I strapped in, noted we were heading north into wind, and spoke to John Blackwelclass="underline" ‘On in the front. All good?’
‘Problems with the whole missile warning system, boss. Engineer is on his way.’
‘Okay. Any others?’
‘Yes, the radios seem a bit weak. Same engineer will take a look.’
We had a whole load of ‘greeny’ problems – electrical issues. The aircraft had woken up all grumpy. The wise head of the electrical specialists tapped on the window, plugged his headset into the wing stub and said, ‘You’ll have to do a full shut-down and restart. See if that clears it.’
John Blackwell re-set the systems and closed down the aircraft. I noted the time; we needed to be off in 15 minutes to make the time on target. I tore a sheet of paper from my kneeboard pad and wrote ‘Rolex 20. New TOT 2120Z’. With a completely silent flight deck, all radars and radios off or in listening mode, we used a runner to get messages to and from the Operations Room.
While the Rolex was being negotiated John and I rebooted the aircraft and the engineer diagnosed and fixed the faults to see us safe into battle. All the while Ocean was still heading north.
After twenty minutes of frantic work by the engineers we were ready to go. My patrol launched into the black. The delay and northerly course for launch had put us an additional 17 nautical miles from our intended launch point. I quickly calculated the time needed to get to the holding point. The southerly track with a tailwind would help, we could cut a corner here and there and just make it on time. We’d have a bit less time on target, but all things being equal we’d be back on deck in under two hours.
This assumption would later bring John Blackwell, Mark Hall, Charlie Tollbrooke and me within a hairsbreadth of crashing into the sea.
‘Head one-seven-zero. One hundred, one hundred, buster.’ Head just left of south, both aircraft at 100ft, maximum speed. We were racing into Libya again. Maximum power, maximum fuel burn, let’s get there!
We settled into formation, John keeping our aircraft on course, setting the track for Mark and Charlie on the wing. I scanned with the radar and the FLIR, left and right, left and right, until the coast came into view.
‘Actioning gun.’ The familiar thud and clunk as the 30mm cannon under the nose jolted to life. Now the 30mm followed my scan… left and right, left and right, wherever my eyes settled the sensors searched. Both aircraft rattled across the beach, not a man or a building in sight. No vehicles, no trees. No wires. Just the desert. A height of 100ft was perfect. My hands felt light and quick on the sight controls and I had a good feeling. Anxiety gone, back in Libya, combat coming.
I cut a corner off the route to hit our timings and Charlie followed. We spread the formation so that we were abreast, about 1,000m apart, low-level and quick. We raced onwards. I spotted a building ahead and John brought us wide. Mark Hall spotted it too and looked in with his infrared sight.
‘Two men… one lying down… the other… the other’s… waving! He’s waving!’ Mark reported. A new sort of welcome, that did not involve a firearm or a missile! The two men were beside a low building and what looked like a fuel truck. Perhaps they were smugglers, or just going about their daily business. Whatever it was, they were right in the middle of a war and two attack helicopters had just raced past in the darkness. They were clearly not pro-Gad.
Eight minutes later we arrived at the holding point. Bang on H-hour. As we flew through our final waypoint the glow and ripple of bombs rupturing the night took my left eye for a second as my right eye interrogated the infrared image of the industrial complex to the front.
‘Nothing seen!’ I called to Mark.
‘Me neither.’
With nothing on the target I checked around the woodland that skirted the northern side.
‘Looking north… technicals.’
‘Weapons! Weapons on the rear, engaging, Hellfire!’ I shouted across the net.
‘In constraints… good to f…’
John Blackwell guided me from the rear seat. I could see from the symbology in my right eye that he was ready and as he said the ‘f’ of ‘fire’ I fired a Hellfire missile.
We were close in and I could see the weapon system was similar to the one Big Shippers and Jay had taken on the previous week. There was a man on the back, at the weapon, square on to me. My Hellfire impacted midway along the pickup truck, eviscerating the man and sending his mangled torso spinning rapidly in a cartwheel, to land 100m to the right of the vehicle.
Pandemonium erupted on the ground. Pro-Gad emerged from everywhere, it seemed. John pulled away. ‘My eyes off target,’ he called as we broke away.
‘On…’, called Charlie, as he and Mark opened up with the 30mm on the scores of pro-Gad rushing in and out of the wooded area.
‘Okay, let’s come back around,’ I directed John. ‘This is where they are. Lots of other vehicle heat signatures in the woods.’
‘Wilco…’, he answered, just as white light and dark in a head-breaking strobe rattled around us. ‘MY GUN! MY GUN!’ he screamed. ‘TRIPLE-A!’
We had flown right over the top of a triple-A gun that had very cleverly remained hidden on my initial visual sweep of the industrial complex. Now it had engaged us, and John was looking right at it out of his right-hand canopy window. With one flick of his right thumb on the cyclic control he actioned the gun and slaved it to his right eye, then immediately pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. I still had the missile system actioned and this prevented the gun from working. The angle was so tight. The weapon processor knew that the gun could engage our own missile if I had fired one, and it therefore prevented the gun from firing. In the moment we had forgotten about this. The triple-A site was a just a few hundred metres from us and almost underneath. John fought the useless trigger while saving our lives with his flying.
‘I can’t get it!! I can’t get it!!’ he shouted.
‘Triple-A… me… now!’ was all I could manage on the net to Mark and Charlie.
John banked our aircraft hard to the right and weaved a tight corkscrew profile to evade the triple-A, as Mark and Charlie ripped the site up with their 30mm. John and I dipped low into the desert and then swung hard back around on to the target area. We intended to join Mark and Charlie in taking apart the ambush, but just as quickly as triple-A had put us on the defensive I got a more urgent warning.
‘SA6, tracking.’ It was the distinctive voice of the calm American lady.
‘SA6! CHAFF! GET DOWN!’ I called, my left eye interpreting the situational display indicating an SA6 to the south. It was out of range of my Hellfire, but I was very much in range of its radar. John immediately descended and brought the aircraft into a precision turn, releasing chaff as he did so.
I burst-transmitted to Mark, ‘SA6… south!’
‘Nothing seen, tipping in on the triple-A now,’ came the reply. Mark and Charlie were in the clear and they couldn’t see a missile in the air. They concentrated on the triple-A site.
I could see on my situational display in the cockpit that the SA-6 had us locked. In the hierarchy of danger this outdid the triple-A, and John reacted with the manoeuvre we had practised off the coast of Cyprus only four weeks before. His flying needed to be absolutely accurate, and fast. We had to get low, break lock and evade.
I talked to John as we raced earthward: ‘Chaff!… 100ft… chaff!’
The American lady interrupted: ‘ALTITUDE LOW! ALTITUDE LOW! ALTITUDE LOW!’, as we raced through the 100ft setting. I immediately silenced the alarm.
‘Cancelled. Keep going. 80ft… chaff! 60ft… chaff! Keep going… broken lock! 50ft, level there… continue this heading… new height warning set at 25ft.’