RAF Valley Coast


RAF Valley

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Transcript


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I'm with the Royal Air Force search and rescue team based on Anglesey.

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These guys patrol

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the coastline of the Irish Sea and, this time, we are exploring their patch.

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That's RAF Valley down there.

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If the runway was any longer, it would be in the sea!

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From up here, you can see why this is a great location for the headquarters

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of the Royal Air Force search and rescue service.

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I'm going to hitch a ride with them later to relive one of their most hair-raising rescues.

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The RAF search and rescue helicopters do not have the sky above Anglesey to themselves.

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These runways see more than 100 sorties a day.

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None of the 60 hot jets based at Valley ever sees combat, but they could not be more vital to the RAF.

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This place is known by some as 'the pilot factory'.

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It's where the creme de la creme of RAF recruits come to learn how to handle fast jets.

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Only one in 40 hopefuls makes it to RAF Valley for pilot training.

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Then, it takes four years of hard graft to master their craft.

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To find out why the coast is the ideal spot for training pilots, I'm joining the ranks.

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Yes! I'm going up.

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I've been fitted with my flight suit and I'm feeling...nervous.

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-Good to go?

-Right. I'm good to go.

-Right, let's go.

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'Armed with some fireproof gloves, a life vest and a huge sense of trepidation,

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'I'm about to put my life in the hands of my pilot, Squadron Leader Ed Thomas.'

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Ed, why is RAF Valley right out here on the edge of everything, on the coast?

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Well, believe it or not, looking at the weather today,

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the weather here is actually very good for a lot of the year,

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so with the westerly airflow, we get a lot of clear spells.

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We're expecting to travel from Anglesey to Blackpool at speeds touching 600 mph.

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-Here we go.

-Here we go, indeed!

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It'll get noisy now, because we'll wind the engine up.

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-Wow!

-Ha-ha!

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Ho-ho, yes!

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-There we go, safely airborne.

-Oh, look there's the sea.

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Yes, it's a good sea today.

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This is where you'll feel the first sensation of G.

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Wow, yes!

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I'm definitely feeling G!

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The camera in my hands suddenly feels like about 20kg.

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That's right.

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'Low-level flying is one of the RAF's most important tactics,

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'so where better to learn how low you can go than over the sea?'

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How high are we flying at the moment?

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I reckon about 600 feet or so.

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It feels a lot lower when the sea's coming towards you.

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We're just flying over the tip of Puffin Island,

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which I'll try and show you now.

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That's Puffin Island, and we're going past it so quickly,

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I hardly get the chance to show it to you.

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'With Llandudno and Rhyl coming up, it's a reminder that this coast

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'has some great resorts - classic seaside towns.'

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Say hello to Llandudno!

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CONTROL: Be advised, a wind farm ahead of you, by about four miles.

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-Oh, that's fantastic!

-Yeah, getting them out here is a bit of a job, I think!

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That's amazing.

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I used to watch these planes all the time and think that the guys in them had the best jobs in the world.

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-Yeah.

-You DO have the best job in the world.

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'For me, this is extraordinary...

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'..but for the pilots, it's just part of the daily routine that turns raw recruits into frontline flyers.'

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-Here's sunny Blackpool. Not so sunny today.

-No.

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'The weather down below isn't so great,

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but there's one place the sun always shines.

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There we are, as promised, on top of the clouds.

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-Wow. It's funny being reminded that even on the cloudiest day, up here it's always the same blue.

-Yeah.

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Not even a day trip - Anglesey to Blackpool and back in just under half an hour.

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Still, what do you expect from a flying visit(?)

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-Brilliant.

-There we are.

-Brilliant.

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Off the coast at Blackpool a near disaster.

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A freak wave left this ferry from Northern Island on the beach.

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When the Riverdance ferry got into trouble in the Irish Sea,

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a huge rescue operation was launched...

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..co-ordinated by the local coastguard,

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which is when the search and rescue team from RAF Valley was scrambled.

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This footage was recorded in pitch darkness by the team's night vision cameras

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and shows the horrendous conditions they faced.

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'They've flown back to the scene to talk me through one of their most spectacular rescues.'

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Flight Lieutenant Giles Radcliffe was the co-pilot.

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So talk me through what happened on the night that the people on the Riverdance had to be rescued.

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We were called out about 8.30

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and it took us about 20 minutes to get here

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and then we found the Riverdance, the ferry.

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We've got a significant list to the port.

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Oh, yes, that's a bit of a list.

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It was in quite a predicament really. It was leaning about 60 degrees to port, both its engines had stopped

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-and the captain wanted people taken off.

-What was the weather?

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The wind was gusting up to about 70 knots.

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The sea state? The waves were the size of houses - about 20 foot.

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The worst conditions I've flown in since I've been at Valley.

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And so what were you required to do in terms of getting people off?

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We ended up coming up with a plan whereby people were lowered out

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from the wheelhouse onto the low side of the vessel, and we were able to winch them up from there.

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The boat was moving around a lot, we had to be very close to the boat,

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close to the masts, so there was the potential to come into contact

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with the boat. That wouldn't be nice. It was certainly a pretty bad night.

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It could have been worse, but thankfully it wasn't.

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After it washed ashore, the ship became a local celebrity.

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By the time you watch this programme this scene will be gone forever, but for me it's a fantastic

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opportunity to find out just how you go about moving over 3,000 tonnes of ferry off of a beach.

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Overseeing the gargantuan task of removing this maritime relic

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from Blackpool's beach is salvage expert, Donald McDonald.

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When you're confronted with this, how do you even start to work out how you're going to get rid of it?

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In the early stages, we didn't anticipate this,

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the early stages were a case of getting the vessel re-floated

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and to take her back to sea. And despite all our efforts, she remained there.

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Latterly, at the end of March, we had a very severe storm, which finished any salvage operation.

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So what's happening now is the last resort?

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This is a last resort, because in the United Kingdom we don't cut up ships on beaches.

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-And, of course, you have the tide to deal with?

-At this time, we've got a spring tide,

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so we get a bit of time to work - up to about 5.5 hours per tide.

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Next week, we might not get near the ship.

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There is something that affects you, seeing a big ship like this

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lying on its side. It kind of gets you in your stomach.

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A ship should be upright floating, not lying on its side being cut into small pieces.

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As a merchant seaman, I could sympathise with this ship.

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However, we'll do our best, we'll give her a tidy end.

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Today, there's barely a scrap of the Riverdance left at its last port of call on Blackpool's beach.

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Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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E-mail [email protected]

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