Well we’ve come this far…
Keep going.
Got to go on with the mission.
Unanimous.
‘Then let’s see how far we can go with this without making too much of a mess of it…’
In truth Tux hadn’t expected anything less from any of them, but ultimate responsibility for their safety lay with him. Their support wouldn’t make their predicament any less precarious, but it was a comfort to him as he made the single most difficult decision he’d ever had to make as an aircraft captain: choosing danger over safety. Now they had to work out how they were going to do it.
‘John,’ Tux called out to his Nav Plotter, ‘how much fuel do we need to get back from the fourth bracket?’
Keable immediately got to work, his calculations double-checked by Ernie Wallis at the Nav Radar’s station to his left. He needed to factor in the winds they’d encountered on the way down, examine the Operating Data Manual that could tell them the fuel burn of the four Conway engines at different weights and altitudes. The five men aboard discussed how low on fuel they were prepared to go; how close they needed to get to Ascension to have any hope of meeting a tanker scrambled from Wideawake to bring them home; and, ultimately, as a result of Keable’s rapid number-crunching, how much fuel they could afford to pass to the Vulcan at the fourth transfer. Over an intense half hour’s discussion the crew focused on the ramifications of sharing the fuel available between the Victor and Vulcan in different proportions. In the end, they felt, the best they could do was to pass 607 just 8,000lb, nearly 4,000lb short of what, after the proving contact, was still required. It would still, Tux thought, give the bomber a reasonable shot at doing the job and making it back to the Rio RV. But it would leave him and his Victor crew at least 20,000lb short of what they required to reach Ascension. Unless they successfully rendezvous’d with a TAT scrambled from Wideawake, they would run out of fuel 600 miles south of the island, well beyond the range of rescue helicopters. And the worst part was, they couldn’t tell anyone.
The refuellings at brackets three and four were supposed to be conducted in strict radio silence. Because of the difficulties they’d had to contend with, that hadn’t happened at the third bracket, but it was one thing communicating with another Victor a few hundred yards away on a discrete VHF channel, quite another to try to reach Red Rag Control over 3,000 miles away on the HF radio. Any long-range transmission by AEO Mick Beer could compromise the strike itself by alerting the Argentinians to the imminent arrival of the Vulcan. Beer agreed with the rest of the crew’s logic. If they were going to put themselves at risk by passing the Vulcan the fuel, it didn’t make sense to threaten her chances of success by broadcasting their presence. They chose to suffer in silence.
Aboard the Vulcan, thoughts began to turn to what lay beyond the final refuelling. As a veteran Victor instructor, Dick Russell hadn’t expected to be flying into harm’s way again – and certainly not in his fifties. That was bad enough, but before the bomb-run he was going to have to swap places with Withers’ co-pilot, Pete Taylor. Naturally enough, Russell’s mind lingered on the safety of the aircraft at a time when, sitting below the flight deck in the jump seat, he’d be powerless to influence events. He turned to Martin Withers.
‘We don’t want to forget our navigation lights,’ he reminded the Captain. While in the formation they’d tried to make themselves as visible as possible, but the last thing they wanted to do was run in to Stanley with lights blazing. ‘Let’s turn them off now, while we can.’
It seemed sensible enough to act now, rather than regret it later, Withers agreed. Russell reached down to his right and killed the lights. The black shape of the bomber was now invisible against the dark sky.
Chapter 36
The new day came quickly so close to the equator and, hidden behind the volcanic hills that crowd Wideawake, the first orange glow of dawn grew quickly into the flat light of early morning. Jerry Price and the Red Rag team had made it through the night and forestalled disaster, but an accurate picture of BLACK BUCK’s progress was still elusive.
X-ray Four Lima. In the dust and fug of the Ops tent, call signs ebbed and flowed over the HF, but while they could be ascribed to a particular crew and aircraft, their meaning was often impossible to interpret.
Charlie Five Tango. That was Skelton.
Seven Echo Foxtrot, authenticate: Milligan, being asked to provide the one-letter code that would prove he was who he said he was. Did it mean there was a problem?
Price could only try to second-guess what was going on further south. While fractured transmissions were coming in from the tankers closest to Ascension, there was nothing from beyond the second fuel bracket, as the attack formation pushed south in strict HF radio silence. Although unaware of the pasting the attack formation had taken from the storm Price drew his own conclusions about the shape they were in. He wasn’t sure how desperate they might be on their return flight, but, after the close calls earlier, he was sure that their situation would be precarious. They would not have the fuel they needed. He wanted TATs airborne and ready to bring home his two long-slots: Tuxford and Biglands. At 6.15, Price ordered two further Victors to prepare to get airborne at 7.30. And while the measured, thoughtful tones in which he spoke barely betrayed the strain, the restless smoking left no doubt.
Minutes later, Milligan’s presence on the airwaves became clear. Victor 163’s HDU had failed again. As the sky outside the tent turned from black to blue, Frank Milligan’s AEO called Red Rag Control to say they were on their way home early for the second time that night. They hadn’t even been airborne an hour. Price couldn’t help but feel for them. Poor old Milligan, he thought, knowing the unfortunate crew, including his friend Alan Bowman, would be in for a ribbing in some quarters. It was just the way of things. But aside from the blushes and frustration of the crew, their return meant that the redundancy in the recovery formation was now gone. Two of the remaining three Victors would instead fill the tanks of Barry Neal’s Victor as close to the Rio RV as possible. They would then leave him to fly on alone to the holding point, a few hundred miles out over the Atlantic, abeam the Brazilian capital. The plan had called for two Victors to wait there. Now there was no redundancy. If there was any problem with Neal’s jet that prevented him from transferring fuel to the Vulcan, the bomber wouldn’t make it back to Ascension. Not for the first or last time this night, their eggs were, once more, in one basket.
Passing across an imaginary boundary into the fourth refuelling bracket, Ernie Wallis flashed the floodlights underneath the Victor. Flying in radio silence, this was the signal to tell the Vulcan crew they were cleared to refuel. For the last time, Martin Withers eased his aircraft into position behind the tanker with gentle, fluid precision. Once settled in the wake of the tanker, he and Dick Russell watched the red lights shining alongside the root of the trailing fuel hose, waiting for them to change; waiting for the go-ahead to make contact. And nothing happened. Then the floodlights flashed off and on again. They were cleared to move in behind the Victor. But they knew that, they were already there. Confused, Russell turned to Withers.
‘I don’t know what’s up with him…’
The Vulcan Captain didn’t answer. Instead, a voice from the Victor came over the RT: ‘You’re clear astern.’
‘We are astern!’ Russell replied, puzzled. And then it dawned on him: the Victor couldn’t see them. With their anti-collision beacons and navigation lights already turned off, Ernie Wallis, peering through his periscope inside the Victor, couldn’t make out 90 tons and 3,500 square feet of delta-winged bomber flying just a few yards away. A little sheepishly, Dick Russell flicked the switch alongside his ejection seat to bring them on again. Contact followed smoothly and easily. Fuel began to flush into the Vulcan’s tanks as Russell, relaxed and comfortable flying in close formation, kept her tucked in close. Some impressive flying and the flexibility of the Victor force had overcome all the storm had thrown at them and, it seemed, things were back on track. He and the rest of 607’s crew were about to discover how wrong that assumption was.