Vulcan 607

by Rowland White

  The crews took off from Waddington again late that evening to fly another training sortie, a composite profile putting together all the elements of what they’d rehearsed so far – air-to-air refuelling, low-level flying, radar bombing, Carousel navigation and electronic countermeasures. On top of this they added the ‘pop-up’ manoeuvre they’d be using to drop their bombs from medium level. Twice, over Leuchars and Flamborough Head, they climbed steeply from low level for their bomb run before diving back down to the deck again. For the first time the sortie was properly representative of the mission they were being ordered to fly. Bob Wright and Pete Taylor now both had a grand total of two ‘pop-ups’ under their belts.

  Reeve, Withers and Monty finally got their heads down just after 2 a.m. They all expected to be able to sleep late the next morning, though. Monty had checked: they weren’t flying the next day.

  ‘Definitely not,’ Laycock told him.

  As they drifted off to sleep that night, none of them was aware that they’d trained for the last time. The next time they flew they’d be heading to war.

  Chapter 25

  27 April 1982

  Monty was woken from a deep sleep by persistent knocking on his window. As he got out of bed to find out what was going on, he noticed his wife Ingrid was already up. He pulled back the curtains and light streamed in past the silhouette of a policeman, standing on a ladder to reach the first-floor bedroom.

  ‘Is your name Montgomery?’ he asked, getting straight to the point.

  Monty, blinking, nodded his assent.

  ‘I’ve got a Flight Lieutenant here to take you to Waddington.’

  Monty asked for time. Now wide awake, he knew what was happening. Unable to rouse him by phone, and with Ingrid out of the house, Waddington had been forced to employ a less than conventional alarm. His bag was packed, he was ready to go, but he wanted to see his wife. He guessed she’d be round the corner with her friend Marjorie and called her. Right first time.

  ‘Marjorie, could you ask Ingrid to pop home.’

  The wives had barely seen their husbands for three weeks. Some had talked amongst themselves, pooling the snippets of information their husbands had felt able to share, speculating on what was being planned. A support network of sorts had grown up. The squadron commanders’ wives tried to look after those of the squadron officers. The men were told that what they were training for was top secret, but most tried to prepare their wives as best they could. It was all over the newspapers, after all. It didn’t take a genius to work out what was going on.

  The strangest thing was saying goodbye. Monty just couldn’t shake off a nagging feeling that he might never see Ingrid again. As he turned to walk to the car, he thought of his father going to fight in the Second World War. The old man must have felt the same sensations as he left to join his warship. He was going to war. Monty pulled the car door shut and headed into the station to join his crew.

  ‘We have a 90 per cent chance of getting one bomb on the runway and a 60 per cent chance of two,’ began Michael Beetham. To help explain the art of runway cutting and ballistic bombs to the Prime Minister and her War Cabinet, he illustrated his briefing with a flip chart and maps, carefully explaining why trying to fly a bomber along the length of the runway would be a mistake. The Chief of the Air Staff told them that in an ideal world he’d like ten or a hundred Vulcans over Stanley, but it couldn’t be done. One Vulcan, he stressed to them, was all that resources allowed. And even that depended on the success of a hugely complicated series of in-flight refuellings. It was vital that the politicians’ expectations were realistic.

  ‘That’s all we can do, but it’s worth doing,’ he concluded.

  Like the Prime Minister, John Nott was supportive of the effort, all for giving it a go, but the prospect of success, he thought, sounded rather touch and go.

  Beetham left with the authority to deploy the Vulcans to Ascension, 4,000 miles closer to their target, but still only halfway there.

  Monty’s crew was waiting for him in the Ops Room.

  ‘Right, boys,’ he greeted them.

  ‘What exactly are we doing?’ asked Nav Plotter Dick Arnott, speaking for all of them.

  ‘D’know, Dick, I’m waiting to see the Station Commander.’

  There was no time to speculate further, before the hyperactive Scotsman was sitting in Laycock’s office with Air Commodore Tony Carver, Air Vice-Marshal Mike Knight’s chief of staff from Bawtry. Carver came straight to the point, while Laycock listened in. His brain whirring, Monty tried to force himself to listen.

  ‘Your crew has not been selected for the first mission.’

  That got Monty’s attention. Shit, he thought. The disappointment was instant. He didn’t think he’d ever get another chance. And I’m flying the Vulcan better than I ever have in my life. He couldn’t just let it go.

  ‘Come on, sir, we’re as good as the rest of them,’ he argued.

  ‘Maybe, but because of the nature of your personality—’

  Monty cut him off. ‘Is this another way of saying I’m a stroppy bastard, sir?’ he asked, sure somehow that his ill-judged intervention the previous evening had influenced the decision.

  ‘Yes,’ Carver told him, which didn’t exactly put the bomber pilot’s mind at rest. The truth was, though, that Monty was the right man for the job long before he’d stood up for himself and the rest of the crews in front of the Chief of the Air Staff. A ‘stroppy bastard’ was exactly what Carver and Laycock were after. Monty was like a terrier. Throw him a problem, Laycock had told 1 Group, and he won’t let go. He’ll keep fighting until it’s sorted out.

  ‘We want you to go down and get everything ready to go,’ Carver explained.

  ‘All right,’ Monty accepted, coming to terms with the idea. ‘You mean we’re going to run the set-up? What authority have I got?’

  ‘My authority,’ Carver replied. ‘You’ve got to get yourselves to Brize Norton. They’re holding an aeroplane for you and your crew. You’ll be in Ascension tonight.’

  As he left, Monty put to Carver the question that really mattered to him: ‘Will we be flying later on, sir?’ he asked, still hoping that he’d get a chance to fly the Vulcan in anger.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  It didn’t offer much ground for optimism.

  John Reeve and Martin Withers were discussing Monty’s departure when they were called in to the Station Commander’s office. Both of them assumed that Monty had been chosen to fly the mission. They stood side by side in front of John Laycock’s desk, the window to their right providing wide views of the north side of the airfield. Laycock told them that the mission was on. Waddington had been asked to forward-deploy two Vulcans to Ascension. Monty’s crew were already on their way to Brize. The Vulcans would be launching one raid on Stanley airfield in the near future. He told them there might also be more to follow. And then he surprised them both.

  ‘One or other of you two will do the attack.’

  It was not what either of them was expecting to hear.

  Laycock continued: ‘Would either of you like to volunteer?’

  Withers, expecting Reeve to snatch the opportunity, attempted to make the whole process more straightforward: ‘My father told me never to volunteer for anything, so…’ he joked, sidestepped and turned to face Reeve, gesturing towards him with open palms, ‘over to you, John!’

  Reeve, to Withers’ surprise, given his raised arm the previous night, said that he couldn’t volunteer without talking to his crew. But he wasn’t given that chance. In the absence of a volunteer, Laycock gave them his decision. He and Simon Baldwin had already made up their minds. In Mick Cooper and Jim Vinales, Reeve’s crew had the most experienced navigation and bombing team, and in Reeve himself it had a captain whose unsinkable confidence and ‘can do’ attitude had been manifest throughout training. He’d been unfazed by whatever was thrown at him. Mistaken for a gung-ho attitude in some quarters, Reeve’s no-nonsense temperament had, initially, giv
en some around Waddington pause for thought about his suitability, but Laycock was in no doubt now. In any case, Reeve was the senior of the two captains. The Reeve crew was Primary. Martin Withers would be flying reserve.

  As the decision was absorbed, Monty’s men were boarding a Hawker-Siddeley Andover CC2 of the RAF’s Queen’s Flight. With them was Squadron Leader Mel James, flying out as boss of the Vulcan engineering detachment with five of his advance guard of technicians. This felt important, thought Monty. It was a short hop to Brize, the hub of the RAF’s epic logistic operation to and from Ascension. From there, they’d be flown to Wideawake. Nav Plotter Dick Arnott boarded the elegantly liveried red and blue VIP transport with a dangerous look on his face – one only too familiar to the rest of the crew. As he cast an eye around the twin-turboprop’s bespoke interior, he caught the attention of the steward.

  ‘Is this the plane that Margaret Thatcher flies on?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Monty felt a sense of dread at what might come next.

  ‘Where does she sit then?’ Arnott carried on.

  The steward innocently pointed out the seat and Arnott walked over to it.

  ‘Dick, you’re not going to do this!’ Monty tried to stop him. ‘You’re not!’ But it was hopeless.

  As he got close, Arnott stooped down towards the Prime Minister’s chair, then performed an unpleasantly close inspection of the seat’s fabric before claiming it as his own. Next they were served tea and sandwiches. Surreal, thought Monty. It was going to be a very strange day.

  One of the reasons Dick Russell was first chosen to work with the Vulcan crews was the size of his waistband. As the Vulcan was originally designed to be flown by a single pilot, its flight deck was cramped. Before either pilot could take to his Martin Baker ejection seat, he had to slide away the large fuel management tray that sat centrally, extending backwards at ankle level from the mess of dials of the instrument panel. Negotiating his way through the narrow gap between the pilots’ seats to swap places with the co-pilot was a job the tall, slim Russell was expected to accomplish with less palaver than his more rotund colleagues.

  John Laycock walked around to the Ops Room from his office to find Russell and the two other AARIs. It had been confirmed by 1 Group that they would be joining the Vulcan crews on the mission itself. Laycock bumped into Russell first. The two men knew each other well from shared time on a Victor bomber squadron in the 1960s.

  ‘Dick,’ Laycock opened, with no hint of the bombshell to come, ‘I’m going to have to send you to fly with the Vulcan crews.’

  ‘I don’t think I can do that,’ Russell answered instinctively, not initially taking on board the importance of what was being said.

  ‘I can’t think of a single reason why not!’ Laycock persisted affably, knowing it hadn’t quite sunk in.

  ‘It’s my birthday party on Friday! My fiftieth! Muriel and I have got all these people coming. We can’t cancel it now…’

  Russell’s wife had spent weeks making plans for friends and family to join them. Laycock explained the thinking behind the decision: the length of the planned mission; the necessary complexity of any refuelling plan; the inexperience of the Vulcan pilots as prodders. However unappealing the idea, on the face of it, might seem to Russell and the two other AARIs, Pete Standing and Ian Clifford, they’d be a valuable addition to each of the bomber crews. Russell’s protests evaporated. In truth, serious doubts had never entered his head; it had just taken him rather by surprise. Poor Muriel would just have to rearrange the party for when this was all over.

  For now, there was just time to get back to Marham, break the news to her, pick up his kit, and return to the bomber station.

  Jim Vinales was in the garden when John Reeve arrived to tell him that their crew were flying Primary. Monty and the rest had already left for Ascension as Ops crew, he told his Navigator. They’d be following him tomorrow.

  Vinales and his wife Jean were worried about their son, Edward. Two years old, he suffered from recurring earaches, which were sometimes so severe that the boy would bang his head on the floor to try to relieve the pain. They felt they were making progress when the condition had recently been diagnosed as glue ear. After Reeve had left, Vinales took a phone call from the consultant, hoping to arrange another appointment.

  ‘Can you come in tomorrow?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I… erm… I’ve got another engagement,’ Vinales told the doctor apologetically.

  Withers, who had no burning desire to fly into harm’s way, was philosophical about leading the reserve crew. He discussed the merits of the decision with them all. It cut both ways: Reeve might be the guinea pig, but he would at least enjoy an element of surprise. The co-pilot, Pete Taylor, agreed with his Captain – if they didn’t go on this one, at least they were guaranteed to live to fight another day. There might not, after all, even be a second mission. Hugh Prior, Withers’ tough, experienced AEO, disagreed. He rather wished his Captain had volunteered. All things considered, the first raid was, he was sure, the one that would give them their best chances of survival.

  The VC10 was routed to Ascension via Banjul and Dakar. On board the packed transport jet, Monty sat next to Mel James. The two men took a notebook and tried to plan for their arrival. Since leaving Waddington they’d barely had time to think. After two weeks completely absorbed by the Vulcan work-up, the organized chaos at Brize had been eye-opening. A WRAF had asked Monty if the kit he was requesting was for Op CORPORATE.

  ‘You can’t say that, it’s secret!’ Monty hissed.

  She patiently explained that everyone and everything at Brize was part of CORPORATE. Monty’s head was spinning from the pace of it and, once on board the VC10, he and Mel James found it difficult to know where to begin.

  ‘What do you think we should do?’ Monty ventured.

  ‘No idea…’ James told him.

  They struggled on briefly before Monty put his notebook away and tried to get some sleep on the aircraft’s cabin floor.

  Chapter 26

  27 April 1982

  A small team of armed police arrived at Gerald Cheek’s house early in the afternoon of Tuesday the 27th. They were, they said, going to take the family away to the airport ‘for their own safety’.

  ‘Are we all going to go?’ Cheek asked them, thinking of his two young daughters and his elderly parents.

  The policemen said they were.

  Fourteen people around Stanley had suffered similar visits that day – including two other families with young children. They were a mixed bunch that had in common a pro-British outlook matched in intensity by the strength of their anti-Argentinian feelings. Apparently they were upsetting the authorities – that was something at least – who wanted to remove them before anything really ugly happened.

  Cheek called Carlos Bloomer-Reeve, the ex-head of the Stanley LADE office, the operation running the pre-invasion passenger service between the islands and Argentina. The unfortunate Air Force officer had been hurriedly recalled from a new posting in Germany to act as the friendly face of the occupation. Bloomer-Reeve told Cheek that they didn’t all have to go, but that he did. He could take his family with him to whatever lay ahead, or leave them behind. It was an appalling choice. Cheek had no idea what lay in store, but he did know what happened to people when armed police took you away in Argentina. He asked, hopefully, if he needed a passport. Alarmingly, he didn’t. He fought a corrosive, not entirely irrational, fear that he was just going to be thrown out of whatever flew him out of the airfield. The goodbyes he shared with his parents, wife and daughters were traumatic and, as he was driven away by an armed escort, thoughts of them all raced through his mind. At BAM Malvinas, a green-and-brown camouflaged C-130 Hercules stood waiting on the pan with all four engines turning. Hell, he thought, that’s my next transport. Over on the eastern side of the airfield he noticed a battery of anti-aircraft guns.

  In The Vault at Waddington, the two Nav Radars, Mick Cooper and Bob Wrig
ht, bent over desks studying maps of East Falkland. They made an odd pair: Cooper, the untidy, red-haired veteran; Wright, the neat, earnest first tourist. They were in The Vault to be briefed by Simon Baldwin’s Ops Team and to do their target study. Used to the beautifully prepared comprehensive target information, including photographs, from JARIC, the Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre at RAF Brampton in Huntingdonshire, they were now provided with little more than a few old maps.

  As far as they could, Simon Baldwin’s Ops Team had tried to replicate the nuclear-training system the crews were familiar with, preparing go-bags for each crew member that contained all the information they needed to fly the mission. The flight plan had been hastily revised to an attack track that cut the runway and pop-up was at thirty miles from the target. While the Nav Plotter’s charts were less than ideal, it was still the Nav Radar’s planning that was made most difficult by the lack of detailed information.

  The Vulcan’s offset-bombing facility allowed the Nav Radar to release the bombs accurately without ever having to put the radar cross-hairs on the target itself. This was particularly useful at low level, where targets such as runways would not paint on the radar because they had no vertical extent. At the pre-flight planning stage, the Nav Radar would identify a feature on the map which he was confident would show on his radar. Then, by inputting the distance and location of these to the relative target into the NBS computer, he could aim at the offset and leave the machine to do the rest.

  To do the offset planning, Waddington had been crying out for large-scale maps and photographs of the target area, but none was available. The Falklands had never featured on JARIC’s list of concerns. The Ops Team had to make do with copies of an elderly 1:250,000 map, and these were not of a sufficiently large scale to show potentially good offsets like air traffic control towers. Two jetties were marked on the maps around Cape Pembroke, but were they wood, steel or concrete? That would affect their radar return. Given the age of the maps, were they even still there?