This time, though, they staggered into the air, looking as if the sky could barely carry their weight. As well as fuel and bombs Reeve and Withers had a couple of other small disadvantages. Alongside the seven men crammed into the crew compartment – as well as the AARI, each aircraft also had a crew chief on board – both jets, like the Victors, carried one necessary last piece of new equipment: a chemical toilet. Then, in what little space was left, Martin Withers, worried about possible deprivation on Ascension, had squeezed in a large plastic homebrew bin filled with cans of McEwan’s Export and bottles of whisky. John Reeve was also carrying extra weight. After getting wind of the pilot’s fruitless visit to the station library, Waddington’s Education Officer had made amends by dropping off a box of books with Reeve’s ground crew. Without asking questions, they’d dutifully secreted them away in the Vulcan’s nosewheel bay. Then didn’t think to tell anyone.
John Laycock relaxed a little as he saw XM598 claw her way into the air, followed a minute later by Reeve in 607 then Neil McDougall’s reserve XM597.
In number 3 hangar, some of the guests frowned as their ceremonial was disturbed by the distinctive howl and thunder of three Vulcans taking off in quick succession. The television cameras completely missed the real story: on the other side of the hangar wall, that distracting roar was the sound of heavily armed bombers leaving Britain to strike the first blow of the campaign to recapture the Falkland Islands.
Overhead Bedford, the Vulcans picked up their five Victor tankers and formed a loose ‘Balbo’ heading southwest towards Cornwall. As they flew high and radio-silent into the controlled airspace of London’s Air Traffic Zone they caused a panic. Faced with an unidentified formation of eight aircraft appearing unannounced on their radar screens, controllers at London Air Traffic Control Centre in West Drayton hit the emergency button. The supervisor arrived quickly to soothe nerves, telling them not to worry about it, but didn’t leave them any wiser as to what was going on. He’d been the only person warned that they were coming through.
A couple of hours later, the first refuelling was completed without incident. Reeve and Withers were safely on their way south past the Bay of Biscay towards the Azores and Neil McDougall turned for home. On the return flight, in an effort to disguise the deployment, he was forced to pretend to be a Victor and route back to Waddington via Marham’s overhead – a complication he didn’t think would fool anyone.
Simon Baldwin had done all he could. Relieved that they were finally on their way, he tried not to dwell on the possibility of something going wrong because of an oversight on his part. Had he missed something? He had confidence in the crews, but the planning, the modifications, the tactics… However, the Vulcans now belonged to Northwood HQ. The order to go would come from them. All he could do was try to follow developments as best he could.
At BAM Malvinas, engineers of the Argentine Army were working to improve the runway. Two hundred feet of steel matting was put down at the western end, which provided a marginally greater safety margin for the aircraft operating from the strip. Of greater significance was the effort to install arrestor gear at the same end. When the work was finished, wires would lie across the runway and could be caught by a hook trailed from the back of a landing aircraft, bringing it to a safe stop before the end of the Tarmac. The equipment worked in exactly the same way as the arrestor wires on the Argentine carrier Veinticinco de Mayo and would allow the Super Étendards and A-4Q Skyhawks of the Comando Aviación Naval Argentina to land at BAM Malvinas carrying stores in all weather conditions.
Near the Cable and Wireless building along the road between Stanley and the airfield, Grupo de Artillería de Defensa Aerea 601 sited their single Roland anti-aircraft missile unit. Because of its imposing, awkward size the Roland launch vehicle had been christened ‘Incredible Hulk’ or ‘La Chancha’ – ‘The Pig’ – by its operators. It hadn’t been thought possible to transport it aboard an Air Force C-130, but somehow it had been done. The big transport’s Captain had nothing but admiration for the men who’d managed to find a way of loading the missile system on board his plane. Their lateral thinking and commitment, he thought, reflected the incredible effort being made by the entire Fuerza Aérea Argentina.
The commander of the 601st, Lieutenant-Colonel Arias, knew that the Franco-German radar-guided twin launcher was the most capable weapon he had under his control. And by 29 April, despite the piecemeal, week-long deployment of his regiment’s weapons systems, Roland was fully operational.
On this last, lethal component of the Argentine air defences the intelligence received by Simon Baldwin had been wrong.
PART TWO
Ascension
Major Campbell was succeeded [as Commandant of Ascension Island] by Lieutenant Colonel Nicolls. Upon the peculiar difficulties, the privations, the horrors with which they had to contend in the early formation, on such a spot, of an Establishment for civilised beings – and to Colonel Nicolls particularly – is praise due, for the untiring ardour with which he laboured to overcome the Hydra-headed obstacles he had to grapple with at every step. But his well-known energy achieved so much that the due chaos was beginning to take shape when… he gave over command to Captain Bate. This officer, after a brief illness, died in command. He was a kind-hearted, amiable man, who strove to do all the good in his power. While the island wore, unmitigated, its own native hideous aspect, – with all its disheartening privations, and the physical obstacles to improvement which every where met the eye, making improvement as it were hopeless, none appeared to envy the ruler such a scene of desolation, or to covet his place… The next appointed to the Command was Captain Tincklar. An active, upright Officer, very zealous – perhaps too much so, for his constitution, it would seem, did not long resist the pressure of the anxieties, or the responsibilities of his situation. He was soon taken ill, and, after a short illness, he died.
Chapter 28
No one actually briefed Bill Bryden on British plans, but at noon on the 29th, when Air Vice-Marshal George Chesworth arrived by VC10 on top of a cargo of cans of Coca-Cola and beer, the American was sure this signalled a change in tempo. Air Commander Sir John Curtiss had sent his number two from Northwood to make sure those running the bombing operation had, as he put it, their ducks in line. Bryden’s suspicions were confirmed that evening when he watched as the two Vulcans of Reeve and Withers landed on Wideawake’s Runway One Four. He’d seen pictures of them in magazines, but this was the first time he’d seen them up close. Beautiful aeroplanes, he thought, and it looks like they can do a job too.
Monty watched them come in from the tower, then hurried down to the pan to meet the crews as they disembarked into the evening warmth.
‘Couldn’t have lasted another minute,’ Mick Cooper gasped as he lit his first cigarette in nine hours. One hour or nine, it didn’t matter: that first lungful of smoke was always just in the nick of time. Unlike the good old days, when captains had been known to flick on the autopilot at 500 feet and light a cigar, the V-force had been a non-smoking airline for a number of years now and Cooper bore the burden stoically.