An Garbh-eilean

Commonly referred to as Garvie Island, it's one of very few places that we could drop full-size live weapons in the UK, and this is three frames from the head-up display (HUD) film of a Tornado GR1.  We were dropping 1,000lb freefall HE bombs on the target on the island.

You can see the nose of the aircraft at the bottom of each frame, with the pitot probe reflecting the light.  In one or two frames you can just make out the Bomb Fall Line (BFL) running almost vertically near the middle of the island.  You can't see the speed or height as they're absorbed by the bright sky: I would have had the brightness of the symbols quite low so as to avoid blanking any useful bit of the ground.  

I'm pretty certain it was a loft attack (pitching up at a constant rate once within range to release the bomb automatically once the range was the same as the forward throw of the weapon), so I would have been flying at 550 knots and 200 feet before engaging the reheat for the delivery.

And why bring this up now?  Well I've been watching Top Guns in the RAF and the latest episode has them dropping laser-guided bombs on Garvie, but from medium altitude (8 or 10,000 feet, I'd guess).  The programme is interesting to Mrs B and me because we met at Lossiemouth, nearly 45 years ago, but it's also good to see that it's showing days in the lives of RAF servicemen rather than "Top Guns".