The grim waiting game aboard Tux’s Victor came to an abrupt end.
‘Superfuse,’ Mick Beer announced emphatically over the intercom, unable to keep the smile out of his voice. The rest of the crew erupted, yelling and screaming with relief and excitement.
‘Fuck, he’s done it!’ someone shouted. There was an intimacy possible in the cockpit of the Victor that the decked layout of the Vulcan didn’t allow. And now, all five of the tanker’s crewmen craned and swivelled in their seats to look each other in the eyes; to share the elation and satisfaction of pulling off the job they’d been sent to do under the most testing of conditions. Until the Vulcan’s transmission, a nagging feeling that the bomber crew had let them down had been hard to shake. It had been dispelled in an instant. But as the euphoria died down, thoughts turned to their own desperate situation. Their fuel state hadn’t been improved by the news of the raid’s success, but they could, at least, now throw themselves into trying to sort it out.
‘Right,’ Tux said, ‘let’s look at all of this and try to refine it; see where we stand; how far we’re going to get; where we can reasonably expect an RV.’
Mick Beer tried to raise Ascension, but he struggled. In the early morning over this patch of the South Atlantic, the HF characteristics didn’t help his efforts. As the big AEO laboured with his radio set, the rest of the Victor crew began to discuss their options. They could only fly north for another four hours at most. If a TAT out of Ascension wasn’t at that point by the time they reached it, their jet was going down. As far as any of them was aware, there was absolutely no guarantee that Beer would get through in time.
In passing the ‘Superfuse’ message to Northwood, a mistake was somehow made. It led to an anxious delay while the Ops Team there waited for clarification of the signal. It was nearly 8.30 before a staff officer confirmed BLACK BUCK’s success to the Air Commander. In the rabbit warren corridors of the state-of-the-art NATO headquarters, Air Marshal Curtiss smiled with relief. Like so many who’d been committed to the operation’s success, he’d harboured private doubts about whether they would pull it off. At the very least, he’d thought, it’s pretty nip and tuck.
From the suburbs of north-west London, news was relayed to Whitehall.
Sir Michael Beetham was sitting at his desk on the sixth floor of the Ministry of Defence. At 9.30, Air Vice-Marshal Ken Hayr came bursting into his office. The Assistant Chief of the Air Staff had run up the stairs from his Ops staff on the floor below. As the elegant New Zealander strode across the carpet towards Beetham, his hand was outstretched, his face a picture of happiness.
‘We’ve done it!’ he told Beetham, whose own grin quickly matched that of his deputy. Between them, they’d conceived and instigated the Vulcan operation. While Beetham had been its advocate within Whitehall, Hayr had monitored the developing plan’s progress at Waddington. The two men shook hands, before reining in their celebration. As Hayr explained, the bombs might have gone, but Vulcan 607 was still on its own out over the South Atlantic. There were thousands of miles and a further refuelling to go before anyone could finally consider the mission accomplished.
At 41,000 feet, Martin Withers engaged the autopilot and 607 settled into her long cruise north. The first hints of marmalade orange were visible on the horizon as the sun began to come up – half an hour earlier at height than at ground level. Withers was shattered. Dick Russell was just thinking that he was probably condemned to his seat in the back until the final refuelling when Withers spoke to him over the conference intercom.
‘Are you coming up, Dick?’
Withers wanted him to sit on the right after Pete Taylor had moved across to fly the bomber from the Captain’s seat. The bomber’s Captain was going to get his head down. The fuel tray was pushed smoothly back into the instrument panel like a filing cabinet drawer, and safety pins were slotted back into the triggers of both ejection seats. The three pilots shuffled around the hemmed-in spaces of the flight deck, while the ever-phlegmatic Taylor and a slightly nonplussed Russell strapped themselves into their harnesses. Bob Wright made the most of the hiatus to take care of a little housekeeping. He unclipped the five full pee-tubes from next to their owners and drained them into the chemical toilet that sat, unused till now, down in the bomb-aimer’s prone position. After hanging them back up, he returned to his chair and, for the first time, began to reflect on what the mission had achieved so far. Up front, Dick Russell settled on to the sheepskin-covered, uncushioned co-pilot’s seat and pulled out the fuel tray. A quick glance over the gauges immediately rekindled his earlier anxiety about the Vulcan’s lack of fuel. They weren’t out of the woods yet. Not by any means.
Behind him, Withers curled up on the jump seat and closed his eyes. Sleep came quickly.
Simon Baldwin hadn’t slept well. But he was still in bed when Air Vice-Marshal Mike Knight telephoned from HQ 1 Group at Bawtry. Half awake, Baldwin was confused by the message.
‘What are you talking about, sir?’ he asked.
The AOC had to repeat himself to make himself understood. While Baldwin hurriedly pulled on his clothes before racing down to the Ops block, Knight’s efforts to coolly and efficiently pass news to the Waddington Ops Room there were similarly frustrated.
When John Laycock had returned in the morning, there’d been no news on BLACK BUCK from any source. The silence around the room was striking. People pushed paper around, chewed their pens and waited. Occasional, routine phone calls would be dealt with swiftly and sparely – once it was realized that the voice on the line had nothing of interest to offer. Just before ten o’clock, the phone rang again. The whole room turned to look. One of the Ops clerks picked up, listened and turned to Laycock.
‘It’s for you, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s the AOC.’
Laycock took the handset and announced himself: ‘Station Commander.’
‘Superfuse,’ was all Air Vice-Marshal Knight said. Laycock considered it for a moment, then realized the word meant nothing to him.
‘Superfuse,’ Knight repeated impatiently.
‘I’m sorry, sir, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about!’
‘For God’s sake! It’s the codeword in your Operation Order!’
‘Don’t have one, sir. We haven’t received an Op Order.’
The line turned blue as Knight digested the news.
‘We’d only be an “Information” address here anyway, sir,’ Laycock explained.
Each Op Order was classified ‘Action’ or ‘Information’. Since the Vulcans had deployed to Ascension, Waddington had been downgraded to ‘Information’. With the bombers under Northwood’s control, they no longer needed to know.
‘Never mind that,’ Knight stopped him. ‘“Superfuse” means that they’ve dropped the bloody bombs!’
‘Oh, right!’ Laycock exclaimed. ‘Thank you, sir. Very good news!’
‘I’ll talk to you later.’
And the line clicked off.
Laycock put down the phone and, with all eyes on him, told the expectant crowd that the raid had been a success. The room erupted from the tense silence that had gripped it all night into a welter of relief, excitement and pride. When Baldwin came hurtling in soon afterwards, it felt like winning the World Cup – the strain of a month’s intense focus and concern evaporated in an instant.
Elation was in short supply on Ascension. Since catching ‘Superfuse’ over the HF, the frequency had come alive, but it was virtually impossible to decipher. Each call sign needed to be checked and authenticated. But the changes there’d been within the formation and the flurry of concurrent messages, often relayed from one distant aircraft via another, meant that only confusion emerged.