IT’S OVER
RICHARD PIKE RECALLS A TURBULENT TIME
There were quick footsteps to the door before the fire officer burst in. As he swished in he said: “They’re bonkers, the lot of them.”
“Yes, yes,” said someone indulgently.
“Hmmm,” he said.
The fire chief now stormed about smacking his fist into his palm and exclaiming: “damn, damn, damn”, until suddenly he seemed to be struck with some good ideas. The pilots, quietly glad, I suspected, to have the operations room’s tense atmosphere eased by our unconventional fire officer, played along with his distraction.
“I tell you they’re mad – off their trollies,” said the fire officer. “And by the way,” he added petulantly, “it’s entirely due to you lot that my poor firemen are kept so busy anyway.”
I was not to know, of course, quite how prophetic his words were about to prove. In any case, promptly interrupted by the operations officer’s call “four Lightnings to cockpit readiness…get going everyone”, the interlude had to be put swiftly behind us. As we pilots started to run to our aircraft, groundcrews raced ahead of us. “Good luck, lads…” the fire officer’s voice trailed behind us.
In addition to the three other Lightning pilots, I ran in company with a Danish lieutenant, a Lockheed F104 Starfighter pilot. The lieutenant would be my passenger in the two-seat T4 Lightning trainer (XM991) allocated to me for the exercise. As 19(F) Squadron’s instrument rating examiner I was used to flying the T4 regularly and deemed, therefore, as suitable to take up our guest. A member of a Danish air force squadron, he would gain first-hand knowledge of our squadron’s modus operandi. This, the theory went, would help to enhance a common bond within NATO’s members. Like all good theories, however, it was the exception that proved the rule, and today we were about to stretch a rule or two.
Assisted by two ground crewmen, we strapped in to our respective ejection seats hastily. When ready, the ground crewmen removed and stowed our seat safety pins, stepped down the ladders on each side of the cockpit, removed the ladders, then stood, arms folded, by a pre-positioned fire extinguisher. All of us would now endure a period of waiting until the Lightnings were ordered airborne by the controller. The aircraft, parked near the squadron buildings at RAF Gütersloh in Germany, overlooked a cavernous hangar with equipment and aircraft components scattered across oil-spattered, roughened floors. Hidden from our present view were staff in offices at the back of the hangar who continued, no doubt, with necessary administrative routines despite the hectic flying activity outside. Unlike the Battle Flight set-up at Gütersloh, with two armed Lightnings in a special hangar at the end of the runway, we would have some distance to taxy to the take-off point. Even so, when ordered to scramble, our slick, well-honed procedures invariably ensured that we’d be airborne well before five minutes had elapsed.
Although altogether different nowadays, back then in the late 1960s RAF Gütersloh held a unique position. To the east, just a few minutes’ flying time in a Lightning, lay the iniquitous ‘Iron Curtain’, more correctly known as the Inner German Border, that stretched for nine hundred miles or so to separate the West from the East. This man-made obscenity comprised massive rolls of barbed wire, special dog runs, minefields, floodlights, carefully combed sandy strips, anti-vehicle ditches, automatic alarms, booby traps and a series of tall watchtowers manned by some 50,000 armed guards. Unless ordered to do so, we were not allowed to enter a so-called buffer zone, let alone cross the border itself. Border infringements by land or air could lead to big trouble – ultimately World War Three could be triggered.
“What’s this?” The Danish lieutenant pointed with one finger. I glanced at him before replying. He had a pale, wide-open face; his eyes were bright and dark. His English was near-perfect with just a trace of accent. When, earlier, we had talked in the mess he’d described how his hazy schoolboy dream to become a pilot had put him in a world he had not really anticipated – one that stretched minds, offered high satisfaction, an arcane transcendence to the reality of becoming an operational fighter pilot.
“That’s the tail ’chute operating handle,” I said in reply to his question.
“Oh, yes.” He paused before going on jauntily: “Seems we’re to be kept waiting for a while.”
“We’re at the controller’s beck and call.”
“Huh,” he snorted. “Controllers!” This remark was prompted, I supposed, by an earlier conversation when we’d discussed local procedures for ground controlled approaches to landing, otherwise known as GCA.
“I was flying with one of our squadron pilots in the T4 Lightning the other day,” I told him, “when the talk-down controller sounded bored so we decided to hot things up a bit.”
“I understand,” he said even though it was apparent that he did not understand.
“We were settled at normal airspeed for a GCA,” I went on to explain, “when – after mutual head nods – the other pilot and I decided to raise the flaps and the undercarriage before applying a burst of reheat.”
The lieutenant started to grin as comprehension dawned.
“As our airspeed increased, so did the pace of the controller’s talk-down patter. It was quite impressive, really. What you might term an exponential rate of talk-down velocity. Until, that is, the controller suddenly realised what was going on and stopped talking altogether.”
“What happened next?”
“The bloody controller had a sense of humour failure, that’s what happened. He complained to our wing commander. As a consequence, the other pilot and I were rostered for extra Battle Flight duties – worthy but dull penance.”
“…maintain cockpit readiness…” the current controller’s voice crackled through our headsets.
“A bit longer to wait,” I said to the lieutenant. He nodded. I checked my watch and glanced at the other pilots, all experienced Lightning men. Postings to the Lightning force in Germany tended to be reserved for older hands – non-wet-behind-the-ears types who were considered suitable for operations close to the Iron Curtain. We all sat expectantly in our cockpits, anxious for proceedings to start. Earlier, we had been briefed that the other Lightnings would move ahead of mine when the scramble order came; the T4, it was decided, should act as Tailend Charlie.
The Danish lieutenant began to fiddle with his oxygen mask. “You okay?” I asked him. He gave a thumbs-up sign but said nothing. Perhaps the suspense was getting to him. A passenger flight in a Lightning was a rare treat; doubtless he had looked forward to this moment but the waiting around was not good. It could get on the nerves.
Suddenly the controller’s voice piped up again “…as briefed, scramble…” and at once a burst of activity could be observed around all four Lightnings. Circling motions with fingers were followed by the shrill wheeee sound of starter motors. When all engines were turning and burning, groundcrews then scurried about to detach external power units and remove wheel chocks. In nearly no time at all the Lightnings were taxying out in the planned order for take-off.
“Clear for immediate take-off,” announced the controller, who sounded harassed. As we approached the take-off point, the lead Lightning moved directly onto the runway. Without delay, he opened up his throttles after which, with intervals of just a few seconds, the others followed in sequence. As I was last in the stream take-off I had to be wary of wake turbulence but a reasonable crosswind on that September day reduced the hazard. When I selected full cold power, a roar from the twin Rolls-Royce Avon engines was accompanied by a surge of acceleration. After a short delay I rocked the twin throttles outboard then pushed them forward to the full reheat position. A momentary pause ensued, as if the engines were thinking about what to do next, until a further roar and a powerful punch in the back confirmed that both engines’ reheat systems had kicked in.
I monitored the airspeed as we progressed and my peripheral vision picked up a blur of runway on each side as we accelerated. At the appropriate airspeed I raised the nosewheel and very shortly after that the mainwheels left the runway surface. Ahead, the other Lightnings had started to turn and I watched them carefully as I felt for the undercarriage operating button. Having raised the undercarriage and completed other after take-off checks, I continued to follow the Lightnings ahead. We were climbing through around 3,000 feet when, quite abruptly, the focus of my attention had to flick from outside to inside the cockpit. A cautionary klaxon in my headset and a swift check of the aircraft warning panel revealed that we had suffered a ‘Fire 2’ – fire in number two engine (the top engine).
At once, I throttled back the affected engine and carried out emergency drills. These included a ‘PAN’ emergency call on the radio which caused the harassed controller to sound even more harassed. I turned back towards the airfield and it was then, as I glanced at my passenger, that I suddenly saw him reach for his ejection seat handle. “No!” I cried, “don’t touch that. We’ve had an engine fire but it’s under control…I’ll have you down in no time at all.” Regretfully, his grasp of the English language, near-perfect when conditions were calm, seemed to falter under pressure. Perhaps I had spoken too rapidly, I didn’t know, but whatever the cause he appeared not to understand. I was tempted to reach across and physically remove his hands from the ejection seat handle but this action could be fraught with danger; any form of struggle might set off the ejection seat. Besides which, cross-cockpit touching can be liable to inappropriate interpretation.
I decided, therefore, to attempt a further verbal appeal: “Don’t worry,” I said as soothingly as possible, “we’ll land safely, very soon.” I tried to keep the language simple. My passenger, though, stared straight ahead as if frozen with fear. His hands still grasped the ejection seat handle and I was uncertain whether he had understood me. Meanwhile, I had to concentrate on the emergency landing. Precipitate action by my passenger was a worrying possibility, nonetheless my priority was to carry out a safe landing – hopefully with him still on board.
As I turned downwind, then onto finals, I needed even greater than normal vigilance. As well as routine procedures, I had to check regularly behind me to search for signs of smoke or fire. I felt, too, the need to glance frequently at my passenger in order to monitor the tightness of his grip on his ejection seat handle. If he pulled the handle – if he actually ejected himself from the Lightning – the perspex canopy would be ejected too and I would have to rely on a small area of fixed windshield for protection from winds of 200 knots or so.
For the landing itself, I aimed for a firm touchdown as near to the runway threshold as possible; too firm, perhaps, for the lieutenant whose angst clearly remained unassuaged. When, at last, we reached the end of the landing run, I manoeuvred the Lightning clear of the runway and shut down the good engine. Finally he appeared willing to release his grip on the handle.
Fire crews now raced up to the Lightning and parked in a circle around us. Firemen ran up to assist with cockpit evacuation, though I noted the lack of their fire officer’s presence. I assumed that he was too busy dreaming up quirky ideas to bother with mundane matters like extinguishing fires. His men then drove the lieutenant and myself to the squadron set-up during which journey I raised the issue of the ejection seat handle. To my surprise, the lieutenant seemed unrepentant. He stressed that an engine fire in one of his squadron’s single-engined F104 Starfighters would almost inevitably have involved an ejection. I had to admit that he had a point.
When the fire truck had dropped us off at the squadron buildings, the lieutenant and I made our way upstairs to the operations room. As we walked in, I noted that the fire officer’s bulky frame had been replaced by a rather different one: a slip-of-a-lass secretary employed by the squadron on a part-time basis. The pilots all had a soft spot for her – impulsive, pretty, mercurial and mischievous as she was. One pilot in particular had become close to her although the relationship appeared to have struck a rocky patch of late. In the officers’ mess, as our tame squadron suitor sat at the bar, his increasing alcohol consumption would fuel heartfelt talk of his woes although the mess bar, with its sometimes nervy bonhomie, could be an unsuitable place to delve into the curious countries of the heart.
All of this, of course, was unknown to our Danish guest as we entered the ops room that day. In addition to normal post-flight paperwork, I had forms to fill in and questions to answer about our emergency. As I did so, I sensed, as usual, the necessary swift but subtle mental switch needed post-flight; the immediacy of airborne issues and consequent intense concentration soon became diluted as earthly matters intervened.
For one thing, I could not avoid reflections on my recent news. Just a few days ago the squadron boss had summoned me to his office to announce that I had been posted. “After five years of Lightning flying on three different squadrons,” he’d said, “you’ve done well.” A small but ominous hesitation had followed. “However, the powers-that-be feel that a ground tour will be in your best interests at this stage of your career.” Another hesitation, then he had blurted out: “You’ve been posted to Headquarters 11 Group.”
Later, my boss, with whom I got on well, had described with amusement my astonished reaction – so great, he’d said, that my eyebrows had practically reached the back of my head. At the time, though, the news had led to an awkward hush. It was surely crazy, I thought, to take an operational pilot at the peak of his abilities and place him in some obscure back office. What the hell was the point of that? I had joined the service to fly aircraft not to sit at a desk. It was bonkers, like that fire chief. As a simple soul (some might say), I had developed from a young age a fascination for – and a love of – flying. At the RAF College, Cranwell I had been awarded the Dickson Trophy and Michael Hill Memorial Prize for flying, and now I had scant desire to ‘fly’ a desk. When, eventually, I spoke I kept my voice steady even though there was rage within me: “A ground tour, sir?” the words dropped down my throat like a swallowed sweet.
Sketch by Richard Pike of 19 Squadron Lightning.
“Yes”, the wing commander’s eyes studied me carefully, “a ground tour”. He had smiled gently then, as if remembering a half-forgotten friend, but there was a trace of troubled conscience in that smile.
19 Squadron Lightning.
“Oh well,” I said dully, “life’s full of surprises, I suppose.”
Just now, however, with the paperwork completed, I invited the Danish lieutenant along to the pilots’ crew room. “You’ve earned yourself a coffee,” I said. “Sorry your flight was such a short one.” He shrugged as if to say, ‘c’est la vie’.
In the crew room we joined a few other pilots, one of whom was our tame squadron suitor in a morose mood. From the drift of conversation I realised that he was in trouble again. An aura of hurt was palpable; his voice had become heavy. He kept his head low and I could hardly see his eyes but I reckoned that I caught a glint of tears. He mumbled some comment and in the silence that followed I could hear a voice chatting on the phone and the beat of music in the background – the nostalgic melody of ‘up, up and away in my beautiful balloon’. Then the door clicked as someone distributing mail slipped into the room. When I glanced at the slip-of-a-lass newcomer – so pretty, so mercurial – I noticed that she was wearing a special dress and that she had taken trouble to make-up her face. No amount of facial cosmetics, though, could hide the despondent, haunted look that told us how empty she felt inside.
“It’s over,” I thought.
The irony suddenly struck. It was over for me too; my Lightning days were ending; it was final.