Many of the bombs produced during that war had since been used in trials but it transpired that somebody, somewhere, had decided to hold back a cache of the mighty weapons. Just in case. After the war the United States had built its own version of the bombs, several of which had been liberated from former US Air Force bases in the last year. The US versions of the Grand Slam and the Tallboy were prosaically called T-14 and T-10. Altogether there were seven ten-ton and nineteen six-ton bombs onboard the Hampshire. If Guy French had been onboard he suspected he would have winced every time the ship hit a big wave.
The bombs were so big that only the Handley Page Victor V-Bomber had a bomb bay large enough to accommodate them internally. A Victor could carry either a single Grand Slam or two Tallboys and the powers that be had determined that while the seven Avro Vulcans sent to the Middle East would operate from Saudi Arabian airfields or from Abadan, the six Victors sent to the Eastern Mediterranean would be based in Cyprus; three at what had been Nicosia Airport, and three from Akrotiri. Two Vulcans and a single Victor would also be based at RAF Luqa on Malta, but the deployment of the additional Victor, and a force of six additional aircraft, all Vickers Valiants had been delayed pending the completion of an extension to the existing main runway at Luqa. On completion of this deployment half the surviving operational V-Bomber Force would be based close enough to support British and Commonwealth forces in and around the Persian Gulf.
Two Victors had been sent to Iraq again last night, one with a Tallboy onboard and the other with thirty one thousand pound general purpose bombs loaded; both aircraft had returned safely at around dawn.
HMS Hampshire’s arrival, two days ahead of schedule was timely because the single Grand Slam and all four Tallboys ‘shuttled’ to Cyprus by Valiants based at Conningsby in England had been expended in the last two nights. The chaps in the Mess at Akrotiri had been of the opinion that it was high time the RAF delivered a ‘Welcome to Iraq’ greeting card to the invaders.
Honour satisfied, everybody could get on with the war now.
Before the Navy had stepped in with its generous offer to cart a whole bunker full of big bombs to Cyprus there had been much talk about ‘wearing out’ and or ‘risking’ the remaining Victor Fleet — fourteen to seventeen operational aircraft at any one time — moving the bombs to the Eastern Mediterranean. In the event, four Grand Slams and six Tallboys had been left behind in England and the Navy had offered to have the Hampshire undertake a second ‘high speed run’ to finish the job as soon as she got back to Portsmouth. But that was only after she had taken onboard all the warheads recovered from HMS Blake, and returned home via Malta and Gibraltar dropping off several ‘tactical nukes’ at each base.
With the news of HMS Hampshire’s mission everybody in the Mess now agreed that despite their initial reservations, the Navy was actually useful for something!
Guy French had spent most of the last year flying RAF turboprop transport aircraft and De Havilland Comets. Although he had been a ‘Vulcan man’ for his whole operational career there simply were not enough Vulcans to go around anymore; certainly not enough serviceable kites to keep a fellow like him in regular employment. Perversely, more pilots and miscellaneous fully trained aircrew had survived the war than either Vulcans or Valiants. He had literally jumped at the opportunity to volunteer to come to Cyprus to ‘train up’ on Victors — for which pilots were actually only slightly more numerous than operational aircraft — in the second, right-hand co-pilot’s seat.
Although being based at cold, wintry Brize Norton was not quite as miserable as it sounded — because of the proximity of Oxford — the chance to come out to sunny Cyprus and the promise of flying a V-Bomber again was almost too good to be true. Even better, everybody knew that of the three V-Bombers the Handley Page Victor was the most advanced and sophisticated of the three. Basically, it put old cart horses like the Vickers Valiant, or the American B-47 or B-52 in the shade.
The Victor was still the biggest aircraft in the world to have broken the sound limit in level flight — allegedly, some bright spark had put the nose down for a few seconds with the throttles more or less open and hey presto, his kite had registered 1.1 on the Mach meter — and in comparison with every other big bomber in the sky its design remained cutting edge over a dozen years after its maiden flight. Notwithstanding, he still missed his beloved Vulcan. Nobody believed him when he said flying a Vulcan was like flying a giant Spitfire…
“Blimey, I’ve never realised how big those bastards were up close!”
Guy French involuntarily reached to his upper lip and ran his forefinger through his moustache. Handlebars were getting a bit passé these days but he was proud of his ‘bars’ even though it did not go down so well with the girls as the clean shaven look.
Girls…
He had been engaged before the October War.
He had survived; God alone knew how.
Greta had not; nor had the tiny village outside York where she and her parents lived survived that awful night.
Even sixty or seventy feet away as the big destroyer edged towards the quayside the bombs on the helicopter pad looked very big. Guy had not realised that they were actually that big. Now if a fellow dropped one of those chaps on a half-way worthwhile target in Iraq or Russia or anywhere else, well, that really would be a thing.
Killing tens of thousands of people you had never known and never would know was murder — whichever way you cut it, it was murder, no point quibbling about words at this remove — but dropping a Grand Slam or a Tallboy ‘on the nose’, now that would be a thing indeed.
If a man could do a thing like that before he died he might die, if not happy, then at least a little more at peace with himself.
Guy French stared at the big bombs as crewmen pulled away the tarpaulins which had kept them dry on the long voyage from Southampton. He stared, and kept on staring because he knew that tonight, for the first time in eighteen months there was an even chance he might sleep awhile without descending into the dreadful miasma of his nightmares.
‘Grand Slam,” he murmured aloud.
Grand Slam!
Chapter 28
Thirty-six year old Sultan bin Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman bin Faisal bin Turki bin Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Saud had been appointed Minister of Defence and Aviation only the previous October. The 12th son of King Abdulaziz had held several senior posts in the Kingdom while still a very young man and been instrumental in assisting his father to establish a system of national governance based on Sharia Law. That he had always been a highly trusted member of his father’s house was attested by the fact he had been appointed to oversee Aramco’s — the Arabian American Oil Company’s — construction of a rail link between Damman on the Persian Gulf to Riyadh in the late 1940s. Contemporaries knew him as a ‘volatile and emotional’ man with no real military experience, other than a short spell in command of the Royal Guard, who had been elevated to his present role because of his birth and his loyalty to the current regime. However, within the Kingdom these were not things to be taken lightly and neither of Prince Abdulaziz Al Saud’s guests that afternoon regarded the hard-eyed man in flowing Bedouin robes standing before them with anything other than wary respect and mild trepidation.