But the family was feeling the strain a little. Marham had been home to V-bombers since 1956. Once considered an elite, the V-force were, by 1982, no longer the newest toy in the Air Force’s box – far from it. April 1982 saw the arrival at Marham of the first of the new Panavia Tornado GR1s, the swing-wing fighter-bombers of which so much was expected. This European collaboration had started life known as the MRCA, the Multi-Role Combat Aircraft. The Victor old-hands were not at all impressed with the brash new kids on the block. They didn’t like the way the pilots and navigators never changed out of their flight suits – that wasn’t the way the V-force did things. They didn’t like the attention the new ‘superjets’ attracted. And the fact that it was 617 Squadron, the Dambusters, the most famous squadron in the entire Air Force, didn’t help either. The ‘Dim Bastards’, they called them. MRCA? Short for ‘Much-Refurbished Canberra Aircraft’, they laughed, referring to the old English Electric Canberra jet bombers designed in the 1940s and now relegated to a declining role as the RAF’s jack-of-all-trades.
It was the Victors, though, that the RAF needed now. Marham’s shiny new residents were of no use whatsoever. Price was taken entirely by surprise. Just a few days before the invasion of the Falklands, Air Marshal Sir John Curtiss had visited Marham from 18 Group HQ at Northwood. The two men had sat around a table discussing Endurance’s frantic efforts to contain Argentine ambitions in South Georgia. They talked broadly about the South Atlantic as a theatre of operations, but without urgency. But now, while there were no clear indications yet of how the Victors might be used, it was evident that if the RAF were going to get involved, the old tankers were the only machines in their arsenal that would allow them to do so.
Soon after Sir Michael Beetham ordered the mobilization of the RAF transport force, with the Argentinians now in control of the Falklands, Price received a signal from Air Vice-Marshal Knight at 1 Group.
The ‘tanker trash’ were to prepare for war.
Chapter 11
Since handing over the reins of the nuclear deterrent to the Navy, the V-force had been run on a shoestring. The Vulcans, their crews were led to believe, wouldn’t be in service for much longer. The official line was that it wasn’t, therefore, cost-effective to spend good money on them. The few modifications that they’d had incorporated were hardly a great leap forward in technology either. The apparently endless upgrade programmes lavished on the USAF’s B-52 force were eyed enviously by their cash-strapped British counterparts. To contest bombing competitions with Strategic Air Command, Waddington’s Vulcans did have their ageing systems tweaked and enhanced. But it was little more than a bare minimum. The Heading Reference System was modified to give a smoother, more accurate feed into the Nav Plotter’s Ground Position Indicator. An additional Radar Altimeter dial was installed for the co-pilot, along with triple offset boxes for the Nav Radar that allowed him to ‘walk’ the bomber to its target using distinctive ground features. Radar-guided join-the-dots. The big delta’s ECM – Electronic Countermeasures – kit was also boosted. It didn’t, perhaps, amount to much, but Simon Baldwin, unsure whether any of it would even be relevant to the demands of CORPORATE, was determined to give his crews any help he could. Crudely screwed in and sometimes rescued from scrap heaps, the extra equipment was fitted to all the airframes selected for his training cell. And it didn’t stop there. Over the days and weeks that followed Easter, more would be done to enhance the old bombers’ capability and, more importantly, their ability to survive.
As Commanding Officer of one of Waddington’s four bomber squadrons, Baldwin had also been asked by John Laycock to put forward one of his flight crews. He had two outstanding candidates: 44’s two Flight Commanders. He had to choose one of them. In the end, though, he didn’t have to wrestle with the decision. One of them was, perhaps, the best pilot on the squadron. The other, though, was just back from RED FLAG.
‘Now you be careful.’
Monty didn’t get it. He’d just emerged from the funeral of a good friend and now his friend’s widow was telling him to be careful.
‘What do you mean?’ he said, brightly. It sounded upbeat and unconcerned. ‘This is me, Monty!’ But she wouldn’t be reassured.
‘I don’t like this,’ she stressed, concerned about what the invasion of the Falklands was going to mean for the RAF. And for her friend Monty, in particular.
‘Oh, we won’t be going anywhere…’ Monty tried again to put her mind at ease. He drove back from the funeral with no reason to dwell on the exchange. But it soon turned out to be remarkably prescient.
When he got home, Monty’s wife Ingrid told him Simon Baldwin had phoned. The live-wire Scot called his squadron boss back to ask him what he was after.
‘You’d better come up,’ Baldwin told his Flight Commander.
Monty headed straight in to the base. And there, confusion and speculation about what might lie ahead were all around. Someone suggested they practise Vulcan on Vulcan formation flying to rehearse for refuelling.
But none of us has done any refuelling!
And the system’s dormant.
We’ll load up some bombs and there’ll be a firepower demonstration at Ascension Island.
Where’s Ascension Island?
We’ll drop some bombs to show the Argies we mean business!
That’s just dumb. Either we’re doing something or we’re not…
It was early days.
Baldwin told Monty that he wanted his crew to represent the squadron. ‘How do you feel about that?’
‘Fine, but I think we’d better start doing some training quickly!’ Monty told him.
Before finally settling on Montgomery’s crew though, Baldwin needed reassurance on one thing.
‘What about Dave?’ he asked.
Monty’s Nav Radar, Dave Stenhouse, was a hugely popular member of the squadron with a rare talent for instigating mischief then being nowhere to be found when it was time to face the music. As a Radar, Monty reckoned, there was no one to touch him. When he was good. But he wasn’t always good. The Vulcan’s best defence was always to fly down low in valley floors, out of sight and shielded from search radars. Entry into the valleys needed to be finely judged by the Nav Radar. The bomber would approach the ridges surrounding the trough at a right-angle, waiting for a signal to turn from the radar operator. And during the intense work-up for RED FLAG there’d been a wobble. Monty and his crew had flown north before turning towards the Scottish Western Isles and descending to low level. They’d done it a hundred times. But then an urgent demand cut through the laconic, well-practised communication between the five crew members.
‘Up the stairs. Quick!’ Monty shouted to Stenhouse over the intercom.
Stenhouse quickly unbuckled and leapt up the stairs between the two pilots. As he stood, holding on, to look forward through the cockpit windows, Monty pointed out the mountain ahead. Closing at around 300 knots, they were flying straight for Mull’s Ardnamurchan.
‘Dave, the next time we fly this, we’re in the bloody dark. Get it wrong and we’re probably going to hit that!’
But he didn’t get it wrong again, and throughout RED FLAG the Montgomery crew became a confident, effective unit. Five months after the close shave in Mull, Monty didn’t hesitate.
‘I think we’re in it as a team, boss.’