‘Pig one, behind Jaguar on short final line-up,’ instructed the tower.
Lieutenant Pete Crawford ran his eye along the eight temperature gauges monitoring the Pratt and Whitney TF33-P-3/103 turbofans, and found them to be in the green. He glanced up as the Royal Air Force Jaguar’s main gear kissed the threshold markers, flashing through their landing lights. Crawford then followed it down the threekilometre runway until it disappeared into the night. Diego Garcia was a British possession but they shared it with the Americans. The Brits were fair pilots and everyone got on well enough. They loved their ‘pints’, as they called them. Hell, aside from the odd pint, there wasn’t much else to do on the tiny island, unless you liked to fish, which Crawford didn’t.
‘Okay, Pete, let’s get this show on the road,’ said Colonel Zeke Chapman, the aircraft’s commander sitting on his left, bringing Crawford out of his daydream.
‘Roger that, sir,’ said Crawford.
The two men eased the throttle levers between them forward and the engine note rose to a shriek. The B-52 moved off the holding marks and swung onto the runway.
‘Pig one. Lining up behind the Jaguar,’ said Crawford.
‘Pig one, you are cleared for takeoff.’
‘Pig one,’ said Crawford automatically, repeating the aircraft’s callsign, confirming that the clearance was received.
Crawford and Chapman pushed the throttles forward to the stops, harnessing the turbofans’ full one hundred and thirty-six thousand pounds of thrust. The Big Ugly Fat Fucker, or BUFF as the type was affectionately known, quickly gathered speed, its massive tyres thumping into the runway’s section joints, slowly at first and then faster as it roared along, eating up the broken centre line. There was a full load of fuel aboard but the bomb bays were empty. The digits on the air speed indicator climbed rapidly, all-up weight around one hundred and fifty thousand kilograms and well within the aircraft’s maximum for takeoff.
‘Rotate,’ said Chapman when one hundred and forty-five knots was indicated on the multifunction glass screen.
Crawford pulled back on the wheel and the aircraft’s nose rose off the pavement. The air speed continued to climb as the main gear left the earth and the colonel pulled up on the lever, retracting it. ‘Flaps, twenty-five,’ Crawford said. This was the perfect training flight. ‘Flaps, ten,’ he said, retracting them further. A seven-and-a-half-hour turnaround with a delivery in the middle.
‘Pig one, turning left,’ said the colonel to the tower as they climbed through a thousand feet. He nodded at Crawford who put the aircraft into a gentle thirty-five degree turn. Standard departure procedure. They’d fly down the runway’s dead side for ten miles, gaining altitude, then set a course for the north-east.
‘Flaps zero,’ said Crawford. The long actuating screws whined until a gentle bump transmitted through the airframe signified that the flaps were seated snugly at their stops; a warning light on the instrument panel winked off and confirmed the fact.
‘Like spreading peanut butter, Pete,’ said the electronic warfare officer, a captain, sitting behind them.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Crawford over his shoulder as he again verified fuel pressures and engine temps. All normal. He then cycled through the various modes displayed by the cockpit screens, mentally ticking off the information presented. As the aircraft climbed through ten thousand feet, a bright orange rind appeared, marking the edge of the world, a band of fire in the sea. They were flying at an oblique angle towards the sun, at a ground speed of six hundred and fifty miles an hour. It would rise above the edge of the world within minutes – much sooner than if they were back on DG. Crawford was happy to be sitting between night and day with a long flight ahead of him. As a matter of interest, he called up the weapons stores on the interface shared with the radar navigator sitting on the lower deck. The display revealed that the stores were empty except for three joint stand-off weapons – JSOWs – occupying external pods under the wings.
‘Heading one-four-three climbing to flight level threefive zero,’ said the voice of the navigator in his ’phones.
‘Do it manual, son,’ the colonel said to Crawford. ‘Feel what it’s like to fondle a forty-year-old mistress.’
Crawford kept the BUFF’s flight management computer out of the loop and flew the aircraft onto the navigator’s course, marvelling again at what a sweet old girl the B-52 was.