there were no (to my knowledge) combat operations at the time

39 aircraft written off!

and 31 fatalities

5x Hunter
5x Harrier
5x Phantom
A Victor, Vulcan, Hercules
and a load of helicopters, Gnat, Buccaneer, Canberra ..

Did they do a whole load more flying back then? I can't imagine that level of crash and fatalities nowadays, from training alone.. they'd ground everything!

[Simpo Two]

Even in wartime, accidents accounted for far more casualties than the enemy ever did.

[Eric Mc]

The RAF and Fleet Air Arm was MUCH bigger than it is today. It was also operating over a larger area as well, with bases in Europe and the Middle East (and even in the Indian Ocean). There was a huge retrenchment, starting in 1975.

[DieselGriff]

During the early-mid 70's my old man was based at Bruggen as a young erk and it seemed he was regularly guarding and looking for pieces at crash sites. I also remember that hardly a day went by without some flying going on, weekends included.

[Turbodiesel1690]

Regarding helicopters, back then was the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland and there were many tens or hundreds of sorties flown daily, mostly concentrated in the South Armagh 'bandit country' and making the small village of Bessbrook the busiest heliport in Europe. I believe there were a fair few losses including a couple of aircraft reportedly shot down by the provisional IRA

[Geneve]

john_p said:

Did they do a whole load more flying back then? I can't imagine that level of crash and fatalities nowadays, from training alone.. they'd ground everything!

Well, aside from those operating in hostile environments, helicopters certainly have a much more reliable safety record nowadays. Otherwise, you wouldn't have Harry and William flying them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politic...

[Eric Mc]

Didn't stop Andrew flying 30 plus years ago.

[williamp]

someone opn pprune listed the RAF write-off's plus fatalities for the post war years. Here is is, taken from his post. (These exclude combat losses. I dont know what the *means)

Year	Number	Fatal
1945	592	638
1946	1014	677
1947	420	176
1948	424	205
1949	438	224
1950	380	238
1951	490	280
1952	507	318
1953	483	333
1954	452	283
1955	305	182
1956	270	150
1957	233	139
1958	128	87
1959	102	59
1960	80	46
1961	74	55
1962	68	50
1963	60	41
1964	62	33
1965	46	71
1966	62	33
1967	60	60
1968	51	43
1969	31	22
1970	36	25
1971	40	72
1972	28	22
1973	30	21
1974	16	5
1975	21	17
1976	33	20
1977	14	7
1978	25	27
1979	27	13
1980	24	13
1981	26	7
1982	35	10
1983	26	19
1984	23	4
1985	19	9
1986	19	10
1987	20	17
1988	19	18
1989	17	9
1990*	29	19
1991*	27	15
1992*	17	8
1993*	17	13
1994*	17	34
1995*	13	9
1996*	21	2
1997*	12	3
1998*	11	3
1999*	18	6
2000*	9
2001*	12
2002*	9
2003*	6
2004*	6
Total:	7554	4970

On another thread, someone else posted this figures about Meteor losses:

1. 150 total losses in 1952
2. 68 lost after running out of fuel
3. 23 lost doing official low level aeros displays
4. 890 lost in total
5. 436 fatal accidents between 1944 and 1986.


There have always been brave people in the armed forces. Its just that you only hear about them in times of conflict.

Edited to make easier to read, hope you don't mind - Mr Will

[john_p]

Interesting. So roughly another 30% of accidents attributed to RN/Army.

In perspective 1974 wasn't such a bad year..

Edited by john_p on Thursday 29th April 15:59

[Geneve]

williamp said:

On another thread, someone else posted this figures about Meteor losses:

1. 150 total losses in 1952
2. 68 lost after running out of fuel
3. 23 lost doing official low level aeros displays
4. 890 lost in total
5. 436 fatal accidents between 1944 and 1986.

Blimming heck - how does that compare with the Lockheed Starfighter?

[Eric Mc]

Bald numbers don't mean a lot You would need to know how many Metoers were in active service and how many were flying to make comparisons.

Accidents per airframe hours is a more valid comparison.

[aeropilot]

Geneve said:

williamp said:

On another thread, someone else posted this figures about Meteor losses:

1. 150 total losses in 1952
2. 68 lost after running out of fuel
3. 23 lost doing official low level aeros displays
4. 890 lost in total
5. 436 fatal accidents between 1944 and 1986.

Blimming heck - how does that compare with the Lockheed Starfighter?

Startfighter losses were dependant on the operator and the way the aircraft was used, and how long they operated them for.

The USAF and the Japanese for example operated it in it’s originally intended HA interceptor role so had quite low losses, Japan only lost 15% of it’s F-104’s. The Spanish AF didn’t loose any! Not sure about the Turkish AF loss rate?

The Belgium, Dutch and German’s operated them in a more dominant low-level role in more inhospitable northern European weather conditions, and so seemed to suffer a higher loss rate. The Belguim AF aquired just over a 100 F-104’s from the mid 1960’s and operated them until the early 1980’s, loosing 41 of them, a loss rate of 37%.
Similarily the Dutch AF aquired some 135 F-104’s and until they retired them in the early 1980’s and had lost some 43 (35.8%) of them.

The Germans operated a much higher number of Starfighters, over a 1000, and losses amounted to 270 aircraft, a rate of 30%, for the loss of 110 pilots, and actually less most of it’s neighbouring AF operators, despite the Germans having the worst reputation.

The Italians operated the F-104 for much longer from the mid 1960’s right through to the mid-2000’s, so 20 odd years longer than the Germans, Dutch and Belgiums. Of the 350 odd aircraft, they lost 138, some 37.5% of the total number.

However, the worst record belongs to the Canadians. The RCAF also operated the 104 in northern Europe as part of it’s NATO force, and of the almost 250 aircraft delivered, from the early 1960’s until retirement in the early 1980’s, the Canadians lost 110 F-104’s, some 47% of the fleet!

Edited by aeropilot on Friday 30th April 22:23

[Eric Mc]

Also, the USAF only flew the F-104A and C models which were substantially cruder than the CF-104, F-104G and F-104S flown by NATO air arms. The USAF (by their standards at the time) operated a fairly small number of F-104s - around 200 I believe.
They were never a great fan of the concept and they had off loaded their early F-104s to Air National Guard units and some overseas "client" countries (such as Taiwan) by the mid 1960s.

[williamp]

I know these seem high- is there an expected loss rate for military aircraft these days in non-combat duties??