An large unmarked jet plane flew over me twice in the same hour, seemingly in the direction of an RAF base north of here. I have checked Jane’s and Wikipedia for RAF planes, but can’t seem to identify it. (It could be American too I suppose.)
Though I didn’t have anything by which to judge its size, it appeared to be very large: a wingspan similar to a 777. Its main distinguishing characteristics were that the tailplane is at the top of the fin, and it has two engines, that are mounted on each side of the fuselage behind the wing.
Perhaps a silly question, but how do you know it was bigger? Size and distance can be deceptive. If not a 727, I’m wondering if it could have been something like a Gulfstream G500?
It could have been a C-9 (Wikipedia) bringing wounded service members (or a VC-9 carrying VIPs) back from the CENTCOM theater to the D.C. area. Most long hops would stop at RAF Mildenhall to top off their fuel tanks.
ETA: puppygod, that’s a great call. Does the OP know whose plane it was? I assumed USAF because we move so much volume through the UK, but (obviously!) it could be RAF, and the VC-10 is their only plane that looks remotely like the OP’s description.
We get a shedload of air traffic - mostly military - over where I work, and even though it’s difficult to size stuff in the air, it’s usually at a very low altitude (often banking overhead) so I’m fairly sure that I can tell the difference between something liner-sized, and a small commuter jet.
ETA: definitely not the VC10 - the engines were definitely singles; also, it wasn’t clearly marked. There may have been small roundals, but it wasn’t clearly from the RAF or the USAF.
Not sure exactly where you are but it didn’t go over me I’ll keep a look out.
I can’t rember seeing anything like this in the past in the Oxford area but we used to get a fair number of VC-10s lining up for Brize Norton. Not so many now. Not sure if their being phased out - they must be very old airframes - or if they’re just based elsewhere.
North of North Oxford. The planes seem to come in from the east (over the countryside) and bank over my office. They don’t seem to go over the city. And as I wrote that, I just saw a Hercules go past.
I was surprised to see an RAF Hercules waiting to take off from Belfast International airport when I was coming back from Liverpool last year.
RAF Aldergrove is next door, but it never occurred to me that they might share the run way, pretty much all military air traffic in NI outside of air shows is from helicopters.
Heh, that was a laugh alright, the passengers looked out the windows and instead of ground crew saw the plane surrounded by soldiers. Not the last disaster to hit City of Derry airport either, it defies any attempt at proper management.
More than likely, it was something out of RAF Brize Norton, which has a variety of large transport planes stationed there, including the C-17 Globemaster III, as well as being the primary UK air transport base.
Plus, it’s in Oxfordshire, unlike RAF Mildenhall, which is east in Suffolk.
Was it necessarily a military plane? The US military transports soldiers on civilian charter flights all the time. Most of the time in fact. For instance there are civilian airliners flying out of Macguire AFB all the time.
Brize Norton (where I used to live - I was an RAF brat) is a lot further west than these planes are heading - they bank over me, then trundle off due north. Suspect it might be RAF Croughton, which is only 31 km away.
I’ll keep a look out.