The defiant, chaotic onslaught didn’t let up for nearly half an hour.
Fortunately, Pete Taylor never saw the flak open up behind them, because at 10,000 feet the Vulcan had never been immune from it. Now nearly 14,000 feet away from the guns, the bomber was beyond the effective range of the Oerlikons, but the shells could tumble onwards beyond that for another 6,000 feet. During that time they remained lethal, if inaccurate. And without finding a target, they exploded anyway. The bright, neat little explosions were more deadly than they appeared. Beyond the neat puff of smoke, each detonation threw twisted chunks of shrapnel across the sky. Vulcan 607’s safety had been relative, but the angry Argentine hail of ammunition had been too late to touch them. Surprise, avoidance and suppression: the attack plan had worked. The invaders had been caught by a determined, British reaction that few of them, least of all the hapless conscripts, had thought would ever come.
Chapter 40
Withers rolled out of the turn to climb away to the north. He was still on edge. In his mind’s eye he’d anticipated flak; he’d even expected fighters; and so far, apart from interest from the Skyguard fire-control radar, they’d got through unscathed. For over eight hours he’d drawn deeply on reserves of nervous energy, pushing his anxiety aside, and his tiredness was now starting to make itself felt. Then, as he levelled the wings, a bright light caught his eye.
Bloody hell – he jumped, suddenly sharp again – a fighter. But as he studied what at first glance had been an Argentine Mirage bearing down on them, he realized it was a planet. Probably Venus, he reckoned. He’d seen only what he had been looking for. He shook himself out of it; they needed to report news of their attack. Withers had kept his feelings to himself, but Pete Taylor couldn’t help noticing that Withers seemed saddened by the hurt he might have inflicted. In fact, the Captain thought it had all seemed rather cold-blooded. Sneaking in before dawn using false codes and dropping bombs. Not much gallantry in that, he thought. The way he saw it, he’d just started a shooting war and he took no pleasure from that. None at all.
As they gained height, putting distance between themselves and the islands, an Argentine search radar continued to sweep over them. Every ten seconds, its forlorn pulse was relayed into Hugh Prior’s headset by the 228. No threat at this time.
Resignation had replaced the uncertainty and gloom felt aboard Bob Tuxford’s Victor when the Vulcan left them. Travelling at 43,000 feet they were still seven hours’ flying time south of Ascension, but they had less than five hours’ fuel in the tanks. Tuxford briefly considered shutting down one of the four Rolls-Royce Conway engines to eke a little more range out of the remaining fuel, but abandoned the idea. It would have got them further, but it still wouldn’t get them home. Ultimately, all Tux had to reassure himself that his jet wasn’t going to fall out of the sky was his faith in the experience and judgement of the ‘tanker trash’ at Wideawake. He tried to relax and recuperate a little after the exertions of the previous two hours. It’s not a hopeless situation, he told himself, certainly not a foregone conclusion.
Behind him, AEO Mick Beer monitored the Vulcan’s frequency on the HF radio.
Under the canvas at Ascension, Jeremy Price was still guessing. He’d dispatched two TATs for Biglands and Tuxford. The two tankers were heading south on an assumption that they’d be needed. He’d heard nothing from either of the long-slot Victors. He could only do what he could do, though, and they had, at least, just brought Alan Skelton home. After reporting a fuel leak when he turned north from the third refuelling bracket his jet had taken on 20,000lb of fuel 400 miles south of Ascension. After sunrise, Monty returned to the Ops tent. Price immediately explained what he knew of the night’s developments. Beyond the fact that the mission appeared to be nearly an hour behind schedule, there was little Price could tell them. BLACK BUCK’s progress was unknown.
‘What’s going on, Monty?’ he asked. ‘How could all the aeroplanes be an hour out?’ Monty didn’t have any answers.
‘All we can do is wait,’ Price told him.
They were soon joined in the Ops tent by George Chesworth. The Air Vice-Marshal too was quickly brought up to speed.
The 228 went wild, lighting up with gunnery threats, missile threats and search radars. As 607 flew north, the Task Force locked on to them with every weapon they had, Hugh Prior was as worried about being shot down by the Navy as he had been about the Argentine defences. The entire 60-degree sector ahead of the bomber was filled with menace. So much so that Prior – the electronic-warfare instructor – found it impossible to differentiate the sound of one from another. He just had to trust that he was broadcasting the IFF frequency the fleet was expecting to hear. And make the post-attack transmission as soon as possible.
‘Did it seem all right to you?’ asked Withers, wanting his Nav Radar’s verdict on the bomb-run.
‘I’ve seen the offsets,’ Wright told him. ‘As far as I can tell it was fine.’
None of them could be any more certain than that. Wright was as sure as he could be that his bombs were on target. Withers asked Hugh Prior to transmit the codeword. There were three options: silence, if the attack had had to be abandoned without alerting the enemy; ‘Rhomboid’, if the attack had failed but had alerted defences; and ‘Superfuse’, if the attack had been a success.
‘This is One Quebec Delta, over,’ Prior said over the VHF.
One Quebec Delta, pass your message.
‘Good morning, this is One Quebec Delta.’ Prior paused. ‘Superfuse.’
Roger, out.
At the same time as Prior transmitted the message to the fleet, Wright set to scan his H2S radar as further confirmation of 607’s presence. Rather than sweeping from side to side, he focused the scanner directly at the fleet, channelling a narrow beam of energy towards the Task Force which, he hoped, would be picked up and identified by the ships’ own Radar Warning Receivers.
Prior immediately got to work on the HF radio in an effort to get through to Red Rag Control. As well as confirming the success of the attack, he needed to get the final refuelling moved 200 miles further south. Their margins for reaching the planned Rio RV off the coast of Brazil didn’t look good.
Three Foxtrot Tango Niner, this is One Quebec Delta, do you read?
As they cruise-climbed Pete Taylor and Gordon Graham began routine fuel checks, until it struck Graham that they were pointless.
‘It’s not worth it,’ he announced. ‘We’re not going to get any fuel from anywhere, so why are we doing fuel checks?’
They continued north, while Prior kept working the HF. A hundred and fifty miles from Stanley, the slow pulse of the Argentine search radar slipped into the distance behind them.
Then, at 0757, Prior made contact with Red Rag Control. And while the news of their success was greeted with relief and satisfaction at Wideawake, anything more enthusiastic was tempered by their knowledge that they still had to bring the Vulcan and two Victors home.