‘Homer, this is Pan aircraft Tiger Two on Guard.’
On all warships, the Operations Room is a darkly colourful, and invariably noisy, environment. The illumination is derived from the reddish glow of radar screens, from small reading lights mounted on the consoles, from the myriad multi-coloured tell-tales and illuminated controls. The noise is caused by the constant chatter on Group Lines, intercoms and radio frequencies as specialist officers and ratings do their work.
The Operations Room on Five Deck is in every sense the nerve centre of the Invincible. Around the perimeter, information is gathered from the ship’s own sensors – principally radar and sonar – and from sensors mounted on other vessels and aircraft that transmit to the ship using secure data-links. Here the Air Picture Compilers track and identify all airborne radar contacts, while Surface and Sub-surface Compilers perform identical functions for their specific areas of responsibility.
The collated data provide the Warfare Officers, working at consoles in the centre of the room, with a complete picture of the air, surface and underwater environment around the warship, and enable them to act or react as the situation warrants. Surprisingly to the uninitiated, during any kind of action or alert the Captain will be found sitting on a swivel chair virtually in the centre of the Operations Room, and he will direct all aspects of the ship’s activities from there. No longer does he fight battles from the bridge, as was the norm during the Second World War. Today, instead, a seaman officer will take the bridge watch, to visually ensure the safety of the ship and to check that helm and engine revolution orders don’t run the vessel aground or into a collision.
Inside the Operations Room, close to the port-side door and beneath the printed title ‘Homer’, is a radar console manned by a specialist Air Traffic Control officer whose principal responsibility is the safe recovery of the ship’s organic air assets. The Military Emergency (Guard) frequency – 243.0 megahertz – is monitored whenever the ship is at sea, but is generally patched through an Ops Room speaker rather than listened to by Homer, who normally has more than enough traffic on his primary aircraft recovery frequency.
As soon as he heard the Pan call – ‘Pan’ being the lower of the two states of aircraft emergency, the more serious one being ‘Mayday’ – Lieutenant John Moore leaned back in his seat and looked up at the Radio Direction Finder display mounted above his console, simultaneously selected Guard on the frequency selector panel, and pressed the transmit key.
‘Pan aircraft Tiger Two, this is Homer. You’re loud and clear. State the nature of your emergency.’
‘Tiger Two has a rough-running engine and is requesting diversion ashore. Present heading is two four zero at Flight Level three five zero, squawking emergency. Tiger One is in company to relay as required.’
‘Roger, all copied, and you’re identified by your emergency squawk. You’re forty-two miles off the coast, and estimate you’ll be feet dry in about six minutes. Standby for airfield information.’
The moment the call had been heard on Guard, Homer’s radar console had become the focus of most of the activity in the Operations Room. His assistant had pulled out the relevant en route chart and the en route supplement covering Italy and was scanning the ERC, looking for the closest airfield that could take the Sea Harrier.
Moore’s next priority was to shed his other traffic so that he could concentrate on the emergency aircraft. In fact, he had nothing else on frequency at that moment, but he was expecting Snake One and Two to check in imminently. To pre-empt them, he called the Air Warfare Officer on Group Line Six.
‘AWO, Homer. Snakes should be on recovery soon, and I don’t want them on my frequency until we’ve sorted out Tiger Two. Can you raise the ASaC Sea King and get Snakes to call Director for recovery?’
‘Already doing it.’
‘Thanks.’
Then Moore looked at the chart his assistant was holding, glanced across at the airfield details listed in the ERS, nodded and transmitted again.
‘Tiger Two, Homer. Suggested diversion airfield is Brindisi-Casale. Runway is eight thousand six hundred feet in length, airfield location approximately one nine zero range fifty from your present position.’
‘Roger,’ Richter said. ‘Turning port onto one nine zero and starting a cruise descent.’
‘Initial Contact Frequency for Brindisi-Casale Approach Control is three seven six decimal eight, but suggest you call them first on Guard.’
‘Roger.’
Commander (Air), who’d been up in Flyco when Richter made the Pan call, had immediately left his position and arrived at that moment in the Operations Room.
‘Where is he?’ he demanded.
Moore glanced round then pointed over to the southwestern side of his radar screen. ‘Here, sir. He’s about to call Brindisi.’
As Moore spoke, Richter’s voice echoed round the Ops Room from the Guard speaker. ‘Brindisi, Brindisi, this is Pan aircraft Tiger Two.’
In the Operations Room, a long silence followed, because the ship was out of radio range of the airfield, but Richter and Splot in Tiger One heard the reply clearly, and the Senior Pilot then relayed the airfield’s response to the Invincible.
‘Pan aircraft Tiger Two, this is Brindisi Approach. What is your emergency, and what is your position, level, aircraft type and number of persons on board?’ The Italian’s English was perfectly clear and understandable – English being the international language of aviation and air traffic control – but with a quite unmistakable accent.
‘Brindisi, Tiger Two is a British Royal Navy single-crew Harrier aircraft with a rough-running engine. Position approximately forty miles north of you, in descent passing Flight Level two zero zero.’
‘Roger, Tiger Two. What are your intentions?’
‘Request navigation assistance and a straight-in approach to a priority landing.’
‘Roger. You are identified by your position report and secondary radar return. Steer one eight five and continue descent to Flight Level one zero zero. Standby to copy the weather and airfield missed approach procedure.’
‘Tiger Two is ready to copy.’
Tiger One was still at thirty-five thousand feet, holding clear of Italian airspace and loitering to relay information to the ship.
‘Homer, this is Tiger One relaying for Tiger Two on Guard. Two is in descent out of twenty thousand down to ten, and receiving nav assistance from Brindisi Approach.’
Richter saw the airfield from twelve thousand feet and fifteen miles, and throttled back even further.
‘Brindisi, Tiger Two is now visual with the field.’
‘Roger, Tiger Two. Report approaching five thousand feet on the airfield QNH with Tower on two five seven decimal eight. We have no traffic in the circuit or local area.’
As Richter pulled his Sea Harrier round in a gentle turn to starboard, he glanced down and in front of his aircraft at the airfield below him. The Italians were obviously taking no chances: he could see an ambulance waiting near the control tower, and at the holding point for the main runway two emergency vehicles – known in the UK as ‘Crash’ and ‘Rescue’ – were already in position, blue and red lights flashing. ‘Crash’ was a primary unit – a first-line heavy fire engine designed to dowse aviation-fuel fires using a foam compound known as A Triple F (Aqueous Film-Forming Foam) – flanked by ‘Rescue’, a small four-wheel-drive go-anywhere vehicle.
Inside seven miles and nicely settled on the runway’s extended centreline, but well above the normal glide path to provide the margin of safety a prudent pilot would want with an engine that might fail at any moment, Richter hauled the Harrier’s speed back to below two hundred knots. Once his speed was within the aircraft’s parameters, he dropped the landing gear, checking the enunciator as four green lights illuminated, indicating that both the main wheel assemblies and the wheels at the ends of the wings were down and locked.
‘Tiger Two, Brindisi Tower, confirm landing checks are complete.’
‘Ch
ecks complete, four greens,’ Richter replied.
‘Roger, Tiger Two. Land runway three two. Wind is green one five at ten gusting fifteen.’
Richter played with the throttle all the way down, but he didn’t attempt to adjust the nozzle angle: he had over a mile and a half of asphalt and concrete in front of him, and was quite happy to use all of it if he had to.
He flew over the touchdown end of the runway, coming in very high and very fast – the kind of profile one of his flying instructors had dubbed an ‘elephant’s arse approach’ because it was high and it stank – then flared the Harrier and dropped it onto the rubber-streaked runway about four hundred yards beyond the piano keys. The moment the tyres touched the concrete, Richter throttled back completely, and the aircraft’s speed began falling away.
‘Thank you, Tower,’ Richter transmitted. ‘Request taxi instructions.’
‘Take the next exit right and follow the taxiway to the first hangar.’
As Richter made the turn he saw the fire-and-rescue vehicles following behind him, the ambulance in trail. He waved an acknowledgement from the cockpit and received an answering flash from the primary unit’s headlights in return.
Fifty-eight miles away and thirty-five thousand feet above the surface of the Mediterranean, the Senior Pilot in Tiger One, who had followed Richter’s frequency changes down to touchdown, heard the transmission and pulled his aircraft around in a starboard turn onto east.
‘Tiger Two from Tiger One on Brindisi Tower frequency. Copy that you’re down safely. See you around, Spook.’
‘Roger that, Splot.’
The Senior Pilot checked his fuel state, selected Destination One – the Invincible’s programmed position – in his NAVHARS, and settled his Harrier into a high-level cruise. Then he switched back to Homer frequency.
‘Homer, Tiger One. Tiger Two is down safely at Brindisi, my estimate at minute two six. Tiger One is now on recovery and requesting pigeons.’
‘Tiger One, Homer. Good news, sir. Pigeons zero seven five at fifty-three.’
At Brindisi-Casale, Richter switched off his Harrier’s electrical systems and then shut down the engine. The ground crew didn’t have a proper set of steps designed for the Harrier, so they improvised with a small fork-lift truck, against the raised prongs of which they rested an aluminium ladder.
When Richter reached the ground he shook hands solemnly with each of the ground crew, then followed their hand signals and sign language towards the squadron building adjacent to the hangar. He walked into the white-painted, single-storey building and followed another Italian’s directions to what he assumed was the squadron briefing-room.
The first, and in fact only, person Richter saw when he pushed open the door was Richard Simpson.
Chapter 2
Monday
National Photographic Interpretation Center (N-PIC), Building 213, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, DC
What may be termed the militarization of space began in 1960 when the US Air Force successfully recovered exposed film from Discovery 13, the first photo-reconnaissance satellite, and when in a parallel but unrelated operation the US Navy orbited a Transit bird.
These two successes were quickly followed by a series of SAMOS (Satellite and Missile Observation System) reconnaissance satellites. The launches of these early and very basic vehicles were followed by satellites of increasing complexity, and near-space orbits are now filled with a plethora of highly sophisticated, complex and very specialized pieces of equipment. These include Defence Support Program infra-red early-warning satellites, Magnum electronic intercept birds, SDS information-relay satellites, and DSCS-3 jam-proof high-frequency communication platforms.
Project 467 began in the 1960s and culminated in the first long-lived surveillance satellite that included data transmission facilities. This was Big Bird, the first of which was launched in 1971. Compared to the early surveillance satellites, it was huge: forty-nine feet long, weighing nearly thirty thousand pounds, launched by a specially modified Titan 3D rocket, and with a design life of months.
Its on-board equipment included a general area survey scanner developed and manufactured by Eastman Kodak, and a Perkin-Elmer high-resolution camera designed for detailed analysis of specific areas of interest. Pictures taken by the area scanner went through onboard processing, and were then scanned and the data transmitted down to earth using a twenty-foot-diameter antenna located at the end of the satellite. To provide hard copy for the analysts, up to six recoverable film capsules were carried, which could be ejected at intervals and recovered by air-snatch using a converted C-130 Hercules transport aircraft.
Five years after the first Big Bird launch, an entirely new surveillance satellite was lifted into orbit. This was the KH-11, or Keyhole, vehicle. Only two-thirds the size of the Big Bird, at just over twenty thousand pounds, but with an operational life of about two years, the KH-11 was initially employed as a back-up to its larger cousin, following an identical orbital path and employing its higher-resolution cameras to take detailed pictures of areas identified by Big Bird as being of special interest. Unlike Big Bird, the KH-11 didn’t scan processed photographs: digital images were produced immediately and the data transmitted to earth in near real-time. The Keyhole could also provide television pictures from its normal orbital elevation of one hundred and twenty miles. In the late 1980s the more efficient KH-12 bird supplemented the KH-11.
Depending on the location of the satellite, digital images are beamed either directly, or via one of a number of dedicated communications satellites in geo-stationary orbit, to the Mission Ground Site at Fort Belvoir just outside Washington, DC. The pictures are then forwarded to Building 213 in the Washington Navy Yard, home of N-PIC – the National Photographic Interpretation Center – part of the Science and Technology Directorate of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Resolution, with particular respect to surveillance satellites, is defined as the minimum distance separating two point light sources so that it can clearly be determined whether those points are dots or a line. The first reconnaissance satellites had an optimum resolution of just over eight feet from their normal maximum elevation of one hundred and twenty-four miles. Big Bird was a huge improvement, and provided resolution of slightly under twenty-four inches from an orbital height of one hundred miles, and the KH-12 brought this figure down to a whisker under six inches from a maximum orbital elevation of two hundred and fifty miles, close to the theoretical limiting resolution of just under four inches.
What all this means in practical terms is that if a man is sitting outdoors reading a newspaper anywhere on the surface of the earth for more than about an hour, an analyst sitting at a purpose-built computer console in Washington will be able to identify which newspaper he’s reading, while he’s still reading it.
Surveillance satellites follow standard and pre-determined polar orbits. They can be manoeuvred to some extent to provide additional pictures of particular areas of interest, but this costs fuel and reduces the life of the bird, so most agencies simply study the ‘take’ obtained when the satellite passes over a particular location during its normal operations.
Frequently, the bird’s sensors are deactivated when it crosses large stretches of water, simply because there’s generally nothing much to see, but there are exceptions. One such exception, originating from the Intelligence Directorate of the CIA at Langley, Virginia, was somewhat unusual, for three reasons.
First, it was old now, having been initiated in the winter of 1972. Most satellite imagery requests have immediate and obvious relevance to whatever troubles are currently being fomented in the world. Second, the area specified was simply a ten-mile square of the eastern Mediterranean, of no obvious strategic or any other importance. Third, it asked for the simplest possible report – the identity and type of any vessel remaining in the same location within that square for more than three hours, or any vessel which returned to the area twice or more in any thirty-day period. No follow-up, no fu
rther action.
Since 1972, N-PIC had forwarded some two hundred and eighty reports to the Intelligence Directorate, had received an acknowledgement each time, and had heard nothing further. The report that morning was almost identical to every other one they had sent, with one exception – they hadn’t been able to identify the Nicos, simply because the vessel had no identification marks visible from above, but they had been able to state exactly what the boat was, because they could see the purpose-built racks for the aqualungs.
This time, they got the usual acknowledgement from Langley, but also an instruction for additional material on the next and all subsequent passes by the bird, and a request for the hard-copy pictures to be forwarded immediately.
Aeroporto di Brindisi, Papola-Casale, Puglia, Italy
‘So just what the hell is all this about, Simpson?’ Richter said, putting down his flying helmet and life vest, and sitting opposite his superior. ‘I don’t appreciate being told to pull stunts like this. Scrambling safety services raises pulse rates and costs money, not to mention the fact that the ship’s now going to have to send a team of maintainers all the way out here by helicopter to spend a couple of days examining a perfectly serviceable Sea Harrier.’
Simpson waved one small pink hand dismissively. ‘Your comments are noted, but this seemed the easiest way to get you into Italy without anyone knowing you’ve been here.’
‘And that’s important, is it?’
‘Yes,’ Simpson said flatly, ‘or it could be.’ He gestured towards a small brown suitcase standing upright against the wall. ‘You might be here for a day or two, so I brought you a change of clothes. You can hardly,’ he added, with a glance at the flying overalls and anti-g trousers Richter was wearing, ‘wander around wearing that outfit.’
‘I thought you had a sudden change of heart about my doing a bit of continuation training,’ Richter said. ‘And I suppose it also explains why I had to fly down at such short notice to join the ship at Gib. So what am I supposed to be doing in Italy? Are we working for the Mafia now?’
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