Armourers replenish the rotary barrel of a 20mm SUU gun on the flightline at Coningsby in Lincolnshire, before fitting it to a 29(F) Squadron Phantom. 14 April 1975. Sgt Phil Major. Via the RAF Conningsby FB page here
Steve Lloyd " ..I was 29 years old at the time at the time. Those were great days, hard work keeping those bad boys in the air. Short sorties meant loads of avionics snags, particularly the radar and inertial nav systems. They were an awesome machines, raw power and performance as good as any at the time so long as the crews were up to it (ours were). Just a pain in the butt to work on - if you were very dominant right handed you had issues. Damned thing was built for left handed techies, which made for a lot of loose article searches late into the night. "Just invert the thing at some time during the sortie, sir, and put the debris in this bag". Wouldn't have missed it for anything.."
A formation of 29(F) Squadron Phantom FGR.2 based at RAF Coningsby, Lincolnshire, pictured in mid-January 1975.
