Jump to content

RN Sea King Sponsons question.


At Sea

Recommended Posts

@Ex-FAAWAFU @junglierating @hendie @MarkdipXV711 and any other knowledgeable Rotor-heads I couldn't think of at the time...

 

I came across these pictures of a Sea King HAS.5 (I think) and the sponsons are definitely not your average Westland ones and look very similar to the ones used by the USN on their ASW Sea Kings.

 

Given I have a Revell Sea King in 1/48 then these sponsons could allow me to build a FAA Sea King 'on the cheap'.  I'd still have to remove the flare dispenser from the port side ones and find a HAS.5 radome (unless these were used on HAS.2) but the Stbd. one is a dead ringer.

 

Question is, why did they use these for what appears to be a short time before reverting to the conventional sponson?

 

Early and Late FAA Sea Kings don't look like this AFAIK.  

 

Happy to be educated. 🙂

 

tn_43900a14-c8ac-4bae-a77f-a881d8c9e5f4.

 

tn_6d9929ef-0484-471b-912b-a6afcca4153a.

 

 

 

NB: Credit to original photographers and images only reproduced for educational / illustrative purposes.

 

Edited by Julien
Please dont use copyrighted photographs
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, perdu said:

I think they had MAD gear involved with the extended rear ends

Yes..MAD bird fitted to some Mk5s around 1980 on the starboard sponson.

It could still be seen long after the gear was withdrawn  as per this photo of an HMS Gannet cab

rn_gannet_sar.jpg

One of the ex-drivers/operators above will be along soon though to give exact details.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I hope nobody's looking in my direction for help or knowledge.  Sorry - I can just about find my way around a Wessex on a good day. (and only an HC2 at that!).  With a Sea King I can just about tell what way it's facing

 

I'll have to defer to those more knowledgeable on the subject

 

  • Like 1
  • Haha 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On ‎22‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 21:24, EwenS said:

HAS6?

Not sure what your question is but HAS6 was an improved 5 with better sonar and other gubbins. 

I think there were 5 built as such and the rest were conversions.

The first photo here is a 5 and the second a 6

 

sea_king_has6_6_of_9.jpg

 

I can't tell the difference but hey!..any excuse to show off the grand old lady.

Guess our Sea King gurus are having a night off. :) 

Edited by Julien
please dont use copyrighted photos
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice pictures of the Kings.

 

The Mk 5 had a ‘full suite’ of Anti Submarine Warfare kit installed. The sponson on the right side did indeed hold the MAD (Magnetic Anomaly Detector) bird, a deployable sensor with a perforated circular end, usually painted yellow and red on RN machines. The sponson held a small electrical winch in it, and the Aircrew deployed this to sense submarines underwater during the Cold War. 

 

The Mk5 also had the LAPHAD’s table fitted facing inboard just inside the cabin door, you can often see the LAPHAD’s operators seat in pictures of the Sea King Mk5 with its cabin door open. This was removed during the Mk6 upgrade. The LAPHAD’s was a horrible thing that used to record the sensors input onto a large roll of carbon paper, it stank when it had been used. 

 

Having only worked on Mk2, Mk4 and Mk5 Sea Kings this is my knowledge expended on the ASW stuff, after all I was a Grubber and not a Pinky. On that thought, the Mk5 had metal standard blades but the Mk6 was released with composite blades.

 

I’d think ExWAFFU would have been the man to fully explain the differences being an ex aircrew pinger😉

 

Back to models, the Revell/Hasegawa kit is a very good base kit but you will need a short sponson for the port side if you intend to build a Westland Sea King. The kit sponsons are Sikorsky ones holding the US Sonarbouy racks, easy to adapt the starboard sponson for a MAD bird though.

 

Just as an afterthought, did you know the RN Lynx Mk3 had the MAD bird installed?

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK I’ve been back into the library to aid my clearly failing memory.

 

According to the Warpaint book on the Sea King the MAD gear was introduced with the HAS5 back in 1980. It was stored in the extended starboard sponson and deployed on a cable from there. There were 30 new build aircraft between 1980 and 1986 and 35 conversions from HAS2/2A. 

 

The HAS6 came along in 1989 with 5 new build as noted above, and some 60+ conversions from HAS5s. Most of the changes were internal to electronics and engines. Warpaint makes the following comment about the MAD which I don’t follow-

“Initially the MAD equipment package was not installed, but was included internally later in all HAS6s.”

Does this mean the electronics were fitted but not the MAD bird as I suspect, or that the MAD bird was fitted elsewhere?

 

Confusingly not all HAS5/6 seem to have carried it, or perhaps not all the time. Quite often the extended sponson is empty. There are also photos of HAS5/6 without the extended sponson so it must have been interchangeable with the normal one.

 

i’m interested to learn more from those with more information.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ewen, I can only comment on what I saw and between 1984 to the beginning of 1986 both 820 and 814 NAS carried only one of the eight helicopters on the squadron. I remember that 13 was the side number on 820. Both of these squadrons were the two main ASW squadrons embarked on the two Carriers, Invinc and Lusty. For the whole time I was on 820 I never saw the MAD fitted to 13, partly, so I was told, it was old tech. Changing the Sponson between aircraft was certainly not common practise, the shimming of each sponson was specific to each aircraft, swapping would be a nightmare and so avoided like the plague, especially as the Sea King is such a labour intensive aircraft. As I said, of the eight aircraft in each of the frontline squadrons of 820 and 814, only one air raft had the MAD bird sponson fitted.

 

The photo you show in your first thread, would seem to me to be 826 or 824 squadron flights embarked on what looks like the Olna, a Royal Fleet Auxiliaries ship. Usually two Sea Kings embarked at a time, 826 had four flights of two Sea Kings, A, B, C and D Flt.

 

I don’t know where they got the statement about retro fitting the MAD, the MoD has a policy of leaving aircraft embodied with kit and adding to the already installed kit, this makes the aircraft twice as heavy by the time it leaves service, the RN Lynx is a classic example.

 

I can recommend the Patric Allen book on the Sea King, especially if you’ve decided on a 1980’s Mk5, they are on eBay etc for good money and well worth the purchase. The book even shows the LAPHAD’s table I talked about. 

 

Hope this helps?

  • Like 3
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Apologies for tardy reply... been at work. In short .. MAD was to be fitted and some aircraft sponsons were adapted to house the mad bird/winch but it never came to fruition as standard front line. I was a maintainer on mk5 and never saw a mad sea king in my service and later as a mk6 aircrewman, my job was the operation and ( achem) interpretation of all Sonics equipment. I was never ever trained to even use mad kit and I never ever saw it fitted in mk6 cabs. The RAF nimrods who we worked With, did use MAD booms.

I think it was thought to be a waste of money to change already modified mad stbd sponsons back to standard ones.

My last flight was in August 1996 was in XV711... a mk6 with a mad sponson. As per my first wip 1/48 Sea King.

Hope this helps.

Ps- some sqdns did trial it, hence your previous pics, maybe 826 sqdn or an IFTU unit. ( In Flight Trials Unit) ... I think ( been a while) 

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks again chaps, very useful info and I will try and find that Sea King book.

 

@MarkdipXV711 straight from the proverbial horse's mouth is always the best source, so thank you.

 

I'll bear what you say in mind, and as with most of these things it's very Airframe specific.  An early HAS5 as part of the IFTU (700S?) would be an interesting subject for a build.

 

Living in Somerset the rumble of the mighty King is missed.  

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, At Sea said:

An early HAS5 as part of the IFTU (700S?) would be an interesting subject for a build.

@Truro Model Builder did one a while ago but the photos are of the photobucket era so can't be seen unfortunately.

Sea King looks strange without all the lumps and bumps

1034680-medium.jpg

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice looking, clean lined, Mk2. No Barn door, 5 blades on the tail and metal main blades. I must build one of these myself, a nice 706 NAS or I do like the 824 NAS marked ones.

 

Some nice pictures of the old Kings at HMS Sultan.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry - I too have been tardy in answering.  You’ve already got most of it.  That version of MAD was introduced as the HAS 5 came in, which was around 80/81, depending on which squadron - some squadrons were still flying Mk2s by the time of the Falklands. Not all aircraft had it; this particular MAD was a US system, and I assume we only bought a certain number to test it.

 

Scroll down to post 178 and there’s a good photo of a MAD-fitted HAS5.  It was also fitted to a pair of HAS2 Lynxes as part of the same trial; the Lynx that lost its nose on Broadsword’s deck during the raid that sunk Coventry had a MAD fitted.

 

My Seaking training started in 1985, and by then the MADs were all gone.  I vaguely recall that the limitations for streaming etc. were still included in the aircrew manual & FRCs, but I never saw a cab with the thing fitted.  There was no aerodynamic advantage to changing the sponsons back, so they never bothered - and some MAD sponsons were still around 30 years later.

 

I can only assume that the trial wasn’t a success.  MAD definitely works - Nimrods, P3s, P8s etc. all have it, the HAS6 had a fixed MAD system inside the tailboom, and the USN used it on the Seahawk for years - but for whatever reason (I don’t know exactly why) the FAA didn’t follow through with this particular version.  

 

Hope that helps.

Edited by Ex-FAAWAFU
  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/25/2018 at 8:04 AM, Wafu said:

Nice looking, clean lined, Mk2. No Barn door, 5 blades on the tail and metal main blades. I must build one of these myself, a nice 706 NAS or I do like the 824 NAS marked ones.

 

Some nice pictures of the old Kings at HMS Sultan.

5 blade TR and no barn door = HAS1, not 2; all RN Seakings apart from the Mk1 had 6-blade tail rotors..

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

50 minutes ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

5 blade TR and no barn door = HAS1, not 2; all RN Seakings apart from the Mk1 had 6-blade tail rotors..

Thanks and you’re quite right

 

Mk1 had five bladed tail and not the Mk2. I’d still like to do one along side the anniversary 771 Sea King for the FAA 100 years.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A couple more photos; firstly a MAD-fitted HAS5 of 826 NAS (Hermes) - seen on a very chilly morning at Culdrose:

38dd2dce-550b-4511-b023-068d96e008bf.jpg

 

...and a picture of XZ729, the MAD-fitted Lynx HAS2 (one of two), seen on the deck of HMS Broadsword looking a little sad after a bomb bounced off the sea during the raid that sank Coventry, went through the side of Broadsword, up through the flight deck and over the side.  Believe it or not, this aircraft lived to fight another day - indeed, I have flown it!  But for these purposes, the MAD fitting on the starboard stub wing is clearly visible.

cee28be9-bf42-441c-969d-f31279dd1597.jpg

  • Like 3
  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...