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UK Military Aviation

NOV 05 2009
Military Aviation >> Royal Navy: Maintaining High Standards – Lt Cdr Matt Whitfield and NFSF(FW)

Matt Whitfield is on fine form. Greeting GAR at the top of the stairs in the building occupied by his Flight, it’s great to see him looking so well and, most importantly, back at work.

As many of you will know, Matt suffered a minor stroke back in August, an event which left him hospitalised and allowed the rumour-mill to begin speculating as to whether he would ever fly again.

The good news is that he is back, obviously, and remains extremely confident that he will indeed be able to resume his flying career in the near future. That won’t be confirmed until various pieces of paper have been signed, but Matt hopes to return to flying duties with other command pilots before Christmas and full-flying duties by February of next year. That’s clearly excellent news for Matt as well as the Royal Navy, the Royal Navy Historic Flight and, depending on how things develop, the Sea Vixen.

As Karl and I wait in Matt’s office while he takes an important phone call, we look at the memorabilia marking some of his flying career to date. Much of this is Sea Harrier related and includes a control column and also a throttle / nozzle unit from one such aircraft, along with a framed photograph commemorating Matt’s first deck landing; a hugely significant landmark for any naval pilot. To hear such positive news regarding Matt’s health and his hopeful return to doing what he obviously loves best is a good way to start the visit.

As Matt leads the way out of his office, destination crew-room for coffee and our interview, he tells us that this building was home to the Sea Harrier squadrons based at Yeovilton before the aircraft’s retirement. You can imagine what it must have been like here then, with the hustle, bustle and banter generated by the SHAR units and all that came with them. It’s a quieter place now, but that quiet masks the various important roles that NFSF(FW) fulfils for the Royal Navy, as he goes on to explain.

“We are truly multi-functional,” says Matt.

“The unit has two Hawks which fly three waves per day, five days per week and at weekends, if required.

“We support our fleet assets which require fighter / helicopter affiliation. For example, that could be pre-deployment training for our Mk.4 Sea King ‘Junglie’ colleagues on 845NAS and 846NAS and also the trainees on the OCU (Operational Conversion Unit), 848NAS.

“We also did a lot of air to air intercept work with the “Baggers” based at RNAS Culdrose before they deployed to theatre, and of course we work with the other helicopters here at Yeovilton; that’s the Navy Lynx and the Royal Marines Lynx.“

It’s not just Fleet Air Arm units that NFSF(FW) supports either.

“We can also be employed by any of the Royal Navy’s ships and indeed those of our NATO allies who are working-up with the Flag Officer Sea Training (FOST) network based down at Plymouth.”

This is one of the unit’s more “scripted” routines with “business being conducted almost every day”. Tuesdays often see a big air-warfare exercise and Thursdays mark the colloquial “Thursday war” in which the Yeovilton-based Hawks will usually participate. This work is, in Matt’s words, “a big deal”.

The Royal Navy’s Fighter Controllers also benefit from the squadron as the Hawks play an important role in their training. Having used simulators and ground schools at Yeovilton they will fly their first “live” sorties in the NFSF(FW) aircraft, and this vital part of their training takes them from simple ‘radar to stern’ intercepts right through to 2 v 1 engagements.

“From our Royal Marine brethren, the SBS (Special Boat Service) at Poole, we have seen a most welcome increase in close air support (CAS) sorties,” adds Matt.

“We also work for Land Command, that is Army assets on Salisbury Plain and we will essentially launch for them whatever the weather. The contract is for us to provide a service and, as you can appreciate, if they are sitting there on the ground then the ability to just check-in with a jet helps to reinforce anything they may have learned in a classroom.

“Frontline aircraft, such as the Navy Harriers, have other training that they can ‘definitely’ achieve when the weather is marginal so we find ourselves being used more and more in support of the Army and, as I mentioned, the SBS.

“They will position themselves on the side of a hill no more than 12 miles south of here and we can go up and give them an hour and a half of dedicated CAS training. Some of these chaps have been to theatre seven times and they will also fly in the back with us, so they can appreciate things from a pilot’s perspective, and we get the chance to talk to the guys who will control us.”

All the while Matt has been talking I’ve been wondering what the correct analogy might be for this unit and sitting here now it occurs to me that it is a little bit like an onion. Looks fairly simple from the outside but, on closer examination, you find more and more layers. You perhaps won’t be surprised to learn therefore that there is even more to come. The responsibilities discussed above cover the squadron’s routine tasking but, as Matt goes on to explain, there are other fundamental roles that also need to be fulfilled.

“We also look after refresher flying for Royal Navy pilots and also RAF pilots who have jumped ship to join the Navy. In Navy terms this covers Harrier pilots who have graduated from Valley before going to the Harrier OCU. We also spend a lot of time looking after students who have finished at Linton-on-Ouse and Valley as the squadron gives them somewhere to be between courses, and they can jump in the back with us for many of our daily tasks. It’s important to remember that for many of them, this will actually be the first Royal Navy unit they have been part of.”

The Flight is naturally plugged-in to the various training stations very closely, and Royal Navy instructors are present at all stages, looking after the Royal Navy’s future fliers if they are on the same squadron, sometimes mentoring as many as eight students.

One misconception regarding this most multi-functional unit is that it actually only fulfils one role and, while that is patently not true, it remains one of their most important responsibilities.

“Once a year, sometimes twice a year, we run an assessment course for Royal Navy rotary pilots who have expressed a desire to go to the Harrier. The course has been running for a long time now and is based upon a classic student / QFI set-up where we take a frontline helicopter pilot who joins us having done eight to ten hours here at Yeovilton in the Grob Tutor, then ground school and a few simulator trips at RAF Valley. We give them their first Hawk experience and have them here for around three or four months during which we take them from never having flown the aircraft before to leading a pair on a low-level sortie.”

It’s a big ask and naturally a steep learning curve for the ‘students’ who essentially experience the RAF’s 208(R) Squadron training syllabus in a significantly condensed fashion. It is pure training and the students will only be assessed as to their capacity for further fast jet training.

“It is unfortunate these days but for Royal Navy fixed-wing aviators it is Harrier or bust; the days of us going to the Tornado F.3 are over. At the end of the course, if they are suitable for further training, then we pat them on the back and they go to RAF Valley, essentially to start from scratch!”

This course is clearly something a little different to the norm with a typical student usually around 27 or 28 years old and coming from flying something like the Lynx. He will have been authorising his own flights or possibly been the only pilot on-board a particular frigate so fast jet training puts such students well beyond their usual comfort zone. Matt says that they are looking at their attitude towards the training as much as anything, for they are expected to make mistakes, but they have to be confident when they go on to Valley as there will be no grey area there. They will succeed or they will fail and, if they do fail, they will return to where they came from in the first place.

“It’s something completely new for them, but when they are on the course all they have to do is fly the Hawk; they have no other duties or distractions to worry about, and I’m happy about that as I want them to give them the best chance of going to Valley and succeeding.”

All of this is conducted with just the two Hawks which are currently sitting outside on the Yeovilton flightline, but Matt can get on the phone to Culdrose at various stages through the year and request a third aircraft for particular sorties. The Hawk itself is still performing in a way which belies its long military career.

“It’s still great fun and, most importantly, very good at what it does. It is also incredibly reliable and I can probably count on two hands the number of sorties we’ve lost due to technical problems in the three years I have been here. We have a superb team of technicians, all of whom are ex Royal Navy, and they can usually fix anything that does crop up, normally something like a faulty micro-switch on the undercarriage. That’s often as bad as it gets!”

Matt’s own job as boss of the unit is a simple one to describe for he is essentially responsible for the standards and practices of all fixed-wing flying in the Royal Navy, aside from the Harrier force. This encompasses the Hawk, Jetstream, Tutor and the Royal Navy Historic Flight, with the mere threat of a visit from the unit probably enough to ensure that all is in order.

“We don’t just look at pilots and how they are flying,” Matt emphasises.

“This is how we differ from the Air Force. Our ‘traps’ (the name to given to the Standards Flight’s visits) cover all the rules and regulations, local procedures, meteorology, everything; it’s a really good working-over, especially for the younger pilots.

“Sometimes it’s hard for me when we go flying with these guys. Some of the pilots on the Jetstream have been flying since before the Falklands campaign and one of them has 13,000 military hours, and there I am with just under 3000. It’s not just the hours but while I’m from a wholly fixed-wing background he had 8000 hours on rotary before going over to the Jetstream, but because they are Navy through and through they do very well when we visit. We do have some phenomenal people, it’s amazing really.”

NFSF(FW) achieves all of what Matt has just described above with just three staff members working alongside the boss himself. John Sharcroft is a former ‘Pinger’ (Anti-Submarine Warfare helicopter pilot) who transferred to become a QFI and is the unit’s resident Tutor and Jetstream expert; Lt Ian Sloan, familiar to regular GAR readers, is a former Harrier pilot and Hawk instructor who is Matt’s Hawk expert, Lt Cdr Rich Sambrooks was deputy boss of a unit at Linton and works ‘across the board’ as required. Matt himself conducts traps across all aircraft types.

Finally we mustn’t ignore the work carried out by the unit in support of the RNHF. Matt concedes that this year has been “painful” in terms of serviceability but he admits he was delighted to learn that Ian Sloan had flown the Sea Hawk for the first time during the summer. It was a proud moment for Matt, having mentored Ian to achieve that first flight in the jet, but he was more than a little disappointed to miss the event as he was in hospital at the time. With just a handful of displays under his belt so far, Ian is looking forward to a fuller season in the Sea Hawk next year and Matt of course is also qualified to display the aircraft, along with the de Havilland Sea Vixen; her future is far from clear at the moment however.

“It would be fantastic to see the Vixen here as part of the RNHF but I really can’t say too much at present as I simply don’t know how things will work-out,” says Matt.

And with that we headed off to sample the delights of a Royal Navy curry, regular Thursday fare, Matt told us. Lunch done, we took a stroll up to the RNHF hangar with Ian Sloan and I recall feeling slightly dazed. Not due to the curry you understand, it was very good, but at the sheer amount of work carried out by Matt and his small team. When his opening gambit was to say that the Flight was “multi-functional” I genuinely had no idea just how much responsibility that phrase would cover. It was an impressive morning and those two Hawks and four pilots play a vital role for not just the Royal Navy but all our armed forces.


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