Vulcan 607

by Rowland White

  Closing up… miss… dropping back, Wallis continued, describing another effort by Biglands to trap the basket. Each of the refuelling brackets covered a great enough distance to accommodate refuelling difficulties. But each also had a geographical limit. If the transfer wasn’t complete by then, dictated tanker lore, then you scrubbed it and returned home. As the three jets pushed south through the storm, they were now closer to the end of the bracket than to the beginning. Biglands was running out of airspace.

  Closing up… contact! When Wallis shared the news of Biglands’ success, his voice betrayed a hint of his relief and Tuxford’s entire crew couldn’t help but relax just a fraction. An instinctive reaction. The Nav Radar continued to stare into his scope as Biglands flew his Victor forward to trigger the HDU’s pump and get the fuel flowing.

  Green on, fuel flows, Wallis told them, and kept watching behind. He knew that Biglands’ making contact was a battle won but not a war. Now Biggles had to maintain formation while the two jets continued to be hurled around the volatile skies. While the co-pilot, Glyn Rees, called out the quantities of fuel being dispensed, Wallis kept Tuxford up to date with their receiver’s uncertain progress.

  ‘He’s getting very unstable…’ Wallis warned.

  As the tanker was bounced around the sky, the trailing hose started to oscillate dangerously. While the motors governing the hose’s travel were designed to prevent waves and ripples kicking up and down its length, there were limits to their ability to absorb extremes of movement. Wallis watched with mounting alarm until, perhaps, the inevitable happened.

  Inside the cockpit of Biglands’ jet there was a heart-stopping crack felt by all five of the crew as the tip of the Victor’s four-inch thick refuelling probe sheered off under the strain – unable to cope with the enormous lateral forces imposed on it. Ernie Wallis’ instruments told him immediately that the fuel flow had been interrupted. He sagged as he watched through the periscope.

  ‘He’s broken his probe,’ Wallis confirmed to his own crew over the intercom.

  Biglands called it in over the RT a moment later. Tux could hear the anguish in his voice. He’d received just 8,000lb of fuel, half what he needed to fly south with the Vulcan as long-slot. And he could take on no more fuel in any circumstances. Whatever he had on board had to get him home to Ascension, 3,000 miles away.

  Tuxford quickly thought through what had happened. If, as well as the damage to Biglands’ Victor, his own jet’s refuelling basket had been wrecked – or if the broken tip of Biggles’ refuelling probe was still jammed into the coupling valve – it meant the end of the road.

  If Biglands couldn’t fly the long-slot role, the only possible option was for him and Tuxford to swap places. For the Vulcan to press home her attack, Tux was going to have to take on the fuel to fly the long-slot while at the same time carefully making sure that Biggles’ crippled jet had enough to get back to Wideawake without any possibility of needing further refuelling. He broke radio silence to talk to Biglands.

  ‘White Four, have you left your probe in the basket?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ came the reply.

  There was only one way of finding out, but for the time being Tuxford had to assume his own drogue was going to work.

  ‘If we’re going to get away with this,’ he told Biglands, ‘the only solution is for me to take the fuel back. Can you get the hose out?’ Then he spoke to his Nav Radar: ‘Right, Ernie, get the hose in, let’s tidy it up…’

  Chapter 35

  ‘White Four, we’re going to have to go for a formation change.’

  As Tux explained his plan to Biglands, his own crew were preparing their jet to swap roles: tanker to receiver. Ernie Wallis checked the view behind them. Clear to wind, he said, before reeling in the Victor’s eighty-foot-long hose. Winding.

  After they’d cleaned up the airframe, the co-pilot, Glyn Rees, prepared the wide fuel tray that folded down between the pilots’ ejection seats. Moving fuel around the tanks in preparation to take on fuel would normally take anything up to fifteen minutes, but there was no time for that. They continued through the checklist until hearing Checks are complete from AEO Mick Beer. Tux thumbed the transmit button and cleared Steve Biglands in White Four to overtake. Forced together by the vital need to maintain visual contact as they darted through the turbulent banks of cloud, the three V-bombers were in unusually close formation. As they changed places, in boiling air and uncomfortably close proximity, Biglands and Tuxford had to keep sight of one another.

  Biggles drifted across to the left. With the Vulcan maintaining her position to their right, the three jets’ formation took on the shape of an arrowhead. Then Biglands pushed forward his throttles to increase the engine rpm and his Victor started to gain on Tuxford’s. As Biggles’ broken jet nosed forward, Tux caught sight of her overtaking through the thick glass beyond his left shoulder. The electric sky raged as the three-ship streaked south in and out of the cumulus. Inside each of the V-bombers the seats creaked and complained as they resisted the forces trying to oust their occupants from them.

  ‘I have your visual, White Four,’ Tux told Biglands, ‘you have the lead.’

  Tux then manoeuvred his jet into position behind the damaged Victor, his senses heightened by the adrenalin coursing through him. Fired up and worried that the whole mission was falling apart, he was in a dangerous mood. Too aggressive, too hot-headed, and he would make mistakes. Tuxford tried to force himself to stay calm. But he knew if he overcooked it he could rely on experienced men like Ernie Wallis to rein him in: Cool it, Bob, slow down. Around him, the rest of the crew were working. With the master switch on their own HDU now turned off, Wallis backed up Nav Plotter John Keable as he replanned the flight ahead. At the end of the fuel transfer they’d become formation leader down to bracket four, barely an hour north of the Falklands. Mick Beer monitored the old V-bomber’s hydraulics and electrics while up front Glyn Rees performed heroics rearranging the fuel tray in a fraction of the time required. Tuxford composed himself, waiting for the word from Biglands’ Nav Radar. Then his headset crackled into life.

  You’re clear astern.

  Tuxford reduced the power and dropped back from a loose echelon into line astern.

  Clear for contact.

  He nudged the throttles forward with his left hand and began to close on the flailing basket.

  Making contact by the book – following the line of the hose to the tanker’s belly – could never work in these conditions, whatever was taught back in ground school at Marham. Tuxford had to go for the basket, but with the distances it was thrashing up and down that needed careful handling. If he tried to fly the Victor in pursuit of the flailing drogue, too many deliberate, opposing inputs on the control yoke would cause a PIO, a Pilot-Induced Oscillation. Each correction would become an over-correction and, like a speeding car fishtailing down an icy road, its driver wrestling the wheel from side to side, the big jet would begin to porpoise wildly. It was a difficult situation to recover from. Especially so when you were flying thirty feet behind the tail of another aircraft. Instead, Tuxford tried to pick his moment, to anticipate the path of the basket and nail it with a burst of power from the engines or a kick of the rudder pedals.

  A hundred and fifty yards to the right of him, hail rattled like grapeshot against the toughened glass of the Vulcan’s windscreen as Dick Russell watched the scene unfold. The green and grey camouflage of Tuxford’s Victor was picked out by the floodlights lighting the underside of the tanker ahead. Russell didn’t like the look of what he was seeing at all; he had never seen an effort to make a transfer in turbulence like this.

  And then Tux made contact with a clunk. Relief. Fuel began to flow through the unstable hose that joined the two jets like an umbilical cord. But with barely half the transfer complete, as Tux fought to remain tucked in behind the tanker, the heavy, fuel-filled hose began to whip violently again as powerful waves travelled up and down its length. Tuxford knew the danger it posed. For
ced to make a quick, agonizing decision, he throttled back to sever the contact and preserve the probe. If the force of the hose’s fierce movement ripped off the tip of his probe too, BLACK BUCK would be over.

  He’d saved the integrity of the airframe, but the formation was still flying south, away from the haven of Ascension. They were way past the bracket limit, he didn’t have the fuel he needed to take the long-slot and still wasn’t sure he could transfer fuel to the Vulcan anyway: Put that one to the back of my mind, at least, he told himself. His pulse was racing and his breathing uneven. Physically and mentally drained, he knew he was on the edge of what he was capable of, the limit of his flying ability. But if this was going to work, there was no choice other than to make contact with the tanker again. A flash of lightning revealed the silhouette of the Vulcan in his peripheral vision to the right. Tuxford flew the bucking jet back into position behind Biglands’ Victor and, with his gloved hands on the throttles and control yoke, focused on the unsteady circle of fluorescent lights around the rim of the basket. He began to lunge for them, cursing each failure to connect. As they were thrown around in their chairs, in the back of Tux’s Victor, Ernie Wallis looked across at John Keable. The look between the two Navigators, only their eyes visible above oxygen masks, shared their recognition of the severity of the conditions.

  Something’s going to break, thought Dick Russell as he watched Tuxford try to strike for the centre of the basket. Minutes passed as the Victor surged forward and dropped back hunting in vain for the basket. Throttle response from the Conways wasn’t instantaneous and sometimes Tux missed by eight or nine feet as his jet lunged in underneath the tanker’s tail before dropping back to try again. The stirring spectacle gripped Russell. True grit, he thought, as he watched Tuxford’s struggle. Russell wasn’t sure many of his fellow pilots could or would have done it, but as the hose twisted and reared around the sky, Tuxford rammed the throttles and locked the probe into the drogue. Yes! Russell reacted instantly, the tension as he had watched ending as surely as if he’d just seen a penalty hammered home in a cup final.

  At the moment the fuel began pumping through the long hose into the Victor’s tanks, Tuxford began to see stars twinkling around the edges of the tanker filling his view forward. The storm released its grip on the formation as quickly as it had enveloped them. The turbulence subsided and, for the first time in over twenty minutes, the three V-bombers began to settle in the air while the hose connecting the two Victors smoothed out. As a sense of the natural horizon returned, Tux was able to loosen his white-knuckle grasp on the flying. But with the intensity of flying through the storm behind them, his attention turned to the fuel within the formation. Acutely conscious that with a broken probe Biglands couldn’t take on any more fuel, he asked his own crew how much they could expect from the damaged tanker. And, in case there was any confusion, he contacted Biglands directly over the RT.

  ‘White Four, you must leave extra reserves to get back.’

  The fuel plan was in tatters. Tux had been supposed to turn for home before the end of the refuelling bracket with 64,000lb of fuel on board, leaving Biglands to fly on with the Vulcan. But that was before the probe tip had sheered off; before they swapped places; before Tux had spent precious minutes trying to make contact, burning extra fuel with every stab at the throttles; and before all three jets had flown way beyond the southern limit of the refuelling bracket. Now over six hours out of Ascension, it was Biglands turning for home and he was going to need more than 64,000lb to get there. A rough calculation showed that around 70,000lb offered the slimmest of margins. But without any means of refuelling he had to arrive at the Wideawake overhead with more than a bare minimum. At this point there wasn’t even the possibility of informing Red Rag Control. Jerry Price was in the dark about what was unfolding thousands of miles from Ascension.

  The amber lights around the tanker’s HDU flashed to tell Tux he’d had all the fuel that could be spared. He throttled back, breaking contact. Then he watched as the floodlights underneath the tanker flicked off before she peeled away to the north to begin cruise-climbing to an economical altitude for the long drag home.

  The attack formation was down to just two jets: one Victor and the Vulcan. And between them they were carrying around 20,000lb less fuel than they were supposed to have: nearly two hours’ flying time; about 600 nautical miles. Woefully short, thought Tuxford, of what’s needed. It was of academic concern, though, if his Victor’s drogue had been damaged in the storm. Until working out how they could continue, they had to discover whether or not they could continue at all. They decided to attempt a token fuel transfer to the Vulcan to prove the system worked.

  Pre-tanking checks, ordered Tuxford to initiate the refuelling sequence.

  While Ernie Wallis trailed the hose, Martin Withers dropped into position behind the Victor. Behind the Vulcan Captain, AEO Hugh Prior pulled a heavy torch out of a compartment in his flight bag and passed it up the ladder to Dick Russell in the co-pilot’s seat. As Withers tried to formate on the drogue, Russell shone the torch through the flight-deck window. Reflections from the glass confused the view ahead, but he was able to pick up the basket in the beam of the powerful torch.

  ‘I can’t really see anything,’ Russell confessed, ‘but I can’t see the probe tip in there.’ There was no obvious problem, but there was only one way to be certain. Dick Russell stowed the torch and Withers closed in on the basket. In the cold, clear air the contact presented no difficulties. Withers clunked home the probe for proving contact and fuel began to flow freely. It was still on. 5,000lb later they were satisfied that the refuelling equipment, at least, wouldn’t provide cause to abort the mission. For the time being, they could continue south.

  As far as the crew of the Vulcan were concerned, the fuel drama was now over. The mood aboard the Victor was rather different. The fuel plan was a bust, but having proved that the refuelling system was still working they now had a crucial decision to make. If they turned back now, if Withers jettisoned his bombs, they had the fuel to get both jets back to Ascension. If they pressed on, the future was uncertain. They would be placing themselves in a situation where they could no longer depend solely on their own efforts to survive. But having got this far – and hung off the end of a refuelling hose in appalling, draining conditions to do so – Tux felt a strong compulsion to carry on, but he couldn’t simply follow his own gut instinct to support the Vulcan. His crew had to feel the same way. He put it to them.

  ‘Right, we either turn back now, or pretty sharpish at least, or we press on in the knowledge that we’ve got to come up with an alternative plan. We may need to abandon or ditch. Say what’s on your mind. I need you all to speak up.’

  One by one, and quickly, the answers came back through the intercom.

  Well we’ve come this far…

  Keep going.

  Got to go on with the mission.

  Unanimous.

  ‘Then let’s see how far we can go with this without making too much of a mess of it…’

  In truth Tux hadn’t expected anything less from any of them, but ultimate responsibility for their safety lay with him. Their support wouldn’t make their predicament any less precarious, but it was a comfort to him as he made the single most difficult decision he’d ever had to make as an aircraft captain: choosing danger over safety. Now they had to work out how they were going to do it.

  ‘John,’ Tux called out to his Nav Plotter, ‘how much fuel do we need to get back from the fourth bracket?’

  Keable immediately got to work, his calculations double-checked by Ernie Wallis at the Nav Radar’s station to his left. He needed to factor in the winds they’d encountered on the way down, examine the Operating Data Manual that could tell them the fuel burn of the four Conway engines at different weights and altitudes. The five men aboard discussed how low on fuel they were prepared to go; how close they needed to get to Ascension to have any hope of meeting a tanker scrambled from Wideawake to bring them h
ome; and, ultimately, as a result of Keable’s rapid number-crunching, how much fuel they could afford to pass to the Vulcan at the fourth transfer. Over an intense half hour’s discussion the crew focused on the ramifications of sharing the fuel available between the Victor and Vulcan in different proportions. In the end, they felt, the best they could do was to pass 607 just 8,000lb, nearly 4,000lb short of what, after the proving contact, was still required. It would still, Tux thought, give the bomber a reasonable shot at doing the job and making it back to the Rio RV. But it would leave him and his Victor crew at least 20,000lb short of what they required to reach Ascension. Unless they successfully rendezvous’d with a TAT scrambled from Wideawake, they would run out of fuel 600 miles south of the island, well beyond the range of rescue helicopters. And the worst part was, they couldn’t tell anyone.

  The refuellings at brackets three and four were supposed to be conducted in strict radio silence. Because of the difficulties they’d had to contend with, that hadn’t happened at the third bracket, but it was one thing communicating with another Victor a few hundred yards away on a discrete VHF channel, quite another to try to reach Red Rag Control over 3,000 miles away on the HF radio. Any long-range transmission by AEO Mick Beer could compromise the strike itself by alerting the Argentinians to the imminent arrival of the Vulcan. Beer agreed with the rest of the crew’s logic. If they were going to put themselves at risk by passing the Vulcan the fuel, it didn’t make sense to threaten her chances of success by broadcasting their presence. They chose to suffer in silence.

  Aboard the Vulcan, thoughts began to turn to what lay beyond the final refuelling. As a veteran Victor instructor, Dick Russell hadn’t expected to be flying into harm’s way again – and certainly not in his fifties. That was bad enough, but before the bomb-run he was going to have to swap places with Withers’ co-pilot, Pete Taylor. Naturally enough, Russell’s mind lingered on the safety of the aircraft at a time when, sitting below the flight deck in the jump seat, he’d be powerless to influence events. He turned to Martin Withers.