…... to Cyprus. The designator would continue to illuminate the target, enabling the LGB to home onto the reflected energy, until the bomb impacted. The only snag with this plan was that the Buccaneer was not actually cleared to release an LGB in a 40-degree dive.
Before this locally-conceived profile could be formally adopted, therefore, it would be necessary to validate the overall concept and to confirm that no problems would be encountered in dropping the bomb. The Det Cdr requested the assistance of a weapons specialist from the Central Trials and Tactics Organisation (CTTO) who was to supervise a small trial to be conducted on Episkopi Range, expending, ideally, six LGBs (one for each crew). The CTTO specialist arrived from the UK and the trial was carried out, although only three bombs were actually allocated. All three attacks, against a hessian-covered frame target, were completely successful and thus confirmed that it would be possible to acquire a small target and that a 40-degree dive release was a practical proposition.
Dave Southwood was also involved in the CTTO trial:
“When we went to Cyprus, they said we had to use laser-guided bombs (to minimise potential collateral damage). Now all of the artillery guns were going to be up in the mountains, and our tactics at the time were to run in and toss the bombs. Caz Capewell and I, the 2 pilot QWIs there, worked out that we could only take out a target 300 feet above our run-in height from the profiles we had, and with some modification of these profiles, we could bump it up to 600 or 700 feet and that was it. And so, literally, on the ‘back-of-a-fag-packet’ in the crewroom, we came up with a dive profile that delivered these things from 15,000 feet onto the target, and this had never been conceived in the RAF before: the medium-level deployment of laser-guided bombs. But we hadn’t proved this, and so we got a guy out from CTTO (Central Trials & Tactics Organisation) to run a trial. We had an allocated 6 bombs; we got the workshops in Episkopi to build these big raft targets; we found a bit of Epi Bay where if we fired the lasers we weren’t going to blind anyone; and CTTO really did not believe this was going to work. We had 2 raft targets and I designed them. They put one target out, we dropped a bomb: ‘doof!’ Sunk the target. Second one: ‘doof!’ Sunk the target. After these first 2 ‘direct hits’, CTTO said: “OK, you’ve proved your point, you’re not going to drop any more bombs – this actually works!”
Now, because they didn’t believe this was going to work, we had a bet on: there was a bottle of champagne on every bomb. If it took out the target, they bought the champagne. If it missed, we bought the champagne. We conceded not to drop any more bombs on the basis they provided all 6 bottles of champagne which, in fairness, they did, so that was fine. Again, 208 was pivotal in terms of the initial employment of this sort of technology from medium level. It’s taken for granted as the norm now, but I don’t think it’s ever really been captured in quite that depth of how much we actually did.”
