Under the Radar

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Under the Radar Page 23

by James Hamilton-Paterson


  ‘Of course it is,’ said Amos shortly as he started the engine. ‘It always was and it always bloody will be. You’re everything to me, but what’s the good of it?’ He let in the clutch with a bang.

  23

  Some time after ten o’clock the next morning the two Vulcans lifted off Luqa’s runway and flew a graceful curve until they reached a modest altitude on their heading across the Mediterranean. Almost immediately they picked up Wheelus Air Traffic Control and a new course. Exercise Praying Mantis would be deemed to have started once they crossed the Libyan coast, which they were requested to do at two thousand feet. Thereafter they would lose height so as to reach the radar installation at the Al Usara desert ranges as low as they liked. At their present speed, flight time from the coast would be approximately seventeen minutes. The first day’s radar exercise effectively consisted of mock bombing runs. These could simulate both a European Theatre retaliatory attack using a nuclear weapon and an attack on a SAM base such as American aircraft were currently engaged in over North Vietnam. It was not long before Vic Ferrit, Yogi 1’s nav radar, had confirmed his aiming point some one hundred and forty miles distant and had it firmly locked into his system’s computer.

  Uncharacteristically for the time of year, the day was again cloudless. In the cockpit Amos was flying and Keith Coswood was glancing regularly through the circular side window by his head. In due course he got the first visual of the coastline where the wrinkled sea met the camel-coloured African continent in a thin line of white. Almost dead ahead and partly obscured by the Vulcan’s nose was a patch of regular shapes that might have been a small city. ‘Tripoli coming up, Skip,’ he told Amos. ‘Twenty miles or so.’

  Both Vulcans lost height without decreasing speed and, having obtained clearance, crossed the coast directly over Wheelus on a desert heading. Vic reported having established the American air base as his ‘initial point’, some eighty miles from what in a live bombing run would be weapon release. At that moment Gavin detected a radar contact from the distant ranges and flicked the switches that brought Oilcan into operation. He had instructions to use normal ECM and now brought his jammers into action. The Blue Diver antennas buried in each of the Vulcan’s wing tips began blasting electronic noise which would immediately have forced the target radar to employ its range gates in order to exclude as much of it as possible. The two Vulcans were now down to three hundred feet or so and five miles apart, and had begun jinking manoeuvres to increase the acquisition radars’ problems. Gavin in Yogi 1 and Ken Pilcher in Yogi 2 then added their Red Shrimp jammers for good measure. These were mainly designed to confuse anti-aircraft artillery, but it was precisely the AAA emplacements around targets in North Vietnam that were currently the problem.

  In this way the two Vulcans went twisting across the desert floor to Al Usara. At forty miles’ distance the two nav radars, Vic Ferrit and Julian Caddy, changed to a larger scale and used the stubby little joysticks in front of them to put their aiming markers on the target. This course information went straight into the navigation computers and thence to their aircraft’s autopilots. Had this been a live bombing instead of a radar comp the pilots could have let automation take over completely. Their aircraft would have flown themselves to the target and released the bomb at precisely the right moment. But down low today, both captains were going to do this manually. This was real flying. Their co-pilots called out the altitude as the camouflaged Vulcans tilted like mottled sails above a rushing landscape of scrub and stones that came into momentary view with each banking manoeuvre. In the distance a huddle of huts, vehicles and radar arrays appeared. There was even a marked circle with a large helicopter sitting in its centre. No-one aboard either Vulcan had more than a glimpse of it. They were concentrating on dials and screens. Calm voices on the intercom simply told the pilots that they had passed the weapon release point. Amos eased back on his control handle, slightly turning it, and with gentle pressure from his foot gaining a little height in a broad turn so as to put some distance between Yogi 1 and the radars before coming in for another run from a different direction.

  ‘What luck, Gavin?’ he asked.

  ‘They’ve lost us, Boss. They couldn’t have got a missile after us unless they’d done it visually and sent up all three. But we’d have chaffed and jammed them out of the sky. This kit really works.’

  ‘Good stuff, you guys,’ Amos relayed to his crew. ‘We’ll give them another three or four runs and then head for home. Maybe they’ve got Yogi Bear on the mess TV back at Luqa.’

  ‘Nah, Malta’s bound to be behind the times. It’ll be something crappy like Whirlybirds, bet you. Rescuing brainless dogs and kids from canyons. Just a twenty-five-minute advert for Bell helicopters.’

  In this way short bursts of banter intercut some high precision low-level flying. On one of the climb-outs Amos asked Keith if he remembered ever being warned about shitehawks here.

  ‘Someone said something about it at breakfast this morning. They don’t tell tales about them here as they do in Aden. Apparently a Shack hit one at twenty-one thousand feet over Khormaksar recently. You wouldn’t believe a poxy great bird like that could get up that high, would you?’

  ‘That’s thermals for you. You’d think they’d need oxygen.’

  ‘We’d be on it, for sure. But they’re scavengers, aren’t they? They only hang around places where there’s garbage to peck at. This Libyan wasteland looks a bit short on edibles, even for shitehawks. Let’s hope the guys stuck out here at Al Usara have been told to take their rubbish home with them when they fly back at night.’

  All in all, it was a triumphant sortie. Neither Vulcan was ever subjected to a radar lock-on long enough for a SAM to have got anywhere near them. Game, set and match to Oilcan, as Baa Mutton remarked after setting a course for Luqa. By the time they recrossed Wheelus at eight thousand feet the radar operators out in the desert had no doubt reported their own failure. The radio message that came up was laconic. ‘Thanks, guys. We thought we’d make it easy for you on the first day.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll try harder tomorrow,’ Amos sent back. ‘We’ve got ’em rattled,’ he added to the crew over the intercom. ‘Well done, you chaps. That was fun.’

  Day two of Exercise Praying Mantis being the bomb comp, the crews were out early while the Vulcans were being bombed up with the inert rounds. They looked much the same as ordinary iron bombs except for the enlarged vanes and their snorkel noses tipped with transparent domes that were revealed when the orange hoods were removed. Each aircraft carried six. The pilots had already memorised the instructions on the conduct of the competition. Six runs were to be made from any angle, at various heights from five hundred feet to twenty thousand. Strict altitude separation would be vital: two USAF aircraft were also competing: an F-105 Thunderchief and a B-52. The F-105 was the type currently being deployed daily over North Vietnam in ‘Wild Weasel’ bombing raids against strategic targets, and the target at Al Watia the competitors would be trying to hit apparently reflected this.

  Some hours later as he banked Yogi 1 at a thousand feet over the desert range Amos said ‘Holy shit!’ as a long, narrow iron structure came into view below. It was a full-scale railway bridge on girder legs, perhaps a hundred and fifty yards long, standing in the wilderness all by itself. Presumably modelled on a real bridge somewhere in Hanoi’s territory, it was complete in its detail of cross-bracing and concrete pilings at the base of the legs. The structure stood perhaps eighty feet high – it was hard to judge from the air.

  ‘Talk about no expense spared,’ said Keith as they banked around it. ‘And a bastard to hit: the thing’s full of holes. Not like the old Bosun out at Donna Nook.’

  ‘I guess that’s the idea. Near misses just don’t count. We’ll just have to see what Vector can do.’

  But it turned out that from five hundred feet Vector couldn’t do much. Both Vulcans’ bombs fell in the bridge’s thin shadow and were scored as near misses.

  ‘We’re
too low, Skip,’ Vic said from the back. ‘There’s no time for the vanes to guide them. It’ll be better higher up.’

  They turned in a large climbing sweep over the desert while behind them the two American aircraft made their passes. They, too, scored near misses. It was a different story from two thousand feet, however: both Vulcans scored direct hits on the bridge. Cheers broke out over the intercoms. Down on the ground, a safe three miles from the target in a reinforced and air-conditioned bunker, the Range Officer radioed up the results with an added ‘Good shooting, guys. See what you can do from five.’ The F-105 also scored a hit, launching its bomb from an underwing pylon. Score: two–one to the RAF but with another four runs to go. The Vulcans climbed to five thousand feet and, even to their own nav radars’ surprise, scored two more hits.

  ‘You couldn’t have done that yesterday, Vic,’ observed Amos acidly.

  ‘Too right, Skip. I was seeing double till lunchtime.’

  Once more they came around in a broad climb and more of the horizon came into view, now including a faint sight of the Mediterranean on the edge of vision to the north. Visibility was not as good as on the previous day: there was more sand in the air and Amos wondered whether as they bombed from greater heights this would defeat the laser system. But what could be seen of the ground was intimidating enough: an endless hinterland unbroken by road or feature.

  ‘Blimey,’ said Keith as the pale mud-coloured panorama tilted up one side of the windscreen. ‘It’s bloody identical in every direction. Imagine being stuck down there.’

  ‘Don’t even joke about it,’ said Amos, and at that moment there was a loud bang that shook the aircraft. ‘What the hell was that?’ They both leaned forward against their harness, rapidly scanning the panels in front of them for emergency lights and aberrant readings.

  ‘Bird strike?’ queried Keith.

  ‘Number four jet pipe temperature rising,’ said Amos. The aircraft was vibrating and the starboard wing wanted to drop. At that moment the number four engine fire warning light came on. ‘Damn. Fire drill, Keith.’ The co-pilot immediately pulled back the right-hand throttle lever and shut off that engine’s high- and low-pressure fuel cocks. As the revs began dropping he pressed the extinguisher button.

  Amos found he was having difficulty holding Yogi 1 in anything like a normal attitude. The right wing still wanted to drop and the entire aircraft was yawing violently. He was having to use both hands on the control grip but took one away long enough to click the intercom switch. ‘Captain to AEO,’ he called Gavin. ‘We have a fire in number four engine. Get off a Mayday, then call Yogi 2 to get a visual on our starboard wing.’

  ‘Roger.’

  The fire warning light for number four engine had gone out when Keith had pressed the extinguisher button but now it came back on. The vibration had increased to an unpleasant shuddering that no amount of tinkering with trim seemed to alleviate. Suddenly Terry Meeres in Yogi 2 came on the radio.

  ‘Yogi one, I’ve got you. The underside of your starboard wing is well ablaze. You’ve got flames coming out of the engine doors.’

  ‘Fire in number three,’ broke in Keith, seeing the light on the panel, automatically pushing the extinguisher button and pulling the throttle lever back. ‘Jet pipe temperature rising.’ He closed off the fuel supply to that engine, including the cross-feed cocks to both it and its neighbour. The Vulcan immediately crabbed to the right under the asymmetric power. With full rudder Amos pushed the remaining two port engines to maximum thrust and put the aircraft into a shallow climb. He knew they were almost certainly going to have to abandon and the higher they could get, the better for the crew in the rear compartment.

  ‘Nav radar, nav radar,’ he called Vic. ‘Jettison all bombs. Repeat, jettison all bombs.’

  ‘Roger, Skip.’ There was a lurch as the three remaining bombs fell away. ‘Bombs gone.’

  ‘AEO to Captain: I’ve just had a gander through the periscope. Confirm major fire in the starboard wing.’

  At that moment both starboard warning lights went out.

  ‘Captain to AEO,’ Amos called back. ‘Lights are out. The wiring’s probably burned through. Hang on while I get us another visual from Yogi 2.’

  Terry Meeres was a safe half-mile away to starboard, keeping pace with his stricken companion and also in a shallow climb.

  ‘Yogi 1, your fire’s worse,’ he called. ‘You won’t put it out, Amos. Get out now. I’ll watch and mark you.’

  ‘Roger, Terry.’ Amos cut him off and clicked the intercom switch. ‘Captain to AEO: prepare to abandon. Prepare to abandon.’

  ‘Roger, Boss,’ came Gavin’s matter-of-fact voice. From his tone he might have been agreeing that now was a good time to break for coffee instead of acknowledging that he would shortly have to entrust his life to a large piece of nylon. Even in this crisis Amos felt a pang of pride for the boy’s courage and professionalism.

  What neither he nor anyone else aboard the Vulcans could have observed, however, was one of those fatal mischances that can haunt airmen for the rest of their lives. At the normally safe distance of a mile away and three thousand feet lower, the B-52 was also banking to bring itself around after its latest pass at the target. Its camouflaged swept-back wings were hardly visible against the desert floor. Unnoticed by anyone above, the trajectory of Yogi 1’s three jettisoned bombs met that of the huge aircraft at a closing speed of over five hundred knots, the combined ton of steel and concrete smashing into it behind the cockpit at the wing roots. In an instant the aircraft’s back broke, the main spars crumpling and the wings folding, its fuselage turning turtle. As it broke up the intact nose section with the five crewmen fell separately into a wadi, the rest of the bomber raining down piecemeal within a half-mile radius. An immense cloud of dust and sand billowed up to mark the spot.

  Six thousand feet overhead, all unaware of this, Amos was still trying to keep Yogi 1 under some sort of control. The vibration was increasing, its frequency becoming higher. The juddering was now severe enough to blur vision and it was becoming hard to read the instruments. Further delay would clearly be suicidal.

  ‘Captain to crew: Abandon. Abandon. Abandon.’

  *

  In the rear compartment the ‘abandon aircraft’ panels were now glowing brightly on the console in front of the crew. As nav radar it was Vic Ferrit’s task to go first and open the hatch. By now the vibration in the aircraft was so heavy it was causing g-forces and Vic had to operate the inflatable cushion on his seat to boost him to his feet. Staggering from handhold to handhold like a seaman on a storm-bound trawler, he reached the door lever and rammed it past the emergency detent. To his relief the hatch opened with a bang and daylight exploded into the darkened compartment. He had an impression of a fawn carpet somewhere beyond the brilliant rectangle in the floor and sent the yellow ladder off into space. Thank Christ the landing gear’s not down, he thought; at least we won’t be smashed against the nose leg when we jump. The lowered hatch would now act as a slide and as his eyes adjusted he could see the glow of the fire reflected on the metal, bounced back from the white underside of the Vulcan’s wing. He checked to see that Bob and Gavin were on their feet and ready to follow, gave them a quick thumbs-up and launched himself down and out, tumbling into a confused slamming of light and roaring air until his canopy cracked open and he was wrenched upright and dangling.

  *

  From a safe distance Terry in Yogi 2 watched and relayed his observations to Amos. ‘OK, one’s out . . . two . . . three. They’re all out and they’ve all got good chutes. Go. Good luck.’

  In Yogi 1’s cockpit Amos and Keith hastily pulled out all their connectors. In the instant that Amos released his grip on the control handle the Vulcan became uncontrollable and reared up into the beginning of a stall from which both pilots knew there would be no recovery. Amos indicated to Keith that he was jettisoning the canopy, which promptly flew up and disappeared in a clap of sound. The noise of the airstream and the two port
engines at maximum power suddenly became deafening, yet there was surprisingly little wind buffet inside the cockpit. He signalled ‘Go!’ and with a bang Keith pulled the face-blind handle and vanished in a cloud of cordite smoke. Amos sat as upright as he could to minimise spine damage then punched out himself, the mad blur of explosive acceleration and tearing wind succeeded by a rush of relief as his canopy deployed and he could see his seat tumbling off below. As things stabilised and his brain caught up with him he noted another parachute off to one side and below: Keith, presumably. He strained to see Gavin’s chute but the ground was still revolving and he lost all sense of direction until he spotted the nearly vertical slash of dark smoke standing in the air nearby at whose end a vast wounded arrowhead was plunging earthwards towing a scarlet banner of flame. A second later Yogi 1 dissolved into the desert almost directly below him. He actually heard the sound of the impact through his helmet. A deep crimson fireball instantly erupted through dust clouds. It reminded Amos irrelevantly of a peony in his aunt’s garden. The way the dust and smoke came boiling up towards him and then frayed to one side indicated a stiffish breeze at ground level. This was evidently going to carry him a little way beyond the crash site. He was thankful the aircraft had managed to gain what little extra height it had.

  As he floated down he was aware of the continuing roar of jet engines as Terry Meeres stooged around the crash site in large circles, keeping well above the descending parachutes. But there was no time left for watching the Vulcan. The ground was rapidly coming up to meet him and he concentrated on making a good landing and not breaking a leg on a boulder or coming down in a thorn bush. In the event he made a copybook touchdown, rolling over and smacking the release to prevent himself from being dragged. The canopy billowed, dented and collapsed and he got to his feet and stood there unfastening his helmet and rubbing an elbow. The remains of Yogi 1 were blazing a bare quarter of a mile away, pouring smoke into the bald blue sky with occasional dull explosive thumps. He thought the entire emergency had lasted no more than four minutes: the activity compressed so he could still hardly believe that in so short a time his aircraft had gone from being a triumphant participant in an exercise to an incandescent pyre in the desert. His mind was still trying to catch up with events when he heard the whapping of helicopter blades. Following the sound he saw a twin-rotor H-21 Shawnee approaching, presumably dispatched from the Al Usara radar site. That’s quick off the mark, he thought, assuming it had been alerted by his Mayday call. No doubt it had come to pick up his crew, guided from above by Yogi 2, which was still flying low-level circles over the area. But he was surprised to see the Shawnee settle near another dust cloud a couple of miles away. Still, knowing that his parachute would have been visible, Amos began gathering up the shrouds and canopy. He heard a shout and, looking around, saw Keith approaching with his own chute hastily bunched in his arms. The RAF didn’t approve of pilots returning without their parachutes.

 

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