Tux knew he couldn’t pass them the fuel they needed. As fuel pumped out of the back of his jet, Ernie Wallis and the co-pilot, Glyn Rees, watched the numbers spin, poised to end the transfer, when they hit the bingo figure.
Seven five… six… seven… eight… nine…
Wallis flashed the amber lights on the HDU to tell the Vulcan crew that they’d had all the tanker could spare. They had to withdraw.
Still 7,000lb short of what they needed the news was greeted on board the Vulcan with surprise and bafflement. They’d taken on a little over half what they’d been expecting. And although the Victor hadn’t actually cut the fuel flow, the instruction was clear. Surprise began to turn to anger. What’s he doing?, Withers thought. How dare they? Completely unaware of the knife-edge on which the Victor crew had already placed themselves, Withers was furious that with a job to do, he was being left in the lurch barely 300 miles north of the target. He wasn’t going to break contact until he knew what was going on.
So, ignoring the amber lights, the Vulcan remained in contact with the drogue. Fuel was still flowing. And the Victor was paying double for every mile further south they flew. Any fuel burnt beyond the point at which the tanker crew had planned to turn north would have to be burnt again just to return to that same point.
‘What’s going on?’ crackled a pinched voice from the Vulcan.
‘Come on,’ Tuxford said to Ernie Wallis, ‘we’ve got to call a halt to this. We can’t keep on giving him fuel and abandon the plan we’ve just worked out.’
Wallis couldn’t simply cut the fuel flow as that would empty the hose, lightening it, causing it to display different flying characteristics. Tuxford thumbed the RT.
‘Blue Two, you’ve got to break contact,’ he told them, angry that Dick Russell, the refuelling specialist in the right-hand seat of the Vulcan, wasn’t putting it all together; that he’d failed to appreciate their predicament. But through the eyepiece of the rear-facing periscope, Ernie Wallis could see that he was, at least, listening.
He’s dropping back, Wallis reported, he’s free.
‘We’re 7,000lb short,’ Hugh Prior radioed from the AEO station in the back of the Vulcan. ‘We don’t have the fuel to carry out the mission.’
Tuxford could hear the anxiety being caused, but had to hope that Dick Russell would work out what was happening and explain. Tux’s own crew had been to the limit, but now, he felt, it was time they tried to save themselves.
‘We have to turn off.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m sorry, that’s it; I have no more fuel to give you,’ Tux emphasized, frustrated by the apparent ignorance aboard the Vulcan of how marginal his position had become. It remained in formation, tucked in close behind them, its presence there questioning and accusatory.
Any understanding between the two crews had broken down.
‘For Christ’s sake, Ernie,’ said Bob Tuxford to his Nav Radar, ‘we’ll offer him more fuel.’ His heart was ruling his head. He decided to gamble on one last throw of the dice to send the bomber on her way. Tuxford pressed the transmit button on his control yoke.
‘I’m rolling out on to a heading of 040. Going north, if you follow us round, we might be able to give you more…’ Then he banked into a wide, left turn towards the north, trailing the hose behind him.
Ernie Wallis, his view behind confined by the periscope’s narrow field of vision, continued to watch the Vulcan’s lights blink out of the dark at him.
‘He’s following us!’ Wallis reported, unable to conceal his surprise that the delta was following them round, turning away from her target to the south. None of the Victor crew had really believed that the bomber would take up an offer made more in hope than expectation.
And Martin Withers would never have followed the Victor into the turn if it hadn’t held the prospect of more fuel. But, in contrast to the view aboard the Victor, he quickly became sure that far from receiving the fuel to make 607’s reverse worthwhile, he’d been given all he was going to get. And he was livid about it. Following the tanker round in the hope of an unknown quantity of fuel had been a wild goose chase. A complete waste of their time and precious fuel. They had a time over target to meet, they were flying in the wrong direction and, Gordon Graham had told them, they were already thirty-seven minutes behind plan.
‘We can’t keep going north,’ Withers told his crew over the intercom and thumbed the RT to tell the Victor crew they were leaving them.
‘We’re off,’ he transmitted before standing the bomber on her ear to bring her back on to a southerly track. He rolled out on to a heading of 237 degrees. Vulcan 607 was heading back towards the Falklands again.
Withers’ transmission was greeted with stunned silence in the cockpit of Tuxford’s Victor. What did they mean? We’re off to Ascension or we’re off to the Falklands?, Tuxford wondered. The bomber had rolled away. Ernie Wallis could confirm that, but they’d have had to do that even if they were climbing north on a parallel course. The exhausted Victor crew sank into their seats, despondent at the thought that the Vulcan could have abandoned the mission after all they’d put themselves through to ensure its success.
‘Right,’ Tuxford cut into their thoughts without enthusiasm, ‘Ernie, let’s get the hose in; get her cleaned up and we’ll climb to altitude. Post-tanking checks, please…’
As the five men ran through the checklist, Tuxford trimmed the hard-worked old V-bomber into a lazy cruise-climb to 43,000 feet. And towards her uncertain future to the north.
Martin Withers was completely unaware of the tanker’s predicament. Eleven tankers and fifteen fuel transfers had brought them to within an hour of their target and now he was being sold short. He felt bitterly let down – so did Dick Russell. The veteran AARI was making quick mental calculations. They were supposed to reach the RV 400 miles off Rio with 14,000lb of fuel in the tanks. Take 7,000lb away from that and it didn’t leave much in reserve. Dear, oh dear, he thought. Russell knew the failsafe operating procedures of the tanker force inside out. If they were going to do it by the book, he told Withers, they had to turn back. As the only man on board with any genuine air-to-air refuelling experience, he had a duty to point out that to guarantee the safety of the aircraft, they should abort. If they were to succeed, only then to lose the bomber as the contents of the tanks turned to vapour, it would be a disaster, not just for them but for the entire British war effort.
Dick Russell had said what he had to say, but however uncomfortable he was with the prospect of pressing on towards the target, he knew that the decision wasn’t his to make. The thought of aborting never crossed Martin Withers’ mind. He’d barely taken in what Russell had said about Standard Operating Procedure and he certainly wasn’t going to put it to the vote. Like Russell, Withers was making rough calculations about their fuel situation. But in contrast to his AARI, he knew the Vulcan well; knew that he could move the remaining fuel around the bomber’s fourteen tanks to eke it out as long as possible. He also figured that they could make their escape from the Stanley air defences at altitude instead of dropping back down to sea level. That might save another two or three thousand pounds too. They could worry about the detail of the low-fuel handling drills later. For now, he thought, we can do this.