‘What do we do about it?’ Laycock asked.
‘We’ve got to have replacement valves, sir.’
‘Do any exist?’
‘Don’t know, sir.’
They were fortunate. Waddington had just been wired into a new computerized supply system that quickly discovered that twenty 4-inch non-return valves were sitting on a shelf at RAF Stafford, a vast RAF maintenance unit near Utoxeter. They arrived at Waddington the next morning. Extraordinary, thought Laycock, thrilled that a potentially show-stopping problem appeared to have been solved so easily. The engineers, meanwhile, got on with chipping the hard-set old filler away from the pipework surrounding the valves. Easter wasn’t going to get much of a look-in this year, but at least something was being resurrected.
With the effort to prepare the aircraft up and running, Laycock turned his attention to the people who were going to fly them. He decided to talk to the charismatic Officer Commanding 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron.
There was something bohemian about Wing Commander Simon Baldwin, a pipe-smoking Navigator with a rich, baritone drawl that sounded like burnt caramel. Since assuming command in 1980, Baldwin had fostered a loose, confident and exuberant atmosphere in 44 Squadron. They were big on sport and big on drinking. But if they played hard, they also worked hard. Baldwin’s laid-back style couldn’t mask his competence.
After success in the 1973 Strike Command bombing competition, Baldwin was given responsibility for navigation in 1974’s GIANT VOICE bombing competition in America. Under Baldwin, the British Nav teams played to their strengths, devising techniques that might counter the great technical advantages of the USAF’s F-111s and B-52s. The RAF won the navigation trophy for the first time ever that year. He returned to the States in 1975 and in 1976 commanded the entire RAF detachment. In 1981, as OC 44 Squadron, he’d beaten the Americans again. Just as the AOC at 1 Group had asked him to.
John Laycock quickly saw that the bombing competitions pointed the way forward. He realized that the best way to prepare the crews for any mission south was to pull a small, dedicated cell of aircrew and engineers out of the squadrons and have them train intensively. There was never a moment’s doubt in his mind that the only man to run the training was Simon Baldwin.
Turning left into Waddington, you passed rows and rows of two-storey redbrick terraces laid out in squares with names culled from the RAF’s past. Laycock and Baldwin were next-door neighbours on Trenchard Square – or ‘Power Drive’ as the cul-de-sac that housed the base’s senior officers was known. Baldwin was at home enjoying a day’s leave when Laycock knocked on the door. As he was shown in, Laycock saw again the evidence of Baldwin and his wife Sheila’s enthusiasm for their squadron in every corner. The ‘Rhodesia’ epithet had been bestowed on 44 Squadron by George VI to reflect the large numbers of aircrew it attracted from the southern African colony. The elephant on the squadron’s crest acknowledged the connection, and images of the big beast on everything from tea-towels and mugs to pictures and ornaments around the Baldwins’ house celebrated it.
‘We’ve had a signal,’ Laycock told the squadron boss.
Baldwin hadn’t even thought the Vulcans would be involved. The Task Force seemed to be an exclusively naval effort, but Laycock explained the order from Group.
‘In-flight refuelling hadn’t crossed my mind, we’ve never done it,’ Baldwin responded equivocally, as he considered what was being planned, ‘but, yeah, perhaps it’ll work.’
The two men talked more. Laycock explained that he wanted to set up what amounted to a bombing competition training cell to train for CORPORATE. And that he wanted Baldwin to head it up. It was no time for false modesty. The CO of 44 knew he had the experience to do it and he knew he could work with Laycock. The big man had once been a flight commander on 44 himself and he knew how to delegate. They talked easily and had confidence in each other. Most importantly, Baldwin knew that Laycock could provide him with the top cover he’d need to get the job done. This was going to be something that everyone would want to be part of.
Even at that stage, Baldwin, the decorated Navigator, realized he was as shaky as anyone about the whereabouts of the Falklands, their location dimly recalled as the setting for First World War naval battles. And while he’d heard of Ascension, he couldn’t place it. Once Laycock had left, he pulled out an atlas to get a sense of what needed to be done. The navigational challenges that lay ahead became immediately apparent. Even assuming they could crack the air-to-air refuelling, the crews would have difficulty just knowing where they were. The Vulcans would have to fly south over 4,000 miles of open ocean. Between Ascension and any potential target, there wasn’t a single surface feature that the Nav Radars could use to fix a position with their H2S scanners.
Baldwin sucked on his pipe and mulled over how they were going to pull it off.
On Easter Sunday, Rear-Admiral Sandy Woodward arrived off Ascension Island on board the 6,000 ton ‘County’ Class guided-missile destroyer HMS Glamorgan. Flag Officer of the Royal Navy’s 1st Flotilla, Woodward had been diverted from fleet exercises off North Africa and ordered to sail south in the early hours of 2 April. Fed up with a job that seemed to be turning into an endless round of cocktail parties and small talk, he considered it his good fortune to have been the closest Flag Officer to the Falkland Islands when the Argentinians invaded. In a week’s time he would be steaming south aboard a new flagship, the 28,000-ton aircraft-carrier HMS Hermes, in command of the battle group tasked with retaking the Falklands.
Transferred to the island from Glamorgan by helicopter, Woodward was impressed at the extent to which this sleepy American communications and tracking station had already been transformed, in just a few days, into a forward fleet- and airbase. So too, it seemed, were the Soviets. Flying from bases in the Angolan capital Luanda and Konakry in Guinea, their giant long-range Tupolev Tu-95 Bear spy planes had kept a close eye on the British fleet’s progress.
Once ashore, Woodward was quickly introduced to Lieutenant Colonel Bill Bryden. The USAF base commander confided in Woodward that he’d been told to give the Brits every possible assistance. ‘But not’, he added, ‘under any circumstances to get caught doing so!’ Clearly the Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, was making sure that his message was getting through loud and clear, whatever fence-sitting there might have been for diplomatic consumption from the rest of the Reagan administration.
Invited by Woodward aboard Glamorgan for dinner as she took on stores for the journey south, Bryden smiled as he walked through the destroyer’s narrow corridors and companionways past cases of Argentine corned beef stacked from floor to ceiling for the long deployment. Can’t give it away back home, he thought wryly.
Food was just one element in a vast logistical exercise that was being staged through Ascension. Unconfirmed reports that materiel had been flown in to Ascension had appeared in British newspapers a few days earlier, but they gave no hint of the scale of the operation. When the British Task Force had cast off from the docks at Portsmouth to cheers and waving flags, its departure had been driven by the imperative to set sail immediately. It had been an astonishing achievement, but the fleet was in no sense ready for war. Weapons, consumables, ammunition and equipment all had to be flown ahead to Ascension by the RAF’s round-the-clock transport operation out of bases at Brize Norton and Lyneham.