Vulcan 607

by Rowland White

  His Nimrods had painstakingly steered HMS Splendid to within striking distance of a Soviet boat. At Northwood, his team had been poring over the analysis of the tapes made by his aircraft, examining the signature of the boat, looking for new developments. And now, just as he thought the operation was about to pay off, the Navy were pulling their boat out. A bitterly disappointed Chesworth berated his naval counterpart.

  ‘It’s not our fault’ was the only explanation he was given.

  The decision was out of the Navy’s hands. Political. And no one could tell him why. But by the time Chesworth travelled north with his family to their cottage in Scotland the following weekend, he, like everyone else in the country, knew exactly where the problem lay.

  The MoD was finally acting on the contingency plans that had so depressed the Defence Secretary, John Nott, when he’d first read them a week earlier. He’d returned from the NATO summit in America to realize that the South Georgia situation had escalated. Over the weekend he read intelligence reports telling him that two Argentine destroyers armed with Exocet missiles had been ordered to sea following the diversion of Endurance to Grytviken. Nott decided it was time to send the submarines. Splendid was the second submarine being prepared to head south. Her sister ship, HMS Spartan, had been ordered into Gibraltar docks to take on stores on Monday. But with the Argentine fleet already at sea, there was nothing either boat would be able to do to stop the invasion. Without expecting to unearth anything that hadn’t already been considered and dismissed, Nott discussed other possibilities with Sir Michael Beetham – with the Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Terry Lewin, in New Zealand, the Chief of the Air Staff was holding the reins. Could the Falklands garrison destroy the runway to prevent the Argentinians flying in men and equipment? They didn’t have the explosives to do it. Could the Parachute Regiment be flown into the islands by C-130? The dependable old workhorses of RAF’s transport fleet simply didn’t have the range to cover the vast distances involved. The only comfort was a false one. Both men believed they were still discussing contingencies. At this point neither Nott nor Beetham knew that the Argentine invasion force was just a day away from the islands.

  By six o’clock the following evening, they were in no doubt.

  The Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sir Henry Leach, returned to his office in Whitehall from a visit to the Admiralty Surface Weapons Establishment at Portsdown Hill. He’d been forced to cancel the trip three times already because of complications arising from a Defence Review that he believed would decimate the Royal Navy. Waiting on his desk was an intelligence report that stated unequivocally that an Argentine invasion of the Falklands was likely to take place before dawn on Friday, 2 April. Accompanying it were a number of briefs counselling that no more should be done. Leach had joined the Navy as a thirteen-year-old cadet in 1937. A sailor of the engage-the-enemy-more-closely Nelsonian tradition, Leach found the contradictory signals baffling and nonsensical. What the hell is the point of having a Navy, he thought, if it was not used for this sort of thing?, and he strode off to find John Nott, his nemesis over the offending defence review. But the Defence Secretary wasn’t in his office. Alarmed by the same intelligence seen by Leach, he was already in the Prime Minister’s room in the House of Commons, briefing her on the situation. Leach was invited in. The Defence Chiefs normally conducted their business in Whitehall in civilian business suits. Uniform was reserved for when a point needed to be made, but, just back from an official visit, Leach was wearing his naval uniform. Coincidentally, he also had a point to make.

  ‘Admiral, what do you think?’ he was asked.

  Leach was unstinting: everything suggested the islands would be invaded in the next few days. Nothing could now be done to deter the Argentinians and nothing could be done to stop them. To recover the islands or not was a political decision, but to do so would require a large naval task force. He went on to outline the ships that could make up the task force. Questions came quickly. How quickly could a task force be assembled? How long would the task force take to get to the Falkland Islands? What about air cover? Then came the one that really mattered.

  ‘Could we really recapture the islands if they were invaded?’

  ‘Yes,’ Leach answered deliberately, ‘we could and in my judgement – though it is not my business to say so – we should.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ the Prime Minister came back quickly.

  Leach finished with a flourish. ‘Because if we do not, or if we pussyfoot in our actions and do not achieve complete success, in another few months we shall be living in a different country whose word counts for little.’

  Margaret Thatcher nodded and Leach thought she looked relieved. He left with orders to sail a third attack submarine south and with full authority to prepare a task force he’d said could be ready in forty-eight hours.

  The Prime Minister turned to her Defence Secretary. ‘I suppose you realize, John,’ she said, ‘that this is going to be the worst week of our lives.’

  ‘Well, that may be so,’ Nott responded, ‘but I imagine that each successive week will be worse than the last,’ and felt immediately that his reply was less than helpful.

  Back in his office at the MoD, Leach telephoned Sir Michael Beetham. The news of the Admiral’s decisive intervention caught Beetham on the back foot. Ideally, he and Leach would have spoken beforehand, but it was clear Leach’s action had been unplanned – a consequence of events developing a momentum of their own.

  With the invasion now inevitable, Endurance was ordered to return from South Georgia to Stanley, leaving behind her force of twenty-two Royal Marines to defend the island should the Argentine mission – still operating under the cover of Davidoff’s scrap dealers – make its intention clear. Captain Barker was mindful of the odds stacked against the meagre contingent of Marines.

  ‘In three weeks’ time this place is going to be surrounded by tall grey ships, but we’re not going to be able to help you if you’re dead,’ Barker told Lieutenant Mills, the young officer in command of the soldiers. He went on to suggest that about half an hour’s spirited resistance before surrendering to overwhelming Argentine forces might be about right.

  ‘Fuck half an hour,’ Mills was overheard saying as he disembarked. ‘I’m going to make their eyes water.’

  That night, ‘Red Plum’ slipped away from South Georgia to the east, hugging the jagged shoreline to avoid being picked up on Argentine radar.

  Chapter 6

  1 April 1982

  A 25lb gold-painted bomb enjoyed pride of place in Flight Lieutenant Mick Cooper’s house. Since he joined the Air Force, bombing had been his obsession. And he was good at it too. Throughout the 1970s Cooper’s reputation as a bomb-aimer had grown steadily. The bomb he now displayed at home had been blagged by his crew, a gift to mark Cooper’s outstanding performance in the RAF’s annual bombing competition against the Americans. Contemporary newspaper reports described Cooper, brought up in Essex, as a ‘cockney bombing ace’. By 1982, the chain-smoking Navigator Radar with the straggly red hair was, perhaps, the best in the business and that was all he ever wanted to be. His Captain on 50 Squadron reckoned the ‘Green Porridge’, the glowing cathode ray tube that displayed Cooper’s radar picture, spoke to him. The RAF may have regarded him as ‘overspecialized’, but so what. His job was to get the bomb on target. End of story. The Vulcan was simply transport, its sole purpose to get him to the right place to drop a nuclear bomb.

  Cooper would tell people he regretted never having had the chance to do just that. It wasn’t Armageddon he was after, just the satisfaction of knowing he could do the job he’d been trained to do.

  In spring 1982, though, with the Cold War reaching its endgame, the possibility that he’d get his chance felt very real. Brezhnev was still General Secretary of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union’s three-year-old invasion of Afghanistan provided a reminder of how high the stakes were – as if the vast armies, air forces and navies t
hat faced each other, waiting for their opponent to blink, weren’t reminder enough. In Britain, the publication of Raymond Briggs’ graphic novel When the Wind Blows vividly reflected many people’s genuine fear. Just around the corner lay Ronald Reagan’s description of the USSR as the ‘Evil Empire’. And yet despite the ratcheting up of East–West tension, Cooper wasn’t going to get to do his job in a V-bomber. By summer, the last four Vulcan squadrons would be gone and RAF Waddington reduced to care and maintenance. On the far side of the station – an old Second World War bomber base built on fens south of Lincoln – decommissioned Vulcans were already being torn apart for scrap. Sitting unloved with panels missing and wires hanging off them, they were a sorry sight for long-serving crews who regarded the old jets with fondness.

  Despite the destruction, morale on the station was still high. For the time being, Cold War notwithstanding, a flying club atmosphere persisted. Waddington had its own golf course and, of course, its own Officer i/c Golf. Work hard, play hard. Many of the men had been on the Vulcan force for years. Squadrons shuffled around and nearly everyone had been on the same squadron as nearly everyone else at some point in his career. With responsibility for Britain’s nuclear deterrent in the hands of the Navy, the crews usually had weekends off, so Friday night’s Happy Hour became a focal point. It usually carried on all night. Formal dining in the evening also provided opportunities to let off steam. And the sight of well-lubricated bomber crews performing ‘carrier landings’, launching themselves off tables through the windows of the Officers’ Mess, would have struck a chord with anyone who’d watched similar scenes of chaos in movies like The Dambusters. Boys will be boys.

  Mick Cooper wasn’t sure about it all. He liked a glass of wine over dinner with his wife Sharon, but didn’t care for being a piss artist. It didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy a joke though.

  As he sat reading the alarming-sounding headlines on 1 April, he couldn’t resist the temptation to make mischief. It was April Fools’ Day after all, and Argentine designs on British islands in the South Atlantic all seemed so far away and unlikely. Cooper phoned the station Medical Officer and told him he was going to ring around the squadron and ask who had 1,000lb conventional bombing experience and was fully jabbed up for the South Atlantic. Would the MO go along with it, he asked. The Doc agreed to and Cooper began asking for volunteers.

  Two weeks later it would no longer seem so funny. And the joke would, in any case, be very firmly on Cooper himself.

  ‘This is the worst day of my life,’ wrote Captain Nick Barker as Endurance steamed impotently between South Georgia and the Falklands into a force ten gale. The bottom line was that he and his ship couldn’t be in two places at once. Barker had left South Georgia reluctantly, feeling that, lightly armed as she was, at least here Endurance and her Wasp helicopters could influence events – even stop any Argentine aggression in its tracks. Barker spoke to his tactical team aboard Endurance, his words reflecting the desperate frustration he felt: ‘There must be something we can do to zap these bastards.’

  The options were limited. They could try to enter Stanley harbour in the face of the Argentine task force and stall an invasion that would already be well under way. Probably suicidal. Or they could try ramming the Argentine support tanker using Endurance’s reinforced, ice-breaking bow. Without fuel, the Argentine fleet might be vulnerable to his little Wasps with their AS12 wire-guided missiles. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was better than nothing. Endurance ploughed on west through the storm.

  In London, despite Leach’s bravura performance, there was still unease about sending a task force. Because of the strength of feeling there had been over the Defence Review, John Nott couldn’t quite bring himself to accept Leach’s judgement at face value. Sir Michael Beetham, too, urged caution. If the fleet sailed it would be a minimum of three weeks before it arrived off the islands. Three weeks of inactivity with the world watching seemed to make them a hostage to fortune. Beetham also worried that, without being able to guarantee air superiority through what would be a comparatively tiny force of Sea Harriers, an amphibious landing might not even be practical. But in an atmosphere where a feeling that we must do something held sway, the reservations of both Beetham and the country’s senior soldier, Chief of the General Staff, Field Marshal Sir Edwin Bramall, were swept aside.

  ‘Look,’ said Margaret Thatcher, cutting across the debate to settle the matter, ‘we’re not committing anything, just sailing.’

  Any decision to actually use the Task Force could be made later. Who could object to that?, Beetham thought, his mind already turning to the formidable problems the distances posed to the use of airpower.

  Eighteen hours after she’d put in to Faslane, HMS Splendid sailed out of the Clyde and dived off the Isle of Arran. Not a single item of stores was outstanding and she carried a full load of torpedoes. As she headed south through the Irish Sea, the submarine’s crew tested everything, checking every bit of kit. By lunchtime they were at periscope depth between Fastnet and the Welsh coast. Roger Lane-Nott tuned in to Radio 4’s The World at One. As he listened, the new reality hit him. This was no longer some show of strength. An enemy would be trying to sink him and he would have to try to sink them.

  Splendid dived deeper. As soon as she was clear of the continental shelf, Lane-Nott ordered maximum revolutions. Full-power state. They were on their way.

  On the Falklands, the day before the invasion, there was an air of unreality. Everyone felt something terrible was just around the corner and yet nothing really tangible had happened. The previous day Gerald Cheek had been up at the airfield with one of the islands’ Cable and Wireless engineers when the regular LADE flight came. The engineer could tell from the boxes that it was Collins’ radio gear and went to take a closer look. The Argentinians wouldn’t let him near it.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ he said to Cheek, ‘but they’ve brought in some very sophisticated equipment on that flight.’ What did that mean though? A member of the FIDF, the Falkland Islands Defence Force, Cheek found out at 4.30 p.m. the next day when he was summoned to Government House by Sir Rex Hunt, the Governor of the islands. A similar outfit to the Second World War’s Home Guard, the FIDF prepared themselves for the invasion. Along with six others, Cheek moved up to the racecourse. At 7 p.m., the FIGAS Islander landed there, approaching low over Stanley. They planned to fly a reconnaissance sortie at first light the next morning. Armed with standard British Army SLR assault rifles and general-purpose machine-guns (GPMGs), they had orders from Hunt to shoot down any Argentine helicopters that might try to land.

  Peter Biggs, just six days into a new job as the Falkland Islands government taxation officer, was still in the dark. He left his pregnant wife Fran at home to go for a run. On his way back as he jogged down Sapper’s Hill, he passed a marine, carrying an SLR, who seemed to jump several feet in the air as Biggs ran up behind him and passed him. Why so jumpy?, he wondered.

  Half an hour later, it all became clear.

  With the decision to send the Task Force made, Beetham focused on the possible contribution the RAF could make to the islands’ recapture. But with the distances involved, the use of air power was going to be, he thought, bloody difficult. The Falklands were as far from London as Hawaii.

  He consulted his closest adviser, Assistant Chief of the Air Staff (Operations), Air Vice-Marshal Ken Hayr. An intellectually acute New Zealander with a carefully groomed moustache and dapper appearance, Hayr could have passed for David Niven’s brother. The two of them chewed over the difficulties and spoke with other senior staff to discuss the options, continually asking themselves the questions: How can we help? What can we do? At such extreme range there were simply no easy answers. In fact, on the day of the invasion there was only one aircraft in the entire Air Force fleet that even had the ability to fly to the Falklands and back from a friendly base: the Handley Page Victor K2. Along with the Vulcan and a third bomber, the Vickers Valiant, the Victor had made up the RAF
’s V-bomber force. For the last ten years, though, the remaining Victors had served exclusively as air-to-air refuelling tankers. It was this ability to transfer fuel while airborne that now made them so crucial. The Navy were on their way though, and Beetham asked Leach what the Air Force could do to support their efforts. Leach had seized the opportunity for the Navy to show its value and, consequently, demonstrate the wrong-headedness of Nott’s proposed cuts. He asked Beetham for just three C-130 Hercules transports to provide logistical support for the fleet. Trying to anticipate events, Beetham thought that such a small number would be inadequate – if not absurd – and told Hayr: ‘Get the whole of the transport fleet on standby, recall them from wherever they are, we’re going to need a big effort!’

  One other thing was also immediately clear. If the RAF was going to contribute anything at all beyond ferrying kit around for the Navy, that effort was going to involve the sleepy little mid-Atlantic outpost of Ascension Island. Many people were now discovering its existence for the first time. Almost exactly equidistant between Britain and the Falklands, this tiny little volcanic island with its very long runway was, at the very least, Beetham thought, bloody convenient.

  John Smith’s wife Ileen and their daughter Anya were trying to make a trifle without success when, at 8.15 local time, the evening’s programming on FIBS, the Falkland Islands Broadcasting Service, was interrupted. The Governor had an important announcement to make. Unaware of what was coming, the Canadian announcer Mike Smallwood didn’t quite strike the right tone: ‘Get your ears tuned in for the Governor, folks.’

  ‘Good evening,’ Hunt began, before explaining the situation in detail. ‘There is mounting evidence that the Argentine armed forces are preparing to invade the Falkland Islands.’ He asked people to stay calm, stay off the streets and keep listening to FIBS. The British government, he told them, was seeking an immediate meeting of the UN Security Council, but if that failed to halt the Argentinians, ‘I expect to have to declare a state of emergency, perhaps before dawn tomorrow.’ But there was never any possibility of reprieve at this stage. The Argentine junta, faced with riots on the streets of Buenos Aires, had already played their joker, announcing that ‘by tomorrow, Las Malvinas will be ours’. There was no pulling back from such a statement.