Wings

by Patrick Bishop

  It was the occasion for the West’s first major stand in what by now had become known as the Cold War. From June onwards, American, British and French aircraft established a Luftbrücke (air bridge) to relieve the besieged inhabitants. The RAF flew into Gatow in the British sector of West Berlin with Coastal Command Sunderlands, putting down on the Havelsee lake nearby. The USAAF used Templehof in the centre. They established an astonishingly efficient delivery system that was a triumph of air traffic control. At Gatow, four-engined Yorks (the replacement for the Lancasters) and Dakotas landed every three minutes, stayed on the ground for a maximum of less than an hour and then returned to one of the supply axes to reload. The landing schedule was so tight that any aircraft unable to touch down on its first attempt had to return to its base to maintain the smooth rhythm of deliveries. In the ten months it took the West to persuade the Soviets to call off the siege, aircraft flew 27,000 flights and delivered 235,000 tons of freight. Thanks to Allied air power, a great battle of wills had been won. It was only the first of a continuous and titanic contest of resources, technology, skill and nerve that would last for forty more years, with on one side the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), founded in 1949, and on the other the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies.

  The enemy was not just the Soviet Union but communism. The ideological nature of this struggle meant that it could be fought by proxies all over the world. In 1950 capitalism and communism went to war in Korea, when the United Nations intervened to prevent the southern half of Korea being swallowed by the communist north. Most of the outside help for the Republic of Korea came from America, with limited support from Britain and others. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was backed heavily by the Chinese communists and the Soviet Union.

  After a slow start, the Soviets were closing the wide technological gap that had opened up at the end of the Second World War. They had learned how to the build the Bomb and had developed their own jet fighters, notably the MiG 15, which at the start of the conflict outclassed the American Shooting Stars and Panthers, and the British and Australian Meteors. It was only with the arrival of the North American-manufactured F-86 Sabre, which, like the MiG, had performance-enhancing swept wings, that the West was able to compete on equal terms.

  The Korean War (1950–53) produced some of the greatest fighter-to-fighter confrontations in the history of aerial warfare, with aggressive pilots clashing in individual combats that recalled the contests of the First World War. Much of the dogfighting was done along the Yalu Valley on North Korea’s frontier with China, which US pilots nicknamed ‘MiG Alley’. There, Sabres tried to intercept Korean and Chinese jets, many of the former flown by Soviet pilots, and prevent them from attacking fighter bombers operating in the south. The most successful unit was the 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing (4 FIW), which was striving to add to the glory its forebears had won flying Mustangs during the Second World War.

  A small number of experienced RAF officers were attached to 4 FIW after Fighter Command, anxious to create a cadre of pilots with experience of jet-fighter combat, called for volunteers. British and American aircrew had worked alongside each other, for the most part in harmony, for large stretches of the preceding war, though there were marked differences in outlook. The British stiff upper lip is a cliché, but in those days it was also a reality, underlying the RAF’s attitudes to tactics, strategy and demeanour, in the air and on the ground. The cult of understatement was equally potent. Many Britons found the Americans’ capacity for self-dramatization laughable, and their attitudes to death mawkish and embarrassing. In 1944 Bill Waterton, the Meteor test pilot, had been stationed alongside an American Lightning squadron and found that ‘they stayed at their end of the mess and we ours. The coolness was not due to criticisms of one another as flyers, but to fundamental differences of temperament. We felt rather bewildered by the Americans, for instance, when after the loss of an aircraft, tears flowed with beer and their mess bore a maudlin, funereal air that lasted a week. They, in turn, could not understand British distaste for public exhibitions of grief, and were appalled by the RAF’s “Poor old Mike went for a burton this afternoon. Let’s have a drink on him.”’5

  Another perceived American character defect was glory-hunting, which Colin Walker Downes witnessed while flying Sabres with 4 FIW. The wing was based at K-14 airfield on the south side of the Han river, a few miles west of Seoul and in action daily over MiG Alley. High-ranking desk-jockeys were keen to join the ranks of the ‘MiG maulers’ and claim a scalp. Despite their lack of experience or flying skills they would from time to time take command of an operation, to the annoyance of their subordinates, who had the task of keeping the ‘one-day wonders’ out of trouble.

  Nor was there any shortage of egotists among the unit commanders engaged in daily combat. The United States Air Force (USAF), which in September 1947 had moved out from under the aegis of the army to become a separate branch of the US military, encouraged a competitive culture with pilots pushing to log the five kills that would make them an ‘ace’. Senior officers would jostle for the ‘shooting slots’ on the offensive sweeps that provided the best opportunities for success.

  British pilots like Walker Downes were given the supporting role of ‘wingman’, watching their leader’s back and directing him onto targets. One morning, just before the end of the war, he was flying as wingman to Captain Lonnie Moore in the Yalu area when they spotted two pairs of MiGs apparently heading for their home base at Feng Cheng. Moore ordered the ‘bounce’ on the last pair.

  ‘I was to the right and behind Moore and I called him “clear” as he closed on the trailing MiG,’ he wrote. ‘I asked if he was sure the pair in front of us were the last pair and received an “Affirmative” answer.’ Moore opened fire at 300 yards and closed to 100 yards, where it seemed that ‘the stream of bullets must have gone straight up the tailpipe of the MiG, for several pieces came away, followed quickly by the cockpit canopy as the pilot ejected at 1,500 feet.’ Moore throttled back to avoid overshooting the lead MiG and Walker Downes had to throw his Sabre into a barrel roll to stay behind his leader.

  Hanging upside down at the top of the roll he spotted two MiGs closing on them in staggered formation. He called a warning to Moore, who carried on oblivious, intent on finishing the remaining MiG in front of him, which was now approaching the Feng Cheng runway. The pursuing MiGs were now on Moore’s tail. He realized his predicament and broke away to the left, leaving Walker Downes heading straight across the airfield at low altitude. As he flashed across it at a few hundred feet ‘the whole airfield seemed to light up’ as the anti-aircraft guns went into action.

  The flak burst alarmingly but harmlessly in the sky around, and then he was clear. The MiG that had been chasing Moore was still ahead and, despite the turbulence which set his ‘flying helmet bobbing against the canopy, while trying to rubberneck, looking for MiGs’, Downes managed to range his gunsight ‘pipper’ on the target. He opened fire at 400 yards. It was too soon, but he saw the Sabre’s .50 calibre machine-gun rounds sparking off the fuselage as the MiG broke sharply to the left.

  Then Downes was sandwiched between two attackers. One latched onto his tail and opened fire. The Russian jets were armed with three cannon, which had the power to bring down a B-29 bomber with a few hits. The shells moved at low velocity, however, and by turning tightly Downes was able to avoid the ‘red cricket balls’ floating towards him. The huge gravitational forces that weighed in during a full power turn were to some extent counteracted by the ‘G-suit’ – worn over the flying suit and lined with hoses, which pumped up to slow the downward rush of blood away from the brain. Even so, his helmet was ‘weighing like a sandbag on my head as it pushed my goggles over my eyes’ and he felt close to ‘greying out’. He glanced back to see his pursuer slamming ‘into the ground in an explosive ball of fire’ – apparently having gone into a high-speed stall as he tried to bring his guns to bear.

  Downes dived for the dec
k at full power and headed south and out to sea where he landed on the sandy beach of a friendly island. He made it back to K-14 at dusk to the surprise of everyone who had assumed he was dead. When he ran into Moore, the American’s main concern was whether Downes had confirmed the two MiGs he was claiming to have shot down.6

  The gung-ho spirit of the American fliers was mirrored in the institutional attitude of their bosses. The USAF and in particular the Strategic Air Command (SAC) exuded aggression and displayed a willingness to embrace the concept of mutual annihilation that underlay the possession of nuclear weapons. The SAC was the air force’s bomber wing and it soaked up much of the mighty resources of the US military budget. It was led by ‘bomber generals’, exemplified by the baby-faced, cigar-sucking Curtis LeMay, the architect of the firebombing of Tokyo. LeMay believed that America’s entire nuclear arsenal should be employed in a single, obliterating strike if it seemed likely that a Soviet attack was planned – an atomic age version of the ‘knock-out blow’ theory of the interwar years. Throughout the 1950s the SAC stood in a state of perpetual readiness to send its nuclear bombers against a host of Soviet cities as soon as the order was given.

  It was a Sisyphean task, requiring constant reconnaissance, monitoring and analysis of the Soviet Union’s actions. It was the fate of the RAF during the period to work as a junior partner with the USAF, sharing the exhausting labour of eternal vigilance.

  In October 1953 warheads were exploded in the South Australian desert, the start of a process that would produce Blue Danube, Britain’s plutonium bomb. The new weapons would be carried by a succession of ‘V Bombers’ – the Vickers Valiant, AvroVulcan and Handley Page Victor, which acted as Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent force until the responsibility passed to the Royal Navy’s Polaris missile-equipped submarines in 1969.

  America’s initial reluctance to share her nuclear secrets waned and in 1958 the US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement was signed, which locked the two countries into a shared nuclear strategy. The RAF was at the forefront of NATO’s plans for nuclear war with the Soviet Union. From bases in central and eastern England V-Bombers would be the trigger force for a nuclear Armageddon, and had the capacity to destroy Moscow and Kiev, killing millions before the Americans had entered Soviet airspace. For much of the time the RAF’s Cold War duties seemed to those who carried them out like an elaborate game, albeit one that bore the risk of violent death if things went wrong. Both sides broke the rules frequently. RAF aircraft flew deep into Soviet air space on intelligence-gathering missions, collecting radar and photographic evidence of military sites, and despite some narrow escapes they got away with it.

  In autumn 1962, however, the feeling of unreality that pervaded the Cold War evaporated and the unimaginable prospect of a nuclear war became horribly plausible. At the end of October, President John F. Kennedy received hard evidence that Soviet missiles were about to be deployed in Cuba, a hundred miles from the Florida coast. He warned that the delivery of the weapons would be opposed by force. Any clash had the potential to escalate into an all-out nuclear conflict in which Britain – as America’s nearest ally and partner in her nuclear strategy – would be in the front line. During the weekend of 26 October 1962 the V-Bomber force was brought to the highest levels of readiness. At four air bases forty Vulcans stood with their bombs on board, their crews waiting alongside at fifteen minutes’ readiness.

  ‘The aircraft were all ready to go,’ remembered former Wing Commander Peter West, an electronics officer on a Vulcan based at Coningsby in Lincolnshire. ‘We were fully kitted out with our flying gear. All we had to do was get in, put our straps on, press the button and the engines would start up.’

  The crisis passed, however, and for decades the British public remained in ignorance of how serious the drama had become. Over the next few decades fear of nuclear obliteration retreated from the national psyche. As the era of the Bomb passed and nuclear weaponry moved into the realm of intercontinental rocketry, the notion of superpower conflict once again became too big to comprehend. After the dying skirmishes of the colonial era – in Suez and in Aden – the prospect of a conventional war seemed equally remote. By the early 1980s, aside from its Cold War preoccupations in Germany, Britain’s military energies were mainly spent trying to control the rebellious natives across the water in Northern Ireland. In both theatres, life had settled down into a familiar and predictable rhythm. In 1982 it was shattered by an eruption in a group of islands most Britons had perhaps heard of, but would be hard-pressed to locate on a map.

  Chapter 17

  ‘Fox Two Away!’

  From the outset, the Falklands conflict seemed a freak of history. It was fought to hang onto a scrap of empire – yet the principle underlying the action was the very un-imperial one of self-determination. It came at a time when imperial sentiment had anyway all but vanished and Britain’s armed forces were being reshaped to suit the needs of a post-colonial world. It was fortunate that they had not yet been transformed to the point where a major exercise in power projection was no longer possible. Victory did nothing to arrest this process, however. The war remains a historical firebreak, a last demonstration of classical, twentieth-century war-fighting before the arrival of the hi-tech military age.

  It was also the last time in which the Royal Navy would play the major role in a war involving Britain. The fleet was still of a size that it could organize the transportation of thousands of soldiers 8,000 miles across the ocean, deliver them into battle and sustain them on the ground. Equally importantly, it was equipped with an air force that could protect them throughout the operation. The air war over the Falklands was fought largely by naval aviators flying off aircraft carriers. Long before the ground troops went ashore the airmen were in action against a formidable and determined enemy, who had the advantage of operating from their own soil. The British aviators had to succeed if the campaign to recapture the Falklands was not to end in bloody and ignominious failure.

  Air power sustained the campaign at every stage. The first military response to the arrival of thousands of Argentinian troops on the Falklands on 2 April 1982 was the despatch the following day of RAF transport aircraft to Wideawake Airport, the British air base on Ascension Island, lying in the equatorial waters of the South Atlantic, a thousand miles off the coast of Africa. They were followed two days later by the first of the Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft, which would scour the seas for Argentinian submarines.

  The spearhead of the Task Force’s air component was the Fleet Air Arm’s Sea Harriers. Three squadrons – Naval Air Squadrons 800, 801 and elements of 899 which reformed as 809 – headed south on the aircraft carriers HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible after sailing from Portsmouth on 5 April. Their job was to protect the Task Force from aerial attack. The RAF’s 1 (F) squadron, equipped with GR3 Harriers, was also sent to support the troops on the ground. The fixed-wing component was augmented by 170 helicopters – mostly Sea King and Wessex – tasked with searching and destroying enemy shipping as well as rescue and transportation duties.

  The air war opened three weeks before the landings. On 30 April the British government declared a 200-mile total exclusion zone around the Falklands, and any Argentinian vessel entering it risked attack. Late that evening, eleven fully loaded Victors – enjoying a new lease of life as aerial tankers – took off from Ascension. Their job was to provide in-flight replenishment for a sole Vulcan carrying twenty-one 1,000 lb bombs, which was bound for Port Stanley airport, 3,886 miles away. Another Vulcan flew behind in reserve. The Black Buck raids – as the five bombing and missile missions against the airfield at Stanley and the Argentinian radar defences were called – were amazing logistical feats. They required skill, precision and huge resources. The attack bomber had to be refuelled seven times on the outward journey and once on the return, burning 22,000 gallons in all. The tankers needed in-flight refuelling themselves to stay in the air. The operation involved a round trip of more than 9,000 miles – sixteen hours’ fl
ying time. This made it the longest bombing mission in history.

  There were a thousand things to go wrong and, inevitably, many did. As the lead Vulcan XM 598 climbed to cruising altitude, the captain, Squadron Leader John Reeve, noticed the cabin was not pressurizing properly – the result, as it turned out, of a perished window seal. The bomber was forced to turn back and it now fell to the reserve Vulcan, 607, to carry out the mission. The pilot, Flight Lieutenant Martin Withers, informed the crew with the laconic observation that ‘it looks like we’ve got a job of work, fellas’.1

  The bomber arrived in the target area just before 4 a.m. local time, to the astonishment of the Argentinians. It swooped down to 300 feet for its approach, then climbed to attack height, delivering its stick of twenty-one bombs at a 35-degree angle across the runway. It then roared away, unscathed, to the north for a rendezvous with a tanker, after flashing the signal ‘superfuse’ to indicate a job well done. It had, indeed, been quite a feat. To laymen, however, the results did not seem proportionate to the enormous effort and vast outlay of resources. Only one bomb had hit the runway. When this news reached the Canberra, steaming southwards towards the islands, the sailors, marines and paras on board reacted with delighted derision. Regret at the limited damage the raid had inflicted was more than outweighed by pleasure that a rival service – the ‘Crabs’, as they called the RAF – had apparently ballsed things up. In fact, it was always understood by the air force that bombing runways rarely had lasting effect and the single bomb did at least render the Stanley airstrip unusable to Argentinian fast jet fighters – though not to C130 transports supplying the garrison. The four Black Buck raids that followed produced similarly modest results and the series was essentially a side show that served to remind the world that the RAF had a part to play in the enterprise.