CHAPTER 10

A COLD WAR REFLECTION

Following the Gulf Conflict and the untimely and almost brutal reduction in numbers of Tornado units, John Peters was posted from his recently disbanded XV Squadron to join my own team. He had of course become a celebrity following his shooting down, capture, and infamous parading on Iraqi TV. But he rode all that with aplomb, and was the most natural and pleasant person with whom to work. Just as importantly, to all appearances he had shrugged off his ordeal.

We had loads of fun with JP. His book Tornado Down, written with his back-seater John Nichol, had become a bestseller and was now to be adapted as a TV film. The production company descended upon Brüggen and found the perfect setting for the interrogation scenes; the sergeants’ mess was, as we’ve just heard, being revamped, and the raw breeze blocks of the building site offered ideal, cell-like settings. What with the book, the celebrity, and now the film of the book, we all felt that JP owed the crewroom a collective beer.

When I asked John to contribute a chapter to this volume his initial reaction was that the world had already heard quite enough about his POW times. I suggested to him that, twenty-five years on, there might be something to say in a reflective tone, and he agreed to consider it. Knowing him as something of a thinker, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when he came up with quite a different piece. But one which is equally relevant to the Tornado story and builds nicely on a couple of allusions made in the previous chapter. The subject is the nuclear deterrent.

Opinions abound on deterrence based upon the threat – and the awfulness – of nuclear obliteration. History will be the judge, but many would point out that the second half of Europe’s twentieth century was more peaceful than the first. Whatever your own views, there’s no denying that carrying out government policy was the duty of, and a stark reality for, Tornado crews, and it played a huge part in their lives – at least until the easing of tension and the ultimate withdrawal of the weapons from Tornado bases in 1998. John’s view on all of this is thought-provoking, so see what you think …

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SQUADRON LEADER JOHN PETERS (RETD)

It was a beautiful spring day … such an ordinarily, beautiful spring day. White puffs of fair-weather cumulus floating in a pale blue sky and the sun shining, casting shadows over the farm land. Driving here, we had passed a couple of villages and a farmer ploughing a field; now we turned off the main road up a track and walked the final distance up to the wire. Peering through the fence I looked up into the sky. My ‘nuke’ – or ‘bucket of sunshine’ as it was euphemistically nicknamed – would have detonated a couple of hundred feet in the air above this spot.

The high explosive surrounding the fissile material ignites. A compressional shock wave begins to move inward. The shock wave moves faster than the speed of sound and creates a large increase in pressure, which impinges simultaneously on all points on the surface of the sphere of fissile material in the bomb core. This starts the compression process. As the core density increases, the mass becomes critical, and then supercritical (where the chain reaction grows exponentially). Now the initiator is released, producing many neutrons, so that early generations are bypassed. The chain reaction continues until the energy generated inside the bomb becomes so great that the internal pressure due to the energy of the fission fragments exceeds the implosion pressure of the shock wave. The energy released in the fission process is transferred to the surroundings with an intensely bright flash, followed by a fireball, which burns everything it touches. The explosion is so powerful that it can be felt miles away in a ‘heat blast’. The rising fireball superheats the air; air blasts outward in a ‘shock wave’. This is violently strong close to the explosion, travelling at a couple of hundred miles per hour, destroying everything in its path.

Thankfully, this never happened in Europe. I had left the RAF in 2000. Now it was 2008 and I had been asked by BBC2 to contribute to a documentary commemorating the RAF at ninety and my time during the Cold War. I was no longer a Tornado GR1 pilot, the Cold War was over and this was no longer the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, part of the ‘Eastern Bloc’ during the Cold War period. From 1945 until 1990, the USSR had administered the region of Germany which was occupied by Soviet forces at the end of the Second World War. Both sides had faced each other with their nuclear deterrents.

I had played my part, but it was over. The Berlin Wall had fallen. The Warsaw Pact had collapsed. The world had changed. Had this not happened I doubt whether Britain would have responded to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990. XV Squadron would not have deployed to the Gulf; I would not have been involved in Gulf War One or been shot down and held as a prisoner of war. Or, subsequently, found myself visiting my former target at ground zero for a television show.

My target had been a SAM-5 site south-west of Berlin. A robust air defence network existed in the DDR, and Soviet air defence units combined to provide a layered air defence network capable of defending the Warsaw Pact’s north-western front. The Soviet presence in the DDR included a number of strategic air defence units, providing coverage for Soviet military facilities, including airfields which were home to Soviet combat aircraft. SAM-5, NATO reporting name Gammon, was a very long-range, medium-to-high altitude SAM system designed in the 1960s to defend large areas from modern, advanced aircraft, including AWACS, jammers and other manned and unmanned aerial vehicles. There were four such sites in the DDR.

Now, as I peered through the fence at this obsolete, overgrown, abandoned SAM site, the final parts were being dismantled by mechanical diggers. The silence and the normality of this perfect spring day were balanced with a visceral sense of its former military intent, mirrored in the brutality of its scale. It was probably half a kilometre square, a bastion of iron and reinforced concrete, with revetments and bunkers spread across the site. A monument to the Cold War. In its time, each such battalion had had six single-rail missile launchers for the 10.8-metre-long missiles, as well as a fire-control radar. As a fighter/bomber pilot, I knew that it would take many, many conventional sorties to negate such a threat, but just one tactical nuke. And now, in 2008, after long years of political and economic evolution, it was being dismantled. The operational world seemed a lifetime ago.

I had joined the Tornado GR1 force in 1989, operating in West Germany, first on XV Squadron at RAF Laarbruch on the Dutch/German border and then on 31 Squadron at Brüggen, near Mönchengladbach. As a young pilot arriving in RAF Germany, as it was called, the experience was surreal, exciting and overwhelming. Compared to the UK bases, there was a heightened sense that this was the front line. It seemed so much more operational, compelling and focused than being in the UK.

When I left Tornado training I was competent to fight the aircraft at a basic level, in that I understood the weapon systems, had dropped practice bombs on the range and had learned basic tactics. Arriving on a squadron, the aim was to become ‘combat ready’ – to be declared to NATO as fully operational aircrew. The first priority was ‘strike’, which meant you would qualify on the nuclear deterrent and could be declared a ‘nuclear asset’. Then, subsequently, fully combat ready, able to be tasked in whatever role was required for a Tornado crew. This whole process took six months of intensive flying to build the skill-set – and exhaustive book-work. So much to learn: missile systems; weapon systems; tactics; recognition; airspace; nuclear, biological and chemical warfare; air traffic procedures; emergencies – the list is endless. But the most important was strike.

Appropriately, this was taken very seriously. Virtually every piece of information we handled daily was classified secret. But nuclear was covered by a higher security classification – UK Eyes B – which meant that only those who needed the information had access. An exclusive club – but this sounds more glamorous than it was. There were cupboards full of classified books, which one might imagine would be really interesting. But in truth there is absolutely no strain in keeping official secrets secret because they are as boring as hell – nuclear in particular. All very necessary. Very necessary indeed. But boring.

So when the BBC asked me to contribute to this documentary, I could not remember any detail – but now we have the internet. Unbelievable! Back in 1989 our highly classified UK Eyes B information was a set of maps and splodgy black and white imagery stamped boldly with red security classification. Now I could see every detail of my former target on Google maps, with latitude and longitude, pictures, 3-D images – and I could literally complete a virtual walk around my target online. All this through a website listing every single SAM site in the former DDR, with full profiles. With technological hindsight our efforts all seem so amateur and ridiculous – but one has to remember that, at the time, both sides were working off that level of information.

Then, the nuclear scenario was the end game we were trying to avoid. My time was 1989-1992, the twilight of the Cold War. It was the era of CND, Greenham Common, cruise missiles, Glasnost, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the new world order. The nuclear stand-off between the Warsaw Pact and NATO would have been fought over Europe. And this was rigorously practised.

Periodically, each RAF operational base would be subjected to a Taceval by NATO. A multi-national team would complete an examination of every aspect of the operational, support and survival-to-operate readiness of the base while under enemy attack. Other forces would be mobilised to attack the base, so that everyone on the station, from senior commander to aircrew, ground crew to administrators, were thoroughly tested under simulated real-war scenarios. Four long days and sleepless nights.

The format of Taceval would follow a pretty standard escalation. The ‘war’ would begin with intelligence reports on initial political posturing, move to deployment of military forces, then through conventional military engagement to first tactical use of nuclear weapons – and then to full nuclear launch. Throughout the later stages of this decline to oblivion, Tornado squadrons would fulfil their role and be tasked to fly tactical missions against simulated targets. That is until the exercise, on the fourth day, ‘went nuclear’. Once, the world had ‘gone nuclear’, each crew was issued with their pre-planned nuclear strike targets. Details were updated with weather, intelligence and threat analysis; then each crew was transported to its HAS under armed guard by armoured vehicles (to negate the possibility of Spetsnaz snipers killing the aircrew – they being the softest, most vulnerable part of the machine!)

At the HAS, you request access through an intercom in the steel door. Upon entry, you are faced with your squadron ground crew; you know their names, you work with them each day – but they now have a gun in your face. Once you get inside the door there is a thick white line delineating a small, square enclosure on the floor. Beyond this is the ‘no-lone zone’. Step beyond this line and, in reality, they have permission to shoot. This is serious. You are there to ‘accept’ from them what is now a nuclear-armed Tornado. Each party reads from a script, with the assessors monitoring every single word. It has to be correct, word-perfect, before we can step beyond the painted white line; before the ground crew lower their weapons. No errors.

Once the identification and acceptance have been made, the pilot and navigator go together to the weapon (usually a simulated one in exercise) to ensure the codes are correct following the two-man principle. The two-man rule is a control mechanism designed to achieve a high level of security for especially critical material or operations. All access and actions require the presence of two authorised people at all times to ensure no rogue element. And then you board the aircraft awaiting your clearance codes over the secure communications. And you wait …

Eventually, hours later, they are transmitted. By now, for exercise, the aircraft has been reloaded with a small practice bomb – but the procedures remain ‘real’. Each crew member translates the information independently to calculate the required clearances and cross-check for accuracy, again following the two-man principle. Checked. Cross-checked. Double-checked. No room for error. This is the start of the nuclear launch. Every action ‘to the second’ perfect. Start left engine; start right engine; open left HAS door; open right HAS door; taxi out. All in complete radio silence. All monitored from the command centre. Then, from the isolation of this concrete cocoon, detached from the world, consumed within the scream of jet engines amplified within this reinforced box, the canopy is down and you exit the HAS in the serene unreality of an air-conditioned cockpit. Two aircrew, alone, tentatively nudging the nose of the Tornado out of the HAS, very aware that, if you take off one second outside your window, the whole station fails its evaluation. Very aware that the work of the last four days comes down to you; 5,000 people’s efforts and expectations that you will do your job. Taxiing out, you are aware of this pressure and confident in your skills, but with a heightened sense of the intrinsic unreality of practising the unbelievable: dropping a nuclear bomb. The exercise assessors even had a scenario to test the reactions of the station should all that pressure become too much for crews and they could not cope with the responsibility. The LMF crew; the ‘lack of moral fibre’ crew.

But by and large we’re launching the fleet. Sixty nuclear-armed aircraft will take off from their base and fly east, all in radio silence. It’s a spectacle. Families come out to watch from behind the wire as the procession of Tornados taxies and lines up sequentially, on either side of the runway, and takes off. Minute upon minute of thunderous engines, the ground vibrating as each twenty-five-ton beast accelerates along the runway in full reheat to complete their reason for being. And then silence.

The macabre impression that remains with me of my ‘strike ready’ days is that this was just one of the two RAF strike bases we had in Germany. Then there were the two other Tornado bases in the UK while, within NATO, there were the US, French, Dutch and other forces – each with numerous bases with several squadrons, all taking off to launch their strikes. At the height of the Cold War, NATO had upwards of 30,000 nuclear warheads, most in a high-alert status to deter the Soviet Union from executing a disarming first strike. These were deployed in submarines, in silos, on the ground, and on dual-capable aircraft such as the Tornado GR1. More than 7,000 nuclear weapons were, at one time, deployed in Europe. That’s an awful lot of nukes. Security guarantees were codified through the declaratory policy of extended deterrence. NATO adopted a flexible response policy, indicating a willingness to use whatever level of force was required to defeat the aggressor. To shore up these guarantees the United States refused to pledge no-first-use of nuclear weapons, implicitly reserving the right to initiate nuclear weapon use should circumstances warrant it. Notwithstanding this, Warsaw Pact aircraft were doing the same but heading west. Given the number of aircraft, I feel sure that there was just not enough airspace in northern Europe. We would have been dodging each other in our race to drop our nukes first!

Even more incredible was the brief we received informing us that, although the planners had de-conflicted and sequenced each of our own strikes, we might (obviously!) observe other nuclear explosions. Whilst we had our anti-dazzle lights in the cockpit – very bright internal lights to illuminate the cockpit so we should still be able to see our instruments in the intense light generated by adjacent flashes, we were advised not to look directly at any explosion as it could blind us. Given that possibility, the brief continued unabashed by advising us that, in the real case, we would be issued with an eye-patch with which we should cover one eye on our way to target so that, if this were blinded, we could revert to the other eye unperturbed and continue to complete our mission!

So, once airborne, post the exercise launch, with the pressure removed we would each go to practise an everyday flight, literally to kill time before receiving the ‘end of exercise’ recall message. Following the launch of the fleet, we never practised (in my time at least) anything post the launch. We never practised anything beyond nuclear strike. The exercise was predicated on the fact, I assume, that we would be dead, that we had nothing to return to. The world would be charcoal. And everything that we knew up to that point had been vaporised. MAD, literally, mutually assured destruction.

And so upon the recall message it was a race to get back to the bar. All aircraft sequenced to land, debriefed – and then pile to the officers’ mess. The tensions of the previous days released; the success of the Taceval, the proof of skill. The war was over – it culminated in a massive piss-up. Squadrons would still be competing to be the best, because it is in their DNA: to be the fastest to get on the apex of the mess roof; to burn pianos; and to win stupid drinking games. This was a throwback to a post-Second World War era, before Gulf War One, when life was more predictable; such a different world to that of today.

Back then there were squadron ops embargoes so that everyone could attend the summer ball or Christmas draw. There were tax-free cars, overseas flights to sunny climes, discounted petrol coupons and overseas allowances. There was cheap booze – gin was cheaper than windscreen wash, so we used it in our cars. It was the thrill of being a fighter/bomber pilot. The lifestyle was relentless fun. All under the umbrella of Armageddon.

It took me back to the very first interview I had when I was seventeen and wanting to become an RAF fighter pilot. Despite all my naivety, expectation and willingness to please, I remember spending three hours sitting on my home cricket pitch trying to come to terms with the seriousness of the first question I knew I would be asked: could I drop a nuclear bomb?

Now I’ve been a fighter/bomber pilot, flown the Tornado GR1, practised for such an eventuality, been to war, been shot down and spent time as a POW. I still don’t know the answer to that question. There are some things in life so big that you would only know at that moment. Could I push the button? One can only hope that, in those moments in life, one would make the right decision. I walked away from this field in the former East Germany with my dilemma unresolved.