Flying the CF-18 Hornet in Combat. "Bones" Ledsham (Part 3) 

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart @markmorehouse66. I speak for the Canadian Army, Navy and Air Force troops who can’t speak out. We swear allegiance to the monarch, but we are failed in the Govt’s support for us.

That’s very kind Stuart. Support comes in many forms. Support from our peers, such as you’ve shown, means more to us than that from a disassociated govt. 😎

Bones...I found the Flight Comment of the crash in Cold Lake. You can see the shots of the overrun and a lone F5 sitting on the ramp.

@@Saguanay ! (Ti-Pic?) Thanks for the fill-in. I’m guessing the lone F-5 was mine!

I’m pretty confident there will be a 4th episode @laMoort. No war stories with the Alpha Jet at Top Aces, but some absolutely wild experiences with the “crème de la crème” of Canadian fighter pilots. We did things you wouldn’t even consider doing in the RCAF…

Thanks again “Sedlo”!

@@tonyledsham2810 you bet! Hey, do know the story about an infamous video of an F-5 guy who strapped a camcorder on the dash and did some pipeline inspections up at Cold Lake? We had a copy of it at YYJ flying club and it rocked. Word was it had made its way around the CAF.

@@tonyledsham2810 I’ll post there here in case you’re not on Discord: Steve, thanks to you and Bones for all those amazing hours. I thought I knew a lot about CF-18 ops, but this really opened my eyes as to how the members of the Canadian Armed Forces always work so hard to make it work. We really, really need to invest more in our military, in all branches, not only to meet our international obligations, but to protect our sovereignty, too. Again, a great series of interviews, and looking forward to hearing about his adventures with Top Aces. (Miss the “Furball” callsign.)

@@sedloyes I’ve seen it and know the pilot. I don’t know if he was flying an upgraded F-5, which I think had a radalt. If not, it’s pretty hard to say he violated the rules (other than he was below treetop level, and the trees are max 30’ in the flying area 😲). I think it was his last flight in the RCAF. We had a CF-18 plt who was court-martialed on his last flight. He broke a couple of windows and injured a civilian with broken glass. His entry to the airline was delayed a couple of months…

I had heard that, too. @@tonyledsham2810 . I managed to get a copy of that video, and watch it every now and then. If you ask Steve, I can get ya a link to the private video. Cheers, and thanks again for all the great info and stories. Much appreciated.

Thanks Bez - I’m sure a lot of the stories resonated with you.

I’m confident there will be a 4th episode. Steve reads these replies as well. Thank you for the book recommendation - I’d never heard of it.

I have made connections on LinkedIn with several Serbs. I apologized for bombing their country and they have enlightened me with their side of the story. The Kosovo conflict was very complex, politically. There’s a reason it’s not talked-about, very much.

Excellent attention to detail @pjotrtjeONL! Here’s an interesting (if somewhat macabre) resource: ‘There is a rather interesting story concerning ejections from Canadian CF-18s and I'm going to bet it's a one off in the entire World? Aircraft 188761, as you have listed on your site as having been ejected from successfully as "over Yellowknife" IN June 2004, was this is not quite the case. The Pilot actually ejected while the aircraft was still on the runway, the aircraft came to a stop by itself without over running the runway and actually had to be shut down by response crews. There was minimal damage and the aircraft was repaired, a new seat installed and put back in service. It is flying today. If this was not enough, the fact that a single seat fighter was ejected from and was able to be repaired (wait for it) this is the second time that this has occurred to this particular aircraft. It was ejected from during an aborted take-off from a Base in England during the late eighties. The aircraft was extensively damaged in that accident and in fact was broken in two. The Pilot (who shall remain nameless) was not injured. Six years and countless dollars later MBB in Manching Germany put the aircraft back in service. I was there to watch it fly away (on a pair of Wings purchased from Australia and a "C" model nose section that was originally intended for a Spanish aircraft transplanted to an "A" model fuselage.)’ web.archive.org/web/20171102101854/www.ejection-history.org.uk:80/Aircraft_by_Type/CF-18/cf_18_hornet.htm

You are absolutely correct @pjotrtjeONL. I realized when I went back and watched it that I had made a mistake. Just like in Gaza today, we have to separate politics from religion.

⁠@@tonyledsham2810indeed, the religion layer most of the times obscures everything else…

Albanians in Kosovo are Muslim so he is correct.