Nimrod Boys: True Tales from the Operators of the RAF’s Cold War Trailblazer

By Tony Blackman and Joe Kennedy

The test pilot and author of Nimrod Rise and Fall shares a collection of over twenty tales from the cockpit of Nimrod aircraft during the Cold War.

As the first jet-powered maritime aircraft, the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod could reach critical points for rescues or for operational requirements in rapid time. Its outstanding navigation and electronics systems also allowed the Nimrod to be a first-class machine in antisubmarine warfare. In Nimrod Boys, author and pilot Tony Blackman offers vivid, firsthand accounts of the Nimrod’s UK-based and worldwide operations.

The stories in this volume range from the Nimrod’s role during the Falklands Campaign and the First Gulf War to more recent anti-drug smuggling operations in the Caribbean. There are also descriptions of the Nimrod’s achievements in the International Fincastle Competition—where Royal Air Force squadrons competed against counterparts from Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

With a variety of perspectives on Nimrod crew life, including from a female air electronic operator, readers will find dramatic, engaging and occasionally humorous stories. One flight test observer also reflects on the canceled Nimrod MR4 project.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781911621799

Tony Blackman

Tony Blackman has spent his life in the aircraft industry as a test pilot, as an avionics specialist and then on the Board of UK Civil Aviation Authority as the Technical Member.

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Preface and Acknowledgements

Nimrod Boys is a complementary book to Nimrod Rise and Fall. It is a collection of first-hand accounts of operating the Nimrod, as distinct from an account of the history of the aircraft with details of the various systems. We have decided, in compiling the book, to keep most of the accounts in roughly chronological order and not to try to match common events that are referred to in more than one chapter. However there are shorter contributions which we have put in one chapter towards the end of the book.

The Nimrod was a trailblazer being the first jet-powered maritime aircraft, which meant that it could reach critical points for rescues or for operational requirements in rapid time. The downside of using jets instead propellers was that the search time was slightly limiting but by shutting down one or two of the four engines during the search, the time was more than adequate and, once air-to-air refuelling was installed, the aircraft had a range that would match any other maritime aircraft then and now.

As one would expect from reading the contributors’ accounts, tracking submarines and shipping was clearly a very important task for the maritime Nimrod as was having an aircraft continually on stand-by, ready for search and rescue sorties. However the aircraft demonstrated its flexibility by making valuable contributions on other operations. The Falklands campaign was an unexpected occurrence and there are several accounts in this book recounting how splendidly the aircraft performed, particularly once the flight refuelling capability had been added. The Cod War and Operation Tapestry are other missions described in the book and, in addition, supporting UK and coalition troops became very important towards the end of the aircraft’s life. To supplement these operations there were frequent overseas trips to the States, Caribbean, Mediterranean, Scandinavia, Far East and occasionally Australia and New Zealand. However, we have one disappointment in that though security has been relaxed and there is now a published book explaining the details of the Nimrod R operation from San Felix Island in Chile during the Falklands War, we have not been able to get an aircrew account to match.

The crews were kept operationally proficient by continual training but in addition there was the challenge of the Fincastle competition, which kept them in first-class readiness competing first for the national Aird Whyte and then the international Fincastle trophy. The Nimrod more than held its own against the propeller-driven Australian, Canadian and New Zealand Air Force aircraft.

The Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft kept up with technology going from the MR1, then to the MR2 with its superb Searchwater radar and finally to the MRA4. One has to wonder what stories would have been told had this aircraft gone into service!

As well as the maritime Nimrod, the Nimrod R1 served the country well for many decades; it was an intelligence-gathering platform and was operated by 51 Squadron. It was heavily modified from its maritime brother and captured vital signals and electronic intelligence. The jet and crews operated in great secrecy for the whole of its service, but the tactical and strategic intelligence value it provided to the UK and allied partners, was instrumental in keeping Britain at the top table of international affairs. We are lucky to have a personal account of this important Nimrod mark and a flavour of the operations it carried out.

It is sometimes forgotten that Avros delivered all the Nimrod MR1s on time and on budget, an unbelievable occurrence these days; this was only possible because Avros were in charge of the whole programme and not dependant on other firms and systems as was the case with the later Nimrod AEW. To demonstrate this we have included a short appendix written by John Smith who was a key flight test observer at Avros while developing the Nimrod MR1.

As I tested forty of the forty-six Nimrods that were built I wanted to put this book together to record what they actually did and so I was delighted when Joe Kennedy agreed to help. He contacted all his fellow aircrew asking them to write down their memories which made the book possible and he also contributed two splendid chapters himself. We also got help searching for contributors from Steve Bond, author of Shackleton Boys, and Bill Speight, who has probably flown more Nimrod hours than anyone else and contributed the final chapter of the book. Inevitably we finished up with more material than we could use and regrettably we have had to omit some contributions.

There are twenty-two contributors to this book and their input ranges from sizeable chapters to a few stories. From a historical record viewpoint it was great that we were able to have not only so many different operational stories but also accounts of the work developing the Nimrod MR1, the MR2 and the history of the AEW3 debacle. In addition, as stated earlier, the capability of the Nimrod R1 is detailed with a general explanation of its operations though understandably many of the operations are still wrapped in security.

The photographs are of course an intrinsic part of the book and hopefully we have acknowledged all the ones that we have received. We apologise if we have used some that we have not acknowledged or have been acknowledged incorrectly. In addition Ray Dunn who was working at Kinloss debriefing the crews helped us to find some MoD photos with background information which we gratefully acknowledge.

We are very grateful to Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Roberts for agreeing to write a foreword for this book. Besides having been a very experienced Shackleton and Nimrod pilot, he later in his illustrious career held key posts in NATO and MoD looking after wider defence requirements. We recommend our readers to look at http://www.blackmanbooks.co.uk/nimrodsubmissions/SubmissionHCDC.pdf which not only lists Air Vice-Marshal Roberts’ senior postings but gives his draft report to the House of Commons Defence Committee on future maritime surveillance after the cancellation of the Nimrod.

Last but definitely not least we are very grateful to Anthony Wright who went through the whole book correcting all the editing errors.

Joe Kennedy and I would like to thank all the contributors to this book and also our publisher John Davies of Grub Street. We feel very privileged to have been able to put this book together.

Tony Blackman and Joe Kennedy

December 2018

NOTE: In the introductory paragraphs to contributions and elsewhere I occasionally use the first person where I have been personally involved. Tony Blackman

CHAPTER ONE

Nimrod MR2 and AEW Flight Testing

Shortly after I became chief test pilot at Avros we were becoming short of test pilots to carry out all the work we had testing Nimrods, Victors and some Vulcans plus the Avro 748 twin turboprop forty-eight-seat airliner. Through the grapevine I heard that Beagle aircraft had just stopped operating and that Charles Masefield might be available. As he mentions we had met at Farnborough and I had admired his splendid displays in an N-registered Mustang (which was soon stopped by the CAA!). What Charles doesn’t mention is that when he came he brought a pre-production Beagle Pup with him which in some ways, without any navigation gear, required a lot more pre-flight planning than our test aircraft.

In his chapter Charles highlights the development work on the MR2 and then tells the sad story of the AEW where unfortunately Avros were not prime contractors and had no control over the then powerful GEC Company. Finally, he comments on the cancellation of the MRA4 which with its four engines and large weapons/rescue bay would in many ways have been superior to the Boeing P-8.

In February 1970 I received a telephone call from Tony Blackman inviting me to join his team of test pilots at Hawker Siddeley Woodford. I had known Tony for some years from our annual meetings in the pilots’ tent at Farnborough Air Shows during the 1960s, and also from my visits to Woodford to display my P-51 Mustang each year at their annual RAFA Air Show. It took me no more than ten seconds to accept Tony’s exciting invitation and I arrived at Woodford on 1st March to join his team of six test pilots plus three co-pilots. Just twelve days later I had my introduction to the Nimrod accompanying test pilot Harry Fisher who occupied the left-hand seat on this maiden production test flight of XV234. So, as we accelerated smoothly and almost silently down the Woodford runway, and the aircraft soared into its natural environment for its first time, began my eleven-year flying relationship with the Nimrod ending with my final AEW Mk3 test flight in 1981 upon my retirement as chief test pilot to start climbing the greasy corporate management pole within British Aerospace.

I very rapidly came to realise what a truly remarkable aircraft the Nimrod was, and how perfectly it was suited to its maritime reconnaissance and its search and attack roles. Indeed, no other maritime patrol aircraft, either before or since, has come close to matching the capabilities of ‘The Mighty Hunter’. Not only was the Nimrod the world’s first jet-powered maritime reconnaissance aircraft enabling it to reach the search area faster than any other of that time – but its four-engine configuration was, and remains to this day, the optimum configuration for this role. Who for example, if given the choice, would wish to be patrolling in mid Atlantic at 500 feet above the breaking waves on a dark and stormy night on just two engines?

By contrast, once descended into the search area, the Nimrod’s two outboard engines could be shut down to commence a low fuel consumption search in the comforting knowledge that, in the event of an engine failure, another engine could be relit within twenty seconds and the search continued. Alternatively, in yet a further twenty seconds a third engine could be relit and in less than one minute following engine failure the aircraft could be climbing steeply on its way home as a fully functioning three-engined aircraft. Added to this capability was the Nimrod’s massive fifty-foot-long bomb bay, the largest ever to enter service with the RAF – including the three V bombers and, indeed, the great Lancaster bomber. I learnt that within this cavernous bomb bay the Nimrod could carry an unequalled assortment of weapons and ordnance. These could vary from up to twenty 1,000-lb bombs or eight Sting Ray torpedoes, mines, Storm Shadow cruise missiles, depth charges including nuclear depth charges, anti-ship missiles and life rafts for those in distress. Additionally, up to 150 sonobuoys could also be stored and dropped from within the fuselage; anti-shipping missiles, such as the AS.12, could be carried and launched from underwing pylons replaced in later years by the Harpoon carried in the bomb bay.

Another of the Nimrod’s great operational benefits that I came to greatly appreciate was its large wing area of more than 2,000 sq ft which enabled the aircraft to carry out low-level steep turns at only 150 knots airspeed – perfect in a ‘find and attack’ scenario. A slow speed manoeuvrability that we always included within our air show displays. Will there ever again be such a versatile and capable maritime aircraft? Certainly, there is none in sight as I write this in 2018.

By the time I joined Tony’s team the great majority of the development test flying of the Nimrod MR1 had been completed and the first delivery to the RAF had already taken place. The main task for the test pilot team at that time was therefore the production test-flying of each of the scheduled forty-six new MR1 aircraft as they came off the Woodford assembly line. There is no better way to get to know an aircraft well than undertaking its production test schedule. This included checking stall speeds at all flap configurations, checking that the Mach trim initiated a nose-up pitch at an indicated Mach number of 0.78, the high-speed operation of the over-wing air brakes, functioning of the bomb doors at their maximum operating speed, shutting down and relighting each engine in turn at the maximum scheduled relight altitude and the time-consuming checking of the correct functioning of all the aircraft systems, electronics and sensors.

An initial test flight of a new aircraft normally took approximately two hours and a half – although Tony Blackman could be relied upon to get through this lengthy schedule faster than any of the rest of us – sometimes completing it in less than two hours. On average each new aircraft took three flights before all the rectifications had been made and it could be declared defect free and ‘off test’. The only slightly disturbing occurrences in the early days of the MR1 production test flying were when flying at 41,000 ft the large cockpit side window would occasionally, and very suddenly, crack from top to bottom with a deafening ‘pistol shot’ like noise just inches from your ear. At such times it was only your seat harness that prevented you from jumping out of your skin. Initially these sudden events resulted in a rapid emergency descent in case the whole window blew out – not a happy thought when you were sitting inches away from it. However, once we had been assured by the window’s manufacturer, Pilkington, that these cracks were in one only of the three ‘triplex’ layers of glass, and didn’t reduce the window’s strength, we ignored such occurrences until the modified windows became available.

In between these Nimrod production test flights there was a considerable amount of systems development flying required to optimise the new inertial navigation system, the Tacan nav system, autopilot development, and the integration of new sensors as they became available. For the sonics trials a transmitting sonobuoy was positioned in the middle of the British Aerospace airfield at Holme-on-Spalding-Moor. The task was to home onto this buoy from all directions. This was great sport as you could enjoy the rare experience of wheeling the aircraft around the countryside in steep turns at very low level. I often wondered what the residents of the occasional local countryside houses thought as we roared over them just above rooftop height.

This interesting and enjoyable period of Nimrod flying was interspersed with development test flights of the 748 regional turbo-prop airliners built at Woodford. We also undertook deliveries and demonstrations of the 748 all around the world which could take us to South America, Africa, Indonesia, the US and the Philippines – often being away for several weeks at a time. By 1972 our Woodford flying was further supplemented with the development test flying of the Victor K2 tanker. It was a uniquely exciting and fulfilling time – indeed on one occasion when some of our pilots were away I actually flew a 748, Nimrod and Victor all on the same day. It was an era in British aviation which, thanks to Tony, I felt very lucky to be part of and is sadly something that will never come again in the UK.

Nimrod MR2

In the spring of 1975, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had committed thirty MR1 aircraft to a major update programme at Woodford and the allocated aircraft began to return to the production line in rapid succession. Amongst many other changes the MR2 was to incorporate the new long-range high-resolution EMI Searchwater radar, a new GEC-Marconi acoustic processor capable of handling the latest technology sonobuoys and the incorporation of the new ‘Yellow Gate’ electronic support measures system which would require pods to be fitted on each wing-tip at a later date.

Nimrod MR2. (British Aerospace)

The upgrade to MR2 standard took two years to complete on each aircraft and on 15th April 1977 it fell to me to make the first Nimrod MR2 flight. As there were no aerodynamic changes from the MR1 at that point this initial flight was little more than a routine air test of an aircraft which had been on the ground for two years. Then began the major trials programme.

In March 1978 Tony Blackman accepted an offer to become a director of Smiths Aviation Ltd and it was a great privilege when Tony appointed me to become his successor as chief test pilot. As the new chief test pilot I had become responsible for all Nimrod MR2 development. Within this programme the Searchwater radar trials were particularly enjoyable as they involved much flying at 500 feet over the sea to test the range at which the radar could pick up, and home onto, submarine periscopes. It was on such flying that the Nimrod’s split axis autopilot proved its worth. With the elevator channel alone engaged, linked to the radio altimeter, you could then fly the aircraft around manually using only the ailerons. It was just like driving a car, in the comforting knowledge that the autopilot height lock would keep the aircraft at precisely 500 feet above the sea. With the Searchwater radar guiding you onto the location of the submarine, came the moment when over the nose the small wake of a periscope became visible. I always found it rather sinister to be passing over this small and innocent-looking protrusion above the waves knowing that beneath it lurked a huge and lethal submarine – altogether quite eerie.

As a culmination to the Searchwater trials the MoD set us what they considered to be a realistic operational test. A Royal Navy submarine was to be positioned somewhere in the Bay of Biscay and the task for the Nimrod was to find it at night using the Searchwater radar alone. The only rule of engagement was to be that the submarine would have its periscope above the surface at all times. To maximise the realism of this final test the MoD advised us that the submarine would be at periscope depth somewhere in the Bay of Biscay from midnight on 12th February 1979 until 0700 hours the following morning at which time it was still dark – our job was simply to find it. Clearly a night-time search had been selected to eliminate the possibility of an accidental lucky visual sighting.

At 2200 hours we took off from Woodford full of enthusiasm for this challenge and high optimism for its successful outcome. As soon as we were safely airborne I shut down number four engine to conserve fuel during our two-hour transit to the Bay of Biscay. Just before midnight I also shut down number one engine and we descended to 500 ft just off the Spanish coast with the bright lights of Coruna clearly in sight on the northern tip of Spain.

We had planned a search pattern which would require us to traverse east/west parallel lines gradually working our way northwards across the search area. In theory any periscope within 30 miles either side of these aircraft tracks would be identified either on our way east or on our way back towards the west. With the autopilot and height lock engaged, and linked to the computer’s search pattern, the job of myself and co-pilot Kevin Moorhouse was merely to monitor the situation while drinking copious cups of coffee. As the hours ticked by our early optimism of rapid success and an early return to bed slowly evaporated. Our initial guess that the submarine would be positioned at the very furthest point from the UK was clearly wrong.

Kevin and I took it in turns to stretch our legs and wander back to the tactical area to stare at the crowded radar screen and ask irritating question such as what about that blip over there? Such unhelpful interjections were always met by the weary response too big. The clear inference being ‘you get on with your job and leave us to get on with ours’. Soon 0500 hours came and went as did 0600 hours and we were now approaching the northern edge of the Bay of Biscay having been airborne for eight hours without any success. Morale in the aircraft had now sunk to a low level. I advised the crew that we had just enough fuel to remain on station for the final hour of the trial.

The decision was made to return briefly to an area where there had been a particularly large number of radar returns just to make sure that nothing had been missed in the midst of them. At 0700 hours we finally gave up and began our disconsolate climb to cruise home all very depressed to have failed in our mission and wondering what would result from this. Just then we received a message from the MoD, routed via Woodford, apologising that the submarine had been unable to reach the search area as planned. The crew language over the intercom contained a number of words that I had never heard before or since – but not particularly complimentary to the MoD’s powers of communication.

Finally, we touched down at Woodford having been airborne for exactly eleven hours and fifteen minutes – certainly setting a non-flight-refuelled record for the Nimrod which made a mockery of the aircraft’s published maximum endurance of ten hours. The trial was repeated a week later with a different Woodford crew on board and was crowned with a successful find after only three hours of searching. There was, inevitably, much ‘that is the way to do it’ crowing from that crew when they returned.

Perhaps one of the most interesting periods of Nimrod MR2 development flying came towards the end of the programme in October 1977 with the installation of the Yellow Gate wing-tip ESM pods. The investigation of the handling of the aircraft with these wing-tip pods was uneventful until we began the stalling programme. As speed was reduced at the prescribed one knot per second suddenly, at just above the expected stalling speed, the nose of the aircraft would rapidly slide horizontally around the horizon, always to the right, followed by a rapid rightwing drop requiring prompt recovery action. On one occasion I delayed recovery slightly too long and ended up in a dive facing in the opposite direction, in effect completing half a turn of a spin. During these stalling trials one of our other test pilots completed one full turn of a spin during recovery. We found that by pulling very firmly back on the stick as this horizontal ‘slice’ to the right began, the aircraft could be pulled through the event and would then stall normally without a wing drop – but clearly not an acceptable technique in service.

The next step was to tuft the wing leading edge between the mid wing and wing-tip pods. To everyone’s surprise, photographs of the airflow over the tufted starboard wing-tip at the stall showed that the airflow was actually travelling forwards. The next step was to glue a long line of two-inch-long vortex generators to the leading edges of both wings running from the mid-wing fuel pods to the wing-tips. This resulted in perfectly normal and straight stalls but clearly would significantly increase the aircraft’s drag and therefore afect fuel economy. The solution would be to start removing the vortex generators, a few at a time, until we discovered at what point this horizontal ‘slicing’ began indicating that we had now removed a few too many.

As this exercise would require a significant number of very short flights with different vortex generator arrays, I took Nimrod XV241 and a crew down to St Mawgan where the clear airspace around the airfield would allow us to take off, climb just high enough to perform some stalls and then race back to the airfield to try a different array. So began five days of a large number of short flights at different aircraft weights and different aircraft centre of gravity loadings. I lost count of the number of straight and turning stalls we performed to establish the optimum vortex generator pattern. The objective was to find a compromise between acceptable stalling characteristics and a minimal number of draggy vortex generators. Tony Blackman’s edict on test flying had always been that perfect handling characteristics normally came at too high a price or trade off. Indeed he used to quote that old saying ‘the excellent is the enemy of the good’. In the end I settled for a vortex generator configuration which produced straight stalls aided by a small amount of aileron if the wing began to drop.

The only frustration during this concentrated development programme was waiting for at least an hour between flights to allow the vortex generator glue to dry. If I became too eager to get going again half the vortex generators would blow off the wing before we reached altitude and I had to shamefacedly return with apologies to the glum-looking ground crew for a totally wasted flight. After five days of flying, and four nights of extremely generous St Mawgan officers’ mess hospitality, which was probably about as much as our constitutions could withstand, we were able to return to Woodford with even the aerodynamicists happy.

Finally, came the time for Boscombe Down B Squadron to clear the modification. I flew with the Boscombe Nimrod project test pilot, Al McDicken. Al was not entirely happy with the use of a small amount of aileron to keep wings level in the stall but, to his eternal credit, accepted that this would be the natural and automatic reaction of any pilot if a wing drop began. Some years later Al became a very well deserving chief test pilot at Woodford.

Nimrod Mk3 AEW

In the 1960s the airborne early warning (AEW) capability of both the US and UK was provided by carrier-based aircraft. In the case of the US the Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye and for the UK the Fairey Gannet. The main objective of these maritime-operated aircraft was the early warning protection of their respective carrier groups. It did, however, become apparent on both sides of the Atlantic that there was a far larger requirement for a land-based AEW aircraft capable of operating at long range over both land and sea. Furthermore, the requirement had grown not only for the early warning of an approaching threat, but also for the command and control of the airborne battle scene. Such aircraft would require a significant number of command and control crew members.

To fulfil this newly identified requirement the US selected the Boeing 707 as its radar-bearing platform which could carry the large, and already fully developed, Westinghouse pulse-Doppler radar. This conventional rotating scanner was encased in an aerodynamic rotodome mounted on tall stilts above the fuselage. In the UK, Hawker Siddeley and GEC teamed together to propose a wholly new British pulse-Doppler radar and mission system avionics package using a fore and aft scanner system (FASS) mounted on the Nimrod airframe. Although the development of an all new radar system was clearly far riskier than the US ‘off the shelf’ solution the British government were persuaded by the attraction of creating thousands of high technology UK jobs and a contract to proceed with initial ‘proof of concept’ development was placed.

Nimrod AEW. (Avro Heritage Museum)

In June of 1977 I accompanied Tony Blackman on the first flight of converted Comet XW626 carrying the large forward radome which would form the front half of the FASS system proposed for the Nimrod. As the handling of the Comet proved to be largely unaffected by this unsightly protrusion sprouting from its nose, the aircraft was declared ready to commence the radar trials. Some four months later, in October 1977, I took the aircraft into the air with a combined British Aerospace (BAe) and GEC Marconi crew, for the first airborne ‘switch on’ of this all new radar. To everyone’s delight it immediately began to pick up airborne targets at an impressively long range – albeit surrounded by considerable radar ‘clutter’. The excitement within the aircraft was tangible and I couldn’t resist going back to look at the screen for myself. Not only could one see a large number of airborne ‘blips’ but also, with the radar scanner canted downwards, the M1 motorway was clearly recognisable by the long snaking line of traffic moving in both directions.

Intensive radar trials commenced which progressively revealed that our early excitement had, perhaps, been slightly premature as two related problems became apparent. Firstly, the pulse-Doppler signal had been designed to focus its microwave power, and receive the resultant reflected signals, along a single very highly powered and narrowly focused beam. However, it soon became clear that this focused radar beam also produced two unwanted ‘side lobes’ which created much false signal clutter on the radar screen. The existence of these two side lobes also somewhat reduced the power and range of the primary beam. The second problem that became apparent was the mission system’s frequent unserviceability which often resulted in us finding ourselves back on the ground within an hour of departure.

As development progressed we did begin to achieve four- and five-hour radar development flights which, although the main problems were not yet solved, proved sufficiently promising for the MoD procurement executive to award a contract for three Nimrod AEW prototypes. This contract was later increased to eleven aircraft. On one of these many flights the radar suddenly ceased to transmit at full power and, as frequently happened, we were requested by the Marconi crew members to return to Woodford. Within half an hour of landing I received a panic telephone call to say that an ambulance had been summoned to rush my fellow pilot John Cruse, flight engineer Bob Pogson, and myself to hospital.

We were told that once the Comet radome had been removed it was found that the radar had started to transmit rearwards and had burnt a large hole in the middle of its scanner dish. The great fear was that both myself and John in the two pilots’ seats just a few feet behind this burnt-through radar dish, together with Bob Pogson, slightly further back at the flight engineer’s panel, may have been exposed to a powerful dose of microwave radiation. Arriving at nearby Stockport hospital the three of us, looking somewhat white faced, were rushed straight into the eye department – the main concern being that powerful microwave radiation might have begun to ‘poach’ our eyes. After many tests, and much peering into our retinas, the three of us were declared undamaged – at least visibly. I reflected that risks associated with test flying are not always those that had been anticipated.

As the radar trials progressed GEC Marconi became ever more secretive about the radar’s progress, or possibly lack of it, until eventually an almost complete breakdown of both communication and trust between BAe and GEC occurred. This reached the point that the BAe flight deck crews were banned from seeing the mission system in action, or even asking about it, during flights. The root cause of this breakdown of teamwork was that, bizarrely, neither BAe nor GEC had been appointed as