Tales from the Cold War

It’s a late summer evening in 1986. A fast motorbike sprints down the road, parallel with a military runway. The rider looks right, watching the twin tail-planes of an F-14 Tomcat dip towards the tarmac as the nose lifts, and the jet sours into the sky, its after-burners lighting up the Californian dusk. The biker fist-pumps the air with one hand, opens the throttle wide, and the bike surges forward in homage to the soaring fighter.

It’s like something out of movie, which of course it is. Tom Cruise as call-sign ‘Maverick’, the talented-yet-immature egotist all-American hero of Top Gun. Who wouldn’t love to be ‘Mav’? Woman want him, and men want to be him, right?

I’m sitting across from that man, although there are some subtle differences. He has less hair for a start, and he’s 72 years old. He’s also probably less prone to emotional outbursts. Like ‘Mav’, he’s lost friends and colleagues along the way, but he’s unlikely to talk about it much. He has stories, but he’s not going to court attention with them, and he’s certainly not going to tell you that for 30 years of his life he was on the front line of the Cold War. Perhaps the key difference between my Dad and ‘Maverick’, is that he didn’t act the part, he played it.

We pour the umpteeth wine under his thatched patio canopy in Cyprus, the retirement home which he personally built to a considerably bigger size than that which he bought. Not that he built it alone, your mother mixed concrete consistently well he says.

Born at the tail-end of WW2, to a Spitfire pilot father and a fire-engine driving mother, he spent his childhood mostly in boarding school, whilst his post-war father served as the Station Commander at RAF El Adem in Libya. His Uncle did two tours on the Royal Yacht Britannia, finally as Chief Engineer. Both were awarded the OBE, tough act to follow. He spent the summers in Libya, driving Land Rovers around the desert, shooting off rounds at unexploded war-time hand grenades, and playing with the King of Libya’s son.

Joining the Royal Air Force as air-crew back when Pontius was a pilot, he graduated top of his class as an Air Electronics Officer (AEO), and was posted to the V-Force; a Vulcan squadron, with responsibility on-board for jamming Russian radars and air-air & ground-to air missiles, to allow the aircraft to find its way to target, and drop its nuclear pay-load. Some job. We weren’t coming back he says, even if we had the fuel, there’d be nowhere left to land.

So what would you do? He shrugs. Fortunately, that situation never needed to be considered.

Like Maverick, Dad also rode a motorbike to work, along Lady’s Mile beach to RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus in the 70s.

So you were like Top Gun! Glamorous stuff!

‘Not sure if Tom Cruise was attacked by a dog pack every morning. It kept running out from a shack and trying to bite me! One day, I lifted my flying booted foot to fend one off, looked back, and it was dead on the beach, accidently broke its neck!’

Oops! Did you ever see the owner?

‘Well, it was short-lived anyway. Was a crap old MZ bike, and

the bolts holding the fuel tank rattled loose and the contents poured all over my legs! Couldn’t afford Tom Cruise’s bike, we didn’t get paid as much as the Yanks! Bought a Yamaha trail bike instead, you used to wash it when I could afford to pay you.’

Must have been weird though, I ask, knowing you are the ones to drop the bomb should it ever go pear-shaped? Do you think it ever came close?

Something strange happened in the 70s he says. We were on QRA from Waddington, and we were nearly scrambled. QRA, Quick Reaction Alert, a constant rotation of several aircraft on each of the V force bases, armed with a nuclear weapon and ready to go. The QRA aircraft were regularly

brought to a higher alert state, called to arms, but always as a test of reactions. The klaxon would sound, then the Bomber Controller would announce the ‘’Readiness State’’ and the air-crew would rush to their aircraft. As they arrived the crew chief would press the ‘’Mass Rapid’ engine-start button & all four engines would wind up simultaneously. The co-pilot then had to race up the ladder first, so as to open the throttles to fuel the start. Once on board, helmets on, the crew were able to hear the Bomber Controller on the secure quick-release telescramble line plugged in under the tail.

Dad takes up the story from here…

‘Always the message was preambled by ‘’ Exercise Edem’’, a test, not real. This time it was not! Oh! ‘Shit’ we all thought, but said little, as the aircraft still needed looking after. The three aircraft taxied the short distance to the runway and halted. Now it is not difficult to confuse pilots, but we AEOs were made of sterner stuff, and as the Air Traffic Controller was now radio broadcasting ‘’Exercise Edem’’, a test, I thought I had the answer. AEOs carried the codes for both war and peace, if the next codeword was in the peace list, not the war list, it was sure to have been an error by the Bomber Controller!!! Or was it? It was possible that the confusion was the result of Soviet hacking and we were being deliberately misdirected. We knew there would be a wait until all the V-force alert aircraft across the UK were checked in as ready, then we would be launched or stood down.

“This is the Bomber Controller” came the message, “revert to RS15, code xxzzyy.” This meant Readiness State 15, or 15 mins to take off, our normal QRA status; in other words, it looked as if it was an exercise. Frantically decoding the word, I found it in the exercise list, passed it to my Navigator to check, then told the Captain. We then had a little chat as what to do. By rights we should wait for the official wartime reversion code before standing down, but should we?

After a short time our Co-pilot noticed a staff car racing round the perimeter track and then passing by on the grass to get in front of us on the runway. Out got the Station Commander. Our Co-pilot recognised him immediately as he had been bollocked, standing to attention on his office carpet while wearing his best hat just the day before. The Boss proceeded to mime quite explicitly for us to stand down and taxi back to our dispersal. The Co-pilot suggested to the Captain that a little fun could be had, and that he could get some of his own back. So for a few minutes we pretended not know what he meant by all his prancing and gesticulating. Eventually discipline returned and the Captain gave the Station Commander the thumbs up. The Boss drove back to his office to call Bomber Command HQ to find out the reason for all the confusion, we taxied back, refuelled the Jet and reset it to RS15 before retiring for tea and sandwiches; thirsty work being a cold war hero, especially when one has a live nuke in the bomb bay!’

The conversation turns to the Isle of Skye, from where readers of the blog will know we recently returned.

We used to visit RAF Portree in Skye quite often, Dad says. I’ll let him continue the story:

‘It was usually on a Thursday [Curry lunch in the mess!!] to work with the radar unit and the Phantom F4, later Tornado F3, from RAF Leuchars. But once we did a 360 Squadron stop-over detachment to Skye, in the Electronic Warfare Canberra, working with and against NATO navies by simulating attacks and trying to jam their technologies and so forth. I was the Squadron Detachment Commander, despite my boss being there, as he wanted a quiet week.

Although I was an AEO, I was also qualified to fly as a Navigator, and the boss, a Navigator, was in my AEO seat. I learned some interesting lessons during the arrival. All the ‘proper’ navigators had been briefed that the Portree TACAN navigational beacon didn’t work during a descent from the south below about 8,000ft, but this had not been circulated to me, not being a proper Nav!

When we pitched up, with not a lot of spare fuel, and it was winter by the way, the icy cloud was solid in the afternoon lack of light. We descended towards the cloud tops while discussing making an icing descent or a diversion to another airfield. The Canberra engines tended to flame-out in cloud between -5c & +5c due to icing on the guide vanes into the engine. The way to avoid it was not to vary the throttle when in the danger zone. Without accurate navigation, this was not possible.

The decision then was to look for a hole in the cloud to descend through, where we’d have visual contact with the ground or sea. If one was not found, we’d divert to RAF Leuchars.

I had a solid TACAN signal at 35 nautical miles and 190 degrees from the Portree airfield, and told the pilot to head 030. So, we’re at 15,000ft descending, the ancient doppler nav-aid is as crap as usual and the pilot is weaving about looking for a break in the crowd. Around 10,000ft the TACAN needle started to wander around in circles, much like us, and after a couple of minutes I realised I had not kept a plot going on the chart after the top of descent. Where were we? Just then we did a left-hand wing-over and dived into a hole in the cloud. Now 8,000ft and descending.

‘Can you see the sea?’ our hero asks the pilot

‘No, it’s nearly dark’, comes the reply from the front, ‘no lights in sight’.

Oh fuck, what is there around? There are mountains 1,700ft-ish on the south of the island, and 2,500ft-ish near the airfield. Where are they and what’s the safety height, the height at which we know we’re above all local high ground? Is it the same as the published airfield safety height? A feverish look over the chart suggests 2,500ft is the highest mountain; therefore safety altitude is 4,000ft.

Urgent call to the pilot, ‘safety altitude is 4000ft!’

‘It’s OK sir’, he says, passing 4,000ft and descending, ‘I’m visual with the runway lights now, 11 o’clock’.

‘Climb to 4,000ft now!’

‘It’s OK boss, I’m visual with the runway!’

‘Climb to safety altitude now! There is a mountain between us and the airfield! Slightly left, got it?’

‘Negative! Fuck! Climbing now!’

A few seconds pass, and the pilot pipes up again…’got the mountain visual now, 11 o’clock, turning right and descending again’.

In the hotel bar that evening I asked the pilot how much higher we were than the mountain. ‘Not saying’ says he, ‘but thanks for the heads-up, shall we not mention it to anyone else?’

‘Are you forgetting we were flying with the Squadron Commander today?’

‘Yes, but what the fuck does he know, he’s a Nav and never even noticed

‘True, we won’t mention it again!’

I also heard after landing that the really ancient Non-Directional Beacon worked fine for those in the know. I had neglected to tune it in! Oops. All things considered, put the whole thing down to experience and make sure you are on the distribution list.’

As he finishes the story, I replenish the wine and laugh, not all steely-eyed killer stuff then? I ask if they did that corny Top Gun thing, singing to girls in the bar and all that?

‘Err, well, not exactly, although Dick Wright did break his foot once. We went to a strip-club on a Vulcan detachment abroad, and they’d taught a horse to strip the clothes off a girl. Dick got so close, the horse stood on his foot!’

Wow, could he have got into trouble for that? I guess you stayed well clear from then on?

‘Not really, we went back the next night, but the horse had a heart attack as it came on stage and died. We figured it saw Dick coming!

Oh, to be a Cold War hero!