Was airborne in a VC10 K3 over the North Sea - flying a towline as my first day as a Captain on 101. All fighters were suddenly recalled to base and we were re-tasked to fly North, direct to Stornoway, meet an E-3 and offload any available fuel. Made some quick calculations for a min off-task with a VFR approach to ISK, then gave everything we could to the AWACS. The K3 had some extra radios and we had GEs onboard; we asked them to stop bringing the news forwards after the second jet hit.