Under the Radar

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  As the armourers’ tractors pulled away the bomb trolleys, now empty except for a heap of canvas nose-covers, the final decision to go was hurriedly taken. Amos and Meeres taxied their aircraft out, turned into the light prevailing wind and took off with a rolling start one after the other. Since Donna Nook was only about forty miles distant neither Vulcan climbed higher than a couple of thousand feet, turning eastwards out over the sea and following the coast up. Within minutes their objective was in sight. The sky was still clear at their level: scattered cloud began at about five thousand feet. Gavin Rickards had already contacted the ranges and had confirmed that the observers were in place and ready.

  ‘You on the ball, Vic?’ Amos asked over the intercom. ‘We’ll do one dry pass to get your eye in.’

  ‘Ready, Boss.’ Vic was intent on the newly installed circular screen that showed a remarkably detailed view of the terrain over which they were passing.

  ‘Two thousand,’ said Baa Mutton next to him.

  ‘Roger.’ Vic saw The Bosun’s image drift down from the top of the screen, sinking across its graticule. His right hand was on a new little joystick with a thumb switch. He moved this until the target was centred in the grid and pressed the button. The laser marker under the aircraft’s nose sent a stream of coded millisecond laser pulses that struck The Bosun and were reflected, being instantly picked up again and appearing in the centre of Vic’s screen as the target. There it stayed, the picture electronically frozen even as the bomber passed overhead, until the increased deflection became too much and the view reverted abruptly to that of normal terrain.

  ‘OK, Boss, it’s just like in the sim,’ said Vic. ‘Let’s do a live one.’

  Amos banked Yogi 1. The bomb doors opened, half retracting into the sides of the bomb bay: a neat piece of design to lessen their drag. XM580 straightened up and once more made a run across The Bosun. This time the aircraft gave a slight lurch as Vic released one of the bombs.

  ‘Bomb gone, Skip.’ Below them and behind, the electronics in the nose of the bomb picked up the sparkle of the laser impulses Vic was sending being returned by the target. Little electric motors moved the vanes, guiding the falling ordnance. There was a small pause. Then –

  ‘It’s a hit!’ Rickards relayed. ‘Bloke says we’ve knocked a corner off.’’

  ‘Blimey, that’s a first for any new piece of equipment I’ve ever known,’ Amos observed to Keith Coswood beside him.

  ‘Bet we can’t do it again.’

  ‘Cat in hell’s chance. We’ll probably hit Grimsby.’

  ‘Don’t. Just think of the paperwork.’

  Yogi 1 came around over the sea as Terry Meeres made his run in the second Vulcan. His bomb was ten yards shy. This was very accurate by usual standards but thirty feet could make all the difference if one were trying to take out a really difficult target such as a railway bridge. Those were practically immune to anything other than a direct hit. Amos’s next run was a thousand feet higher and slower at 240 knots. ‘Those clouds are going to scupper us,’ he said, pointing as he lined up. ‘We’re not going to get any higher today.’ Once again the Vulcan gave its little lurch as Vic toggled another bomb. This, too, was called as having shattered against The Bosun. There were cheers from the compartment behind.

  ‘Well, dang me: the bloody thing seems to work,’ said Keith. ‘I can’t wait for the next bomb comp. It should give the Yanks something to chew on.’

  ‘Oh, they’ve probably got something just like it, except it can brew them a hot drink at the same time.’

  ‘We’ll still give ’em a run for their money. And do it on NATO standard coffee.’

  After dropping all their bombs the two Vulcans headed for home. The first squall had hit and tiny meniscuses of water pooled, quivering, at the corners of their windscreens. Once the crews had been debriefed it was clear this first trial had been a great success. After receiving seven direct hits and one low ricochet The Bosun was reportedly looking scarred, mottled with the fresh marks of today’s damage. Had the bombs contained high explosive much of it would have been demolished.

  ‘But we keep quiet about it,’ said Group Captain Mewell at the end. ‘No need to go telling your mates in the squadron.’

  His caution was scarcely necessary. By the time the crews had changed and filled out all the necessary paperwork the episode was already beginning to blend into the mounting tally of all the sorties they’d ever flown. The bread-and-butter routine of Cold War flying was as always followed by hours of filling out forms and reports and writing up log books, and with the certainty of doing it all over again tomorrow.

  15

  At Lindsey Air Station in Wiesbaden, which hosted the headquarters of the USAF in Europe, Lieutenant General Gus Moon closed his office door before unlocking the pouch that had arrived on the overnight flight from Washington DC. Standing, he riffled idly through the contents while trying to dislodge a stubborn fragment of breakfast bacon from between two molars with his tongue. Boring . . . boring . . . semi-boring . . . aha! A document with the Defense Intelligence Agency’s blue seal caught his eye. He picked it up and sat down at his desk. Its Top Secret heading was followed by the code word CORAM, meaning information that must on no account be seen by a NATO ally. That was fine by him. Had it been left to Gus Moon he would have shared as little as possible with most of them.

  He noted that the original document had been forwarded from Headquarters Command, USAF, where it had been copied to just two other names besides his own. Both were high-ranking colleagues and one, General Hubert T. Buchinger, was a personal friend. Moon read on:

  DIA agents in the United Kingdom report RAF Bomber Command may be in possession of (i) a new radar system, and (ii) a new bomb guidance system. Both are subject to UK level 3 security and probably of near-deployment status. If true, this suggests development has taken place unilaterally, care having been taken expressly to shield these projects from US eyes. The Director suggests discreet, repeat discreet, enquiries be made of Strategic Air Command base commanders at both RAF Mildenhall in England and Offutt, Nebraska to ascertain whether any information about the existence of these alleged new systems has yet been divulged by their British counterparts. An affirmative answer would also confirm the reliability of DIA sources.

  The Agency notes there were rumors within SAC after Exercise Skyshield II in 1961 that the success of the RAF’s Vulcan contingent was due to their employing a radar technique or ECM advantage to which SAC was not made privy. This has since been discounted as a face-saving device on the part of NORAD. In our opinion these latest intelligence reports may simply be a ‘Chinese whispers’ resurgence of this old rumor. It may now have been embellished to include an alleged new British bomb guidance system that could rival or even exceed our own Paveways that are nearly ready for deployment.

  All the same, in view of these reports and the great urgency of deploying the best available battlefield technology in South East Asia, the Agency respectfully suggests the Air Force take steps to ascertain the reports’ validity. This might conceivably be achieved by means of joint USAF/RAF exercises.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Gus Moon as he laid the document down. The DIA quite often got its facts right. The idea that the British might be pulling a shitty surprised him, but not very much. In his career he had made good friends with several RAF types, some of whom were now high-ranking officers. There might well be matters of national pride at stake here. Britain’s V-bomber force was a perfect example of the store the Limeys set by doing things their own way with their own equipment. Moon didn’t doubt that if they really were working on something new they would share it with the USAF as soon as it was ready.

  At this moment his aide, Captain Polick, came in to give him the good news that his meeting at 11:00 with the French general had been cancelled on account of the general’s ill-health.

  ‘Great,’ said Moon. ‘With any luck he won’t recover and I shall never again have to listen to him passing on complaints fro
m that pain-in-the-ass de Gaulle. The Frogs are going to pull out of NATO anyway, and the sooner the better.’

  The last time they met, the French general had had the nerve to wag a warning finger about Dien Bien Phu and what he called ‘Indochine’ generally. ‘You watch out,’ he’d said. ‘That General Giap’s a military genius.’ Moon had been hard put not to retort that the yellow fellow might well be a genius, but he’d been facing the fucking French Foreign Legion, or whatever it was, and not the combined military might of the United States. A very different ball game, monsieur.

  It was no secret that his assignment to USAFE was getting Moon down. Despite not having flown an aircraft in eleven years he still thought of himself as basically a stick-and-rudder man. Yet this command required him to be more of a diplomat than anything else, and it severely tested him almost daily. There were times when NATO seemed less a partnership of allies and more a rabble of warring tribes. Despite the imminent threat of mutually assured destruction in the northern hemisphere and an increasingly bloody communist insurgency in Southeast Asia, some of America’s so-called allies seemed to be more focused on endless squabbling, especially about their equipment. Tomorrow, for instance, he would be having yet another meeting with the Germans about their F-104 Starfighters. The aircraft had already earned itself the newspaper nickname of ‘Widowmaker’; but whose fault was that, given how much extra avionics gear the Krauts had insisted on stuffing into them? No surprise the damn things were overweight and fell out of the sky. In that case the Dutch would soon come calling to complain that their own F-104s were inferior because their avionics weren’t as advanced as the Germans’. And finally the Italians would bellyache that they’d heard the Dutch aircraft were getting an upgrade that would leave the Italians’ own Starfighters as the weak link in the southern chain. The widespread rumors that Lockheed had only been able to sell the aircraft by means of widespread bribery didn’t help, either.

  Still worrying at his shred of bacon, Gus Moon sighed and reached for a cable slip.

  TO: GEN BUCHINGER/USAF HQ CMD JBAB 12/3/64. YOUR DIA COMM OF 12/2/64 NOTED. REMEMBER RAF HAS VULCAN SERVICING FACILITY AT OFFUTT SO EASY TO CHECK IF SYSTEMS ALREADY DEPLOYED. SURELY IF ALREADY IN GENERAL USE WE WD KNOW? SUGGEST I GET JOHNNY PIERCE TO INVITE RAF TO RADAR/BOMB COMP ASAP STRESSING NEED FOR BEST AVAILABLE FIT. CONFIRM AUTHORIZED SOONEST. VAE VICTIS MOON.

  He had Captain Polick take this down to signals and find him some toothpicks. Wiesbaden was five hours ahead of Washington DC so he wouldn’t be hearing from Hubie until after lunch at the earliest. Meanwhile the rest of his mail was waiting. He worked his way through the usual dispiriting news in the form of yesterday’s cables and reports from South Vietnam. It was clear to Gus the war would have to escalate massively. The air force was already building up its forces in Tan Son Nhut and Bien Hoa, and sooner or later McNamara would surely authorise fighters and bombers to strike north of the 17th parallel. At which point they’d come into the sights of the SAM batteries the Viet Cong had got from the Russians. Gus knew what that would mean. Back home public attitudes about the war might be overwhelmingly supportive, but he had a premonition he knew was shared by some of his colleagues that things might not be so easy. He vividly remembered his own days as an air force base commander in Korea and the hell that was unleashed on his pilots who crossed the Yalu River. Technology had improved a lot in the last fifteen years, and not just on the American side. All the more reason to ensure that if the British ECM and bomb guidance really was superior, their secrets should be shared without delay.

  At 14:30 his aide brought him a flimsy envelope. Inside was a message from Hubie Buchinger:

  TO: LT. GEN. A. MOON/USAFE HQ LDY 12/3/64. AUTHORIZATION CONFIRMED FOR PIERCE INVITATION RAF BOMBER CMD RADAR/BOMB COMP SOONEST. VAE VICTIS HUBIE

  Colonel Pierce and Gus Moon went back a long way – to World War II, in fact, when Johnny Pierce had been Gus’s wingman flying P-51 Mustangs with the 8th Air Force out of southern England. Now, many years on, Pierce was commander at Wheelus Field in Libya. This was rapidly turning into the biggest American air base outside the United States, its importance increasing daily as pilots posted to Vietnam stopped on the way for intensive practice of low-level strikes on the Al Watia and Al Usara bombing ranges. When they had last met Johnny told him they had just built the most accurate possible replica of a Soviet Guideline radar installation out in the desert and this, too, would be used for pilots staging out to Vietnam. It would be the perfect place to find out whether the intelligence reports about the British had been correct.

  Lieutenant General Moon unwrapped a toothpick and dealt decisively with an infuriating remnant of lunch. Europe did at least have that to recommend it: it was a toothpick culture. Then he lifted the receiver of his red telephone and placed a call to Colonel Pierce at Wheelus.

  16

  After a late-night sortie that saw both ‘P’ Flight Vulcans back at 5 a.m. Baldy Hodge spent a couple of hours superintending Yogi 1’s refuelling and dealing with a minor hydraulic leak on the nosewheel steering jack. Then he made a prodigious breakfast in the sergeants’ mess before commandeering the technicians’ runabout. He and several of his colleagues had clubbed together and bought a ten-year-old Jowett Javelin from a wing commander who had been posted to Singapore. With full access to the RAF’s workshops they had rebuilt the car’s odd, flat-four engine into something considerably hotter and it was generally admitted that it went ‘like the clappers’. Its availability on any given day was decided on a first come, first served basis.

  Now Baldy was speeding to Lincoln through wintry lanes. On the seat beside him was a small packet addressed to a Catherine Smithers in Liverpool. It contained a film cassette from the tiny Minox B camera they had given him the previous year. He assumed ‘Catherine Smithers’ had the same relationship to a living person as ‘John Parsons’ had to himself. A conscientious man, Baldy Hodge was aggrieved at having to send the film off unexposed in all but a handful of its fifty frames. Had that stupid twat Caltrop and his dozy dog stayed asleep for only a couple of minutes longer he could have used the lot. As it was he’d only managed to take a few pictures of the new radar set-up – whatever it was – at the AEO’s station. He had hastily hidden the flashgun and battery pack in a corner under the work desk, reasonably safe in the knowledge that he would be the next person to enter XM580 and could spirit them away in a tool bag. They were too bulky for him to have carried out under Caltrop’s nose. The MP wasn’t that stupid.

  But he wasn’t that bright, either. The keys to all the aircraft were hung on a board in the dispersal hut, and if the poodle-pusher had been on the ball he would have checked back to see if XM580’s key was there. It shouldn’t have been if Hodge had taken it to get the documents. But in fact it would have been there anyway because Baldy had long ago had a duplicate made. Nobody knew about that, least of all the Squadron Engineering Officer. Still, regardless of whether the MP’s suspicions had been aroused, it was not going to be easy to arrange another opportunity. The policeman’s blundering intervention had left Baldy with an unfinished job. He had yet to photograph the other new equipment that had been installed on the navrad’s side of the desk. He wondered how much anyone could deduce about how an instrument functioned from its photograph.

  Not much, he hoped as he wrestled blasphemously with the car’s peculiar column-mounted gear lever, briefly slowing for some cretinous yokel on a bicycle. It was a major preoccupation of Baldy’s to convince himself that the information he collected from time to time for ‘Catherine Smithers’ and her friends hardly amounted to spying as such, and much less to genuine treason. Baldy and his conscience very often consulted one another in great detail and always concluded unanimously that the information he was supplying was of little material use to an enemy. In this ever-competitive Cold War Vulcans themselves were rapidly approaching obsolescence in terms of their technology and in any case, as Baldy would gratuitously remind the sergeants’ mess, the days of the entire V-f
orce as constituting Britain’s deterrence were numbered. Anyone who could read a newspaper knew it had little more than four years’ life left in it before the navy took over. At which point he, Baldy, was O-U-T out. He had given the best years of his life to the RAF, had been rewarded with a pittance, and had what he considered a miserable pension to look forward to if he retired at thirty-nine. However, a trained and experienced ex-RAF chief technician had real value on the open market. Some of these Middle Easterners who were modernising their air forces simply threw money at you for a short-term commission. True, the idea of three or five years spent getting his knees brown somewhere up the Gulf held little charm for Baldy Hodge but still, Arabs weren’t really nig-nogs in the proper sense and in fact some of them were all right. The point was, their filoos was good.

  Because of course it was all about money. Unknown to everybody but himself and his wife, Baldy Hodge had one single-minded mission in life. This was to buy a decent house for his parents, and particularly for his father. Each snatched visit to see them in their rural slum near Thame renewed both his indignation and his determination that they must have better in the years they had left to them. Their present hovel was a disgrace. On the edge of flood-prone water meadows, it was the end cottage of a row of five meanly flung up in the mid-nineteenth century to house estate workers. It was damp and draughty with the unmistakable smell of galloping dry rot. His dad had been forced by illness to retire from the railway in 1961, aged only fifty-nine. He had worked from the age of fourteen when he had been taken on as an apprentice at Didcot by the Great Western Railway. From there he had risen to drive the Cheltenham Spa Express in the mid-1930s: one of their crack trains with gleaming cream-and-chocolate coaches. That was when Baldy had been born in the modest but solid railwayman’s house in Didcot that GWR had built for its engine drivers. After the war GWR was swallowed up into British Rail by government decree – a socialist government, needless to say – and there wasn’t an ounce of proper paternalist decency in that lot. After years of breathing coal dust Dad’s lungs had gone and he and Mum had been obliged to quit their home after nearly thirty years and plough all their meagre savings of eight hundred quid into that mouldering pigsty. It would have been a point of honour for any son to see them properly rehoused.