A very busy day, with poor weather, resulting in a lot of work in the Ops Room recovering aircraft by PVA (Poor Visibility Approach).
This is a technique used when the visibility is less than the pilot’s limiting visibility, usually a quarter of a mile, which is the range at which he must see the ship or the ship’s approach lights in order to legally continue with the approach. As you must recover the aircraft, because the clearly unacceptable alternative is for it to crash into the sea when it runs out of fuel, you simply modify the approach so that the aircraft is able to get close enough to the ship to see it.
Basically, you fly the aircraft directly up the stern of the ship, reducing its speed progressively, and bringing it down to such a height that the pilot can see the ship’s wake. The speed of the ship is increased as much as it reasonably can be, and smoke floats are dropped over the stern so that the pilot has some idea of where he is in relation to the centre of the wake, if it is being dispersed in rough conditions. Once the pilot sees the ship, he lands in the usual way, and by using this method, and reducing the speed of the helicopter until it is only a mile or so faster than that of the ship, it is possible to recover aircraft in almost any conditions.
We also got lumbered with doing Force Marshal (that’s the frequency on which all transit aircraft, flying into and out of PSA – Port Stanley Airfield – in the main, are supposed to be controlled), and as you have to be a qualified Air Traffic Controller to man it, Paul and I were kept out of mischief for most of the day. As a further complication, there was a Flight Safety Meeting in the afternoon, which both Paul and I were supposed to attend. Paul was the Secretary, and I had a couple of inputs from my side of the controlling picture. As it was, only one of us could attend, so Paul went, while I did the Marshalling bit in the Ops Room.
In the afternoon there was a steam-past of Invincible, which was by all accounts quite impressive, as Captain Jock Slater throws the Illustrious around as if it was a racing Mini rather than 20,000 tons of aircraft carrier, and we went within about 50 yards of our sister ship, as a kind of a farewell gesture. The people on Invincible had gone to some trouble to keep us amused, and one of the banners they held up as we passed them at speed read ‘Nice to see you back, Hermes. Like the new paint job’, which I though was rather neat, though I didn’t get to see any of it, being tied up in the Ops Room as usual.
Illustrious assumed the duties of Air Co-ordinator from Invincible, and once we had accepted the reins of office, as it were, and we had taken FOF3 (Flag Officer Third Flotilla, Rear Admiral Derek Reffell) on board from Bristol, I received a message, in code, from Invincible. Decoded, it read:
MANY THANKS FOR RELIEVING US. FIRST 1000 HOURS FORCE MARSHAL ARE THE WORST. RETURNING TO BASE IMMEDIATELY. REQUEST PIGEONS.
Pigeons, in this context, has absolutely nothing to do with the feathered efforts that eat breadcrumbs and crap on your head, but is in fact a request for a direction to steer, and range to run, for a particular point. The term it comes, predictably, from the concept of a homing pigeon, so I suppose actually there is some connection. I then drafted out a reply to her, encoded it, and sent it:
OVERRIDE. VECTOR PORT 030. PIGEONS 035/7000 MILES. GIVE OUR LOVE TO POMPEY. DOLPHIN CODE 172.
The Dolphin Code is a code within a code, in this case. Normally, the Dolphin Code is used as a convenient way of insulting people just by using numbers, and most ships and pilots hold copies of it. In this case, Dolphin Code 172 was relatively polite, and when, decoded, just said RELAX, CHAPS. THE A TEAM HAVE ARRIVED. This seemed particularly apposite as far as we were concerned. There was no recorded reply from Invincible.
In the evening I treated myself to a dose of soft porn and watched Joan Collins showing very nearly all in ‘The Stud’, which turned out to be a pretty decent reasonable film, quite apart from the undeniable attractions of Ms Collins. God, if I had a body like hers at her age – well, perhaps not quite exactly like hers, but you get the picture. She really is quite remarkable.