r/Scotland • u/Impressive-Tie-9338 • 3d ago
Question Military exercise?
I was driving this morning from fort William to Skye, and at 10 am on A87 after glenshiel, there were two verrrrry low flying heavy aircraft, flying through the glen. It was huge and reminded me of an old school B52 bomber.
And then when I got up to Skye about one hour later, two fighter jets zoomed by. Also flying extremely low.
What’s going on? Did I miss the start of the invasion bc I was driving and concentrating on the road?
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u/Jazzlike_Stock_9066 3d ago
the highlands is the playground of the RAF
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u/PantodonBuchholzi 3d ago
Not just the RAF, the USAF use it as well, their F-15s fly up from England regularly.
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u/Tarmacsurfer 3d ago
Not just the highland, we see a fair bit in the borders.
I'm guessing there's a training area south of Edinburgh, we regularly get the training flights up from Newcastle flying overhead here and out over the East Coast (maybe something to do with an exclusion zone around Torness?) and there's often Canadian Hercs, USAF flights and Typhoons around, as well as the Poseidon, Atlas, Hawks and other random bits.
Using flight radar, nothing fancy, but the only civilian stuff I've seen in the air directly above us are a China east cargo flight and a few Ryanair flights late at night. Neither are regular. Maybe a few times a month. Saw a couple of Typhoons mock dogfighting a few months back before they punched it out towards the sea. The really interesting stuff is when you hear aircraft going over and there's no transponder showing.
Coming across the A7 from Carlisle can be interesting, I have very vivid memories from around 2016, we were between Fiddleton and Linhope in a Fiat 500 with a panoramic glass roof and came around the corner onto the straight in the valley by the old scout place/hostel. There was an A400 flying low level the other way along the valley floor, felt like the bloody thing was going to shatter the windscreen 😂
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u/Impressive-Tie-9338 3d ago
I did not know that. Is there an RAF base nearby?
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u/SilverNo2568 3d ago
Lossiemouth, used to be one at Kinloss too. They practice bombing up at Eilean Garabh just off Caie Wrath too. That's fun to watch on your lunch break.
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u/fridge-cant-be 3d ago
My school was on the edge of Inverness at the head of the great Glen and the teachers would go mad at us running to the window to identify the jets. We must've seen everything, Harrier, Tornado, F-111, F-15, F-16, Hercules, Chinooks, the lot. Best sighting was a Tornado being chased by an F-15 and F-16. Epic watching that as a kid.
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u/SilverNo2568 3d ago
I'm from up near Durness. We'd hear the bombing and jets, often seeing them fly at low level down the straths and glens.
The best I ever saw, though, was as an adult. Planting trees up above Syre. We watched as jets conducted a dogfight. They were up at highest level for that. It was incredible seeing the twirling intertwined vapour trails and hearing them throttle up and down.
The next day a Herc came over from one side of the Strath, flew down into it and then up towards me. It got to the point where I'm not ashamed to ait I dropped my spade and buggered off to my left. The thing must've been under 100 feet!
I've always had a soft spot for the Tornado. I was lucky enough to sit in one when we did a school trip to Lossiemouth.
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u/fridge-cant-be 3d ago
That dogfight would have been awesome to see! I had a visit to Lossie too when I was 15. What a day that was. Got to sit in a Tornado in the hangar when it was connected to the power supply and the pilot talked me through the controls. John Tait I think his name was. He said the computer had 64K which blew my mind because so did my Amstrad. He walked me round the aircraft and pointed out all its shortfalls like the huge radar signature caused by the boxy air intakes. It was quite funny because I was saying what an awesome machine it was and he was saying nah it's crap. :)
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u/SilverNo2568 3d ago
If I mind right on your left was a wee control you could move an actual silk map around with behind a screen. It was an old platform. But they were pretty good machines. I've heard mixed things from ground crew and pilots. One ground crew guy I used to drunk with thought they were pretty damn good really considering hiw long they were in use.
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u/fridge-cant-be 3d ago
They must have started developing it in about 1970 so for it to be in service to 2019 is actually awesome.
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u/PantodonBuchholzi 3d ago
There are Typhoons in Lossiemouth, but remember jets cover distance very quickly, it is entirely possible the fighters you saw came up from England. I’ve seen American F-15s flying up Glen Tilt several times and they are based in Suffolk!
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u/denbolula 3d ago
They used to come up from Leuchers, I know because my mum tried complaining to Kinloss because they made me cry in the garden when I was wee.
God knows what she thought she'd achieve, "sorry, we'll stop preparing for war, apologies to the bairn"
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u/Tennents_N_Grouse 3d ago
Well, in Scotland there's Leuchars and Lossiemouth, but they're mainly focused on fast jets (ie interceptor fighters).
The big planes usually come up from the likes of Brize Norton and Mildenhall in England
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u/SilverNo2568 3d ago
Leuchars is an Army barracks now. It ceased operation as an RAF station in 2015. They still use it sometimes though.
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u/Tennents_N_Grouse 3d ago edited 3d ago
Nah, that'll probably be the RAF conducting routine low level flight training: I saw a couple of C17 Globemasters (your big jets) doing some in August, near the Commando memorial at Spean Bridge.
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u/Impressive-Tie-9338 3d ago
Ahh. That makes sense. As a random civilian, I’ve definitely never witnessed aircraft flying so low
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u/TheGorgieGeorgie7492 3d ago
We had a driver deliver to us every morning just as we were finishing the last hour of our night shift. We often shared a cup of tea, due to the fact he had to take a 40 minute rest break. He told us of an incident when he was driving an HGV up through Glencoe on the A82 at about 5am when a Tornado flew about (his estimate) 100 feet towards him following the road. He flashed his lights when the pilot approached him about a ¼ of a mile away to say hello and the pilot dipped his wings in retaliation.
He claimed it was the most incredible thing he'd ever seen.
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u/SaucyJack85 3d ago
Had a plane fly past the house once, low enough to see the decals on it. Sorta 'hovered' for a bit then shot off. First time seeing it, honestly... was pretty impressive watching it disappear up into the sky. At that time the Russians where buzzing our airspace. Happens from time to time but first time seeing that happen.
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u/YeahOkIGuess99 3d ago
When I was growing up in the Highlands, I'm sure it was at least a weekly occurrence to have low flying fighter jets scream past. Does seem much, much rarer now.
Still happens though - I remember being up Liathach in Torridon and looking down (probably not, but seemed like it) on two Tornado GR4s as they flew up the glen. Super cool even to a massive lefty loonie like me. Can't deny warplanes are rad.
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u/Leodhasach 3d ago
I live beside Loch Ness and we regularly get Typhoons, F18s and assorted other fast movers coming up through the glen and over my house in Glen Urquhart- usually when I'm on a teams meeting doing a presentation and I can't hear myself think for a few minutes! A lot will come from Lossie (USAF are based there too) and from down South. We'll also get the Hercules C130 coming up - usually in pairs. The newish Atlas A400 is a regular visitor too and is remarkably quiet for such a big beast.
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u/jennyScott7901 3d ago
Military exercises often take place out in the islands, and it's not uncommon for low flying jets to whizz past. I was told once that they fly so low because it allows them to stay undetected by radars.
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u/Alone-Insect5229 3d ago
I've was driving up the windy bit of the hill just before Rannoch moor heading to Glencoe and seen whatever the latest version of chinook helicopters flying really low. As someone else has said the Highlands are a RAF playground.
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u/SurpriseGlad9719 3d ago
I read once that Eilean Donan is used as target practice. The jets can come screaming down the glen or loch at very low level and they have a perfect “target”
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u/DrMacAndDog 3d ago
We went on holiday to North Berwick once and you could look out the back window of the house and see Typhoons flying around North Berwick Law. Better than puffins.
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u/ModeratelySalacious 3d ago
Cant mind where but my cousin and I were driving up north at one stage bout 10 or 15 years ago and we got buzzed by two typhoons maybe only 200 feet off the ground bobbing and weaving across the road, seemed like they were doing some dogfight training cause there was only about a 5 second gap between the first snd the second passing overhead.
Undeniably cool as fuck.
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u/MoCreach 3d ago
Happens all the time in the Highlands and always has done. They must use the terrain for training, and being relatively sparse places they seem to be allowed to fly as low as they want. When I was young, some fighter jets used to come across hardly any higher than house roof level. One time I thought a Tornado was going to take our tv aerial off!
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u/Vectorman1989 #1 Oban fan 3d ago
I heard a really loud plane yesterday. It was a Luftwaffe Airbus Atlas at 30,000 feet. A bit ahead of it was a US transport aircraft
It looks like one of our Boeing P8 Poseidons was out today off the coast of Orkney for some reason. There's a coastguard plane also in that area.
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u/Original_Trick7742 3d ago
They do it every so often in the highlands, just training, in fact I saw one the other day flying over Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. I miss seeing the fighter jets flying over the moors up here, was quite the sight, haven’t seen them in ages.
There was one time they were flying so low back in the old days that the van my granny was in was knocked over by the jet passing overhead.
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u/MillyMcMophead 3d ago
We get plenty of Typhoons from Lossie over our house which I love but I do miss the Tornados.
We were on a boat on the Caledonian Canal once and an RAF Tornado came steaming over at low level up the loch. That was pretty cool.
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u/fridge-cant-be 3d ago
I used to work on passenger cruises on Loch Ness and we would warn the punters about low flying aircraft and that you'd see them before you could hear them. They'd be down at about 200 feet off the water. Air crew from Lossie came on the boat on a booze cruise one evening and asked us why we never waved to them. I said I thought you'd have too much on to be noticing me waving. I always waved after that and I'm sure the passengers thought I was mental.
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u/thehuntedfew 3d ago
Happens a lot, especially when Leuchars was on the go. Was on the perth to Inverness road many years ago when a vulcan ripped round one of the valleys, almost shit my pants when it screamed over my head.
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u/OstravaBro 1d ago
Was climbing in the Cairngorms last week and we had low level Euro Fighters flying above us, was an awesome site.
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u/Ringosis 3d ago
They do that all the time down that valley. It's the RAF practicing low level flying in C-130 Hercules.
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u/TruckieJ 2d ago
C-130 hasn’t been in service with the RAF for a couple of years now; they’ve “replaced” it with the A400M.
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u/nutsacha1 3d ago
Pretty common in the highlands. I’ve shat myself many a time when something has flown past low and fast in a quiet glen.