Blackburn Buccaneer

The Blackburn Buccaneer was a British low level strike aircraft serving with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. Designed and initially produced by Blackburn Aircraft it was later known as the Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer when Blackburn became a part of the Hawker Siddeley group.

The first Buccaneer model, the S.1, was powered by a pair of de Havilland Gyron Junior turbojets producing 7,100 pounds of thrust. [2] This mark was somewhat underpowered, and as a consequence could not take off fully laden with both fuel and armament. A temporary solution to this problem was the "buddy" system; aircraft took off with a full load of weaponry and minimal fuel and would sortie with a Supermarine Scimitar that would deliver the full load of fuel by aerial refuelling. This was not an ideal solution however, as the loss of an engine during take-off could have been catastrophic, and the Gyron Junior gave a poor range due to high fuel consumption. The long term solution was the S.2, fitted with the Rolls-Royce Spey turbofan, providing 40% more thrust with a greatly reduced fuel consumption. The engine nacelles had to be enlarged to accommodate the Spey, and the wing required minor aerodynamic modifications as a result. The S.2 Buccaneer had completely replaced the S.1 by November 1966.

With the introduction of the Martel air-to-surface missile, some Mark 2 aircraft were converted to carry it, and became S.2D. The remaining aircraft became S.2C. Sixteen aircraft were built (and fifteen delivered) for the South African Air Force as the S.50, S.2 aircraft with the addition of Bristol Siddeley BS.605 rocket engines to provide additional thrust for the "hot and high" African airfields.

When the Fleet Air Arm's Buccaneer operations ended in 1978, 62 of the 84 Mk 2 aircraft were transferred to the Royal Air Force (RAF) as S.2A. These joined 26 aircraft that had been built by Blackburn's successor, Hawker Siddeley for the RAF as the S.2B. These aircraft were not navalised and, like the S.2A, had RAF-type communications and avionics equipment.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Blackburn
• Buccaneer
• naval
• aviation
• carrier
• Hawker
• Siddeley
• strike
• aircraft
• Fleet
• Air
• Arm
• Royal
• Navy
• RAF

[231171]

I saw them every day flying over my school in scotland in the eighties.

[dalelfven]

@GRAHAMAUS

Compare to its cousin A-6 Intruder the Buccaneer is a beauty.

[LOUISVART]

@carroj9

i remember something like this

mock up battles between usaf and raf

rf won without a single loss

[bingofioul]

@MrStig691 yes but not enought real to get some kind of hawkeye onboad...

[MrStig691]

@bingofioul The others are REAL enough..

[fyorbane]

What a magnificent plane. Better and more stable than any other at low level including Tornado's.

[RobertM408]

In l968-70 Hermes was operating with 12 Sea Vixen, 8 S2 Buccanears and 4 helicopters. Would it have been better in the 82 Falklands war with say 8 Buccanears and 12 Sea Jaguar or 16 M Type Skyhawks with 4 sidewinders underwing. Sea conditions around the Falklands precluded the Argentine carriers from launching its Skyhawks, but Hermes was slightly larger and could have launched its Buccs and Jags from several 100nm nth of the Falklands.

[AVMamfortas]

Airframe hours were not 'run out'. The test rig aircraft just kept going. Nothing could bend it.

[digireedoo]

Ah the big banana jet. Gotta love it. Look on youtube for the take off where the pilot makes use of the weight switch on the undercarriage, which harks back to the carrier days. The Bucc leaves the runway and the undercarriage retracts immediately, leaving the jet flying at about 5 feet!

[DeutscheRitter1]

@carroj9 My point was that the tornado autopilot systems can fly less than 100 ft in zero visibility. I'm not talking about the pilots ability at all, that has nothing to do with what I said. By the way, I think I sent you an email saying the same, apologies. The Buccaneer can't do that, the Tornado is the only aircraft that can. It can fly an attack mission by itself.