Secrecy. As the events are over 30 years ago I got permission to give a public lecture on the holy of holies, Bomber Command's war plans. In the audience was another vault officer who kept nodding his head (he wasn't asleep).
Now for the August panic. It was August 1969 exactly one year after the Czech invasion and I think 2 months after the Royal Navy took over deterent responsiblities. The alert was declared as Selective Generation and not as an Exercise. The number of aircraft ordered to readiness by the Bomber Controller was declared over the bomber box. I remember it virtually word for word.
"This is the Bomber Controller for Bomblist Charlie, Selective Generation. Cottesmore 16 aircraft, Finningley 3 aircraft, Scampton 10 aircraft, Waddington 16 aircraft." It was repeated once followed by Bomber Controller out. I am not sure the exact numbers but it was not a full all out generation.
The time was about 1400 on a Friday and any jets airborne were winging their way back home and crews were well on their way to a good weekend as the bar still had a brisk trade at lunchtimes. Would we, at Waddington, be able to raise 19 crews? Not only that but could we cover the top 19 targets too?
Surprisingly two squadrons, 44 and 50, had ground training days, the squadrons were fully manned, and no crew was drunk. Really!
As it became apparent that this was 'no drill' I asked the Eng Controller about the window loads. Not one aircraft had the proper primary operational fit which included RBW and Type 150 and no aircraft had the alternative load of Type 22 either.
When asked to check they engineers came back with the stripper counter readers that had no relevance to the actual chaff fitted. They then had to prepare 4 hoppers with the right contents and number of bundles, then swop it on an armed aircraft. Each time the crew had to go out as the window was changed over.
Later that afternoon we got a call from Strike asking what the window loads were. I sent back, as instructed by Arthur Griffiths, "All aircraft are fitted in accordance with the Bomber Command War SOP, Vol 1, Chapter 5, para 22." Love - 15. Boots Griffths loved that sort of game. He turned to the engineers and said make it happen. The window bay was working all night repacking 22x4 window packs.
That they worked overnight suggests to alert lasted for at least 20 hours.
Why? Best rumour that we had soon after was that one of the Royal Navy SSBN had gone u/s and we were covering the UK deterrent. An alternative was that contact had been lost with the SSBN. The last rumour was it was simply a precaution as it was the 1st anniversary of the Czech uprising.
The QRA practise alerts were EDOM. Once QRA was finished the USAF Exchange Officer in Exercise Plans created Exercise EDITH, not unlike the selective generation. This exercise had no operational basis, at least initially, and the Ops branch was unaware of it. When I asked him the rationale behind the exercise he said it was a shame to lose the operational edge that we had from QRA.
Finally Flat Vet, did you smoke and did you cadge lights from unsuspectng copilots?
WE177B was indeed the first of the new nuclear weapons in RAF service. Its nominal weight was 950lb which was the look-a-like weight of a conventional weapon. It actually weighed about 1007.5 lb but could not be called a 1,000lb bomb because the 950lb of conventional 1,000lber could cause confusion. The WE117A was called a 600lb because the RN had a 540 and the US B57 was a 550. The actual weight of the 177A was nearer 550, I can't recall its actual weight. As for its yield I believe the range was rather larger than that at the usernet site mentioned above.
The yield of the Yellow Sun 2 was less than 1Mt. The bomb was known as Bomb Aircraft HE 7,000lb HC. HC for high capacity suggested it was similar to the 4,000 and 8,000 WW2 blast bombs. It was also nuclear code for a megaton weapon, hence the yield assumption of 1Mt. A megaton range weapon however began at 500kt. The YS2 nominal was about 850kt.
The WE177B, Bomb Aircraft HE 950lb MC, was nominally 450kt.
Flat Vet,
Got you.
The non-exercise QRA alert was not a one off. I was at Cottesmore when one occurred and that time no amount of pleading whatever got the crews to stand-down.
We had met too many USAF missile jocks and crews to fall for that 'trick' just trying to get us to only pay lip service to the rules.
I had a Gp Capt from Bomber trying to inspect the Vault on a pre-AOCs. No dice. His name was not on the list - it was a very short list. When he realised bluff was not going to work he made a note of the authorising officer's name, Norman Howard I think, and went off to get authorisation. He never came back.