Vulcan 607

by Rowland White

  It was early days.

  Baldwin told Monty that he wanted his crew to represent the squadron. ‘How do you feel about that?’

  ‘Fine, but I think we’d better start doing some training quickly!’ Monty told him.

  Before finally settling on Montgomery’s crew though, Baldwin needed reassurance on one thing.

  ‘What about Dave?’ he asked.

  Monty’s Nav Radar, Dave Stenhouse, was a hugely popular member of the squadron with a rare talent for instigating mischief then being nowhere to be found when it was time to face the music. As a Radar, Monty reckoned, there was no one to touch him. When he was good. But he wasn’t always good. The Vulcan’s best defence was always to fly down low in valley floors, out of sight and shielded from search radars. Entry into the valleys needed to be finely judged by the Nav Radar. The bomber would approach the ridges surrounding the trough at a right-angle, waiting for a signal to turn from the radar operator. And during the intense work-up for RED FLAG there’d been a wobble. Monty and his crew had flown north before turning towards the Scottish Western Isles and descending to low level. They’d done it a hundred times. But then an urgent demand cut through the laconic, well-practised communication between the five crew members.

  ‘Up the stairs. Quick!’ Monty shouted to Stenhouse over the intercom.

  Stenhouse quickly unbuckled and leapt up the stairs between the two pilots. As he stood, holding on, to look forward through the cockpit windows, Monty pointed out the mountain ahead. Closing at around 300 knots, they were flying straight for Mull’s Ardnamurchan.

  ‘Dave, the next time we fly this, we’re in the bloody dark. Get it wrong and we’re probably going to hit that!’

  But he didn’t get it wrong again, and throughout RED FLAG the Montgomery crew became a confident, effective unit. Five months after the close shave in Mull, Monty didn’t hesitate.

  ‘I think we’re in it as a team, boss.’

  It was enough for Baldwin. ‘I’m happy if you’re happy.’

  ‘It’s all of us or nothing,’ Monty stressed, confident that his mercurial Nav Radar would rise to the occasion. The decision made, it wouldn’t be mentioned again. Not mentioned at all, though, was Monty’s concern that his Air Electronics Officer, Squadron Leader John Hathaway, appeared to be going deaf. He seemed to struggle with the RT – instructions needed to be repeated. But he was a good AEO. He’d be OK. Making up the crew were the co-pilot, Bill Perrins, and Flight Lieutenant Dick Arnott, the sharp-dressing Nav Plotter. Monty still felt a twinge of guilt. What, he wondered, am I getting them into?

  On the morning of Easter Monday, Baldwin joined John Laycock and the Commanding Officers of 101 and IX Squadrons in the Ops block to choose the crews. Above the door, a plastic sign read ‘ROYAL AIR FORCE WADDINGTON OPERATIONS’, blue lettering against a white background. Inside the front entrance were dark, polished wooden boards listing decorations, aircraft types and station commanders. Among the latter, in gold calligraphy, were names that spoke of a different era: Twistleton-Wykeham-Ffiennes, Bonham-Carter and Dado-Langlois. At the end of the list was Laycock’s name. His office was down a corridor to the left of the boards, one of the few rooms in the cobbled-together building that had windows providing natural light and a view of the world outside. And there, around a conference table, was where the four senior officers met.

  Laycock asked the three squadron bosses to nominate their top crews, while he spoke for 50 Squadron in the absence of their CO, Wing Commander Chris Lumb – away on leave. They looked at overall experience, experience on aircraft type, bombing competitions, RED FLAG, the reputations of the Nav teams and soon a consensus emerged. Crews were almost self-selecting. Martin Withers and Monty were just back from RED FLAG. Both were QFIs – Qualified Flying Instructors – and, as a result, had experience in flying formation – what, in essence, successful air-to-air refuelling is all about. That was 101 and 44 accounted for. Brian Gardner from IX Squadron and Chris Lumb himself had also been on the deployment. Gardner was added to the list, but Lumb was ruled out by his seniority.

  ‘I will not have any Vulcan Wing Commanders down at Ascension throwing their weight around,’ Laycock had been told by Air Vice-Marshal Knight at 1 Group. ‘The most senior rank you will have in your crews is Squadron Leader.’

  With his hand forced, Laycock chose Squadron Leader Neil McDougall’s crew instead. McDougall hadn’t been to Nevada, but he had more experience flying Vulcans than nearly anyone else on the station. Laycock knew him well and had flown with him recently. The big Scot with the tinder-dry sense of humour got Laycock’s vote. But only until Chris Lumb returned to Waddington the next day. Once Lumb, with the greatest of reluctance, had removed himself from the list, he queried McDougall’s presence.

  ‘I’m surprised you selected Neil,’ he told Laycock, encouraged by the Station Commander’s invitation to speak his mind. ‘I didn’t rate him as highly as a couple of my other guys.’

  ‘Well, who?’ Laycock asked him.

  ‘John Reeve.’

  ‘Well, I’ve known Neil for fourteen years,’ Laycock countered, ‘and I’ve watched him operate in some particularly difficult conditions during the winter of ’78. I’ve got the highest regard for his captaincy skills.’

  In the end, though, it was Lumb’s call. Laycock didn’t know as much about Reeve himself but, aware of the experience and ability found throughout his crew, was happy to defer to the 50 Squadron boss. It soon became academic, in any case, with the news from 1 Group that Marham’s stretched tanker resources wouldn’t be able to support the training of more than three crews. Neil McDougall dropped down the pecking order to become the reserve captain, replaced by Squadron Leader John Reeve.

  ‘Really?’ queried Monty when Baldwin told him, unable to mask his surprise. He wasn’t sure. He’d flown as Reeve’s co-pilot in Cyprus years earlier. He remembered him as a decent enough pilot, but, he worried, Reeve might go at this a bit like a bull in a china shop.

  Squadron Leader Bob Tuxford had been on his new squadron for barely a week. He wasn’t too pleased about the move from 57 either. But with an influx of ex-Vulcan personnel, 55 was short on tanking experience. And he had plenty of that. Since joining the RAF in the late 1960s he’d become one of the youngest captains in the V-force, gaining command after just two years as a co-pilot. After a three-year exchange posting in California flying KC-135s for the USAF, he’d returned to the RAF as a QFI on Jet Provosts out of Leeming. Since 1980, Tux had been back with the ‘tanker trash’. He was a tall, stylish man with dark hair that swept back from a widow’s peak; his own paintings hung on the walls of a beautifully presented home. Tux’s self-possession could ruffle feathers, but no one doubted his ability, least of all the Station Commander, Jerry Price, who’d known him since they’d flown together in the early 1970s.

  Price summoned Tux to the Marham Ops Centre in the evening of Easter Sunday. When Marham had been ordered to prepare for CORPORATE, there was only one Victor crew with a current qualification for day and night tanking and receiving. That had to change if the Victors were going to reach the South Atlantic. They would need to take fuel from each other in a complex long-range relay to cover the distance. There followed an unprecedented, intensive effort to bring every crew on the station up to speed. All week, Victor K2s had been streaming into the refuelling areas over the North Sea and later that night it was Tux’s turn. He was scheduled to head out to towline 6, a rectangular slice of airspace just off the East Anglian coast, bang in ten contacts and come home night-qualified. Up and down in less than two hours, he thought. First of all, though, he had to go and meet Jerry Price.

  Inside Ops, Tux was greeted by a tangle of jagged-looking metal scattered across the floor: old F95 cameras. Wrestling with the sorry-looking pile were two technicians from RAF Wyton, home of the Air Force’s reconnaissance squadrons. What’s going on here?, wondered Tuxford, eyeing what looked like a pile of Meccano. Jerry Price explained. Marham’s twenty-three Victors w
ere the only asset the RAF could deploy as far south as the Falklands. Anything that was going to be done had to be done by them. Price, along with the two Squadron Commanders, had chosen three Captains to fly low-level photographic reconnaissance missions in the Victors: Tux, Squadron Leader Martin Todd and Squadron Leader John Elliott. As Tux was the most recently qualified QFI, with the most recent low-level experience flying the little Jet Provosts, Price wanted him to fly with both Todd and Elliott on their first sorties. Nothing was said about what they might be taking pictures of, but a shortlist seemed obvious. He and the two other captains were being singled out to spearhead Marham’s effort. There was already an atmosphere of excitement and purpose on the base caused by the invasion of the Falklands, but this was going to be vastly different to the usual routine.

  Then Jerry Price told him he could hand-pick his own crew. Walking into the crewroom and saying, I want you, you and you, Tuxford thought, was going to be worth the price of entry alone. A few names sprung immediately to mind.

  Squadron Leader Ernie Wallis was a Marham institution. He’d seen it all. Now a sandy-haired 52-year-old veteran, he’d been a Nav Radar on the tanker force since the late 1950s, when Michael Beetham had been his squadron boss. He’d flown out of Nigeria in support of Beetham’s record-breaking long-range flights to Africa and helped develop the three-point ‘triple nipple’ Victor tanker – work that had earned him an MBE. In 1979, after twenty-one years at Marham, he was awarded the ‘Freedom of the Station’ – although in typically self-deprecating style, he wondered aloud whether it was because he was indispensable or only because the Air Force couldn’t think what else to do with him. He knew more about how the Victor’s refuelling equipment worked than anyone else at Marham. When there was a problem, if Ernie couldn’t either rectify it or circumvent it, no one could. He definitely deserved the accolade ‘Mr Flight Refuelling’. The Nav Leader of 55 Squadron, he was first on Tuxford’s list.

  In return for Tux’s faith in him, he viewed the self-assured pilot affectionately as ‘a pain in the arse’, in the same way that a teacher might regard a naughty, but likeable pupil.

  On the V-force, navigators came in pairs and Wallis was part of a double-act with Flight Lieutenant John Keable. Both men were well known for their sense of humour, both always ready with a quick quip or retort. Tux knew them both well socially through the Mess and was sure he was picking the best team – their selection was a foregone conclusion.

  Tux was still new to 55 and hadn’t had time to see everyone at work. But the squadron boss’s hard-working co-pilot, the stocky, dependable Flight Lieutenant Glyn Rees, was the most experienced co-pilot on the squadron. He looked like a good bet.

  As AEO he picked his mate, the not inappropriately named Mick Beer. Squadron Leader Mick Beer was a social animal, one of a group of fellow officers who could end up back at Tux’s house for Sunday lunch. Tux’s wife Eileen was used to it. Whatever food there was would end up shared between sixteen of them. But if the Tuxfords were regularly eaten out of house and home, at least they were never out of drink. None of their guests would dream of arriving without booze, least of all Mick Beer. The tall, broad-shouldered AEO may not have had as much experience on the Marham tanker force as some, but he’d got time on the old Victor SR2 reconnaissance squadron. He was a good AEO and Tux knew he could rely on him. In the air and at the bar.

  Beer, of course, was also regarded by Wallis as a ‘pain in the arse’.

  Chapter 12

  13 April 1982

  On Tuesday morning, Tux, taking the place of the regular co-pilot, strode out to the Victor K2 with Martin Todd and the three members of the rear crew. Their mission was to familiarize themselves with the big four-jet tanker at low level and trial the makeshift camera fitting, mounted behind the glass panels of the visual bomb-aiming position in the nose. To do so they would be conducting simulated attacks on the sea cliffs of north Yorkshire’s Flamborough Head – a feature that was going to receive a great deal more aggressive attention from the RAF over the weeks to come.

  XL192 sat camouflaged and ready on the Marham pan, fussed over by a team of ground engineers and technicians, all marshalled by a crew chief – the man with responsibility for the old jet’s well-being. On the Tarmac, still attached by cables to ground equipment, the Victor resembled a bird with broken wings. Her unique, once celebrated, crescent wings sloped down from the fuselage towards the ground in search of support, their clean lines broken up by underslung refuelling pods and fuel tanks. Hunched above the squat undercarriage, her white belly barely clearing the Tarmac underneath, she was all lumps and bumps and afterthoughts. But, like an albatross awkward on terra firma, she needed to fly. Once in the air she had a presence to rival the Vulcan. Her high dihedral T-tail and swept, tapering wings were graceful and elegant. Her distinctive nose, apparently stolen from the rocketships of Buster Crabbe-era Flash Gordon, gave her a purposeful look. A 1950s vision of the future.

  Designed to the same 1940s Air Staff Requirement as the Vulcan, she was the last of the V-bombers to fly. Sir Frederick Handley Page, a giant of the British aviation industry, was stung by the superiority of the Avro Lancaster’s performance over his own wartime four-engined heavy, the Halifax. The company that bore his name didn’t let it happen again. The Handley Page Victor could carry nearly twice the bomb load of the Vulcan and she was faster too – in 1957, test pilots took her through Mach 1, much to the annoyance of the team developing the Vulcan. At the time she was the largest aircraft ever to have broken the sound barrier – and the Observer, sitting in one of the rear-facing crew seats, the first man to break it travelling backwards. Rivalry between Avro and Handley Page was intense. Crowds at Farnborough were the beneficiaries as the two bombers slugged it out, performing rolls, loops and high-speed Immelman turns – manoeuvres never before seen in aircraft of their great size and weight. Sir Frederick – or HP as he was known – left nothing to chance in competing for the affections of the public and the Ministry of Supply. He even chose a special colour scheme. The Victor prototype was painted in a striking matt black finish, set off with silver wings and tail. A distinctive red cheatline ran from nose to tail. His futuristic new bomber looked stunning.

  The Victor was built to slice through the sky at 60,000 feet – twice the height of today’s commercial airliners – untroubled by the fighters of the day. But when Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane was shot down by a Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile ‘above 68,000 feet’ over Sverdlovsk, Russia, in 1960, it was obvious that altitude alone no longer offered the V-force any security. The decision to switch to low-level operations was quickly taken, and it was a decision that would have major consequences for the Victor.

  It was the first of the V-bombers, the Vickers Valiant, that suffered most as a result of the new flight regime. In 1964, a crew were lucky to escape with their lives when, during a training flight, their Valiant was rocked by a loud bang followed by a shaking throughout the aircraft. The pilots were able to bring the bomber home safely, but it was clear when the jet came to a standstill that the starboard wing was sagging. When engineers examined her, they found that the rear wing spar had cracked in flight. Urgent inspections on the rest of the RAF’s Valiants showed all bar one to have signs of similar damage. The entire fleet was grounded for good, leaving the RAF without an airborne tanker barely five years after Beetham’s 214 Squadron had proven the new capability.

  The Victor, able to carry its own weight in fuel, was chosen to fill the breach. But the Victor’s great load-carrying ability was not the only reason for the decision. Like the Valiant, the Victor’s airframe stood up less well to flying in the thick, gusty air at low level, where the bomber force was now confined, than the Vulcan’s more robust, rigid delta. Crews pulling the Victor into a fast, steep climb from low down – a manoeuvre designed to simulate the release of a weapon – could hear the wings crack under the strain. The Victor, with her more flexible, shock-absorbing wings, was easier on her crews at low level than her
Avro rival, but stress was killing her and, had it been allowed to continue, it probably would have killed her crews too. By the end of the 1960s, the last Victor bomber squadron was disbanded. Of the three V-bomber designs, the Vulcan was left to soldier on alone. The Victor’s future with her wings clipped, her bomb bay sealed and her defensive Electronic Countermeasures stripped out lay in tanking at medium altitude.

  But now Tux relished the chance to take a Victor down low again. Providing they stayed inside the prescribed fatigue limits, a few flights ‘in the weeds’ weren’t going to hurt. They may have been uncomfortable, difficult to handle and hard to see out of, but he had huge respect for the old jets. He admired them. The RAF needed to provide long-range reconnaissance and the Marham tankers, with their Heath Robinson collection of hastily installed cameras, were the only option available.

  Ten-year-old Leona Vidal had had her heart set on it. For weeks she had been nipping into Stanley’s West Store to gaze longingly at the black Raleigh Chopper with the silver lettering. The classic push-bike design with its long Easy Rider handlebars and stick-shift Sturmey-Archer gears made her heart beat a little faster. But she knew that her mother Eileen, the islands’ radio operator, couldn’t afford it. Eileen, though, had other ideas. Signing up to a hire purchase payment scheme she bought her daughter the bike she so coveted. It became her pride and joy. For two months she cleaned it every day until, kept in the yard at the front of the house, it gleamed.

  On Tuesday the 13th, she woke up to a beautiful cold, calm, clear Falklands day – the kind that in years to come she would tell people helped make Stanley such a great place to grow up. Or had done.

  That morning, her bike was gone from the yard; taken, during the night, by Argentine troops whose numbers seemed to grow with every passing day. How could anyone do that to a little girl?, she wondered. What possible use could a kid’s bike be to them?