By the morning of Monday the 19th, a day later, they’d welded together sections of L-shaped mild-steel girders found on the engineering dump and bolted them on to the once-clean wing. The pylon itself was also built in the station workshops. With only the most basic aerodynamic fairing over the front it was equally agricultural in appearance.
Chris Pye’s team were again lucky with the Vulcans they’d chosen. Cooling ducts built into the wing for the Skybolts allowed them to run the wiring for the Dash 10 back to the cockpit. The control panel was screwed into the top of the AEO’s station replacing his cool-air duct. It was still stickered ‘HONINGTON ONLY’.
The job just needed finishing off. One of the engineers asked if someone could tell him which one of the squadrons home-brewed its own beer.
‘Someone can,’ he was told, ‘but we’d rather you finished this first. Then we can talk about the home brewing!’
‘No,’ he said, defending himself, ‘you misunderstand. I’ve drilled through the bulkhead to take the wire in and all I want is some of those corks with the hole in the middle so that if I put the wires through the hole, push the cork into the hole in the bulkhead, shove a bit of mastic round it, it’ll be the perfect pressure tight seal…’
To call it make and make do was understating the ingenuity by a considerable degree.
The trial fit was a success and over the next two days the remaining CORPORATE Vulcans were rolled into the hangar to be similarly equipped. At the same time, the engineering team worked to refine the design of the hastily constructed prototype pylon.
Having the Dash 10 – the best kit available – was something at least. But it didn’t put an end to Simon Baldwin’s concern about those radar-laid guns. The thought of them nagged away at him. He’d seen what they could do.
Another five Victors flew in to Ascension the next day. The following morning, 20 April, they were going to send a Victor south, beyond the Antarctic convergence.
Chapter 18
Bob Tuxford reached up from his ejection seat to a central control panel mounted in the roof of the Victor’s cockpit. He checked the power source for engine start and opened the cross feed cock before flicking the ignition isolation. Then he selected the engine and pushed the start button.
‘Pressing now. One thousand… One.’ Communicating with his crew. ‘One thousand… Two.’ Then he repeated the action for the remaining engines. He dropped the other hand down to his left and released the throttles, then eased them forward before clicking the levers back into idle, turning over at around 48 per cent of their maximum revolutions. The crew went through the long list of checks: call and response over the conference intercom that connected all the men on board. Everything up and running. Today they were flying with a sixth crew member: a radar expert from the recently disbanded 27 Squadron, the specialist maritime reconnaissance unit. He would normally have had a proper seat, bolted down and secure between the pilots and the backseaters, but with the wooden box that housed the gyros and accelerometers of the Carousel INS strapped to the middle of the floor taking its place, he’d have to sit on that instead. For fifteen hours.
It was nearly three weeks since the Falklands had been invaded and until now the Argentinians had had it nearly all their own way. Marines had put up fierce but limited resistance in Stanley and on South Georgia, but in the end they’d been overwhelmed. Today, Tux felt, was when things began to turn round. It had struck home during the briefing. As he’d looked around at his colleagues listening and taking notes from sheets of cardboard hanging from the canvas of the Victor Ops centre, he couldn’t help but think of the images of the Second World War. This is what the RAF gets paid for, he thought.
Tux had been chosen to fly the long slot. The plan was for five Victors to fly south together. Then, like rows of cutlery used and discarded from the outside in at a banquet, the Victor formation would shrink as each wave of aircraft transferred spare fuel to those continuing, before turning for home, their usefulness at an end. Eventually, just Tux would be left, flying alone into potentially hostile skies to survey the unwelcoming seas around South Georgia. ‘What intelligence do we have and where are our surface forces?’ Tux had asked, concerned about what might be waiting for them when they descended to begin their search pattern. Knowing the location of British ships was important. Anxious, about to engage the enemy for the first time, they were as much of a cause for concern as Argentine anti-aircraft destroyers. It was all very well the Navy shooting first and asking questions later, but a beautifully worded apology wasn’t going to bring back a dead Victor crew. Tux didn’t really get an answer. The blank looks that greeted him suggested that nobody really knew.
Now it was time to go. Tux checked in on the RT, just a brief transmission to prove the radio. Then, as he gently nudged up the power from the four Rolls-Royce Conway engines, the Victor began to roll forward. Before going too far, he tested the brakes. The big jet bowed heavily on its nosewheel. The view from the pilots’ seats was poor. Even the rear-view mirrors designed to help manoeuvring on the ground were of little use. Instead the Nav Radar and AEO would peer through their portholes on the sides of the cockpit to check the wings for clearance.
Clear right.
Clear left.
Then John Keable told them the Carousel had tripped off-line.
There was no quick fix. For the INS to find its bearings again they needed to start from scratch. It would take at least fifteen minutes to reboot and, with the rest of the formation burning precious fuel, ready to take off, they couldn’t afford to delay. Keable had no idea what had happened, but there was no way they could fly the probe slot without it. Bitterly disappointed and cursing the wretched piece of new kit, Tuxford thumbed the RT again.
‘We’ve lost our INS, we’re not capable.’
And then the flexibility on which the ‘tanker trash’ prided themselves kept the mission on track.
Watching the Victors fly into Ascension, Bill Bryden had thought about how many of the old converted V-bombers the Brits needed to support any long-range mission. Why, he wondered, can’t we lend them some of the USAF’s big Boeing KC-135s? As they were nearly twice the size of the Victors it was true that fewer of the American tankers would have been needed, but that would only increase the responsibility shouldered by each one. If you’re using two tankers and one fails, you’re worse off than if you needed five and one then develops a fault. The other critical advantage the British tanker force had was the ability to both give and receive fuel. For all its advantages, the American Stratotanker didn’t give that option. Tux knew that well – he’d spent two years flying them out of California with the USAF. It was a distinction that, in the days to come, would prove to be of vital importance.
The five Victors waiting on the Wideawake pan were interchangeable – even at this late stage. Each of the crews carried copies of the flight plans allocated to their colleagues. Swapping positions within the formation was almost as simple as turning the page and following a new flight plan. If Tux couldn’t fly the long slot, then Squadron Leader John Elliott would. The Captain with whom Tuxford had trained in the Highlands the previous week seamlessly assumed the new role.