C4 Documentary - 1983 The Brink of Apocalypse
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C4 Documentary - 1983 The Brink of Apocalypse
Not really Aviation I know but it may have bought back some memories for some on here.
Did anyone else think it was a well put together documentary ? I was just wondering if anyone around at that time remembers it being that scary ?
Personally I was just about to start Scopie training at West Drayton so I had yet to hear about things like "Able Archer".
One thing that made me laugh (in a 'can you believe it' kind of way) was the bit about Russian spies counting the lights on at night at the MOD. To think WW3 could have kicked off because a cleaner was running late.
And the bit about the Soviet threat indicator board - once all the boxes were filled in they launched a first strike !
Did anyone else think it was a well put together documentary ? I was just wondering if anyone around at that time remembers it being that scary ?
Personally I was just about to start Scopie training at West Drayton so I had yet to hear about things like "Able Archer".
One thing that made me laugh (in a 'can you believe it' kind of way) was the bit about Russian spies counting the lights on at night at the MOD. To think WW3 could have kicked off because a cleaner was running late.
And the bit about the Soviet threat indicator board - once all the boxes were filled in they launched a first strike !
One thing that made me laugh (in a 'can you believe it' kind of way) was the bit about Russian spies counting the lights on at night at the MOD. To think WW3 could have kicked off because a cleaner was running late.
Tightgit
I was in BFG in 83 (poetic!)
I though the documentary was a load of overhyped crud. At least until I got that annoyed with it I turned it off!
I though the documentary was a load of overhyped crud. At least until I got that annoyed with it I turned it off!
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Reminded me of the seemingly endless exercises we had at Wattisham in the mid to late 80s. I'm pretty sure during one of them I heard that Leuchars had put Q9 up (?) for real.
We used to be able to listen in to Neatishead on the squawk box on the wall in the management cabin. There were many amusing messages passed back to us when we first moved onto the HAS site when people thought that it was an intercom from the cabin to the HAS
We used to be able to listen in to Neatishead on the squawk box on the wall in the management cabin. There were many amusing messages passed back to us when we first moved onto the HAS site when people thought that it was an intercom from the cabin to the HAS
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I was in the USMC (3rd Marine Air Wing, MCAS El Toro, Ca) in 1983.
No special alerts, no "grave-visaged senior officers", nothing.
That year was much like 1984, 1985, etc.
Sounds like someone thinks no one will remember what it really was like then, so he can hype things up to make some political/military point.
No special alerts, no "grave-visaged senior officers", nothing.
That year was much like 1984, 1985, etc.
Sounds like someone thinks no one will remember what it really was like then, so he can hype things up to make some political/military point.
I remember the time around 77 that Fylingdales started broadcasting “Live BMEWS Traffic” over the box to 1Gp Ops. They would not answer our calls on the snatch line and Strike could not verify what was going on. Procedures said that we had to get the AOC down to Ops but he was off base and the SASO would not answer the secure speech line. I had to high tail it up to his office to summon him, it turned out that his PA was on an errand and the SASO did not know how to answer the line.
It turned out that Fylingdales had launched into an exercise without warning other agencies and had given the staff the wrong prompt cards to work from.
The best plans of mice and men!
It turned out that Fylingdales had launched into an exercise without warning other agencies and had given the staff the wrong prompt cards to work from.
The best plans of mice and men!
Not for the first time did a test go awry.....
Back in Autumn 1983 I was twiddling my thumbs on the WTM Ops Bridge when all of a sudden that well-known 'brrrrrrrr' sound came over the telebrief. "WTF gives, Neat?" quoth I over the hotline. "We don't know either" came the helpful reply, followed by "Q1 and Q2 at cockpit readiness" from the guys in the Q-shed.
I took a risk....
"Maintain"
I then told Neat that the clock was ticking and asked for the MC to find out WTF was going on before Q scrambled. Sharpish...
Fortunately, by then someone had indeed found out. Some wanquerre had decided to do a line test without telling anyone - and his test tones sounded identical to the 'real thing'. So we relaxed Southern Q, then fielded the DFC's rather peeved phonecall a few minutes later....
No Sovietski missiles, just some tit conducting a test without clearance...
Back in Autumn 1983 I was twiddling my thumbs on the WTM Ops Bridge when all of a sudden that well-known 'brrrrrrrr' sound came over the telebrief. "WTF gives, Neat?" quoth I over the hotline. "We don't know either" came the helpful reply, followed by "Q1 and Q2 at cockpit readiness" from the guys in the Q-shed.
I took a risk....
"Maintain"
I then told Neat that the clock was ticking and asked for the MC to find out WTF was going on before Q scrambled. Sharpish...
Fortunately, by then someone had indeed found out. Some wanquerre had decided to do a line test without telling anyone - and his test tones sounded identical to the 'real thing'. So we relaxed Southern Q, then fielded the DFC's rather peeved phonecall a few minutes later....
No Sovietski missiles, just some tit conducting a test without clearance...
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Ahh, Beags a fine story, and yours is probably not the only example. But what if the reds had been coming over the horizon, who would be the tit keeping Q on the ground? 
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Ballsy decision by the Soviet Colonel not to respond.
One day in autumn 1983, I bunked off school to sit in the back of a PA28 piloted by a friend of my dad's who was a civvie QFI. We were on the apron at Liverpool when a USAF C130 arrived.
In those days you could wander over and chat to the crew which we duly did. My dad's mate asked if they'd diverted into LPL but they replied that it was a planned stop as part of a NATO exercise. They'd flown in direct from Dover AFB in the 'States to practice collecting cargo from non-familiar European Civilian Airports and delivering it to other non-familiar European Civilian Airports.
After gorging themselves on mugs of tea (we insisted they tried it as we told them the coffee was crap), Bacon Barm's and asking some of the locals if they knew any of The Beatles, they invited us onto the flight deck while they started their prep'.
The aircraft commander was a Major and gave me a unit patch, unit baseball cap and a signed photograph of the aircraft from "The Crew of Fargo 11 on Exercise Able Archer- Tonto's first trip to Europe"
They left 90 mins after landing for some airfield in West Germany.
In those days you could wander over and chat to the crew which we duly did. My dad's mate asked if they'd diverted into LPL but they replied that it was a planned stop as part of a NATO exercise. They'd flown in direct from Dover AFB in the 'States to practice collecting cargo from non-familiar European Civilian Airports and delivering it to other non-familiar European Civilian Airports.
After gorging themselves on mugs of tea (we insisted they tried it as we told them the coffee was crap), Bacon Barm's and asking some of the locals if they knew any of The Beatles, they invited us onto the flight deck while they started their prep'.
The aircraft commander was a Major and gave me a unit patch, unit baseball cap and a signed photograph of the aircraft from "The Crew of Fargo 11 on Exercise Able Archer- Tonto's first trip to Europe"
They left 90 mins after landing for some airfield in West Germany.
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An excellent programme, well researched and in considerable depth. The two clear messages resonating from the programme were the fact that the Soviets didn't do analysis and believed all the intelligence that they gathered , and that critical events can hang on the interpretation of a fairly low-level operator on the night shift - the Soviet missile warning cell which picked up spurious satellite reports of launches based on IR reflected from high-level clouds.
There is an excellent book "The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War" by Peter Hennessey which is well worth a read. In a similar vein to the above, the story is recounted of the SIS officer handling the Soviet spy Penkovsky, who received a telephone call with the signal indicating an imminent strike. Unknown to the officer, Penkovsky had been arrested (1962) and the call was a spoof. As it didn't feel right, the officer didn't pass on the call...who knows what might have happened if he had!
There is an excellent book "The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War" by Peter Hennessey which is well worth a read. In a similar vein to the above, the story is recounted of the SIS officer handling the Soviet spy Penkovsky, who received a telephone call with the signal indicating an imminent strike. Unknown to the officer, Penkovsky had been arrested (1962) and the call was a spoof. As it didn't feel right, the officer didn't pass on the call...who knows what might have happened if he had!
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I was at Bruggen in the late '70s when there was a big sign outside the main gate saying the role of the station in peacetime was to prepare for war. God did we prepare; it seemed like every other week there was a minival, and always in the middle of winter.
However the blood really did freeze one time when the hooter went off around 4 o' clock on a Friday afternoon. Down came the barrier, everyone back to work and then the tannoy telling everyone to get the goon-gear on. WTF? Surely the Russians wouldn't be so unsporting?
It turned out there'd been an explosion at a chemical works in Holland, and the noxious cloud was heading towards the more densely populated areas of MGB or Erkelenz. We would have been 'assisting the civil powers' if the worst had happened. Fortunately it didn't.
However the blood really did freeze one time when the hooter went off around 4 o' clock on a Friday afternoon. Down came the barrier, everyone back to work and then the tannoy telling everyone to get the goon-gear on. WTF? Surely the Russians wouldn't be so unsporting?
It turned out there'd been an explosion at a chemical works in Holland, and the noxious cloud was heading towards the more densely populated areas of MGB or Erkelenz. We would have been 'assisting the civil powers' if the worst had happened. Fortunately it didn't.
