Charlie Five Tango – that was Biglands – affirm request TAT to fly that route to make an earlier RV. Request you pass this to Red Rag Control. I will TAT on frequency and sub one seven.
‘Lima Charlie, may I relay? Over.’
Confirm message, Charlie Five Tango, and read back.
Two Mike Mike – Tuxford – returning with technical defect and does not require TAT. ETA Ascension One One Two Zero.
It sounded as if Tuxford was on his way back carrying a problem, didn’t need fuel and was expected into Wideawake at 11.20. But all of this applied not to Tuxford, but to Biglands. Because of the broken probe, Tuxford and Biglands had changed places, but Price didn’t know that. The confirmation only served to underline how little he or anyone else at Red Rag Control really understood about what was taking place in the skies to the south-west. It was all guesswork. At 11.20, Tuxford would still be nearly two hours from Ascension and flying on fumes.
All the Ops Team could do was make sure they had a tanker as far south on inbound track as they could and hope that the two jets would find each other. Wing Commander Colin Seymour, 55 Squadron’s CO, was already on his way. Someone, Price knew, was going to need the fuel.
With one of Ascension’s two Nimrods heading southwest to assist the Vulcan’s RV off Rio with Barry Neal’s Victor, Price kept the other at an hour’s readiness on the Wideawake pan. In the event of a catastrophe, she could at least provide search and rescue cover up to 2,000 miles from the island. The Nimrod carried Lindhome Gear consisting of a large nine-man MS9 life raft linked by floating ropes to two containers full of stores, but it could do no more than find the survivors, mark their position and drop survival equipment. It couldn’t actually fish anyone out of the sea; couldn’t bring them home.
Chapter 41
While the Vulcan headed north towards the Rio RV, staying within striking distance of the South American mainland, Tuxford’s Victor was heading out to sea, away from any safe haven except Wideawake’s 10,000-foot runway. For nearly an hour, Mick Beer tried in vain to satisfy himself that the Victor’s desperate situation had been communicated and understood. As Beer persevered, talk on board turned to what would happen if he failed to confirm a rendezvous with a tanker. Tuxford was clear that they couldn’t ditch the jet. Each aircraft has specific ditching characteristics and, unlike the Vulcan, the Victor was believed to be unsuited to landing on water safely. Trials had shown that the forward bulkhead immediately behind the H2S radar scanner would catch the water like a bulldozer, dragging the nose under the surface and forcing the whole jet to dive deep underwater. Its crew would, almost inevitably, be lost.
Instead, they worked out an alternative. It would mean abandoning the jet before the fuel tanks were really sucked dry. In order to have any hope of keeping his crew together, Tuxford had to be sure he could maintain control. Two hours from now, they decided, and still at least 800 miles from Ascension, they would set up in a slow cruise at 5,000 feet above the ocean. The height allowed plenty of time for the rear crew’s parachutes’ static lines to work. They would open the crew hatch on the port side of the cabin, then the three backseaters would jump from the Victor in rapid sequence. It should ensure that they weren’t too widely scattered. Tuxford and the co-pilot Glyn Rees would then stay with the Victor and try to bring her back over the point where the rest of the crew had bailed out, before pulling the yellow and black striped handles between their legs to fire their ejection seats. The hope was that they’d come down in the same patch of water. It wasn’t much to look forward to.
They all then went through their abandonment drills. Every connection was physically checked: oxygen, static lines, lanyards, dinghies and the rest of their survival equipment. Each was wearing a Mae West lifejacket that carried an EPIRB locator beacon, a knife strapped to his leg, a heliograph to reflect the sun towards Search and Rescue crews, and a whistle. They had time, so it made sense to be thorough. On reaching the end of the checklist, they went back to the beginning and ran through the whole thing again.
Right, thought Tuxford, while Beer kept working the HF, now it’s in the lap of the gods.
The news on the BBC World Service was astonishing. The huge, booming explosions that John Smith thought might be the sound of an Argentine ammunition dump going up had been the result of an attack by an RAF Vulcan bomber. The shock of the bombing had caused a panicked tangle of naked limbs on the landing of Sparrowhawk House. Once dignity had been restored they made tea and sat around the radio while a barrage of Argentine anti-aircraft fire raged outside. There was nothing on the five o’clock or 5.30 news, but at six o’clock Stanley time the BBC reported the raid. By the time they heard the bulletin, the newscaster explained, the Vulcan would be over the South Atlantic on its way home.
As a fourteen-year-old boy, Smith had watched the first Vulcan prototype, then still known only as the Avro 698, fly at the 1952 Farnborough Air Show. It was only the fourth time the revolutionary new aircraft had ever flown. At the time it had seemed like science fiction, but what had happened an hour and a half earlier was just bizarre. How could we be bombed by this old aeroplane?, he wondered. And a little part of him noted with satisfaction that he was probably a member of a pretty exclusive club: the only person watching the 698 at Farnborough that day to have subsequently been bombed by the thing.
Tuxford and his crew could have done without it. Hearing the BBC announcing the successful bombing of Port Stanley seemed, at best, surreal and definitely premature. They were still four hours from home – assuming they made a rendezvous with a TAT and were able to take on fuel. There was good news though. Mick Beer had at last had his HF transmissions acknowledged by Red Rag Control. And that long-range conversation revealed that the tanker they so desperately needed was already in the air. While Tuxford and Rees concentrated on flying the aircraft, they pooled the fuel in the central bomb bay tanks to make sure that every drop they had on board was available to them. Beer relayed lat/long co-ordinates worked out by Nav Plotter John Keable to Wideawake. The RV was as far north as they dared go along a direct track between the Falkland Islands and Ascension.
Bob Wright shook his Captain awake.
‘They want you up front,’ he told him as Withers opened his eyes and found his bearings. Vulcan 607 was closing on the final refuelling rendezvous and he needed to take back control of the bomber. Withers had been asleep for nearly two hours and it had done him good. It had been dark as he bedded down and, as he climbed the ladder up to the flight deck, the bright daylight was slightly disorientating. The anxiety he’d felt as they climbed away from the bomb-run was behind him, though. He clipped back into his harness and leg restraints and smiled at Dick Russell to his right. Then he looked at the gauges and realized that they were carrying less fuel than he’d ever seen aboard an airborne Vulcan. Russell was clearly uncomfortable with it. For the last hour, he and Taylor had been experimenting with the jet’s altitude, gently climbing between 38,000 and 41,000 feet in search of a tailwind that might give them a few extra knots of ground speed. They’d found nothing to help them. Vulcan 607 needed fuel within the next hour.