Cold War Boys: Previously Unpublished Tales of Derring-Do from Pilots and Crew of the Lightning, Phantom, Hunter, Tornado and Other Aircrafts

By Richard Pike

When the US president, Harry S Truman, declared the Truman Doctrine in March 1947, he could not have known that the resultant Cold War would persist for over 40 years until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. In addition to nuclear and conventional military friction between the Eastern and Western blocs, the struggle for dominance involved a remarkable range of activities including the space race, psychological efforts, espionage, even rivalry at sporting functions and technological events. This diversity is reflected in the 20 chapters of Cold War Boys which opens with a vivid description from the author of survival procedures used by English Electric Lightning pilots in the event of nuclear war. From there on, various contributors share their original experiences on a range of fixed-wing aircraft and rotorcraft across the world including tales from RAF Germany, the Falklands and the Far East. Each story demonstrates some of the intriguing circumstances faced by aircrew and ground crew whose tenacity and professionalism had to cope with miscellaneous situations of danger, excitement, risk, pathos and humor. This book serves as a reminder of what air forces faced during the Cold War years as the ever-present threat of nuclear war persisted. A must for all aviation fans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781911667971

Richard Pike

Richard Pike became a flight cadet in 1961 at the RAF College, Cranwell, where on graduation, he was awarded the Dickson Trophy and Michael Hill memorial prize for flying. In the early stages of his forty-year flying career he flew the English Electric Lightning before converting to the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom. On leaving the Royal Air Force he became a civilian helicopter pilot. His duties took him to a wide variety of destinations at home and overseas including the Falkland Islands not long after the end of the Falklands War. His last assignment was in Kosovo helping to distribute emergency humanitarian aid on behalf of the United Nations World Food Programme. He and his wife live in Aberdeenshire. He is the author of several Grub Street titles including: Lightning Boys, Lightning Boys 2, Hunter Boys and Phantom Boys Volume 1 and 2.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

SURVIVAL SCRAMBLE

RICHARD PIKE’S CONTRASTING FLIGHTS

As the sun climbed through the sky towards its zenith, the passage of the hours seemed quite rapid that morning. However, with the approach of evening and as subtle colours started to mark the far horizon, the cockpit seat in a de Havilland Canada DHC-1 Chipmunk aircraft began to feel pretty hard and the cockpit itself rather cramped. Since, by that point, I’d spent what felt like the entire day in the rear cockpit of one of these machines, perhaps an awareness of fatigue, and of time starting to slow down, was inevitable. Even so, a sense of job satisfaction surely compensated for any discomfort when, on that July Sunday in 1966, my log notes confirmed that more than ten individual Air Training Corps (ATC) cadets had taken turns in the Chipmunk’s front cockpit for air experience flights. I’d accrued over five hours of flying in three separate flights which, I was told, had been more than a little appreciated by the cadets.

In pre-flight briefings by their ATC officer, these cadets had been assured that the Chipmunk, designed by a Polish engineer, offered good, responsive flying characteristics suitable for ab initio training which included aerobatics. This is a single-engine machine, said the ATC officer, so who can tell me anything about the engine?

At this, several arms shot up from the group of ultra-keen cadets. It’s a de Havilland Gipsy Major 8, sir, said one of them, which produces 145 horsepower.

Very good. And can anyone tell me about some of the Chipmunk’s aerodynamic features? When this question was met with silence the ATC officer hinted: Features which affect the aircraft’s safety performance?

Is it to do with stalling, sir? said one of the cadets.

Good lad. Yes – the inboard leading edges of the wings have stall-breaker strips to prevent a stall from originating on the outboard section. As well as this, the manufacturers have fitted anti-spin strakes.

Further briefings followed but when flying began, and when my first cadet passenger climbed into the front seat of Chipmunk WD373, his enthusiasm, bolstered, perhaps, by the warmth of the summer sun, was positively infectious. After start-up and taxiing routines, he followed me through on the flight controls as we lined up on the runway at RAF Wattisham in Suffolk. When I asked him: Okay? All set for take-off? his response was an eager: All set, sir! Now cleared by air traffic control, without delay I advanced the Chipmunk’s throttle. As the aircraft accelerated, I could see from the rear cockpit that the cadet was staring at the runway edges to gain, I assumed, an impression of speed. Look up, I said, ensure that the area ahead is clear; check above and all around. I wanted to emphasise the importance of good ‘lookout’: Learn the fighter pilot’s habit to search for other aircraft.

Soon, as I levelled the Chipmunk at a height of around 1,500 feet and when I asked the cadet if he’d like to take over the flight controls, the answer was immediate: Yes, please, sir. At this stage there was a tendency, naturally, for a rookie pilot to over-control and the Chipmunk would start to lurch around the skies alarmingly. Most of the cadets, though, settled down quite quickly and then, as the countryside slid past, there was the opportunity to observe the landscape’s medley of colours, the soft Suffolk contrasts. Few hills or valleys were evident here, just a patchwork of flat fields with haphazard villages that gently poked and prodded their way into adjacent countryside. On this, the day’s first flight, we flew due south towards Dedham Vale and Constable country, although for a contrast on later flights I’d head due east to fly in the direction of Ipswich with Aldeburgh Bay and the North Sea beyond.

However, with just 30 minutes of flight time allocated to each cadet we could not fly far. At an opportune moment, therefore, I’d ask the cadet if he’d like to experience some aerobatics. If there was a positive answer, I’d take over the flight controls again and suggest that the cadet ‘followed through lightly on the controls’. I’d demonstrate a modest barrel roll followed by a loop then, if the cadet was not suffering from airsickness, a few more manoeuvres as we headed back to Wattisham for a couple of airfield circuits before landing. After the landing, and while I taxied the Chipmunk back to dispersal, the next-in-line cadet could be seen standing keenly, ready to take over from his colleague. A slick changeover aided by the ATC officer meant that I could keep the engine running to save valuable time before proceeding with the next flight…and the next and the next until at length, as the sky began to herald the first signs of evening, that seat in the rear cockpit of Chipmunk WD373 began to feel really rather hard.

Daybreak came quickly the following morning. Even at the best of times the sound of the station alert siren was hardly welcome, but the grim racket early on a Monday morning ushered a particularly pestilent start to the week. Gone were the memories of yesterday’s Chipmunk air experience flights; now I had to switch swiftly from Air Training Corps volunteer to my everyday job as an English Electric Lightning fighter pilot.

As the wail of the alert siren was fading, I dressed hastily then dashed from the RAF Wattisham officers’ mess to the 56 Squadron set-up where the buzz of activity was building up. Engineers rushed here and there to arm and prepare Lightnings for flight; the duty operations officer spoke in earnest, fretful tones on the telephone while the squadron pilots hurried to change into flying gear before they scrutinised meteorological forecasts, examined and signed necessary documents, and checked procedural updates. The exercise, we learnt, would start with a so-called survival scramble when all Lightnings in a flyable state would be ordered airborne. The idea was to avoid destruction on the ground by incoming Soviet missiles, a plan which assumed that the missiles would arrive in an orderly fashion within a fairly brief timescale. In view of the Lightnings’ limited fuel capacity, the timing would be tight indeed. However, as with so much in those frosty Cold War days, dilemmas were varied and many, and some of the suppositions within contingency plans were, to put it politely, a little questionable. Nonetheless, something had to be done and I suppose that this was the best plan that anyone could dream up. The ramifications of the Cuban crisis of just four years previously continued to rumble on; by now, though, President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated, the Soviet’s Nikita Khrushchev was no longer in power, his ineptitude seen by the Soviet Politburo as precipitating the crisis in the first place. As a result of all this, the current relationship between NATO and the Soviets had regressed from a state of mere frostiness to one that was positively glacial.

However, as Lightning pilots our duties did not cease. We knew that it was unlikely that our base would survive a massive Soviet missile assault and consequently, therefore, following a survival scramble our task would be to attempt to find somewhere to land, a place from where, after the aircraft had been refuelled, we could take off again to confront incoming Soviet bombers. Across the United Kingdom there were over 30 bases earmarked for possible emergency use by V-bombers and which might be available for Lightnings. With places ranging from Machrihanish, Kinloss, and Prestwick in Scotland, to Ballykelly in Northern Ireland, Manston in Kent, Leeming in North Yorkshire, Burtonwood in Lancashire, Coltishall in Norfolk, St Mawgan in Cornwall, the list was long but which one to choose and what would be found when there? Whether V-force or Lightning (or Chipmunk, even) would the devastation of a nuclear exchange make landing in any of these places feasible? Would the necessary technical expertise still be available to rearm and relaunch any fighters and bombers that managed to land?

With uncomfortable questions which nobody could answer tumbling one upon the other, someone in some headquarters had tried to produce operations manuals that elucidated procedures and which, that day, we were discussing when, suddenly, a cry from the operations officer announced: "All pilots to cockpit readiness… get going everyone!"

Since, by then, technical logs and authorisation sheets had been checked and signed already, the pilots ran directly to allocated Lightnings which had been parked in a neat row. As with the other pilots, I was assisted by a ground crewman, a conscientious individual who helped me to strap into the Martin-Baker ejection seat of my Lightning F3 – XP699 – after which, when I gave a thumbs-up sign, he removed and stowed the seat safety pins. He then stepped down the cockpit access ladder which he wriggled clear of fixings on the fuselage side before he stood, arms folded, by a pre-positioned fire extinguisher. Now all of us had to endure a period of waiting until the Lightnings were ordered airborne by the fighter controller at the control and reporting centre (CRC) at RAF Bawdsey in Suffolk.

The CRC there was a temporary arrangement following a fire in the fighter control bunker at RAF Neatishead near Norwich six months earlier – a bad business which had caused unfortunate repercussions across the RAF’s air defence world. The station fire team at Neatishead had done their best to contain the blaze but when it became evident that they were struggling, civilian back-up was summonsed. In the bunker’s labyrinthine, smoke-filled corridors some of the civilian firemen became disorientated. Despite desperate efforts to locate and save them, when the men’s breathing apparatus eventually ran out of oxygen, three of the civilian firefighters succumbed, the tragedy of their deaths made even more poignant with the realisation that the fire had been started deliberately by a disgruntled airman. The fire itself continued to burn for nine days before it was fully extinguished. Later in the year, the airman responsible was sentenced to seven years in prison for starting the fire and causing the deaths. A major rebuild of the bunker complex at Neatishead would take eight years to complete until, in 1974, the CRC there was reopened.

Just now, though, while I sat in my Lightning F3 to wait patiently along with the other pilots, there was time to observe the local Suffolk countryside with its fields and hedges and trees that stretched beyond the airfield boundary towards the famous Constable country which I’d overflown in yesterday’s Chipmunk flights. It was tempting to imagine what Constable might have made of a military airfield. Evidently he was not satisfied with painting scenery alone, for Constable liked, apparently, to include the human touch in his paintings with busy farmworkers, children near farmhouses and people outside cottages. Perhaps, I speculated, he’d have relished the opportunity to paint pilots and ground crews and their shiny Lightnings lined up in front of a cavernous hangar with, in the background, equipment and aircraft components scattered across oil-spattered, roughened floors. And he’d have captured, no doubt, the facial expressions of the ground crews who now stood looking really rather bored as everyone waited for action.

I glanced across at our rival squadron, 111 Squadron, whose pilots, like us, remained at cockpit readiness until all of Wattisham Wing’s Lightnings were ordered airborne for the anticipated survival scramble. Both 56 Squadron and 111 Squadron had distinguished pasts having served in two world wars and having fought in the Battle of Britain. As a new arrival on 56 Squadron, I’d been allocated the secondary duty of officer in charge of squadron historical records. I’d read, therefore, that 56 Squadron had been heavily involved with the defence of the south of England in the Battle of Britain, bringing down nearly 60 enemy machines. Meanwhile, 111 Squadron had pioneered dangerous head-on attacks against Luftwaffe bomber streams, claiming 47 enemy bombers destroyed for the loss of 18 of the squadron’s Hurricanes. After the war, both squadrons, unusually, had operated their own aerobatic display teams with the ‘Firebirds’ of 56 Squadron flying Lightnings, and the ‘Black Arrows’ of 111 Squadron flying Hawker Hunters.

"Wattisham Wing…standby! With this radio transmission, my nerves suddenly stiffened, my pulse quickened. I recognised the voice of the officer in charge of operations – the wing commander himself. Clearly this was serious. The next instruction, though, came not from the wing commander but from the chief controller at Bawdsey: This is Bawdsey, said the chief controller, Wattisham Wing…for survival…scramble, scramble, scramble! Acknowledge!"

At once, a rush of activity developed as a series of shrill wheees confirmed that engine starter systems had been operated. Soon, with engines ‘burning and turning’, canopies were lowered and chocks were tugged clear by the ground crews who’d been galvanised into action. Now, in a pre-briefed sequence, the Lightnings began to make their way rapidly to RAF Wattisham’s main runway, orientated north-east/south-west, while the pilots prepared for a stream take-off. This take-off technique (as depicted by the renowned aviation artist Chris Stone – himself a former Lightning pilot – in his painting ‘Rotation Take-off’) was designed to ensure that the Lightnings were airborne as swiftly and efficiently as practicable. In my planned sequence, therefore, I duly rolled onto the runway, eased the rudder pedals left and right to straighten the nosewheel then, without stopping, advanced the Lightning’s twin throttles to the full cold power position. A surge of acceleration followed then, after a short pause for the engines to settle, I rocked the throttles outboard and pushed them fully forward to the maximum reheat position. A further pause ensued, then a muffled boom-boom sound as the reheats lit. Now a characteristic thump in the back confirmed that the reheat systems were serviceable. As the massive thrust of XP699’s twin Avon engines propelled me ever faster down the runway, the contrast to yesterday’s take-off in a Chipmunk was stark indeed.

There was little time to think about that, however, as XP699 accelerated and I held my position conscious, as I did so, of the wake turbulence stirred up by the aircraft ahead. Fortunately, the crosswind factor on that day helped to dispel some of the turbulence and now, swiftly airborne, I had to concentrate on station-keeping relative to the Lightning in front. To avoid bunching, pilots were required to make positional adjustments and it was not long before suitable separation was achieved so that a follow-my-leader procession developed as Lightnings started to head out over the North Sea.

It was at this juncture, presumably, that we were likely to pass any inbound Soviet missiles. No doubt it would be virtually impossible to spot their slippery, supersonic presence as the likes of R-12 Dvinas with thermonuclear warheads rained down in their dozens, or maybe hundreds. Designated, curiously, ‘SS-4 Sandal’ by NATO, these medium-range ballistic missiles with a length of over 20 metres, a speed of some 8,000 miles per hour and a blast yield in excess of two megatons, had been designed with an autonomous inertial-guidance system. Doubtless this meant that, regardless of any last-second ceasefire agreement, there was no means to stop the missiles’ lethal progress after launch. During a survival scramble, the first signs of attack when viewed from our Lightnings could come from telltale nuclear ‘mushroom’ clouds that developed above targets designated as strategic by the Soviets. RAF Wattisham, as one of the United Kingdom’s main front-line air-defence bases, would surely qualify which entailed, of course, collateral damage to peaceful Suffolk and its serene surrounds.

Perhaps that day, up there, I ruminated that it was best to put such apocalyptic thoughts from the mind. Instead, I might have thought it prudent to concentrate on the good things in life like, for example, flying Lightnings. For surely it was the case that as a twenty-three-year-old, newly qualified Lightning pilot at the time, my focus, and that, I believe, of my colleagues, was on the joie de vivre gained from flying such an aircraft. We faced, I suppose, a paradoxical situation. Despite endless briefings, lectures, intelligence updates, discussions about the dire implications of our role, we could still relish the opportunities, the challenges, the excitements of operating an aircraft like the Lightning. Indeed, it was tempting to see the outbreak of nuclear war as something of a theoretical prospect for the consequences of such a war would be so devastating, so overwhelming, so utterly unbelievable that many members of the general public, politicians, diplomats, even the military were inclined to the view that, to all intents and purposes, the chances of this actually occurring could be… well, while not exactly ignored, nonetheless, shall we say, discounted.

But reflect for a moment: we did not know then what we know now.

Four years before the practice survival scramble which I’m now describing, on a day that became known as ‘Black Saturday’, 27 October 1962, the captain of Soviet submarine B-59, Captain Valentin Grigorievich Savitsky, while evading US Navy pursuers took his vessel to a depth where radio messages from Moscow could not be monitored. Arthur Schlesinger, an advisor to the John F. Kennedy administration, later stated: This was not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War, it was the most dangerous moment in human history. When discussing these matters at a forum in 2002, the US Secretary of Defense during the Cuban missile crisis, Robert McNamara, said: We came very close to nuclear war, closer than we knew at the time. For Captain Savitsky had made the erroneous judgement that war may have started already and he wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo. This, though, required the agreement of three named officers on board. An argument broke out between these three when one of them, Captain (second class) Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, evidently a modest man born into a peasant family near Moscow, objected. Looking back, it would be hard to overstate the significance of the intervention of Captain (second class) Arkhipov. It seems barely credible – grotesque in the extreme – that the fate of countless millions of people should rely on such an arcane, precarious procedure, nevertheless it appears that Arkhipov’s actions probably saved humanity, a point dramatically highlighted in a subsequent documentary ‘Missile Crisis: The Man Who Saved the World’.

From our perspective as Lightning pilots, we were one element within the overall policy of deterrence. It was our duty to help defend our country; spurred by the demands of intensive, expensive training, we’d do what needed to be done, follow procedures, fight to the last, that was surely beyond doubt. However, in the complex world of Cold War politics, one of the larger questions was whether we were suitably equipped for such a mission. Following the survival scramble, and on the assumption that the Lightnings found somewhere to land, re-arm, refuel and then take off, would the aircraft’s capacity to carry just two missiles be sufficient for the task? The mathematics were murky, but it was calculated that every Lightning pilot would be required to confront approximately 30 Soviet bombers each.

Wattisham Wing, this is Bawdsey…standby… the controller abruptly interrupted thought processes. After a pause he went on: …Wattisham Wing to divert to Coltishall. The lead Lightning acknowledged as he turned left towards RAF Coltishall in Norfolk, the base for the Lightning Operational Conversion Unit (OCU) and as such well acquainted with the demands of operating fast-jet fighter aircraft. It was not long before the controller had facilitated a well-regulated recovery and all the Wattisham Wing Lightnings had landed then taxied to dispersal sites. As part of the survival scramble exercise, the pilots climbed out of their cockpits to head for refuges where, sitting inside a cramped shelter, we had to await further instructions from Bawdsey.

While we waited, the atmosphere inside that shelter seemed to be quite tense. I caught occasional glimpses of a guard with one arm through the sling of his rifle as he moved around by the shelter’s entrance. From a hard, clear sky the warmth of the day’s summer sun shone down to accentuate what felt like an interminable delay before we received scramble orders to intercept exercise targets. From time to time we talked about this and that – the Beatles, the troubles in Rhodesia, the ongoing war in Vietnam. Some of the OCU students and staff joined in with the discussions, and I was struck by the fresh-faced look of the students who, as with the ATC cadets yesterday, seemed to reflect the keenest of the keen. Which squadron are you joining? I asked a student sitting next me.

Just heard that I’ve been posted to Binbrook – 5 Squadron, he hesitated, they moved there last year.

Lovely Lincolnshire!

Nice and flat; good for flying.

Indeed, I glanced at him. And if you feel so inclined, I beamed, you might get some Chipmunk flying.

How do you mean?

I spent most of yesterday flying a Chipmunk for some ATC cadets.

Air experience flights?

Yup. There should be similar opportunities at Binbrook.

Yeah, he shrugged, maybe I’ll do some of that. But it’s the Lightning…

It was at this point, however, that our conversation was interrupted by a scramble order from the Bawdsey controller. As usual, everything had to be done at breakneck speed. Clambering past others in the shelter, I rushed outside in company with another pilot who’d been scrambled simultaneously for a separate target. After a faultless start procedure, we requested taxi clearance from the local controller. Soon cleared, we began to move away from the dispersal area but as we did so I suddenly caught sight of my student friend who was running towards a two-seat Lightning T5. Along with his instructor, evidently he’d been ordered airborne as part of the exercise. I gave a brief wave, but he was too engrossed to acknowledge. It struck me, though, that here was a young man ready to soar through life, someone who in future years would cast his mind back over the halcyon days of his youth, someone who would have, no doubt, experiences to recall, dramas to reveal, accounts of tales that needed to be told…

CHAPTER 2

TENSE TIMES

RICK PEACOCK-EDWARDS IN THE FIRST GULF WAR

Sign here, please sir, the security officer pointed. The handgun, when issued, appeared to emphasise a portentous moment in an increasingly perilous situation. Of course, reflected Group Captain Rick Peacock-Edwards as he signed for the weapon, he was aware of the general scene, of how a few days previously, on 2 August 1990, the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, had ordered his forces to invade Kuwait, Iraq’s oil-rich neighbour. Now, however, the handover of that gun seemed to highlight Rick’s personal participation in this international event of escalating danger and unpredictability.

The first hint of his involvement came after he’d landed from a training flight in a Panavia Tornado aircraft. As station commander at RAF Leeming in Yorkshire, a key fighter base with three Tornado squadrons, and as a qualified Tornado pilot, Rick would fly when opportunities arose. And on that day, Tuesday 7 August 1990, he was halfway through such a flight when he received an urgent call to return to base immediately. After landing, and as he hastened to sign in his aircraft, he was met by stern-faced officers who escorted him