The Vulcan’s offset-bombing facility allowed the Nav Radar to release the bombs accurately without ever having to put the radar cross-hairs on the target itself. This was particularly useful at low level, where targets such as runways would not paint on the radar because they had no vertical extent. At the pre-flight planning stage, the Nav Radar would identify a feature on the map which he was confident would show on his radar. Then, by inputting the distance and location of these to the relative target into the NBS computer, he could aim at the offset and leave the machine to do the rest.
To do the offset planning, Waddington had been crying out for large-scale maps and photographs of the target area, but none was available. The Falklands had never featured on JARIC’s list of concerns. The Ops Team had to make do with copies of an elderly 1:250,000 map, and these were not of a sufficiently large scale to show potentially good offsets like air traffic control towers. Two jetties were marked on the maps around Cape Pembroke, but were they wood, steel or concrete? That would affect their radar return. Given the age of the maps, were they even still there?
The Ops Team were forced to go back to basics, and use geographical features like Mengeary Point, Cape Pembroke, Ordnance Point and Eagle Headland – where land and sea meet. And even these apparently reliable features were less than ideal as bomb release offsets because they moved with the changing tides. With luck, given the medium altitude of the bomb-run, the Nav Radars would be able to paint the runway itself and place their cross-hairs over the target. That, though, was no more than a possibility and certainly not something upon which they could hang the success of the mission.
The Nav Radar would also have to set the stick spacing for the bombs. Since the targeting conference in the Station Commander’s office, the Ops Team had discovered that the optimum setting on the 90-Way bomb control unit was 0.24 seconds between bombs. This translated at ground level into fifty-four yards between each bomb. But although the runway was only forty yards wide, there was no danger of missing completely because the Vulcan wouldn’t be flying at 90 degrees to it. Rather than having a target forty yards across, the 35-degree angle of the cut meant the potential target increased to seventy-six yards. If two bombs straddled the runway perfectly, each would land well within the opposite edges of the paved surface. The craters, plus heave, would rip out each side of the runway. Baldwin’s planners were fortunate; they had a 90-Way setting that meant they didn’t have to hit the centreline to put the strip out of action.
In the normal scheme of things crews weren’t allowed even to discuss their targets with other crews. The restricted access to The Vault was absolute. As the CORPORATE crews refined their attack plans, the target planning room continued to be where the rest of the Vulcan force planned the nuclear mission that was, for the next few months at least, still declared to NATO. The AARIs, although now joining the Vulcan crews on the attack itself, weren’t cleared to enter. It didn’t seem right, and Pete Standing, attached to John Reeve’s crew, was quietly taken aside and filled in on the details of the discussions taking place on the other side of the door.
Throughout the day, other preparations were made for the deployment to Ascension. Careful not to miss a trick, John Reeve and his crew looked into whether they were entitled to some sort of tropical allowance. The Falklands might be on the edge of the Antarctic Circle, but Ascension looked promising. Reeve himself qualified for a pittance to re-rank his KDs, khaki drill tropical kit, but Mick Cooper struck gold. Having left the Air Force before rejoining, he was entitled to hundreds of pounds to renew the whole lot. That sort of cash, he baited his crewmates, was going to pay for a fantastic new TV and video.
Reeve ran round the station seeing what he could cadge out of different departments to make the deployment more comfortable. The sports centre were happy to send them down to Ascension with whatever they could spare. He had less success at the library.
‘You’ll have to sign the books out individually and each of you can only have two.’
Reeve was incredulous. ‘Let’s get this right. The station’s going to war and you’re telling me you can’t help?’ He didn’t have the time or energy to argue and turned on his heel, muttering darkly about the librarian being a stickler for rules.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘Squadron Leader Montgomery, sir.’
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘Vulcans, sir.’
‘Sort yourselves out, son. I haven’t got time for you. I don’t know why the fucking hell you’re here and I don’t know what you’re fucking well going to do, but get on with it.’ Captain Bob McQueen, RN, greeted all new arrivals to Wideawake with equal warmth and Monty was no exception. But for all the cultivated prickliness that quickly had him labelled ‘The Admiral’ by the RAF contingent, there was method in his madness. While Jerry Price was the Senior RAF Officer, McQueen ran the British show on Ascension. It was McQueen to whom Bill Bryden had handed his letter raising doubts about whether Wideawake could supply the Vulcans with fuel. Since early April, Bryden had watched him keep the entire operation together, deftly winning the trust and support of the large St Helenian work force already on the island. But with even basic requirements like water and sanitation just a breakdown away from collapse, it was understandable if strangers weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms. He needed to be relentless and ruthless in trying to keep numbers down. One unfortunate padre, flown in on more than one occasion to provide spiritual support, was each time deemed surplus to requirements and sent straight home on the next flight.
Monty was struck by just how well set up the Victor contingent seemed to be. He’d only been on the island for a couple of hours, but the desk he’d been allocated in the corner of the tent still seemed rather unimpressive by comparison. While Mel James’ technicians made contact with their counterparts from Bill Lloyd’s Victor engineering detachment, a Sherpa van drove him and his co-pilot, Bill Perrins, north to Two Boats to their accommodation.
Named after the two wooden boats upended in the nineteenth century to provide shade for those traipsing up and down Green Mountain, the village was no more than a handful of buildings put up in the 1960s to house BBC families. From the settlement, perched 850 feet above sea level, three miles east of Georgetown, the two Vulcan pilots could see beyond hard black rivers of lava to English Bay, where the ‘Great White Whale’, P&O’s flagship Canberra, sat at anchor alongside a few stray warships. The accommodation was as spartan as the views were spectacular. One half of the dormitory block already housed RAF Hercules crews, off duty, drinking and noisy. Monty and Perrins got to work sweeping out the other half. Twenty people with one toilet and two sinks – this is going to be bloody awful, he thought. No windows – at least there’d be fresh air. The two of them did their best to make it presentable, before Perrins finished it off with a hand-drawn sign of a man with his arm chopped off. If they were doing something those stuck at Waddington would give their right arm for, their hovel, it seemed only fitting, should become ‘The Right Arm Hotel’.
The Flight Planning room at RAF Waddington lay in the heart of the Ops block. Electrical cabling inside metal pipes ran across the walls and ineffective air-conditioning vents hung from the high ceilings. Below them, eight wide wooden desks faced each other. Each redecoration was simply layered on top of what had been there before. The thick magnolia paint smothered what had once been a brass loudspeaker grill in a wooden box fixed above the main entrance.