Our Flight Commander came up to us.
“Briefing in my room; six o’clock.”
We did not have a lot of time to think about it. Six o’clock came and we all crowded into Les’s room and waited for the news. Les didn’t beat around the bush.
“Gentlemen, The Javelins have been posted to Singapore.”
The rumble of surprise around the room from people who had been used to the Air Force springing surprises for generations was apparent.
“The confrontation between Malaysia and Indonesia has been trickling on but the Indonesians are now starting to paratroop into Malaysia at night and there is a requirement for more night interceptors. The most obvious are Javelins, and the ones here are the first choice because they are just around the corner. As they are now finished in India we are going to tank them to Singapore. We will launch on Tuesday, it is going to be a very busy day so I expect everybody to be fully up to it. The Javelins now belong to the Far East Air Force and they have told them to be on station and operational between Sumatra and Malaysia by six a.m., tomorrow, Singapore time, because that’s the time when they have dropped them before. A plot has been worked out,” Les continued. “Four aircraft will pick up four Javelins just off the East Coast and tank them all the way. They have four pilots who are OK for night refuelling so they will be flying them. They will be armed with missiles so without underwings they will have to be refuelled twice and then again abeam Butterworth so that they can stay on station for an hours and then land at Tengah.”
He added as an aside. “They had better get the refuels right otherwise they will end up in the oggin. We will take the other four tomorrow.”
There was a Tanker Cell at Marham who’s job it was to work out how to do projects like this and each crew were handed a folder with all the planning details that had been Telexed to the High commission.
“Another thing; don’t pass it around that we are taking them to Singapore. As far as anybody here is concerned you are going back to the UK.”
After dinner we gathered in John’s room and went through the planning for tomorrow. The Javelins were positioning on an Indian AF base near Hydrabad. The refuelling was simple; as we approached the coast the Javelins would be scrambled and vectored on to us by the Indian radar so theoretically we would all meet up together. The Javelins would tag on to us four until just before their Point of No Return and then would be topped up. This would give them nearly enough fuel to get to Butterworth but also a new PNR. Each Javelin also would stick with one tanker to avoid any shuttling time between refuels. The second refuel would be at the new PNR just before the north of Sumatra which would give them enough to reach Tengah. The track was some 200 miles north of Sumatra because Sukarno had recently acquired some Mig 15s and they might come up for a look-see. We would shepherd them until the Malacca Strait and then they were on their own.
Monday morning we lazed by the pool as out compatriots packed up and left to fly the first wave. The only thing of interest was that Juhu airfield was not far away. The very first de Havilland Comet flight into India had landed there by mistake instead of the new Bombay airport. It stopped alright but they had to remove all the seats and some of the remaining fuel so that it could get airborne for the short hop to where it was supposed to be. The approach was just south of the hotel and apart from the normal Dc 3s I saw my one and only Liberator, Indian Navy, on finals.
The next morning the buses pitched up and we all climbed in. The previous day had gone to plan but it was a bit of a waste of time because there had not been any trade for the Javelins. As soon as we got out of the nice part of Bombay we closed all the windows to repel the tapping hands. The poverty hadn’t changed in the last few days but I was not paying any attention to it any more. When we arrived at the airport we found we had to go through customs again because if you bought anything in India you had to pay export duty in foreign currency on it to take it out! One very choked off officer had to pay £16 on a sari, which was more than he had paid for it! I was clean, as were the rest of my crew so we were transported over to our aircraft.
The had found a leak on No3s throttle unit and they had changed it. Unfortunatly there was no way they could do the throttle-slam or matching checks so there would probably a bit of throttle stagger. Bad throttle stagger is a nuisance, the throttles are all over the place for the same power from each engine and it is awkward to synchronise them. At least we weren’t refuelling, that is when it is at its worst. We walked around the aircraft and climbed up to the cockpit. The water-meth truck had just left the last aircraft; we could afford to load that on here and the trusty Roller was steaming towards us to get us going. We only started Nos. 2 and 3, as we were initially only taxiing to refuel. He was right about the throttle stagger; they were two inches apart just getting them up to 6000 rpm to move. There was a bit of difficulty on the hardstanding as the support Britannia was not parked in the ideal place but there was somebody on its wing showing us the vertical separation as ours passed over it. We took the slot nearest the runway and shut it down.
We got out for a breather whilst the refuelling was being done and after a noisy ten minutes all the aircraft had repositioned. Whilst the tanker train was moving down the line we co-pilots all gathered round and worked out the take-off performance. There were no lines or distance-to-go boards on the runway so the IndAF had parked a truck 1,500ft from the rolling point. The taxiway from were we were to the threshold was closed for repair so we would have to backtrack the runway to the last turn-off and loop around the serviceable taxiway; there being just enough room for the four of us. There was 10,000ft available and we were going to use 9,000ft of it to get airborne. The undercarriages were going to come up in a hurry because just off the end of the runway was a squatter’s city. We all confirmed each other’s figures and retired to our respective aircraft.
At the bewitching hour we got the clearance to start together and we all fired up. Everybody checked in and confirmed that they were ready so I called for taxi clearance for all four. “Clear enter and backtrack,” was the reply. A thumbs up from our marshaller and we proceeded off the hardstanding towards the runway. As we reached the turn off for the runway I looked up at the runway approach and shouted,
“STOP!”
There was a Boeing 707 with everything hanging out at about one mile from touchdown. John didn’t ask; he just slammed on the brakes. Behind us the same thing was distracting the two pilots and when they looked forward they were just about to run into the back of us but they stopped with about two feet to spare.
“Hold you position,” from the tower.
That was a bit late, I thought. The 707 touched down and rolled to the end of the runway and as soon as he passed us we were cleared to continue. As we turned back up the runway we speeded up a bit to make up time. The throttle stagger was lousy, the levers were all over the place. We went around the loop and held at the holding point and we could see that all the other aircraft were tucked in out of the way. We were cleared to line up and take off and after a good look up the approach to make sure there were no other surprises we lined up. “
To be continued.