Courtesy of an excellent article on The Drive, we find that our funny talking friends in the land where Everything Can Kill You have released some fantastic archival footage of air operations from past years of Exercise Pitch Black. What is Pitch Black, you ask? No, not the Vin Diesel movie. This is a biannual multinational training mission put on by the RAAF (much like Red Flag here in the States).
The linked article in the first paragraph has some great commentary on how the exercise grew from an Australia only air defense exercise into its current much larger format, but for the purpose of this Thursday blog, let’s stick to the stuff that I really like: lots of awesome jet noise!
The Aussies have operated quite a diverse fleet over the years, and hosted some rather interesting aircraft from other countries as well. This provides us with some fantastic footage of types that were rarely seen in the USA, or at the very least, rarely seen outside of cities in proximity to naval bases.
According to the Source of All Knowledge, the HS-748 was originally developed as a short haul airliner in the 1950s by Hawker Siddeley. The RAAF purchased ten aircraft in 1968 and operated them until 2004 as navigation trainers, and VIP transports.
All right, that’s it for this week!