Holy cow!, thought Monty when he saw the first draft of the refuelling plan for the mission itself. To get one Vulcan to the Falklands and back was, it was first thought, going to take twelve Victors. The RAF had never done anything like this before. Jerry Price had received the Op Order from Northwood earlier in the day and immediately got Trevor Sitch’s planning team to work. They’d produced a model that worked like an inverted pyramid. A large formation would take off together from Wideawake and turn south. At four points along the route, the formation would split into two groups: those continuing south and those returning to Ascension. Before the latter turned for home, they would fill the tanks of those continuing. From each of these refuelling brackets, a reduced total of fully fuelled jets would fly on towards the target. The Vulcan was at the pyramid’s apex. And key to the success of the whole exercise was the Vulcan’s fuel consumption. The Victor planners knew the capabilities of their aircraft inside out. They needed watertight information from someone with comparable knowledge of the Vulcan. So they asked Monty: ‘What do you expect the Vulcan fuel consumption to be?’ Monty and Bill Perrins got to work. Using the new photocopier, they copied and enlarged the fuel graphs from the Vulcan Operating Data Manual. The big delta’s normal maximum take-off weight was 204,000lb. With full tanks, the bombs and the Dash 10 pod, the weight was going to be a lot higher than that. Off the graph. The ODM simply didn’t include the figure they needed – a Vulcan wasn’t supposed to try to take off at that weight. The curve on the fuel consumption graph they had was exponential, rather than linear. Monty and his co-pilot tried to extrapolate a figure from where the curve on the graph ended, and estimated 13,500lb per hour. They passed this figure on to the Victor planning team to weave into their refuelling plan and wondered why it had fallen to them to figure it out. What, thought Monty, about the resources available at HQ 1 Group?
Then, just after midnight, news came through that the Vulcans weren’t leaving Waddington that night.
‘Monty, it’s off,’ Jerry Price told them. None of them was entirely clear on the reasons for the change in plan.
‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’
Sharon Cooper’s reaction to her husband’s unexpected reappearance reflected that of all the wives. The goodbyes hadn’t been at all easy either. All the couples had held each other a little tighter. Many of them had babies and small children. Don Dibbens’ wife Janice was five months pregnant – and had her leg in plaster after dislocating her knee. She knew her husband was flying into danger. Saying goodbye once had been upsetting. To have to do it again was going to be much worse. Barry Masefield’s wife Gwyneth was distraught when he arrived back at their house in Heighington. Gareth, their young son, had persistent, serious health problems. The whole family had been under an enormous amount of emotional strain already, but over the two weeks he’d been training Masefield had retreated into himself, had even stopped interrupting during Coronation Street. It was obvious something was wrong, but he couldn’t tell Gwyneth what was causing his anxiety. Now she had her husband back, but she knew she was going to have to go through it all again the next morning.
‘This is silly,’ announced Hugh Prior, ‘we’ve all said our goodbyes.’ He’d already told his wife Caroline, ‘Don’t you worry, it will be all right,’ and kissed his baby daughter, Tara. He lived on the station, a few hundred yards from the Ops block, but he couldn’t face going through it all again. He joined Pete Taylor and Dick Russell in the Mess. And, with his wife in Australia, there was no reason for Martin Withers not to join them. He, too, opted to sleep in the Mess, deciding to forsake the lonely charms of his Lincoln maisonette. The four of them stayed up drinking, putting the world to rights.
Mick Cooper shuffled in to his house, trying to explain himself to Sharon. ‘Small foul-up,’ he said sheepishly, ‘only temporary…’ Then he closed the door behind him.
Chapter 27
Television camera crews were there for the occasion. Inside Waddington’s number 3 hangar IX Squadron was finally disbanding as a Vulcan squadron. Almost exactly twenty years earlier, at RAF Coningsby, they had become the first operator of the then ground-breaking new Avro delta. The building holding the parade had an industrial age feel. Thick layers of dark-green paint tarted up the exposed ironwork. Behind enormous sliding doors, a large audience sat under bunting and flags to watch the ceremony. Any sadness at the famous unit’s passing was tempered by its immediate rebirth as a Tornado squadron. The squadron standard was being passed straight on to a new team, flying the state-of-the-art new pan-European strike jet. There were speeches and reminiscences. Afterwards, the throng would move to number 2 hangar for a reception followed by lunch in the Officers’ Mess. No one could accuse them of not properly marking the occasion. John Laycock sat watching proceedings. A little before ten o’clock, though, he managed to slip away to the control tower to oversee the departure of his three Vulcans.
It wasn’t straightforward. They were leaving in strict radio silence. And although their 301 series Rolls-Royce Olympus engines had been uprated to run at 103 per cent rather than the usual 97.5 restriction, the jets were overloaded with fuel and bombs for the first time. A green Verey flare was fired to signal engine start. Either side of the Runway Two One threshold, on Alpha and Bravo dispersals, the Vulcans came to life. The weather was fine, but the wind was tricky. Every extra knot of wind speed down the runway would make the take-off safer and now its direction was marginal, not really favouring either runway. Any tailwind would only make it harder to get off the ground. Laycock had to make a decision but, as the three bombers waited, he was caught in two minds. Should he have the jets taxi the entire length of the runway and take off down Runway Zero Three, or should he stick with the plan, Runway Two One. He remembered a calculation made when he was flying Victors in the 1960s. Taxi too far, too heavy, and main tyres were going to blow. If it happened now the consequences didn’t bear thinking about. He stuck with Two One and another Verey flare signalled to the Captains that they could take off at their discretion.
Cleared to depart, Martin Withers pushed the four throttles forward, increasing the engine rpm to 80 per cent. He checked the engine instruments and released the brakes. Once rolling he wound up to maximum power and 598 accelerated down the runway, while Nav Plotter Gordon Graham, eyes fixed to the air speed indicator, called the speeds: ‘60… 80… 100… 110…’
The Waddington runway isn’t flat. It features a hump beyond which, seen from the tower, it slopes away out of view. Laycock had never seen a Vulcan travel so far down the runway without leaving the ground. They were always away by the time they reached the hump. He watched as 598 disappeared down the slope, still, it seemed, glued to the ground.
‘120… 130… 140… 150,’ Graham continued in the cockpit. ‘Decision speed… Rotate.’
Withers pulled back on the big jet’s fighter-style joystick, lifting the nose.
Despite its imposing bulk, a lightly loaded Vulcan leapt into the air like a giant balsa wood model caught in a gust of wind. No sooner had the nosewheel left the ground than the whole machine pointed skywards at 45 degrees to the ground. It was a trick that never failed to impress an audience.