In return for Tux’s faith in him, he viewed the self-assured pilot affectionately as ‘a pain in the arse’, in the same way that a teacher might regard a naughty, but likeable pupil.
On the V-force, navigators came in pairs and Wallis was part of a double-act with Flight Lieutenant John Keable. Both men were well known for their sense of humour, both always ready with a quick quip or retort. Tux knew them both well socially through the Mess and was sure he was picking the best team – their selection was a foregone conclusion.
Tux was still new to 55 and hadn’t had time to see everyone at work. But the squadron boss’s hard-working co-pilot, the stocky, dependable Flight Lieutenant Glyn Rees, was the most experienced co-pilot on the squadron. He looked like a good bet.
As AEO he picked his mate, the not inappropriately named Mick Beer. Squadron Leader Mick Beer was a social animal, one of a group of fellow officers who could end up back at Tux’s house for Sunday lunch. Tux’s wife Eileen was used to it. Whatever food there was would end up shared between sixteen of them. But if the Tuxfords were regularly eaten out of house and home, at least they were never out of drink. None of their guests would dream of arriving without booze, least of all Mick Beer. The tall, broad-shouldered AEO may not have had as much experience on the Marham tanker force as some, but he’d got time on the old Victor SR2 reconnaissance squadron. He was a good AEO and Tux knew he could rely on him. In the air and at the bar.
Beer, of course, was also regarded by Wallis as a ‘pain in the arse’.
Chapter 12
On Tuesday morning, Tux, taking the place of the regular co-pilot, strode out to the Victor K2 with Martin Todd and the three members of the rear crew. Their mission was to familiarize themselves with the big four-jet tanker at low level and trial the makeshift camera fitting, mounted behind the glass panels of the visual bomb-aiming position in the nose. To do so they would be conducting simulated attacks on the sea cliffs of north Yorkshire’s Flamborough Head – a feature that was going to receive a great deal more aggressive attention from the RAF over the weeks to come.
XL192 sat camouflaged and ready on the Marham pan, fussed over by a team of ground engineers and technicians, all marshalled by a crew chief – the man with responsibility for the old jet’s well-being. On the Tarmac, still attached by cables to ground equipment, the Victor resembled a bird with broken wings. Her unique, once celebrated, crescent wings sloped down from the fuselage towards the ground in search of support, their clean lines broken up by underslung refuelling pods and fuel tanks. Hunched above the squat undercarriage, her white belly barely clearing the Tarmac underneath, she was all lumps and bumps and afterthoughts. But, like an albatross awkward on terra firma, she needed to fly. Once in the air she had a presence to rival the Vulcan. Her high dihedral T-tail and swept, tapering wings were graceful and elegant. Her distinctive nose, apparently stolen from the rocketships of Buster Crabbe-era Flash Gordon, gave her a purposeful look. A 1950s vision of the future.
Designed to the same 1940s Air Staff Requirement as the Vulcan, she was the last of the V-bombers to fly. Sir Frederick Handley Page, a giant of the British aviation industry, was stung by the superiority of the Avro Lancaster’s performance over his own wartime four-engined heavy, the Halifax. The company that bore his name didn’t let it happen again. The Handley Page Victor could carry nearly twice the bomb load of the Vulcan and she was faster too – in 1957, test pilots took her through Mach 1, much to the annoyance of the team developing the Vulcan. At the time she was the largest aircraft ever to have broken the sound barrier – and the Observer, sitting in one of the rear-facing crew seats, the first man to break it travelling backwards. Rivalry between Avro and Handley Page was intense. Crowds at Farnborough were the beneficiaries as the two bombers slugged it out, performing rolls, loops and high-speed Immelman turns – manoeuvres never before seen in aircraft of their great size and weight. Sir Frederick – or HP as he was known – left nothing to chance in competing for the affections of the public and the Ministry of Supply. He even chose a special colour scheme. The Victor prototype was painted in a striking matt black finish, set off with silver wings and tail. A distinctive red cheatline ran from nose to tail. His futuristic new bomber looked stunning.
The Victor was built to slice through the sky at 60,000 feet – twice the height of today’s commercial airliners – untroubled by the fighters of the day. But when Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane was shot down by a Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile ‘above 68,000 feet’ over Sverdlovsk, Russia, in 1960, it was obvious that altitude alone no longer offered the V-force any security. The decision to switch to low-level operations was quickly taken, and it was a decision that would have major consequences for the Victor.
It was the first of the V-bombers, the Vickers Valiant, that suffered most as a result of the new flight regime. In 1964, a crew were lucky to escape with their lives when, during a training flight, their Valiant was rocked by a loud bang followed by a shaking throughout the aircraft. The pilots were able to bring the bomber home safely, but it was clear when the jet came to a standstill that the starboard wing was sagging. When engineers examined her, they found that the rear wing spar had cracked in flight. Urgent inspections on the rest of the RAF’s Valiants showed all bar one to have signs of similar damage. The entire fleet was grounded for good, leaving the RAF without an airborne tanker barely five years after Beetham’s 214 Squadron had proven the new capability.
The Victor, able to carry its own weight in fuel, was chosen to fill the breach. But the Victor’s great load-carrying ability was not the only reason for the decision. Like the Valiant, the Victor’s airframe stood up less well to flying in the thick, gusty air at low level, where the bomber force was now confined, than the Vulcan’s more robust, rigid delta. Crews pulling the Victor into a fast, steep climb from low down – a manoeuvre designed to simulate the release of a weapon – could hear the wings crack under the strain. The Victor, with her more flexible, shock-absorbing wings, was easier on her crews at low level than her Avro rival, but stress was killing her and, had it been allowed to continue, it probably would have killed her crews too. By the end of the 1960s, the last Victor bomber squadron was disbanded. Of the three V-bomber designs, the Vulcan was left to soldier on alone. The Victor’s future with her wings clipped, her bomb bay sealed and her defensive Electronic Countermeasures stripped out lay in tanking at medium altitude.
But now Tux relished the chance to take a Victor down low again. Providing they stayed inside the prescribed fatigue limits, a few flights ‘in the weeds’ weren’t going to hurt. They may have been uncomfortable, difficult to handle and hard to see out of, but he had huge respect for the old jets. He admired them. The RAF needed to provide long-range reconnaissance and the Marham tankers, with their Heath Robinson collection of hastily installed cameras, were the only option available.