Underneath the khaki canvas of the Ascension Ops centre, some of the Victor captains considered the possibility of the HDU failing. Could they, in extremis, use either of the Mk 20 wingpods? Tux talked it through with the two 57 Squadron Flight Commanders, Martin Todd and Barry Neal. Even if it was the only chance of saving the jet it seemed unlikely. When they placed plan drawings of the Victors next to each other it became clear just how difficult it would be. It was one thing for a small jet fighter like a Lightning to hold station behind the wing of a Victor, but to try it in another Victor was a recipe for disaster. The eighty-foot hose on the centreline was nearly twice the length of those that trailed out of the wingpods. Making contact with the baskets trailing from the pods would bring the receiving Victor’s wing dangerously close to the tail of the tanker. On top of this, the receiver’s own high tail would sit right in the turbulent vortices spinning off the tanker’s wingtip. When it was needed most, control would be near impossible.
Even if the wingpods had been able to transfer enough fuel to make the effort worthwhile – which was, at best, marginal – it was a non-starter. If the Mk 20s were all that could save you, you were shafted either way.
Simon Baldwin sat alone at his desk with a cup of coffee and his pipe. He shared Mick Cooper’s doubts about how they were training to go in. As a clearer picture of the Argentine air defences had emerged his own concerns had grown. The previous night the 44 Squadron boss hadn’t been able to sleep. As he’d lain in bed, different ideas and possibilities raced through his mind. Assuming the Victors could get the Vulcan to the right place, he had to take care of two things: he had to try to ensure his crew survived and he had to maximize their chances of destroying the target, which, although yet to be confirmed, seemed certain to be a runway. An enthusiast like Cooper could talk for Britain about the different bombing options available. He’d hoarded official Air Ministry publications on bombs dating back to 1948. From practice bombs to the 22,000lb Grand Slam, he could tell you what sort of impact to expect. Of course, he’d tell you, it also depended on whether you used cast or machined cases; what fusing and detonator combination you chose. You could have instantaneous explosions or anything else up to a 144-hour delay (should you decide to ignore the Geneva Convention). And you could mix it all up within one bombload if you liked.
Baldwin knew that with more definitive information on the Argentine defences he had to reconsider the attack options. The Argentine low-level defences now looked extremely strong, and if the troops were on the ball, the Vulcan making a low-level attack could be exposed to an appalling barrage of anti-aircraft fire as it flew all the way down the runway at 300 feet. On top of this, the laydown attack was also by no means guaranteed to hit the target. The normal procedure was for the Nav Radar to issue directions until the pilot could make a positive identification of the target, and take over to make the final corrections visually. This approach was hard to fault in good visibility, and the Night Navigation Goggles meant that it remained an option in darkness. However, with the imminent onset of the Falklands winter, there was every possibility that the weather would be diabolical. In snow or fog the pilots would be all but blind, meaning that the attack would have to be carried out using the NBS and its antique computers. The runway was only about forty yards wide and radar bomb attacks were not always that accurate. There would be a strong probability that the Vulcan would end up decorating the airfield with a neat line of craters running parallel to the runway. Miss with one and you’d miss with them all.
And yet this wasn’t the clincher. Baldwin knew that from 300 feet, even if they got the bombs on target, there was a danger that they just wouldn’t do the necessary damage. On a laydown attack the 1,000lb bombs slowed down by their small parachutes wouldn’t hit the runway at sufficient velocity, or at a steep enough angle, to do the job. There would be insufficient penetration for them to do more than pockmark the hard surface of the strip.
Baldwin’s mind began to turn to the possibility of using a bombing technique he’d practised as a young Navigator during his first tour in the Air Force on Canberras in Singapore in the mid 1960s. The bombers would run in towards the target at low level, and shortly before the target, pop up to a height of 7,000 feet, and level off for a short run-in to the release point. Back then, the reason for using the tactic had been self-preservation. The potential targets at that time were Indonesian airfields and a pop-up to 7,000 feet put the Canberra out of range of the Indonesian anti-aircraft batteries. But the pop-up brought with it another crucial advantage: they could use ballistic bombs instead of retarded thousand-pounders.
To properly break up a Tarmac runway, these needed to be falling nearly vertically – at an aerodynamic terminal velocity of over 1,000 feet per second. They would then penetrate deep underneath the Tarmac into the substrata and destroy the strip from below, exploding upwards to rip out its foundations and leave a huge crater. Baldwin wasn’t sure of the exact dimensions but he knew it would be big – big enough for any aircraft trying to take off to fall into. The effect wouldn’t simply be more spectacular; it would also be more permanent. Like a test match wicket, a runway, once damaged, is unlikely to be quite the same again. Even if it was patched up efficiently, a deep hole would always be liable to subside, ensuring that it was out of action as far as fast jets were concerned. A very comprehensive repair was possible, but it would take days rather than hours, and that was assuming the Argentinians had the equipment, material and expertise on the islands to even contemplate it.
Baldwin now turned his attention to how he was going to keep the bomber safe. Soviet long-range ground-to-air missiles, supplemented by fighters with air-to-air missiles, had forced the V-force to low level. The Argentine fighters on the mainland were too far away to interfere. Word from Intelligence was that there were no fighters based at Port Stanley. Even if there were, though, at low level the Vulcan would retain a large measure of surprise. In the short time it would be exposed to the Argentine search radars – from early in the pop-up climb to bomb release – the Argentinians would struggle to get a fighter airborne.
Baldwin checked against his graph of the Argentine air defences. At 2,000 feet – the minimum from which the bombs could be dropped and reach terminal velocity – the bomber’s chances of survival were slim…Roland: kill zone – 12,800 feet. He asked the Station Intelligence Officer to check again with his Intelligence community whether or not Roland was deployed on the islands. The answer he got was the same. Roland, Baldwin was told, had not been deployed. He moved on. Tiger Cat burns out at 8,500 feet, but it’s visually aimed… so barely threat at all at medium level at night. Oerlikon – that was what he was really worried about – 6,400 feet. Give it a bit for the wife and kids…8,000 feet. That should put them above the kill zone.
Keeping out of the kill zone was the critical step, but it didn’t completely remove the aircraft from danger. The Argentine high-explosive cannon shells would continue to heights well above the kill zone and explode automatically at the end of their upward flight. That they were travelling relatively aimlessly at this stage would be no consolation to the crew if they happened to fly into one. He could raise the height of the bomb-run to, say, 20,000 feet, which would put the aircraft well above everything the Argentinians had, deployed or otherwise, but this was likely to have a hopelessly detrimental effect on bombing accuracy. And Baldwin knew from his Canberra days that there were no data or formulae to give him a clue to the rate at which accuracy degraded with height. He sought opinions from some of the Nav Radars, but none felt confident of hitting the small runway from 20,000 feet. This came as no surprise; he knew that to hit the runway, the lower the better.