Just been keeping an eye out for more specific dates than i have

216 squadron formed in February 1979 marking the final transfer of all Buccaneer operations to the RAF.  809 Squadron also stopped operating at this time and we inherited some of their aircraft. In some cases we wished we hadn't as a couple of them seemed to have an awful lot wrong with them.

The entire Buccaneer fleet was grounded in February 1980 after one Buccaneer broke up in mid-air during a Red Flag exercise killing the crew. Investigation found serious fatigue problems - a modification made in the S.2 variant had affected the ability of one of the spars to cope with stress and apart from 12 and 216 squadrons (anti-shipping squadrons which mostly flew over the sea and thus did much less of the overland hard manouevring) most Buccaneers were affected. No RAF Buccaneer would fly again until August, when only those Buccaneers not too badly affected were allowed to fly. The opportunity was taken to slim down the force slightly and 216 squadron was disbanded. New spar rings were gradually fitted to the fleet and operation with Laser Guided Bombs (LGBs) and the Pave Spike designation system began (LGBs finding favour after some use by RAF Harrier GR.3s in the successful Falklands campaign of 1982) but by 1983 Buccaneer operations were cut back - the Tornado had arrived. 15 squadron changed to Tornado operation in July, 16 squadron followed in February 1984. 208 squadron was re-tasked with the maritime role 216 had previously undertaken, and a programme to upgrade the maritime-tasked Buccaneers began - Martel was no longer an effective enough missile, and British Aerospace's Sea Eagle was the ideal replacement

Buccaneer takeoff

Is it my imagination or does this buccaneer appear close to the Ground???

Actually the party trick was to go down the runway and wait for the takeoff speed to reach the right speed then wait for a hump in the runway to lift the aircraft off the undercarraige up but not lift off, the bump would take the WOG (weight on ground) switches off load and they would allow the undercarriage to go up even though the aircraft had not climbed.

So it look lower taken off than it did do on it's undercarraige, good trick eh.

Once off the distance to the ground grew but not necessarily by much and they seem to be very close in many shots i have seen. Some of the best ones show them flying past ATC towers, with the people on them looking down.

They had beards!

Having recently read the book "The Phoenix squadron" featuring 809 Sqdn, I couldn't miss a chance here to include pictures of Ark Royal, as we shared the hangar with 809 for their last couple of years. We also inherited their aircraft. One thing that comes to mind straight away is that everyone there had a beard, i never even wanted one but there they were sporting huge amounts of hair, even if they didn't have any on top.

They could tuck all their aircraft in half a hangar which is as story in itself. If you can imagine getting something 55ft long (airbrakes extended, nose closed), 42 foot wide (wings extended) and 16 foot high (tyres inflated)(only joking) into a hangar space, then parking 20 more in the same hangar you can imagine how crowded it was, it certainly didn't pay to absent mindedly extend the wings.

as you can see in this shot below the width of the aircraft was hugely different once the wings were extending and as there was only a metre or two between aircraft so the wings would end up nicely resting on the next one over.

Another part about the parking was that it was a good idea to do the jobs you wanted to do on the folded part of the wings before you parked it in the hangar because it was an interesting job later to try to do them on a ladder with only a few metres of space.