Originally Posted by
NutherA2
During the "Konfrontasi" in the Far East, it was impractical to hold CR on Javelin QRA for protracted periods, on account of high temperatures. FEAF decided that Readiness 10 was too long a reaction time, so there was a kind of Dutch auction, resulting an a crew-room state of Alert 7. It was unusual to take longer than 5 minutes to get airborne, though, whether the crew was awake or sleeping when the scramble was ordered.
Similarly it was deemed impracticable for the Victors and then the Vulcans to hold RS15/RS05 and the order was RS20/RS10. In practice, as Nuther says, it was possible to get airborne in a shorter time. As in UK we could get from PJs in the mess to cockpit readiness in about 5-7 minutes there was no reason why we could not have got to RS05 from RS15 in the Far East. To get to RS10 however dictated RS20. RS10 differed from RS05 or cockpit readiness in that it meant crew relaxing in the 'cool' outside the aircraft or possibly with the door open and thus not technically at CR.
As we didn't have telebrief one crew member would have been onboard monitoring the RT.