‘Watch your speed…’
‘I know, I know. I’m watching it,’ Taylor told him, lowering the nose still further.
The jet was gathering speed in a dive, but as Withers watched, waiting for the needle on his ASI to respond, it was telling him they were about to stall. ‘Watch it!’ he called again to his co-pilot, his voice urgent now. Aircrew are trained to believe what their instruments tell them. Ignoring them, trying to fly by the seat of the pants in the wrong conditions, had killed a lot of pilots. But on board 607, the instruments were wrong. It was the roar of the wind around the cockpit that told the truth this time, and Withers was the first to realize what was happening. The pitot tube had iced up in the cold, humid air. This insignificant-looking protrusion held the key to measuring the aircraft’s speed through recording and comparing changes in air pressure; if ice seals the pitot’s opening, the ASI in the cockpit will no longer work. Once the problem had been identified, it was easily contained, but it was another reminder of how far away from safety they were. A wake-up call. Taylor raised the nose and the excess speed bled off.
At 2,000 feet above sea level, a safe height even if their forecast pressure settings were wildly inaccurate, they levelled off, before descending more gently down to 300 feet above sea level. Below the radar. Dropping through a scattered cloud-base towards the sea, Withers was surprised by what he could pick out. Despite the darkness there was enough light from the moon to catch the moving planes of the sea’s surface, although its distance below them was impossible to judge. He asked Wright for a height find on the Radio Altimeter, a device which worked by bouncing radio waves back and forth from the jet. Once 300 feet was confirmed, the NBS was updated again. Assuming Graham and Wright’s bisection of the two Carousel readings was accurate, the old ballistic computer was now loaded with the information it needed for Wright to get the bombs on target. But until they switched on the radar they wouldn’t know for sure that they were where they thought they were. Both Navigators’ greatest concern was that, after flying nearly 4,000 miles, they would miss the islands altogether. It remained an unsettling possibility.
Gordon Graham called the distances to run until the pop-up as the bomber streaked towards her target, low above the uninviting sea. Now Withers took back control from Pete Taylor. Hugh Prior’s eyes were fixed on his banks of numbers, screens and dials. He made sure the chaff and infrared decoy flares were set up, satisfied himself that the Dash 10 pod that had tripped at Wideawake was ready to go and checked that the transponder telling the British fleet who they were was squawking on the right frequency. And he listened. For the same reason he and Barry Masefield had decided not to use the ‘Spanish Tape’ he did nothing that might give away their position. Through his headset he picked up the faint sound of his crew breathing and he strained to hear the tell-tale pulse of British and Argentine search radars. The Royal Navy were supposed to be operating a ‘weapons tight’ during the Vulcan’s approach, but it only needed one nervous mistake under pressure to cause a tragic accident. There were less than a hundred miles to go. Twenty minutes.
‘Have a good trip, and don’t shoot the Vulcan down!’ joked pilot Steve Thomas as he handed his fighter over to his boss, 801 Naval Air Squadron’s CO, Commander Nigel ‘Sharkey’ Ward. Sea Harrier 003 sat on the deck of HMS Invincible – a calmer place now that days of storms had abated. Thomas had been sitting on alert in the cramped cockpit of the little jet for hours, ready to launch at a moment’s notice in response to any airborne threat to the Task Force. Bearded and charismatic, Ward was a self-styled maverick, the epitome of the swashbuckling naval fighter pilot. A few minutes later, after realigning the navigation system, he checked his engine, pushed the throttles forward to 55 per cent and rode the brakes. As the Flight Deck Officer whipped his glowing green wand down to touch the deck, Ward opened the throttle, accelerated down the deck and was forced into his seat as the jet was thrown into a ballistic curve by the ski jump over the bows. As his speed increased, the V/STOL fighter’s wings bit the air and he rotated the jet nozzles backwards. Armed with twin 30mm Aden cannons and a pair of AIM-9L Sidewinder all-aspect heat-seeking missiles, he was flying Combat Air Patrol for the Vulcan, tasked with keeping her safe from any marauding Argentine fighters. And he was pretty pissed off about the whole affair. Only the RAF, he thought, would have the gall to insist on a weapons-tight procedure in a war zone. Ward was incensed by what he saw as the RAF poking their noses in where they weren’t wanted. He could see no merit in a mission he thought his Sea Harriers should be performing. In his righteous indignation he stubbornly overlooked the fact that to carry the same weight of bombs as the single Vulcan would put nearly his entire squadron of precious air defence fighters in harm’s way. Still, he thought, watching the RAF’s back got him into the air, and if he was lucky he might get to see some explosions. He switched his Blue Fox radar to standby, levelled off 200 feet above the South Atlantic and set course for the islands.
Gordon Graham waited anxiously for confirmation of his position while, as the estimated range to the target dropped below sixty miles, Bob Wright reached forward to switch on the old H2S radar. Although dependable and familiar, by 1982 it was a relic that, in an earlier incarnation, had been used by the Lancasters of RAF’s elite Pathfinder force as they fought the Battle for Berlin in the autumn of 1943 and early 1944. Its results were, to say the least, open to interpretation, its effectiveness largely dependent on the skill of the operator. During the Second World War, Air Vice-Marshal Don Bennett, the commander of the Pathfinders, had been so unimpressed by the sight of an indecipherable H2S map of Berlin that he simply screwed it up and threw it in the wastepaper basket. The Mark 9A version of the H2S in the nose of 607 was a vast improvement on its predecessors, but a lot now depended on Wright’s dexterity with it. As he’d flown south the young Navigator had played out his role in his mind, mentally rehearsing the procedures which, at the long mission’s furthest reach, he’d have one chance to get right.
The H2S scanner in the Vulcan’s nose was over six and a half feet across. Switched off during the flight from Ascension, it had hung, face down, from its mountings. When Wright switched the power on from the crew compartment, the black tangle of machinery supporting it whirred into life. Wright glanced to his right to check that the power supply indicator was on then focused on the cathode ray display that dominated his work station. Random, phantom returns flickered green against the black background like static but there was no clear image. As Withers kept the jet low, on track towards Stanley, the distance to run towards the target ran down. Another mile every ten seconds. Wright’s eyes darted around the radar set’s control panels, looking for the problem. To his left he noticed the Scanner Position Indicator dancing restlessly.
In discussing the Vulcan raid, the overriding concern of the politicians and Defence Chiefs in Whitehall had been the safety of the islanders. Without absolute reassurance that the runway could be attacked at no risk whatsoever to the civilian population, they would not have approved the operation. Wright knew it. Unless he could bring up a reliable picture on the green porridge, they’d have to throw away the mission. Without a functioning bomb-aiming radar, at night, trying to hit the target would literally be a shot in the dark. Irrespective of whether or not they hit the runway, dropping the bombs without it would be a gamble that threatened the safety of the very people they were trying to protect.