Here goes. For the Mods this will never be published.
It was a brilliant shot, I had to admit. John had broken the pack quite well leaving the cue ball almost against the baulk cushion with one red requiring a very fine cut and another blocking the black to the top right pocket. I had cut the red in with loads of back and side screw and had nudged the red clear of the black leaving me in the ideal position to pocket it and screw back into the pack. John tapped his cue on the floor in applause as I rammed the black against the pocket rail and split the pack wide open with at least five reds begging to be potted. This is going to be a good break, I thought, visions of a 147 appearing in my mind.
“Fareastdriver, Sir,” it was the hall steward, “telephone call for you.”
Bugger it. I thought, ‘I’m going to lose my rhythm now,’ I went into the hall and picked up the phone. It was my flight commander.
“How would you like to go to India?”
“India!” I gasped. “What an earth for?”
“You know this nonsense that the Chinese and Indians are having about their border region. They’re sending out a squadron of Javelins to show Commonwealth solidarity and we, and 214 Squadron, are going to tank them out. Davo Ward’s wife is supposed to pod next week and as you have not done an overseas trip yet I want to send you out there instead of him. There’s a brief after lunch, see you then.”
There was a click as the phone went down that suggested that I had no choice. I went back to the snooker room with thoughts of India running though my mind. I lined up for the planned red in the centre pocket and to my despair it brushed the corner and rolled to the centre of the table. John practically ran to the other side and started knocking up a score in multiples of eight. 104 came up and then he cleared all the colours. Damn it, I thought, they should have all been mine.
“Must have been a serious call for you to have missed that?” He surmised.
“They want me to go to India.”
“Oh yes, they were talking about that this morning.” John was 55 Squadron’s adjutant when he wasn’t playing snooker or flying so he went with his boss to the morning operations briefings.
“Apparently they have already sent out some people from Mareham, (214 Squadron’s base) to sort out the other end. As far as I know your squadron is going to Bombay and the Javelins are going to some place in the north.”
I went back to the hall and phoned up Operations. I was supposed to pick up a Victor crew with the Anson after they had ferried their aircraft down to Boscombe Down. Leaving at the same time as them usually meant that they would be ready to jump in as soon as I arrived. I spoke to the Warrant Officer who knew in what state and where all the aircraft were.
“There’s no hurry,” He replied to my query, “The Victor needs a nosewheel tyre change and won’t be ready ‘till about four; I’ve told your blokes at the station flight already.” The immediate problem solved I went into lunch.
At least something was happening in my Air Force career. I had joined the RAF in Rhodesia in 1960 with thoughts of hurling around the stratosphere in Hunters or Lightnings but at the end of flying training, I, with hordes of others had been sent off to the V Force as co-pilots. As usual there were too many and I had ended up on a Valiant tanker squadron as a surplus pilot. I had done all the training required but as I had not been allocated to a crew I filled in for the sick, lame and lazy. Fortunately there had been a requirement for somebody to fly the station’s communication Anson so that had kept me fairly sane whilst they looked for a slot for me. Apart from that many hours at the mess snooker tables had brought me up to a standard that many champions would envy. The days of flying around the world refuelling aircraft and looking after the needs of WRAF officers and nursing sisters who did not want to get a reputation on their own base had, hopefully, yet to come.
We didn’t have a briefing room on 90 Squadron. The hangar probably did when it was built in 1937 but then squadrons only had a couple of dozen aircrew and not twelve five man crews that a Valiant squadron had. Apart from the crew room which was never fully utilised all the rest were offices. The place was packed, a blackboard in one corner had five crew lists chalked on it and on the other side was a map of Europe and the Far East with a modified Javelins to Bahrain refuelling route. Dave was there, only to see what he was going to miss. His crew was a good bunch, the youngest on the squadron and we all got on well together. I had not done a lot of flying but I had breezed through my tanker conversion course without any trouble so they and I had no qualms about my performance. .
“Gentlemen please,” it was the boss so the place fell silent. “The station intelligence officer will brief you on the situation in India.”
Bill looked surprised. He had only prepared a military brief and he knew little more about the political situation than that he had already read in the morning paper.
“As you all know,” he started, we didn’t but not that it mattered. “The Chinese and Indian governments are in dispute over their border in the Himalayas. This has given rise to fisticuffs and now they are beating bigger drums. The Indian Air Force has no all-weather fighter capability so the government, as a sign of support, are detaching 23 Squadron to India until the dispute is settled.” Having bluffed his way through the political bit he then went on to describe the relative strengths of the opposing air forces.
“The Indians have a few Mig21s but it is predominately Hunters, Gnats, with a couple of dozen Canberras. The Chinese air force was almost all Mig17s with IL28s as their bombing force. In other words, if the weather is bad only the Javelins will be able to fly.”
Having summed up yet another one of the British Government’s futile gestures he handed us back to the boss.
The boss started with alarm. His idea of briefing the squadron was for everybody else to tell him what was going on. Delegation of responsibility was his forte. He passed the hot potato to my flight commander. Les was good, he was on top of everything. He explained that the whole exercise was a 214 Sqn show but because of the size and the urgency we were making up the numbers. It was immediately obvious why the boss wasn’t going. Relations between the two squadron commanders were somewhat less than cordial.
The five crews were selected because it was their turn to do an overseas detachment. Four crews would fly the first two days to Bahrain and the fifth crew would be pre-positioned to fly the No1 Tanker to Bombay. As it was a relatively short distance from Bahrain to Bombay the Javelins would be topped up with fuel just before the coast so that they could get cross the Indian sub-continent. We would remain at Bombay on the assumption that the dispute would be of short duration and then we would bring the Javelins back. Should it not be sorted in a week or so then we would return to the UK leaving 214 to bring them back in slow time. He looked around at the more elderly members of the squadron.
“There is no question,” he said firmly, “of the aircraft reverting to the bomber role and being used in operations.”
The wrinkled faces relaxed, going to war was the last thing they had in mind for their pre-retirement programme.
#
We had two days to plan. The first four Javelins were leaving tomorrow and the last four of the twelve would be taken out by us. The fact that it would be spread over three days was because of the time that it would take to generate tankers and fighters. 214 Sqn. were frantically rebuilding an aircraft on major servicing and 23 Sqn. were pulling out the two war reserve Javelins to make up enough serviceable aircraft. The fifth crew would be going out tomorrow in a Britannia with the ground party.
Ron, our Nav leader was next. He explained the route and how the refuelling brackets had been calculated for the Bahrain-Bombay leg. The route out to Bahrain was standard. It had been used before on a long range Javelin detachment so it was known to work. The procedure was that the Javelins would leave Leuchers and join up with the first tanker at Spurn Head. After they had been being topped up the other three tankers would join and then relieve No1 tanker of all his surplus fuel. No1 would return to Honington, refuel and fly independently to Akrotiri in Cyprus, the first night-stop. He would do the same thing next day out of Akrotiri which is why the crew would be relieved in Bahrain because of all the flying they had done. On crossing the Mediterranean coast No2 would tank up the four Javelins and proceed to Luqa in Malta, refuel and carry on to Cyprus. No3 and us, No4, would do a pair each just before they got out of range of Luqa, which would leave all of us with enough fuel to get to Akrotiri. The Valiant wasn’t designed to be a tanker. Even with a bomb-bay tank fitted it only could carry 78,000 lbs. of fuel and at 8,000 lbs./hr it used 40,000lbs just getting to Cyprus.
There then followed the usual clarifying of minor details.
“What’s the LOA (local overseas allowance) in India?” somebody asked.
Les shuffled through some yet unread signals.
“It’s nine rupees a day.”
Nick picked up last weeks Times and flicked through to the financial section. He looked at the exchange rates in horror.
“For Christ’s sake, it’s thirteen rupees to the pound. That makes it,” a fractional pause, “13s 10d.” An almighty wail went around the room.
Bill piped up. “They couldn’t have changed the rate since 1947 because that was what it was when I left India.”
The boss interjected. “I will sort this out this afternoon, if there is nothing further we had better get on with it.”
I looked at my watch, three-thirty. This was going to be difficult, doing the fuel planning and flying the Anson at the same time.
Davo came over. “I’ll do the planning for you; you had better do your flight.” We cleared it with the boss and I left them to it.
The Victor was ready on time but it was five o’clock before we got airborne. Fortunately I had enough fuel to return as the civilian refuelling crew at Boscombe had gone home. As Honington was a V Force station it had a twenty-four hour canteen in operations so I had dinner there when I got back. It was about nine when I went into the bar for a few beers.