Old_Hand said:
When I was on the old Ark (77-79) the Buccs of 809 sqn were flown mainly by crab pilots. And a good bunch they were too. They were used for bombing and inflight refuelling. It was amazing to watch them when they were bombing practice when we were towing our splash target. They used to bomb it from below the horizon so you could not see anything until the bomb struck. They were able to do this by tossing the bomb out of the revolving bomb bay and the bomb flew like a missile straight up and down again onto the target.
You are correct in the fact that the Buccaneer had a revolving bomb bay and that it was capable of tossing a bomb. This bomb bay was rarely used though as most of the time for practice bombing the bombs would have been loaded onto pylons beneath the wings.
I question using either Medium toss Mode or Long Toss mode on a ships splash target. Though fairly accurate there would have been a probability of hitting the ship. Long Toss was used to deliver a nuclear weapon and the bomb was released from a distance of four miles. Also for practice bombing (splash targets) it would have been normal
practise to use 28lb bombs, these were far lighter than the much larger BOMB but had been aerodynamically designed to give the same flight profile. The splash target was usually used by Buccaneers for 2" RP (rocket projectiles) and ADSL (Automatic Depressed Sight Line) bombing.
ADSL looks like dive bombing but has some subtle differences.