Hullo Russia, Goodbye England

by Derek Robinson

  “Not Ben Nevis,” Young said. “Too many tourists in gym shoes. It once had a hotel at the top. Imagine that. A hotel... I prefer the Northern Highlands. There’s a peak called Suilven...”

  At that height, through the cockpit window, Scotland was unseen. When Young got a course change from the back room and gently banked the bomber, Scotland might be glimpsed. From eight miles high it looked as flat as a map.

  Talk about mountaineering whiled away the time until they reached Benbecula and then it was all business: steady cruising at fixed heights and speeds and bearings while Dando switched his black boxes on and off, and 81 Signals Unit got washed in their electronic energy. Then Young turned north. Their flight plan took them clockwise around the coast of Scotland, and finally south to East Anglia and Kindrick. Routine trip. Not even a mock interception by Hunter fighters. Maybe Fighter Command had lost the hangar key.

  “Good,” Silk said to Young. “I have control.”

  Young sat back and poured himself some coffee. Silk got a course change to 075 degrees: just north of east. “Landfall at Cape Wrath,” Hallett said. Silk did nothing. Hallett repeated the new bearing. “Tell you what,” Silk said. “Let’s go and look at the scenic grandeur which our second pilot so much admires. What’s a nice juicy sea loch near here?” he asked Young.

  “Sea loch... Let me think... Well, Loch Laxford is due east of us, maybe a bit south.”

  “I need a course to Loch Laxford, Jack.”

  “Give me a second, skip.”

  Silk put the Vulcan into a wide, descending spiral. When he got the new course he was down to thirty thousand feet. “You know this isn’t on our flight plan, Skip,” Hallett said.

  “No, I don’t,” Silk said, “but you whistle the opening bars and I’ll pick it up as we go along.”

  Not even an old joke: a very old joke. Nobody laughed. Nobody spoke as Silk kept circling and losing height. At ten thousand feet he straightened out and made a shallow dive towards the mainland. When he entered Loch Laxford he was down to five thousand: still a mile high. “Damn letterbox windscreens,” he said. “No good to man nor beast.” He banked, steeply this time, and flew out to sea. When he returned, the bomber was low, and getting lower. “Nav radar to pilot,” Tucker said. “Altitude six hundred and falling.”

  “You talk to them,” Silk said. “I’m too busy driving.”

  He flew into the long, twisting valley of Loch Laxford at a leisurely 250 knots and 400 feet above the water. There were islands, not big, not high, and the land on either side was rugged but not threatening. “I see what you mean,” he said. “Quite delightful.” In shadow, the loch was grey; in sunlight it was green and blue. Loch Laxford was five miles long; the Vulcan covered it in a little over a minute.

  “Mountains ahead,” Hallett said.

  “We see them,” Young said.

  “Which do you recommend?” Silk asked him.

  “Ben Stack. Go dead ahead, follow the road, four or five miles, you can’t miss it, I mean give it lots of space, it’s two thousand feet high and close to the road.” Young heard the rapid-fire tension in his voice and told himself to be calm.

  “Altitude four hundred and fifty,” Dando said.

  Ben Stack was a magnificent hulk, and Silk showed it respect by keeping a quarter-mile distance as he circled it. The Vulcan had used a lot of fuel; it performed better now it was lighter. “Impressive,” Silk said, “but not majestic. What’s next?”

  “Steer one-nine-zero,” Young said. “Skip: are we doing a low-flying exercise?”

  “Mountains ahead, thirteen hundred feet,” Hallett said.

  “We see them. That’s Ben Strome, steer east of it,” Young told Silk. “Look for the lochs, they’re near sea level, it’s safer there.” Silk nudged the Vulcan away from Ben Strome. Young said, “Is this an official low-level job?”

  “What a lot of heather. Let’s say it’s a pioneering low-level job.”

  The Vulcan swept around the flanks of Ben Strome and turned south, briefly chasing its shadow across acres of peat bog.

  “Mountains coming up,” Hallett said. “Many mountains, and high.”

  “That’s Quinag,” Young said. “You must be extra careful here.”

  Silk skipped over a couple of lochs and a road, and lined up the Quinag range. “Doesn’t look much,” he said.

  “Please, please, do a circuit. Look it over first.”

  Silk dropped his speed to 200 knots and prowled all around Quinag. “See what you mean,” he said. “Several peaks.”

  “Five high ones, up to twenty-six hundred feet. Steep isn’t the word. On a good day, the view of Eddrachilis Bay is ... I wouldn’t swap all of England for it.”

  “Isn’t that a little loch?” Silk dipped a wingtip to improve their view. Sun glinted on water, deep in the black heart of Quinag. “There’s a big valley leading up to it. That’s a glen, isn’t it?”

  “With a sheer wall at the far end.”

  “Vulcans climb walls. Didn’t they teach you that at your OCU?”

  He banked and flew at Quinag, opening the throttles until the speed neared 300 knots. The glen was vast. It seemed to swallow the Vulcan. More throttle, but no more height. Young had the illusion that the bomber was skimming the stream that led to the little loch, an illusion created by the rising sides of the mountains as they narrowed the glen. He told himself it would be a painless death, smeared over two thousand feet of vertical sandstone. That was when Silk gave full throttle and pulled the control stick back and the Vulcan stood on its tail and left Quinag standing.

  They levelled out a five thousand feet. “Always a pleasure,” Silk said. “I could get to enjoy this mountaineering game. Now where’s your favourite peak? Where’s Suilven?”

  When Young first set out to climb Suilven, he didn’t know it was perhaps the most remote mountain in Britain. He took a day just to cross the wilderness surrounding it. Broken peat bogs, flat jungles of deep heather, erratic sheep trails that faded to nothing; and the weather was foul. He camped under the awesome heights, streaked silver by the run-off of rain. Next day, typical Highland weather: beautiful. He climbed the mountain and walked its ridge, a dozen roller-coaster miles, much of it knife-edged. When he wasn’t terrified he was bewitched. Then the rains returned: another wilderness slog. Three secret, sacred days.

  Silk did Suilven in eight minutes.

  After that he did the An Teallach range, wandered around the coast and did the Beinn Alligin ridge, hopped over Wester Ross and stooged down Loch Carron and up Loch Alsh, frightening the yachtsmen, and did the Five Sisters of Kintail.

  “I don’t want to spoil your fun, skip,” Hallet said, “but this ultra-low-level stuff must be drinking our fuel like there’s no tomorrow.”

  “Glencoe,” Silk said. “Can’t leave out Glencoe.”

  “You do Glencoe,” Dando said, “and we might not reach Kindrick.”

  “Glencoe tops are probably fogged in,” Young said. “They often are.”

  Silk took the Vulcan up to three thousand. “You drive,” he said. “I’m knackered.”

  “Steer one-six-five,” Hallett said.

  5

  The identification letters and numbers on the fin of the aircraft were easily readable. Bird watchers on Ben Strome had binoculars; they looked down on Silk’s Vulcan thundering past and abandoned any hope of seeing snow buntings, peregrine falcons, greenshank or golden eagle. They scrambled down the slopes and looked for a telephone. Theirs was one of a stream of complaints that reached Air Ministry.

  While the Vulcan was still cruising south, Freddy phoned Pulvertaft, gave him the ident and was not surprised to hear that Silk was the pilot.

  “How low?” Pulvertaft asked. Freddy told him. “The man has a death-wish,” Pulvertaft said. “He’s a menace. I’ll place him under close arrest the minute his wheels touch down. I don’t want to prejudge, but he’ll be stripped of his commission and go to prison, that I can guarantee.”

  “Wait. We st
ill have a little time,” Freddy said. “Do nothing. It’s not as simple as it looks. I had enough trouble with Skull. Silko could be infinitely worse. I’ll call you again in fifteen minutes.”

  He talked to a few colleagues, veterans of crises, and then got back to Pulvertaft. “Agreed, Silko’s got to go. But absolutely no fuss, no close arrest, leave the Provost-Marshal’s office out of this.”

  “Surely we should make an example.”

  “Never forget: his wife is Mrs Silk MP. Very big in CND. They’d love a big court-martial, they’d squeeze every drop of juice out of it. Nuclear Pilot Goes Berserk: I can just see the placards. No, we tread very softly-softly. When he lands, have a car ready. Take him at once to Bomber Command’s medical centre, the place where we test would-be Vulcan pilots. Someone will meet him. And pack his kit.”

  ***

  The man who met him was Group Captain Evans.

  “Silk,” he said. “Slippery stuff. I thought I might see you again. Hoped not, but ... here you are.”

  “Here I am, sir.” It was dusk. Hours ago, sweat had dried on his face: low flying could be hard work. A wash would be nice.

  “We’re worried about your eyesight, Silk. It’s not good enough, is it? Anyone who goes looking for trouble, the way you did, and finds it, must have rotten eyesight. Agree?”

  “I could do with a drink, sir.”

  “You still owe us for half a bottle of claret. Follow me.”

  They went to his office and Evans gave him a whisky and water. “So you’re leaving the Service,” Evans said. “Retiring on medical grounds. In fact you’re out already – the paperwork was completed while you were still in the air. Slightly irregular, but I’m sure you can see your way clear to accepting the change.”

  Silk stirred his drink with his finger, and sucked the finger. “I can barely see you, sir. And I don’t know what’s become of that bottle.”

  Evans gave him another half-inch of Scotch. “The first time I saw you, I warned you that Vulcan duty was no piece of cake. I told you that any weakness was terminal, it would eat away at you until you cracked. And here we find you playing silly-buggers at sea level in the wildest corner of the Scottish highlands.” There was no anger in his voice; only flat amazement. “What went wrong?”

  “People kept disappearing,” Silk said. “And I worked it out – I’ve got fewer years ahead of me than behind me. And they’ll scrap the Vulcan soon. I knew I’d never get another chance like today. That’s all. Now I’d like to wash my face.”

  When Silk came back from the bathroom, Evans said: “The best thing for all of us would be if you were to disappear. Go a very long way from Britain. I’ve looked at your file. You must know people in Air America.”

  “Barney Knox was my boss. The last I heard, he was in their California office. Los Angeles.”

  “The West Coast.” Evans looked at his watch. “Eight hours difference. It’s worth a try. Here’s their number in LA.”

  Silk took the slip of paper. “You know everything, don’t you?”

  “It’s reciprocal.”

  Silk made the call. Naturally, Knox was glad to hear from him. Surprisingly, his old job was available. “Preferably somewhere not a million miles from Seattle,” Silk said. Knox suggested Vietnam; plenty of Air America work there. Silk said he thought Vietnam was quiet now the French had gone. “Think again,” Knox said. Silk took the offer.

  He handed the slip of paper to Evans but he didn’t release it. They stood in the middle of the office, each holding the end of a piece of paper. “You had this ready,” Silk said. “You didn’t write the number and give it to me. It was all prepared.”

  “I spoke to Knox an hour ago. He was waiting for your call.”

  Silk let go. “I feel somewhat manipulated,” he said.

  “Well, you manipulated Bomber Command, Silk. So now we’re quits. We’ve booked you onto a plane to LA tonight. Ticket and passport will be at the check-in. Hungry?”

  They walked down the corridor, to the mess. “Vietnam,” Evans said. “Jolly good. Don’t come back soon, will you?”

  Author’s Note

  Hullo Russia, Goodbye England is a fiction based on fact. The reader is entitled to know which is which.

  The major events are true. References to Bomber Command’s operations in World War Two, the formation of Vulcan bomber squadrons by the RAF, the policy of nuclear deterrence in the Cold War, and the American attack on Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, followed by the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 – these all happened in much the way I have described. However, there was no Vulcan squadron numbered 409, and no RAF Kindrick in Lincolnshire. Air America was only one of many CIA-owned airlines; for the sake of simplicity I allowed it to represent them all.

  Accounts of the design and performance of aircraft are as accurate as I could make them. This includes details of the Blue Steel stand-off nuclear weapon, the Thor ballistic nuclear missile, the AEO’s jammers (Red Shrimp, Blue Diver and so on), simulators, Micky Finn exercises, electromagnetic pulse, nuclear targets in the Soviet Union, and Vulcan training flights to Benbecula and to Rockall, including the presence of Russian trawlers engaged in electronic snooping on Nato activities.

  The characters are fictional, although some of them have been around for years. Skull and Air Commodore Bletchley first appeared in my novel Piece of Cake, and then turned up again in A Good Clean Fight, while Silk played a big part in Damned Good Show, as did Zoë. Silk’s morale-boosting tour of American war factories, and his visits to U.S. Air Force flying schools, are invented; so is the hectoring interrogation he gets when he rejoins Bomber Command.

  But Silk’s generous treatment by Ronald Colman fits the facts. During the war, the British colony in Hollywood was very hospitable to passing RAF aircrew, and I have not exaggerated the warmth of the welcome that beautiful stars gave to young pilots.

  The eyepatches are not fiction. The Vulcan cockpit had windshield blinds which could be used to hide a nuclear flash; but as an extra safeguard against total blindness, aircrew were indeed issued with an eyepatch. By 1962, Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) and Operational Readiness Platforms (ORP) were standard procedures on Vulcan squadrons. When bombers were scrambled, the thrust of their engines was truly massive: on one base it repositioned the town rubbish dump, unwisely sited near the perimeter fence. Ejection seats – ‘bang seats’ – were provided only for pilot and co-pilot. In time of trouble, the rest of the crew were expected to bale out through the door in front of the nose wheel – by no means an easy exit, given the height, speed and perhaps damaged condition of the aircraft.

  The title is apt. If the policy of nuclear deterrence failed and Vulcans were sent to retaliate, they would never turn back until their task was done; and then turning back would be pointless, because every home base would have been obliterated. Few aircrew, if any, seem to have lost any sleep over this bleak scenario. Perhaps their maturity and experience shaped their outlook. Many had served in Bomber Command since the early days of World War Two, when they flew such vintage machines as the Battle or the Hampden. Silk’s arrival on 409 Squadron brought the average age of Quinlan’s crew below forty. This situation was not unknown. Bomber Command liked seasoned performers in its nuclear aircraft.

  The Cold War needed no invention: the reality of MAD – Mutual Assured Destruction – was chilling enough. Reports by the Conservative Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing are fact. Captain Red Black’s task – to bomb East Berlin while, within a minute, it was being destroyed by two Thor missiles – was part of the strategy known as ‘cross-targeting’. An official history of the Cuban Missile Crisis comments: ‘The pilot assigned this task is remembered as the individual who sweated the most during cockpit alert.’

  I had no need to embroider that Crisis: the bare facts provide ample material. It is true that the telephone link between SAC HQ and Bomber Command HQ fell silent; that SAC signals were transmitted in plain English for the benefit of
Soviet ears; and that B52s flew threateningly close to Soviet borders. In mid-Crisis, SAC – without warning the Soviet Union – launched an Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile over the Pacific, later revealing that it was unarmed. At about the same time, the US radar network reported a missile launch in Cuba, aimed at America – a radar technician had mistakenly inserted a test tape into the system. Luckily someone aborted the process of knee-jerk retaliation. That was not the only cock-up.

  General Curtis LeMay was, by his own account, the most hawkish of hawks. On the other side, Kruschev was indeed persuaded that Americans would mistake Cuban missiles for palm trees; and Russian forces (to protect the missile sites) turned out to be far greater than he had expected. Generals always need more troops, sometimes to protect the troops they already have. By contrast the British response to the Crisis was laid-back: RAF nuclear bombers were not sent to their dispersal fields.

  The acronym SMIT is invented but the policy it stood for is not: British (and American) nuclear defence was based on the assumption that mounting international tension would allow time to prepare for war. Preparation is one thing; action is another. The survival of Great Britain might well have hinged on whether or not Prime Minister Macmillan was on the road. There was a vital link between his Rolls-Royce and the Automobile Association. All messages to and from Macmillan’s car-phone – cutting-edge technology in those days – went via the AA network, normally used to communicate with its motorcycle patrolmen. If Russia attacked Britain, the AA would find the PM and tell him.

  A generation is growing up which did not know the Cold War. They may find it hard to imagine what life was like for aircrew on a Vulcan squadron: endlessly rehearsing the task of penetrating deep into Soviet air defences; knowing by heart the street plans of Russian cities; shaping their lives around the possibility that a scramble order could, at any moment, send them airborne to wipe out those cities, with very little chance of return. Hullo Russia, Goodbye England can convey only a fraction of the flying skills, the high endeavour and the mental strength that the job demanded. The scramble order never came. Nuclear deterrence worked. We should be thankful.