CHAPTER 8

SCUD HUNTING

As well as replacing Vulcans, Buccaneers and strike/attack Jaguars, the Tornado also took over from a recce Jaguar squadron in Germany. For this role a variant of the aircraft known as the GR1A was developed; the type had internal recce sensors, and a second squadron of these specialists was also formed in the UK. Later in the aircraft’s life the nature of the tactical recce fit altered, with advanced, podded equipment replacing the original sensors. At the same time the pattern of operations shifted towards an almost continuous series of overseas operational deployments, with the Tornado recce product becoming an integral – and much in demand – part of the overall ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance) effort. Thus it became necessary for all crews to be able to perform recce tasks – and the new equipment made this possible. So in time the edges of the traditional tac recce role began to be blurred, but not before the original specialist squadrons had what was undoubtedly one of their finest hours – and one which received extensive press coverage; Scud hunting in the Gulf Conflict.

I first knew Alan Threadgould when we were flight commanders flying Jaguars at RAF Coltishall, he on a recce unit, and I on an attack squadron. As is the way with the RAF our paths subsequently diverged, but it’s nevertheless been a pleasure to remake his acquaintance in the preparation of this book. Having been in the front line of operations at Dhahran during 1991, he is well placed to tell us how it really was in Scud country.

________________________________

GROUP CAPTAIN ALAN THREADGOULD (RETD)

“This is bad-land.” With those four words Tim Robinson announced that II(AC) Squadron had joined the war against Saddam Hussein for the liberation of Kuwait. He and I had just crossed into Iraq to the west of the diamond-shaped ‘neutral zone’; Dick Garwood and John Hill were somewhere out there in the darkness as we headed off on the first of our Scud-hunting missions.

The recce jets had not flown on the first two nights while the bomber boys rained mayhem down on Iraq. In General Norman Schwarzkopf’s words, the Tornado was being the ‘thunder and lightning of Desert Storm’. On day three, as I came out of the office Dick was clutching the tasking order that would send us on our way. It was a simple task; two parallel strip searches some twenty kilometres long and ten kilometres apart, with the aim of detecting Scud missiles. Scuds were a very important part of the target library. Keeping the Israelis out of the war was a prime concern of the allies, and Saddam knew this; hence his early Scud attacks on Tel Aviv.

Tim and I set off on the navigation and recce planning, while Dick and John set to work on the other important stuff, particularly escape and evasion. Dick’s ‘cunning plan’ of swimming the Euphrates should we be shot down in the north seemed good to guys who had only been in theatre for five days; the river was such a thin line on the map. It was only days later when we saw on CNN the kilometre-wide raging torrent that we realised the folly of that plan. Still, it has provided many a good laugh since.

The standard fuel fit for peacetime ops was two, or sometimes four, 1,500-litre external tanks. For Desert Storm, approval had been given for us to carry the 2,250-litre tanks designed initially for the Tornado F3. We had not flown with them yet, but out at the jet with checklist in one hand and flashlight in the other, we checked these monsters, aware of the alarming, computer-generated images that BAe had sent to us showing the effect of jettisoning them. How something so big could come off the wing, flip over and possibly hit the top of the wing and then the fin was beyond belief; but that was the least of our worries, and I put the images out of my mind – for now.

We launched into the darkness up the ‘olive trail’ route to the AAR area. We switched to the AWACS channel where the radio chatter was continuous; so much for all the radio-out training we had done in the past. A first was that we had been handed night-vision goggles. An odd time to learn, but a look though them made one realise how many aircraft were in the sky – the coalition launched some 2,800 sorties in the first twenty-four hours. Approaching the tanker I was very disturbed to get locked up by an S-60 AAA radar. This piece of Russian equipment had been widely sold around the world and, old as it was, a hit from one of its 57mm rounds would not be pleasant. But hang on, I thought, we aren’t even in enemy territory yet. We had no range on the AAA source, just a steady bearing out at ten o’clock. All through the RV and refuelling the S-60 was there, looking at us. During the descent to low level it never wavered, and even when we were down at 200 feet doing over 500 knots it was still steady – but had moved around closer to nine o’clock. It was therefore not far away. As Tim announced our crossing into Iraq it had gone round to eight o’clock and from then on fell away. It was only several hours later that we found out it belonged to an Egyptian unit; it had been there for weeks and everyone else was well aware of it. Thanks for the briefing, guys!

With the TFR and autopilot engaged at the 200-foot setting, hard-ride, and with the throttles firewalled and every light on the aircraft turned off, we were plonking along in the mid-500 knot range. The TF was magnificent, although Tim was complaining that the sensor imagery was not good; there was nothing we could do about that, though. It was darker than I can remember any other night trip being. The odd Bedouin encampment slipped past the cockpit, so close that you felt they could be touched. So far, so good – but that was to change.

On our northerly heading we had about thirty kilometres to go before the turn south-eastwards for the strip search. As we approached the turn I glanced at the fuel gauges and was horrified; we were using internal fuel, when the externals should have had tons left. That would have to be a problem for after the target, as I had no spare capacity to work it out at this stage. We completed the strip and turned back southwards. I allowed myself a quick radio call to make sure Dick was OK; now for this fuel problem.

My immediate thought was that we would not make the border and that the boss was going to have to eject on the first night of his war (it would have been my third time, by the way). To stand a chance we had to get rid of these tanks; I seemed to remember BAe’s recommendation for jettisoning empty 2,250s was 10,000 feet, straight and level, below 250 knots. But ours were almost full, and who knows what was in the 1,500-litre tanks. We had to stay low and fast for tactical reasons and were eating up what fuel we had left very quickly. Well, needs must, and we were at war – so at 580 knots and still at 200 feet we gingerly pressed the jettison button. Success! All four tanks cleared safely. Who needs test pilots?!

We crossed the Saudi border not long after and zoom climbed to get as high as possible to save what fuel we had left. We contacted AWACS and declared an emergency, requesting an immediate diversion to the absolutely nearest suitable airfield. They came back straight away with, “Turn 150 degrees for King Khalid military strip at seventy miles”. What music to our ears – but landing a Tornado on a dirt strip? Shows how little I had had time to learn about the area, for out of the dust and haze appeared an airfield looking something akin to Heathrow. Quite a relief; we landed with just 600 kilograms remaining, right in line with normal peacetime regulations. We quickly refuelled with the help of some American ground crew who told us they had been sent to a UK base six months previously to learn about Tornados. Nothing like planning well in advance! We got airborne in the middle of a Scud warning with most of the airfield lights turned off, so our landing light actually became a take-off light. Taxiing in at Dhahran with all four tanks missing was a great way to get the troops to understand that we really were now at war.

It took our engineering guys over two days to find out why those external tanks had stopped feeding. The tiniest capacitor was at fault – and I was presented with it later.

The Tornado recce jet was an adaptation of the standard GR1 mud-mover. The 27mm Mauser cannons were removed and sensors and recording devices fitted in their place. The fit was an infra-red linescanner mounted vertically, with two sideways-looking infra-red sensors looking left and right. Between them they gave just over 180 degrees coverage. The system was conceived towards the end of the Cold War when our concept of operations envisaged high-speed, low-level, day or night, all-weather flying. For this the sensors were excellent and the quality of the IR imagery so good that it was often hard to remember that it was in fact IR. On the down side, resolution fell off dramatically with altitude; even pictures taken at 1,000 feet were hard to interpret. This would become an issue as Desert Storm progressed – but more of that later.

Each of the three sensors was connected to two tape recorders. The primary tapes recorded continuously when selected, giving about forty-five minutes recording time. The navigator tapes could, however, be deselected, rewound and played back to view sections of recorded imagery. Each target on a mission was given a numbered ‘event mark’. To save searching a whole tape after flight the system had an edit function whereby it searched all the prime tapes and took target data off each sensor using the event marks as reference and compiling that data onto a tape perhaps only four or five minutes in length.

One of the system specifications was that any tape could be played on any recorder. With twelve aircraft on the squadron each with six recorders, and with an equal number of recorders in the RIC, it’s easy to see that this was a demanding specification, and in my time as boss it never fully worked; we ended up playing ‘musical tape recorders’, matching those which we knew were better than others.

This had been at the root of our problems from 1 January 1989, the day we had formed II Squadron at RAF Laarbruch. For me, it had been like going home; as I had previously flown recce Phantoms there with II Squadron in the 1970s. Anyway, the technical difficulties with the Tornado recce system meant that our first aircraft had no sensors fitted. But as many of our crews, particularly the navigators, had no previous recce experience, it gave us the opportunity to get them into recce ops before they had to worry about operating the sensors. There had been other teething problems, with some elements of the system being renowned for catching fire. One particular box, the framing mirror unit, often did so, and soon became known as ‘the flaming mirror unit’.

The recce system was eventually signed off as fit for purpose and the first set of equipment was delivered to Laarbruch by mid-year. After the first mission that we flew with the system installed, Ken McCallum (navigator extraordinaire) handed the edit tape to Andy Pooley, OC RIC, with great excitement – but the subsequent analysis immediately revealed problems. All had seemed to go OK in the air, but playing the edit tape in the RIC revealed it to be a failure, with lots of missing data. Much effort from industry, the RAF test and evaluation teams, and my navigators and engineers would continue over the following six months. But it was not resolved, which was the reason that we didn’t deploy to Desert Storm until the very last minute. Some very senior officers had wanted us out there earlier, but my argument was that if we couldn’t fix it at Laarbruch with all the experts close by, including a contractor working party, we would certainly not be able to fix it in Saudi Arabia.

It was while all these engineering investigations were going on that we had a NATO exchange with a Greek recce Mirage squadron. As per normal practice, half of us went to their base while half of their squadron came to us at Laarbruch. On the last night of the exchange the Greeks threw a ‘hangar party’ at Laarbruch in one of our concrete HASs. The Greek C-130 which had flown in to pick them up had also off-loaded some wonderful Greek food and a large quantity of liquid refreshment. All we had to do was supply tables, chairs and the officers’ mess crockery. It was an amazing night with lots of ‘Zorba the Greek’ dancing and way too much imbibing.

The next day was to be a down day – a good decision by the boss. However, that morning I was woken by a telephone call from Wing Commander Dave Wilby, who was standing in for the station commander. Through the haze of very red eyes and the worst headache I had had for a long time, I heard Dave say that Kuwait had been invaded and that II Squadron’s recce capability was urgently needed. “Yeah, right – nice one Dave, very funny. I’ll see you later.”

But something in his voice made me stay on the line and, sure enough, after a few more minutes I was bolt upright in bed realising we could be going into a war zone within forty-eight hours. I needed more information, but a major and equally daunting task was to first pass by the mess and explain to the manager why most of the crockery he had lent us was laying shattered on the HAS floor. “Don’t worry – just send me the bill!” It wouldn’t be the last time I would say that.

From the mess it was off to the ops room where several of the station executives were gathering. Dave Wilby gave us as much intelligence as he could, and then it was back to the squadron to start planning. Our callout plan worked remarkably well despite the night before, and I was soon able to break the news to my guys. It was very quiet in the room.

Over the next few hours we went through the routine of ‘are we going tonight … or not going tonight … or not at all … or maybe tomorrow?’ In the end the initial deployment took a very different direction and we were stood down. But over the next several months RAF squadrons deployed and I started losing experienced crews to bolster those units. Andy Pooley, OC RIC, was also deployed to Tabuk, and it was quite a while before I saw him again.

The year quickly came to an end with no real improvement on the technical side of the recce system. Indeed problems would persist throughout my time in command and for a long time afterwards. But we nevertheless intensified our night recce and AAR training. Some restrictions were lifted so we could train with TFR at heights and speeds we’d use for war – and sometimes in cloud. Now, there are many things I have done with an aeroplane over the years that were orgasmic. But night TF in cloud, at 300 feet and 450 knots in the Scottish mountains in a snow storm, is something that goes in the category of ‘been there, done that, don’t ever want to do it again, I’m too old!’ But soon we would be at war and being fired at – and ‘Tommy TF’ was becoming our best friend.

Unlike many of our colleagues we spent Christmas at home, but it was a very tense time as we stood by to deploy at short notice. The deadline was approaching for Saddam to leave Kuwait and he was showing no signs of doing so. Eventually we got our deployment date of 14 January, and we also learned that some of Glenn Torpy’s XIII Squadron would be joining us. This was good news as they had some very experienced Tornado recce guys. We were to fly three of the six II Squadron aircraft to Dhahran in eastern Saudi, with Glenn and his team taking the other three.

The previously mentioned Dick Garwood had arrived at Laarbruch as one of my flight commanders on the day Saddam invaded Kuwait. We had been on recce Jaguars together and had both flown RF-4C recce Phantoms in Texas, so I was glad to see such an experienced man. I remember calling him as he was unpacking the removal van: “Can you remember how to tank a Jaguar, because the Tornado is similar and you need to come to work now.” Since then, weather and aircraft availability had conspired so that he hadn’t completed the full night tanking syllabus. Fortunately, though, the first prod on our eventual deployment to Saudi would be at about 4am, so I was able to sign him off at 25,000 feet over France and declare him fully operational and ready to go to war. That was, by the way, his first time refuelling from a TriStar, which was more challenging than the Victor and VC10 he’d been used to.

We arrived in Dhahran at dusk and were allocated shelters next to the few Kuwaiti A-4s that had been flown out of Kuwait as Saddam had invaded. Wing Commander Jerry Witts, OC 31 Squadron, and Wing Commander Ivor Evans, OC IX Squadron, and their guys had done a great job in making some old and scruffy buildings look business-like. Torps and his team had recently arrived, so we now had four squadron commanders fighting over the boss’s office. Actually it all worked very well, with Jerry being the flying wing commander. Group Captain Cliff Spink, providing top cover, did an outstanding job of being there when we needed him; he didn’t try to be over-wise, just let us get on with our jobs.

With just under three days to the deadline the recce crews had a lot of catching up to do on local procedures, and some even managed to get a few area-familiarisation sorties flown. This included flying very low and fast over the British army to make them aware of what sudden air attack would be like. As with several others, though, my first mission in theatre was to go to war in Iraq.

Torps and I spent quite a while poring over the operation order that detailed the planned missions for the first two days, and we were mind-boggled. It was a large, computer printout about two inches thick with row after row of missions. My first thought was that, with so many missions, this would be over on the first night – but as is often the case I was wrong.

On the 16th we heard that the war would start that night. I had sent most of my people back to their quarters by the time the bomber guys started suiting up. Things were getting tense and the last thing we needed was too many people milling about and getting in the way. I shook hands with Jerry and wished him luck as he and his eight-ship left for their aircraft. The squadron building became ominously quiet. Only ten or fifteen people were left behind when the air raid warning sounded. Behind the building were eighteen-wheeler ISO containers, each hardened with thick pieces of steel and sand; inside were inflatable NBC shelters. All were numbered and we had each been allocated to one. Each held about fifteen, but with so few people left, occupancy was down to a maximum of three. I was with one of the 31 Squadron guys in mine. We were casually putting on our NBC kit when four of the loudest bangs I have ever heard rattled the whole structure. I looked across at my companion, and even through his gas mask I could see two huge, startled eyes looking out. I’m sure mine were exactly the same. The speed of dressing dramatically increased! Dhahran was one of the best protected airfields in the world, with squadrons of F-15s, F3 Tornados, AWACS, EW jammers, Patriot missiles, and loads of point-defence AAA guns. And yet some Iraqi aircraft had got through? Morale hit an all-time low, and in the next few minutes my confidence in this being a one or two-week war was shattered.

It was only when we emerged that we realised there was a Patriot battery just the other side of a large wall, and that what we had heard was them launching. We were to hear many more before the war was over, as the eastern part of the kingdom took the brunt of the initial Iraqi attacks. On this occasion, and once our heart rates were nearly normal, I and the last of the recce guys left for our accommodation in Al Khobar. There, we heard on Radio Bahrain that Yugoslavia had come in with a last-minute peace plan. I looked at my watch and thought that they had better be quick; the first strikes would hit in five minutes.

And so to the recce war. The mission I described earlier was actually one of the few I flew specifically looking for Scuds. As well as being politically sensitive targets, several bits of them had landed close to us after having been partially destroyed by Patriot missiles. So the incentive for finding them was there, and we did actually locate one on that first mission – although more by luck than anything else. Just as Dick Garwood and John Hill came to the end of their strip search, their autopilot, which had been in the terrain-following mode, kicked out and the aircraft pitched up into a steep climb. Dick took manual control and flew it back down to 200 feet, but in doing so he flew about five kilometres past the end point of the strip – and at that point overflew the Scud. We never worked out why the imagery from the sensors was very bad that night, but it was still possible to see the shape of the transporter-erector-launcher and the tent that sits next to the missile where all the pre-launch calculations are done. Once the news of the sighting hit the newswires, Downing Street asked for a copy of the photograph. I have a feeling they might have been underwhelmed!

The Dhahran command team during the first Gulf Conflict. From the left: Wing Commander Ivor Evans, OC IX(B) Squadron; Wing Commander Jerry Witts, OC 31 Squadron and the overall commander; Wing Commander Alan Threadgould, OC II(AC) Squadron; Wing Commander Glen Torpy, OC XIII Squadron (later to become chief of the air staff).

A great percentage of the missions we flew were over the terrain where, eventually, Schwarzkopf’s now famous ‘left hook’ would take coalition forces on their way to Kuwait and victory. For us, who did not know that plan, it was disappointing to come back off so many missions and find nothing on the imagery. But of course that was exactly what the planners wanted to see, and when we eventually found that out we felt good at having contributed to that success.

Glenn Torpy had a visit one night from the SAS unit that was billeted close to our squadron building. They came over to see what help we might be able to give them, and Torps subsequently flew some very long missions out west where he actually covered the ingress route that those guys would take later after being ferried out there by some brave aircrew of the special forces C-130s and CH-47s. Not for them the relative safety of 550 knots.

The Iraqi Republican Guard was a much-feared and well-armed force, and for many days we were not tasked into their area. Eventually we were sent in their direction, and Torps flew the first mission. I understand there were great cheers of joy raised in the coalition air operation centre when he returned unscathed. I flew the second mission into the area later that night. Just as Tim and I approached a point where a SAM-8 had previously been recorded, our radar-warning receiver lit up and we got the tell-tale sound in our ears of a radar lock up. I looked down and saw on the screen that it was actually one of the USN’s F-18s. OK heart, you can start beating again. The SAM-8 is a particularly nasty piece of kit and was one of the few that really posed a threat to us at the heights and speeds we were flying.

Sadly, losses began to happen and a decision was made for some very good reasons to push the bomber guys up to the relative safety of medium altitude. Unfortunately, the story went out that the losses were the inevitable result of operating at very low altitude, but this was not entirely true. Of the five Tornados that the RAF lost during Desert Storm only one was shot down below 3,500 feet. Two actually flew into the ground – but they were not shot down. More than twenty years on I am still explaining that to USAF friends who have the idea that low level is fun in peacetime but has no place in war.

Part of my explanation to them emphasised that we, the recce team, continued at low level throughout without loss. Of course we had little choice, for the reasons of sensor resolution I explained earlier. But as it turned out our high-speed, low-level flying was fine anyway. Nothing is ever totally simple and there were no doubt many factors involved; perhaps the enemy were now focusing higher up.

As coalition forces on the ground moved north, a directive came that all aircraft had to be above 25,000 feet when crossing a line some 100 miles north of the Iraq /Saudi border. Well, this was fine for the bomber boys; they were up there anyway. But for us reccies it meant leaving our comfort zone at 200 feet and climbing while still in enemy territory. And it was here that, again, the radar warner lit up and there, over my right shoulder, were AAA tracers. They were out of range, but it made us realise how vulnerable we were in that manoeuvre.

One of the last missions I flew was a route recce down the main road from Baghdad to Basrah. It had been a particularly difficult mission because the autopilot / TFR combination kept kicking out every couple of minutes. Each time we pitched up a few hundred feet, and I’d take manual control and get back to 200 feet. In the end I flew it manually. As we got closer to Basrah the road traffic built up significantly as the Iraqi army tried to escape the leading edge of coalition ground troops. It took longer than maybe it should have done for me to realise that they didn’t have small flashing lights on their trucks – it was actually small-arms tracer!

As we approached the now infamous point that became known as Mutla Ridge, where the Apaches and A-10s had destroyed a huge number of enemy vehicles, we noticed what looked like a very low cloud deck. Soon it was down to 250 feet and I began to smell the burning oil. This of course came from the oil fields to the west of us which Saddam had ignited. The next night the stand-down order came for nearly all coalition aircraft. We were put on standby to do recce of the route that would take Stormin’ Norman and others to the meeting at which Iraq surrendered, but in the event we were not called upon.

So with the war over we settled down to sunbathing beside an empty pool and eating more curries at BAe’s cafeteria, knowing that, as the last to arrive in theatre, we would be among the last to leave. Eventually we got a departure date; Glenn would take three jets back to the UK and I’d take three back to Germany. But I concocted a plan to have the other two of our crews go back a few days earlier and then launch from Laarbruch to rendezvous with us over Germany – so we could arrive as a five-ship for the much-awaited celebrations.

Well, so much for the best-laid plans. I had just refuelled to full over the north coast of Egypt when an oil-pressure light came on showing the right engine was in trouble. I had to shut it down and, with four external fuel tanks and internals full and only one engine running, the Tornado was only going down. So, once again I had again to blow all four tanks; meanwhile, Tim was rapidly plotting our diversion to Crete, where we sat for four days until the aircraft was repaired. “Don’t worry – just send me the bill!”

By way of an epilogue I do remember back in 1982 on 41(F) Jaguar Squadron doing a flight check on a young pilot who was eight months into his first tour. It didn’t go very well and I made him retake it. In the debrief we discussed the pressure that he had felt and how that might have affected his performance that day. I said, “Pressure? One day I might have to take you to war. That would be pressure.” That young Jaguar pilot was Dick Garwood. He rose to be deputy commander of Air Command – and I know he won’t mind me telling the story.