About 30 years ago, AOC Maritime woke up one fine September morning and decided that all this Glasnost and Perestroika business was all very well, but the Russkis needed a reminder that the UK was still very much in the anti-shipping business. There was, it seems, a Sverdlov somewhere a long way north, which he decided needing a seeing-to. Signals were fired off to Lossie and a 6-ship of Buccs was told to plan a good wazzing of said shipski…
We were tasked as the tanker support, but such was the secret squirrel nature of the boat people at Northwood that they wouldn't give us any details - until our boss said something along the lines of "You can forget your tanker unless you tell us where and when you want it!"
Reluctantly the details were forthcoming. My relatively new first tourist navigator was relieved by one of the most experienced navs we had, who set to with his calculations whilst I took down receiver details, the jet was filled to the brim and the co-pilot (RFK) and engineer went to get it ready. Then we joined them, cranked up and set off north. The Buccs launched as we flew over Lossie - or rather 4 did. One was U/S and another was delayed. So after the 4-ship joined, we flew a zig zag reduced MLA progression track until the 5th joined us. Clearing the UK ADR, we adjusted to a 'due regard' level, topped up the Buccs and held at a suitable point whilst they went off with their horns out to savage the Sverdlov.
A little later we heard them on the way back. I called 'Go ADF' and they soon found us. We heard later that the Russians had been caught with their pants down - no tracking or fire control radars of any sort until one brief lock as the Buccs departed!
After we refuelled them, they thundered off back to Lossie in high spirits. Meanwhile our aged navigator had been studying his calculations and reckoned that if we went up to FL410, we could probably get back to Brize on diversion mimima. So up we went, having called a somewhat surprised Bodo controller. Bless him, the navs sums were spot on and we managed 6:40 out of a VC10K2, including refuelling 5 Buccs twice, without needing to divert.
A nice letter from the Bucc leader (TLW) followed; their multi aircraft attack profile had worked exactly as advertised and the Sverdlov had been caught totally unawares. With TLW leading, I can imagine that the simulated attack would have been very impressive!
Happy Days!!
Last edited by BEagle; 9th Dec 2018 at 09:14.
Reason: Wrong date - it was actually 1 Sep 1988!