PhilipG
There is an inherent danger of accident every time an aircraft takes off and lands, this is increased when taking off and landing at unfamiliar locations I think we can all agree.
There is an inherent danger of an accident every time an aircraft flies and steps are taken to mitigate the risk. If the risk was too high, you wouldn't go flying. Equally if the urgency of the task is such then you may deem it acceptable to reduce the normal safety margins and operate to different criteria.
The dispersal airfields were not unfamiliar to the crews. We operated into and out of them on a regular basis and I would not accept that this represented any higher than the normal level of risk.
As PN says, there was no plan or SOP visible to us at the coalface. One can only surmise that anything that did exist started with:
"Breathe a huge sigh of relief and come up with a plan to revert to some lower state of readiness."
If you anticipated recovering the weapons by air, the first thing you had to consider was how to defuel the aircraft with the weapon on board? Sorry, no can do. So, you have to unload the weapon and having done that you might as well convoy it back by road, at least from the closer dispersals.
It would seem more likely that any scenario would involve a phased return to a "normal" alert state and remember that we could be held at RS15 for 30 days. By selectively standing down dispersals on a rotation basis this could probably be significantly extended, who knows?
One thing you can be sure of is that it wouldn't have all wrapped up with a tannoy message of "Endex" and everyone going to the bar. Things would not return to normal for a long time.
YS