CHAPTER 15

ALL AT SEA

Those who flew the Buccaneer in the anti-shipping role loved the aircraft. Its long legs, its ability to fly very low and its comfortable ride all made it a favourite, and its crews were fiercely loyal to the machine. But by the early nineties it was undoubtedly reaching its best-before date, and as Tornados were withdrawn from Germany under the ‘options for change’ defence review they were the obvious choice to replace the Buccs. Accordingly, in its GR1B version, Tornados formed the maritime attack force until they were withdrawn from the role around the millennium.

2010’s UK defence review reassessed the threat (and, perhaps more pertinently, the nation’s finances) and resulted in us, today, not only having no fixed-wing anti-surface shipping capability but, with the cancellation of Nimrod MRA4 and the abrupt withdrawal of Nimrod MR2, no dedicated land-based maritime attack or reconnaissance capability at all. Whilst we all understand the financial imperatives, to leave such a capability gap until the anticipated entry into service in 2020 of the Boeing P-8 was taking a huge risk – to say nothing of leading to embarrassment from time to time as we asked NATO allies to cover the gap.

The Marineflieger had operated Tornados in the anti-shipping role from the outset, although that task was turned over to the Luftwaffe in 2005. But whether RAF Tornados were ever particularly successful in their short-lived maritime role I leave you to judge from this chapter by Gordon Robertson. He was a QWI veteran of the Buccaneer era before converting to the Tornado – so if anybody can cast light on this little-known aspect of RAF Tornado ops then he’s the man.

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WING COMMANDER GORDON ROBERTSON (RETD)

Before starting I need to say that I regard the Tornado as exceptional at what it was designed to do. In bad weather or at night, using TFR it can ingress hostile airspace undetected and drop bombs in a bucket. Its nav kit, its radar and its avionics are unparalleled. However, when you are trying to find 28,000 tons of Kirov class battlecruiser that’s doing thirty knots in an unspecified direction from a rough position that’s six hours out of date, the ability to find a nail in a fencepost and hit it with a big hammer is not the greatest of your problems. In considering the Tornado’s effectiveness in the maritime role, inevitably comparisons have to be drawn with the aircraft it replaced: the Buccaneer. In doing so, we must remember that the Buccaneer was specifically designed for anti-shipping operations and the Tornado was not.

The job of finding and attacking ships, or anti-surface warfare as it is properly known, had long been done by the Nimrods and Buccaneers based at Kinloss and Lossiemouth in the north of Scotland. The ‘kipper fleet’ role was to locate and track any Soviet surface action group (SAG) poking its nose round Norway’s North Cape and consign it to the icy depths of the North Atlantic at the earliest opportunity. Having been brought into service in 1969 as a short-notice gap-filler for the cancelled TSR2 and then F-111K, the Buccaneer had given the RAF sterling service for almost twenty-five years. But despite having the reputation of being as tough as the proverbial brick outhouse, time was catching up with it, and years of abuse had left the aircraft at the end of its fatigue life. It was said that there were upwards of four feet of (carefully managed) cracks on each airframe.

A replacement had to be sourced within a dwindling defence budget. A number of alternatives were considered, with Buccaneer crews offering a wish list to the authorities ranging from new Buccaneers, through F-111s, to F-15Es. Strangely, the MoD was reluctant to give these alternatives any serious consideration, proposing the Tornado GR1 as the only realistic option. And so it was that the Tornado found itself being shoehorned into the maritime role.

Number 12 Squadron was selected as the first maritime Tornado squadron, with 617 Squadron re-roling shortly afterwards. The plan was for 27 Squadron, operating Tornados at RAF Marham, to disband and for its number plate to be immediately passed to a Chinook unit. Number 12 Squadron Buccaneers at Lossiemouth would simultaneously disband and its number would be handed to Marham Tornados, thereby ensuring that neither 12 nor 27 Squadron had breaks in their histories. I arrived at RAF Marham having just completed conversion from the Buccaneer to the Tornado to take on one of the squadron leader posts on 27 Squadron just weeks before the re-numbering and impending move to Lossiemouth. As the new boy on the outfit, and already having a few years service under my belt, it came as no surprise to me that, mysteriously, I was the only aircrew squadron leader available to act as flight commander on the up-coming disbandment parade. It’s strange how these things happen and how, at this critical time, every other squadron exec couldn’t fit into their dress uniform, had a bad leg, other commitments, or two left feet. So while everyone else was filling their boots with the last of the overland flying I was re-familiarising myself with the finer details of parade and sword drill for the ceremony.

Perhaps the boss felt guilty, for I was rewarded by flying the first official 12 Squadron Tornado sortie. On the last day of September 1993 we positioned a pair of freshly painted 12 Squadron Tornados from Marham to Lossiemouth ready for the designated ‘first’ on 1 October. Knowing that others back at Marham would be trying to claim the title of the first to fly a 12 Squadron Tornado sortie, the race was on to get airborne. The boss, Wing Commander Cas Capewell, had secured an early take-off slot at Lossie and we slipped the surly bonds at around 0800 hours on a crisp, clear Scottish morning. We did a quick round tour of our new backyard and threw it back on the deck after just twenty minutes, indisputably winning the ‘race’.

As Cas and I taxied back in, feeling rather pleased with ourselves, we could see the ‘scrambled egg’ of a group captain’s hat atop the figure waiting for us at the edge of the pan. It was certainly unusual to be met by the station commander, but a nice touch. Cas, however, seemed to have a guilty conscience. “What have you done?” he asked me over the intercom. “Have we dinged anything sensitive?” A born leader, clearly, immediately deflecting any blame onto his subordinate! “What do you mean me? We’ve only been airborne twenty minutes; even I would be hard pushed to drop us in it in that length of time!” As we got closer it became clear that the figure of authority belonged to Nigel Maddox, out-going OC12 (Buccaneer) Squadron, recently promoted to group captain and, that day, acting as station commander. ‘Mad Dog’ was known to both Cas and me from our earlier Bucc times, and maybe he was there to shake our hands rather than our throats. After all, few upwardly mobile group captains can resist a photo opportunity, and a squadron with a new aircraft type would ensure coverage in the local rag. Had I anticipated that a photographer from the RAF News would also be present that morning I might have chosen a different T-shirt to wear under my flying suit. But the centre-page spread in the next issue was eternal testament to my sartorial ineptitude; I stood proudly in front of the 12 Squadron fox on the Tornado’s fin sporting a bright yellow 27 Squadron T-shirt.

The squadron as a whole didn’t move to Lossiemouth until 1994, but arrived in some style on 7 January flying a diamond nine across the airfield. Thus began the Tornado’s short-lived tenure as the UK’s maritime attack force. No 617 Squadron, the Dambusters as they like to be known, or ‘six foot seven’ (6’7 – get it?) as everybody else calls them, arrived later in the year to complete the maritime Wing. Although the Moray Firth is a wonderful location with a great weather factor, fabulous flying conditions and a safe and clean environment to raise a family, there was some reluctance amongst many of the servicemen and women and their families to make this enforced move. The same had been true ten years previously when Buccaneers had moved from Honington to Lossiemouth. Families were forced to uproot, sell houses, give up jobs, re-locate kids at school and move lock, stock and barrel to the frozen north. As a Scot I’d like to think that things were not as bad as folk imagined, and I think that that is borne out by the number of people who, from both moves, have made their lives in Morayshire and have remained there for decades.

But as well as resistance to the move there was a reluctance to take on the maritime role, which was viewed as boring and undemanding in comparison to its overland equivalent. Again, this mirrored the earlier Buccaneer experience. On both occasions a number of maritime crews had been dropped into the new squadrons to provide relevant experience. Having been part of that maritime core both times I can say that convincing Tornado crews that the maritime role was rewarding was a damned sight harder than it had been with the Bucc mates. To a large extent this was down to the optimisation of the Tornado for the overland role and I’ll discuss that shortly. But first, let’s look at the tools we were given to do the job.

Integral to the capability was the missile, and the Buccaneer had already been equipped with the BAe Dynamics Sea Eagle for some years when Tornado took over the role. The missile was a development of and a successor to the Martel, which had been used in both its anti-radiation and TV-guided forms on Buccaneers. Sea Eagle employed a Microturbo jet engine for propulsion, giving it a range of around 60 nautical miles in its sea-skimming profile at about 560 knots. It flew at extremely low level, the exact height depending on the sea state, which was assessed by its radar altimeter. The large warhead (230 kilograms) employed a Misznay-Schardin plate, a type of shaped charge which provides a high degree of armour-piercing capability by forming a slug of molten metal without needing a precise stand-off distance or impact angle.

Sea Eagle had an autonomous radar seeker head that could be targeted in a variety of modes to select different targets within the SAG. Sophisticated electronic counter-measures made it extremely resistant to jamming and other electronic protective measures. In the terminal phase the missile reduced its height even further to impact the target just above the waterline. But for all its many excellent features the missile had one weakness. At a short range from the target it popped up to over 100 feet to acquire the target, permitting its J-band radar seeker to see over the radar horizon caused by the curvature of the earth. The range of this manoeuvre and the pop height were calculated assuming a target of zero height. To the best of my recollection, though, there were never any Soviet ships that met this criterion, so the pop manoeuvre was entirely redundant, exposing the missile to unnecessary risk.

When Sea Eagle entered service, the Central Trials and Tactics Organisation commissioned a study to determine the number of missiles required to achieve the loss of the highest-value unit within a nominal SAG comprising a representative number of the most capable capital ships. The study’s simulations took into account Sea Eagle missile profiles, ship disposition, surface-to-air missile acquisition, fly-out and reload times and the number of Sea Eagle hits on other ships. When the sea spray settled and all the sums were done, the answer wasn’t forty-two (the solution to Douglas Adams’ famous Hitchhiker’s Guide question), but twenty-four. I imagine that it could only have been serendipity that the Buccaneers operated in six-ship formations and were capable of carrying four Sea Eagles each (as well as four 1,000-lb retard bombs in the internal bomb bay, by the way).

The Tornado could also carry four Sea Eagles, but only at the expense of its two large underwing fuel tanks. In order to retain practical range, the normal operational load was just two Sea Eagles plus two 2,250-litre fuel tanks. So a Tornado formation would, to start with, be short of weapons.

In preparation for any maritime attack, crews would plan knowing the ships’ latest known location, when that observation was made and what direction the ships were travelling. From this the ships’ expected position at the time of the attack could be projected along their mean line of advance, for example if the ships were detected as travelling north at twenty knots six hours before the planned attack time, then the attack should be planned to take place 120 nautical miles north of the detected position. Having just re-read what I’ve written, the overland guys might have had a point; maybe the maritime game wasn’t that demanding after all! But of course those ships were under no obligation to maintain heading and speed while we got our act together, and those sneaky, underhand, naval types regularly changed both course and speed to make our lives difficult.

At some considerable distance from the target the attackers would split into two sections, perform some speed adjustments, and launch their Sea Eagles at forty miles before, as Blackadder had it, returning for tea and medals. The idea of adjusting the speeds before missile launch was to try to get all the missiles to appear over the ships’ radar horizon at the same time. While I couldn’t disagree with the maths and the rationale, I always regarded this practice as unnecessary. I argued that, whatever the orientation of the SAG, a 90° split tactic would allow the ships to employ both their forward and aft defensive weapon systems, whereas a single axis assault at least gave the attackers a chance that one system would be unable to bring its acquisition and guidance radars or weapons to bear, simply because the ship’s superstructure was in the way.

Before maritime software was embodied to twenty-six Tornados (bringing them to GR1B standard), the nav-attack system was also sub-optimal for the role. Maritime attacks rely on each aircraft flying specific splits and timings based on the target position to achieve coordination of the final attack. Before the software update, all the points within the attack geometry were located as fixed latitudes and longitudes. This meant that, although the stored target position could be moved, all the points within the attack remained fixed. The software update fixed this problem by allocating a number of points to an attack and fixing them relative to the target position, so that when the target moved all the attack turning points moved too. This seemed to be a relatively simple modification, but it took an age to come in. You could ask, by the way, why we could not have drawn on existing Marineflieger Tornado experience. Not only was their missile different, though, but by contrast with our ‘blue water’ scenario they were concerned more with coastal operations.

A Nimrod was essential to a radar-silent attack from beyond the ships’ radar horizon, for without an accurate update on the target’s location the attacking force would have to find the ships themselves. Having the Nimrod element of the UK’s maritime force less than ten miles away from Lossiemouth at Kinloss had allowed for good interaction, and over the years the force had developed co-operative tactics that allowed the Buccaneers to target key elements of a Soviet SAG, firing their Sea Eagles beyond the target’s radar horizon. A normal attack would see the Nimrod periodically broadcast an encrypted version of the zulu-zulu (ZZ), the latitude and longitude of the SAG’s high-value unit. The attacking aircraft would fly through a pre-arranged position, set as a range and bearing from the ZZ some 120 nautical miles distant. Hopefully, the Nimrod would pick up the attacking aircraft on its radar and provide encrypted updates on the ZZ position.

Similar cooperation worked for Tornado, while in both cases we would revert to autonomous attack if no Nimrod was available. But doing so in the Tornado exposed another of the aircraft’s major weaknesses in the role. A good maritime radar can pick up the nice big steel and aluminium radar reflector that is a ship at long range. The Buccaneer’s Blue Parrot radar had a maximum range of 240 nautical miles, although 180 was more normally used. The Tornado’s radar, although sophisticated, ground-stabilised and multi-mode, had a maximum range of forty nautical miles. So when operating without a Nimrod the Tornado was limited to firing Sea Eagle well inside the missile’s normal launch range.

A part of the GR1B upgrade was to paint the aircraft a rather fetching shade of light grey. We were assured that the boffins had done considerable work on selecting the appropriate shade of grey, but with fifty to choose from they could have picked something closer to that found in the North Atlantic. One of the key principles of camouflage is to break up the outline of the object, which is why regular aircraft camouflage used a disruptive pattern and explains the reasoning behind the bizarre dazzle-ship schemes used during World War One. The standard overland disruptive grey and green actually did a good job over the sea. I don’t deny that the new, light colour used across the whole aircraft looked good, but we shone like beacons over the North Sea, as well as over land.

My logbook shows that the first maritime sorties we undertook with Tornados were over the period 14-17 September 1993 on Exercise Solid Stance, flying via Lossiemouth and squeezing in a night-stop at Bergen, Norway, to conduct a series of five sorties. Although maritime work gradually increased, for the next year over half of our flying remained overland. This included commitments common to the whole Tornado force, such as Operation Jural, the UK element of the air policing of the southern Iraq no-fly zone in the wake of the Gulf Conflict. We also clung to Exercise Red Flag at Nellis Air Force Base in the States, which I can’t let pass without relating the tale of a trip out.

The middle weekend of the exercise was a US national holiday and no flying was planned for the Monday. We had the use of a car, and thought it would be a good idea to drive out to see the Grand Canyon. We gave ourselves a leisurely start on Saturday and set off on our long drive, stopping off at the Hoover Dam to get the tourist tick. We were in no rush, with our plan being to arrive a little before sunset to view the canyon at its most spectacular. It’s a lot further than it looks on the map, and we drove for hours, but with Tornado navigational precision we arrived at twenty minutes before sunset.

We soaked up the incredible views, wondering at the play of colours on the canyon walls almost a mile high. Then it got dark; very dark. It does that at night in the desert; it gets very, very dark. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, far less the bloody canyon. This wasn’t the idea, so following a hasty re-plan we decided to drive to Flagstaff, find accommodation there and drive back to the canyon in the morning for the sunrise. Fine plan. But it was a holiday weekend and there was no accommodation available in Flagstaff, in fact there was no accommodation in any of the towns we went through. Before too long we were closer to Vegas than we were to the canyon – so we drove back home. In essence, we’d driven the equivalent of from London to Newcastle and back again to look at a hole in the ground for twenty minutes.

Never mind, every cloud has a silver lining. As we arrived back in Vegas we noticed that tickets were still available for BB King, Doctor John and Little Feat in a triple-header show late that night. I’d like to say how much I enjoyed the gig after the disappointment of our sightseeing trip, but I slept through most of it.

Prior to our operational Gulf deployment we had to endure escape, evasion and resistance-to-interrogation training. So, in preparation for surviving in the desert we were shipped off to Dartmoor for a week in October to find out what it’s like to be cold, wet and miserable. For those who don’t know or can’t imagine – it’s cold, wet and miserable. I was paired up with Chris Hazzard, whose enthusiastic, positive and optimistic approach would provide a perfect antidote to our privations. But within an hour of starting our trek across the moors, Chris’s sunny disposition was sorely tested after falling in the River Plym and being soaked to the skin. He spent the next few days trying to dry himself out over tiny fires made of damp twigs.

I will freely admit that this episode was not my finest hour. The tone was set in the twilight of the first morning. As the watery sun was creeping up over the horizon, colours were indistinguishable, one from another. When we’d set up camp overnight we had used our parachutes as makeshift bivouacs, being careful to keep the camouflaged sections of the parachute outermost and the orange and white gores to the centre. Chris and I were breaking camp and folding up our parachutes when we glanced down the hill and saw a couple of members of the ‘enemy’ hunter force approaching. We looked at each other, wondering how we could make our escape, then looked at the twelve feet of parachute we were shaking out between us. In those few moments the sun had finally made its appearance, with the muted colours of the forest now being thrown into stark relief. Stretched between Chris and me was now four yards of vivid orange silk, which we were flapping vigorously like a couple of clowns to rid it of twigs and bugs. If we’d shouted, “Cooee, we’re over here, big boys!” we couldn’t have been more conspicuous or looked more ridiculous. We spent the next ten minutes face down in the mud, being relieved of our contraband Mars bars and tea bags before being released for another few nights of purgatory.

Things didn’t get any better later in the week. Having dug a grave hide I was lying in a pool of stagnant water in a cold, dark, claustrophobic hole in the ground trying to convince myself, as we’d been told, that this misery really was better than being unprepared for the real thing. The roof of the hide was an inch from my nose, and what little kit I had was squeezed round about me. It was impossible to get comfortable, but in an effort to get less uncomfortable I shifted my kit around. As I did so I thought I felt my satellite safety locator beacon switch on. I’d pushed it away out of arm’s reach and the only way to retrieve it and check it was to get out of the hide – which would take time. Experience told me that if I got out to check the beacon I’d inevitably find that it was switched off – and I’d have gone to a lot of bother for nothing. I convinced myself that I couldn’t have switched it on accidentally and that I should stop fretting. What experience now teaches me is: if you ignore it you will certainly have switched it on and the whole international search and rescue set up will be alerted to a distress beacon being set off in Dartmoor; the entire hunter force will be sent to your precise location to find the twit that switched on his beacon; and that the exercise directing staff will not be best pleased. Ah well, you live and learn! The upside of this training was that I learned, after a few days of dehydration and sleep deprivation during the resistance-to-interrogation phase, that hallucinations are something to look forward to.

In the overland role the best way to get to the target safely was to ingress at low level using terrain masking to avoid enemy radars and missiles. This meant that the aircraft was hidden by the physical terrain or flown in the terrain’s radar clutter where enemy radars could not distinguish between the ground and the aircraft. Normally, overland flying training was done at 250 feet, but to practise for wartime flying could be authorised down to 100 feet in remote areas. In the maritime role there was no terrain cover; therefore day-to-day flying was conducted at 100 feet and, with special authorisation, down to fifty feet.

Flying at 100 feet over rough terrain is a hard skill to master, requiring talent and practice (God alone knows why we let pilots do it, then!) Safety margins are small and separation from terrain is achieved visually. The radar altimeter is always there as a back up to provide a warning if things get too close. Over water it’s a different story. No matter how rough the sea, the ‘terrain’ is predominantly flat. Safe separation is still achieved visually but there are fewer visual cues to aid perception, and the radalt becomes a more important aid to flying at the right height. For all its good points, the Tornado’s radalt had the unhappy knack of regularly unlocking at under 130 feet, requiring the aircraft to be climbed to re-establish lock before descending again until the next time the radalt unlocked. This made it difficult to stay low in the radar clutter.

Over a relatively cold sea the heat from the jet engines of any maritime attack aircraft stands out like a sore thumb, making a good target for infra-red or heat-seeking missiles. Luckily, at heights below 100 feet these types of missiles are likely to either impact the sea or fuse off it before reaching their target. All in all, as a key defensive measure, operating at very low level was a principal tactic for maritime attack aircraft, so a reliable radalt was essential.

The shift in the geo-political landscape following the collapse of the Berlin Wall meant that there was now perceived to be less of a maritime threat from the Russian Bear, and in a political climate desperate to find the peace dividend expected from the end of the Cold War it was really no surprise that the maritime attack element should come under threat. Sea Eagle integration wasn’t included in the GR4 upgrade programme and, although the Tornado remained on maritime work for a while, the role and the missile were axed in a defence review around April 1999.

It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and a number of the time-expired Sea Eagles were fired off during Exercise Neptune Warrior. 617 Squadron’s then boss, Wing Commander Bambi Thwaites, was allocated two missiles to fire during the exercise (no doubt he was just lucky that his name was drawn from the hat – twice!) On both occasions the aircraft failed to get a firing solution through the main computer. Engineering investigation traced the problem to a wiring fault. The GR1B used the same wiring circuits for Sea Eagle that the standard GR1 used for TIALD. A fleet-wide upgrade in 1998 to make all Tornados TIALD-capable had screwed up the GR1B wiring, and this hadn’t become apparent until Bambi’s pilot pulled the trigger.

I did three tours on the Buccaneer, achieving some 2,000 hours and gaining a stack of qualifications and specialisations. As a junior officer I had few distractions and was able to concentrate on flying and honing my skills. I felt an affinity with the aircraft and thought that I could operate the kit to maximise the aircraft’s effectiveness and that of any formation I was leading.

By contrast, my one tour on the Tornado was as a squadron executive, flying only 250 hours. There were other duties: I was the squadron warlord and managed the outfit from behind the ops desk while we prepared for our first NATO Taceval; at the same time, as a flight commander, a stack of annual reports had to be written. At least I now know what symptoms I should look for to indicate that I am stressed!

I never felt that I came anywhere near achieving the level of proficiency that I did on the Buccaneer. Despite the Tornado’s wonderful nav/attack system I always felt that we were asked to fiddle with it too much – don’t get me started on the wisdom of conducting radar fixes based on an Ordnance Survey map position – and I never felt truly comfortable operating the aircraft. I always felt that I was either fighting the kit or feeding the beast.

All the same, I have tried to give an objective assessment of the effectiveness of the Tornado in the maritime role. As I said at the start it was not designed for that; it was pressed into service in a role for which it was ill-equipped. But as in everything else the aircraft was asked to do over its lengthy and impressive service history it did it well, or in the maritime case well enough.

It is probably very clear where my sympathies lie. I loved the Buccaneer and had great fun operating it. Regrettably, I cannot say the same for the Tornado, but that is not the fault of the aircraft. Nevertheless, its relatively fragile engines notwithstanding, if I had to go to war I think I’d prefer to do it in a Tornado. For a navigator, there is a comfort in knowing where you are and knowing that the kit is going to get you to the target and deliver your weapons accurately – at least it would do if you were over land.