‘TIME,’ BEGAN THE TV ad to a backdrop of ticking clocks and dramatic chords. ‘When you fly air cargo, time really is money.’ As an image of a striking bare-metal 747 swept across the screen bearing the legend ‘FLYING TIGERS’ behind the cockpit and sporting two distinctive diagonal red and blue stripes across the rear fuselage, the voiceover promised, ‘It’s on time or it’s on us.’ Across the bottom of the screen, the small print warned that ‘some restrictions apply. Call Flying Tigers for details.’
And that’s exactly what the MoD did.
Formed in the wake of the Second World War and named after the American volunteer fighter unit with which the company’s founders had served in China during the war, the Flying Tiger Line had grown into the world’s biggest cargo airline. ‘If the Tigers can’t move it,’ went the industry mantra, ‘then nobody can.’ And compared to the time they’d flown Shamu the killer whale, the six surplus RAF Hunters the MoD needed delivered overnight to Santiago were a breeze.
Chartering the Tigers, though – an outfit so eager to do what it did with style that it had even set up its own record label, Happy Tiger Records – was hardly going inconspicuous. But while the timing of the Hunters’ despatch to Chile may have raised a few eyebrows, when the big silver Boeing 747-200 freighter took off from RAF Brize Norton with its cargo of Hawker thoroughbreds on Sunday, 25 April, there was nothing else to suggest that it was anything other than a straightforward, if rather swiftly processed, arms deal.
On the same day, a little over 20 miles to the other side of Cirencester, the departure of another transport aircraft, a 30 Squadron Lockheed Hercules C.1, was recorded in the unit’s Operations Record Book. XV292 was also bound for Chile. But the C-130 crew that climbed away from RAF Lyneham to the west were very definitely not broadcasting details of their final destination. All that was known about the mission being flown by Flight Lieutenant Morris and his four-man crew was that they were taking part in Operation FOLKLORE. That this was an effort to deploy the 39(PR) Squadron Canberra PR.9s to the South Atlantic was not shared. The less said the better.
Looking down from the bridge across the lashed-down Wessex helicopters and bladeless Chinooks, Mike Layard watched as the pale grey jet slowed to a hover alongside the ship, her nose pointing aft. Atlantic Conveyor had slipped out of Devonport dockyard the previous day. Now anchored in Plymouth Sound, she had only to complete First of Class trials with the SHAR before she could begin the long journey south.
Carefully balanced on a raging haze of 10 tons of thrust pouring from the Pegasus turbofan through the engine’s four nozzles, the SHAR edged forward and sideways, yawing slowly until the nose was perpendicular to the length of the ship. A hypnotic balance of power and delicacy. The water seethed white beneath her as she inched over the gunwales and came to a halt over the pad. She descended vertically, dropping hard over the last few feet on to her undercarriage, then settled on the ship’s forward flight deck. The noise fell away as the pilot pulled the throttle back to idle.
Inside the cockpit, Tim Gedge looked around him, taking stock of his new surroundings. Absorbing the picture. He advanced the throttle again to 55% and rotated the nozzles to 40%.
Duct pressure 55 psi. Good. Brakes on.
With his left hand he pulled the nozzle lever back to the hoverstop. A second later he slammed the throttle forward to full power and immediately felt the jet become light on its feet as the powerful Rolls-Royce engine took the strain.
He checked his instruments again as he rose vertically from the pad, noting with satisfaction that the tall mast to his left was serving as just the kind of visual reference he had intended.
Layard watched the SHAR describe a wide, low circle around the Sound before approaching from the other side of the ship. One Red 90 landing and take-off, one Green 90; port and starboard. And with that, the First of Class trial was complete. He wouldn’t see 809’s SHARs again, nor the RAF’s GR.3s from 1(F) Squadron, until Ascension.
As XZ438 climbed away to the north there was no more to do; nothing to further delay their immediate departure.
Over the last ten days expectations of Conveyor had grown. She had become more than simply a vessel for transferring stores and aircraft south; she was now a potentially valuable addition to the fleet – a third flat-top. There was new communications equipment and the machinery necessary for RAS, but despite Layard’s best efforts she was to all intents and purposes unarmed. She had sprinklers and fire extinguishers, but not the sealed compartments required of a warship to contain battle damage. Members of Naval Party 1840 had already christened the huge, open lower deck that ran the length of the ship the ‘Cathedral’. And then there was the Merchant Navy crew. Layard would have his work cut out preparing them to go to war, even getting them to acknowledge that that was what was happening. They are not in the right frame of mind, Layard felt as he got to know the small ship’s company.
Only Ian North, the ship’s fifty-seven-year-old Master, had any experience of what was to come. North gave the order to weigh anchor, ready to sail into hostile waters again for the first time since 1945.
Tim Gedge hadn’t been back to Plymouth City Airport since running Britannia Flight, the small squadron of De Havilland Chipmunk T.10s the Navy used to provide officer cadets with air experience. As well as a handful of piston-engined Royal Navy trainers, the former RAF airfield was now home to Handley Page Heralds and De Havilland Dash-8 commuter airliners plying routes to and from the Channel Islands and the Scillies. And so Gedge’s arrival in a frontline jet fighter caused a few raised eyebrows. But after completing the sequence of proving flights from Atlantic Conveyor’s newly installed landing pad he needed to top up the tanks before returning to Yeovilton.
As he climbed away from the little airport he turned and looked out towards the Sound.
Conveyor was already gone.
That evening, Elspeth Layard noted the ship’s departure in her diary: ‘Well, he has really gone now and the yoyo will be at the end of its string until he returns – soon, I hope. It’s all very well being self-sufficient, but it would be good to know that he’ll be back sometime.’