Hi JN! How well I remember Night 1 of GW1! It came as a total shock to find I was down to lead 3 x VC10K to trail 8 x JP233 Tornadoes to their cast off point, then loiter until they returned post-attack. The weather was difficult and keeping within the narrow speed range for the heavy Tornadoes was quite a struggle. We'd planned to balance up the fuel across our tanker formation whilst waiting for the Tornadoes to return, but the tanker with all the spare fuel had an unserviceable centreline hose. Hence after the 8 x Tornadoes returned, thankfully unscathed, by the time we reached KKIA we were rather low on fuel. To make matters worse, both hoses were stuck at full trail, so a flapless landing was needed...
Fortunately all the Tornado crews with whom we'd worked were fine. But when we saw your pictures in the Daily Mail a couple of days later, we realised what a truly nasty regime we were up against.
Your book looks brilliant, mate!