CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Station Commander

The nine-month course at Latimer provided an excellent sabbatical for officers of my rank from the Navy and the RAF, majors (and some lieutenant-colonels) from the Army, and a few MOD civil servants. There were no foreigners. It was a chance, inter alia, to mingle in a very useful joint-Service way, see each slice of the military functioning in its own sphere (we went to sea with the RN, to Germany for a ‘field-day’ with the Army, and to various airfields with the RAF), exercise our brains on joint-Service problems, and get some bits of illumination on the ways of the MOD. It was also lots of fun.

On 1 July, some eight months into the course, I was both astonished and a little embarrassed to discover that I was being promoted to Group Captain. Astonished because I had only completed one tour as a wing commander and the default was at least two and a half. Embarrassed because I had received the award of the Air Force Cross in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List published just a couple of weeks before, and now I was moving past my contemporaries, and some who had been my seniors. While I was still unaware of the competitive atmosphere that I later found to prevail in the higher – and thinner – reaches of the rank pyramid, and the jealousies felt by some if they saw a potential competitor coming up fast behind them on the inside rail, I sensed, quite rightly as it turned out, that my rapid rise would generate some adverse and envious comment. I was in the limelight, and I felt uncomfortable in it.

A few days after the promulgation of the Promotion List the Air Secretary, then Air Chief-Marshal Sir John Barraclough,¹ visited Latimer to speak to the RAF element about their postings. To my further surprise and acute pleasure I learned that I had been selected to command Leuchars with effect from late September. ‘You’ll need to fit in a couple of refresher flying courses,’ he said, ‘and you won’t have much time to do them for we really don’t want to have to delay the date we have set for the handover of command.’ I tentatively suggested that a delay would be unnecessary, arguing that by the end of the course at Latimer I would have been less than a year away from active flying and could therefore go directly back to it with little in the way of refresher courses. I added that, as Leuchars had Lightnings and Phantoms, and I had plenty of experience of the first but none of the second, the ideal for me would be to go straight to the Phantom OCU at Coningsby for a short introductory course. And, I said, by avoiding the Jet Refresher Course at Manby and the Hunter follow-on at Chivenor, the Service would save public money. It may be that my point about economy, always a strong motivating force within the MOD, swung the day but, whatever the reason, I went directly to Coningsby for the last two weeks of August. I was made very welcome there by the Station Commander, my former squadron commander, now Group Captain David Blucke.² I had what was virtually a bespoke thirteen hours’ familiarisation course on the Phantom FG2 – just about enough instruction to enable me to qualify to get into the air at Leuchars, fly safely, and pick up the intricacies of the aircraft as a fighting machine as I went along.

Before setting off northwards I had to visit HQ 11 Group for briefings from various members of the staff and to meet the AOC, Air Vice-Marshal Bob Freer and the SASO, Air Commodore Dave Simmons. The AOC began by asking if I knew a Wing Commander Keith Beck. Beck had been offered to the AOC by the Air Secretary’s department as the next commanding officer of No. 43 Squadron and the 11 Group Staff had expressed misgivings about his lack of ‘front-line’ experience. SASO suggested that I might prefer not to have him. This was my first experience of an officer’s career path possibly being adversely affected by staff doubt and I didn’t feel at ease with it – though I realised that the management of 11 Group was actually being kind to me by offering me the option to turn down a possibly doubtful squadron commander. I mentioned that Beck and I had gone through flying training together but that I had formed no particular opinion of him then, which I hadn’t, and added that I had not come across him since. This was hardly a ringing endorsement. However, as I felt that fairness required him to be given his chance to command, I said that I would be content to have him at Leuchars.

As a final item in my session with the hierarchy of 11 Group the AOC turned to the subject of refresher flying, or rather, my lack of it. I repeated the arguments that I had deployed to the Air Secretary but the AOC was not impressed. He told me that I was to select one of the aircraft types at Leuchars and fly only that. I thought this a bit unnecessarily restrictive but said nothing. Some five years later, when I was myself the SASO at 11 Group, I came across a note that Bob Freer had written on a file directly after meeting me. ‘I don’t care how good White thinks he is,’ he had inscribed, ‘he should have been made to do the full refresher courses; no one is to be allowed to avoid them in future.’ Perhaps he was right but I felt, and feel, that there are times when the comfortable ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach needs to be questioned.

Things had changed quite a bit at Leuchars in the three and a quarter years that I had been away. Nos 23 and 43 Squadrons were still in situ, but 11 Squadron had been redeployed to Binbrook, and its former hangar, offices and parking apron had been given over to the shore support of HMS Ark Royal’s Phantom squadron, No. 892. Leuchars had become 892 Squadron’s disembarked base, and the provider of accommodation for those of its families who had chosen to come north with it. Additionally, a rather odd unit, the Phantom Training Flight, had been formed as a sort of mini-OCU to convert naval crews to operate the Phantom. The PTF was nominally a RAF unit, commanded by a squadron leader, Andy Walker, who had, conveniently for the personnel people, switched from flying with the Navy several years before. The Flight was otherwise manned exclusively by naval aviators and ratings. To help the PTF to perform its task the outline of Ark’s deck had been painted on the threshold of the eastern end of the main runway, a Mirror Aided Deck Landing System had been installed, and a rapid rewind arrester wire had been stretched across the ‘deck’ at roughly the right position. The complement of sailors on the station fluctuated between two and four hundred depending on whether the ship was at sea or not. A Senior Naval Officer, Commander Mike Layard,³ when I first arrived, had been appointed to the Station to see that all things relating to the dark blue went smoothly. They did, surprisingly so, given the Senior Service’s distaste for the role of lodger on a light blue unit, and the loss of former size and strength that this pointed up. In fact, with the exception of one sailor on guard duty one night, the naval complement very fully and willingly supported the Station in all its endeavours and activities throughout my time in command, and it was a pleasure to have them there.

Given the AOC’s stipulation that I fly only one type of aircraft at Leuchars I decided to stick with the Phantom. Besides, I needed a lot more Phantom hours before I could consider myself to be anywhere near competent in the aircraft. So I told Wing Commander Operations, Mike Gautry, that I would fly with 43 Squadron and the PTF and that he should fly with 23 Squadron. In retrospect, this arrangement was probably unfair to him as he had had minimal experience in single-seat aircraft and virtually none on fighters; he found the Lightning a little intimidating and, although he persevered, he clearly did not enjoy flying it. That is not to say that he was without spirit: he had attracted censure in a previous job by barrel-rolling a communications aircraft, the HS-125, in a moment of joie de vivre en route from Gibraltar to the United Kingdom.

The Phantoms in RN and RAF service⁴ had been modified to take Roll-Royce Spey 202 engines. The engine intakes were a wider bore than those of the Phantoms produced for the United States military and consequently the fuselages of ours were not as originally designed. The changes took about 20% off the aircraft’s original design performance. That not withstanding, the British version of the aircraft had very distinct advantages in the air defence role, particularly as this was now taken to include the defence of ships throughout the United Kingdom Air Defence Region. For a start, in the normal fit that 43 Squadron had adopted (two under-wing drop tanks) the Phantom carried some 17,450 lbs of fuel. To this could be added, without serious restriction to the operating envelope of the aircraft, a belly-mounted drop tank giving a further 3,960 lbs; the Lightning Mark 6’s fuel load of 10,608 lbs was under half of this total.⁵ Secondly, the Phantom had a man in the back to work the electronics – a division of tasks that certainly took a lot of pressure off the pilot and probably meant greater efficiency in tackling the more difficult targets, such as those evading hard in cloud, or employing electronic defensive measures, or doing both. And, thirdly, with its load of eight missiles, it had the potential to make very cost-effective use of its ability to stay airborne for a reasonable spell, even without air-to-air refuelling.

While flying single seat-fighters I had never felt the need for anyone in the back – in fact I think most people in the single-seat role felt a smug superiority at being able to do it all solo. But now that I was occupying an administrative and representative role, and only flying whenever I could escape from the various demands made on a Station Commander’s time, I was content to have a helpful monitor in the back seat.

I wasn’t aware what procedures for crew-cooperation had been adopted within the ground-attack Phantom force, or in any other multi-crew aircraft, but on 43 Squadron, the only FG2 squadron in the air defence role at the time, a concept of close ‘team’ integration had been nurtured. The squadron’s idea of creating a feeling of equality in value and responsibility between the pilot and navigator was sound in principle, but it carried with it a risk of undermining the well-tried practice of giving sole responsibility for the safe operation of the aircraft to the captain. In single-seat aircraft the matter was simple: no one but the pilot had responsibility. In 43 Squadron, the responsibility was split by the team-concept because it required navigators to ‘help’, not merely advise, the pilots in the event of an emergency: the pilot would tell the navigator what was up (usually what was showing on the warning panels in the front cockpit) and the latter would get out the emergency ‘flip-cards’ and read from them. This lulled at least some of the pilots into feeling that it was unnecessary to work assiduously in the simulator to memorise emergency procedures. The same applied to some of the navigators who, not having to control the aircraft in the emergency situation, could feel that they would have no great problem in reading the necessary response from the flip-cards at the moment critique. I was not impressed with the response I got from some of 43 Squadron’s navigators when practising emergency procedures in the Phantom simulator – and I don’t think that this was because they were in a simulator and not in a real situation where adrenaline might have boosted their reactions. Lightning pilots practised to the point of having the emergency responses as second nature and, as a consequence, were seldom caught out. Possibly, the Lightning’s propensity to catch fire spurred their interest in being prepared, and perhaps it could be argued that the Phantom’s greater safety record justified the 43 Squadron approach. However, I was not convinced. My suggestion to Keith Beck that he make the point to his crews that teamwork must not replace responsibility did not produce much by way of noticeable change; however a stricter testing procedure in the simulator did.

Later, when I was the SASO at 11 Group, I had to deal with an example of split-responsibility in action. This merely reinforced my misgivings and made me realise that the team concept possibly extended beyond 43 Squadron. It involved a student pilot at the Phantom OCU who was teamed with a staff navigator for a night sortie. Towards the end of the flight the pilot reported an ‘air-turbine over-speed’ warning-light. The navigator responded by saying: ‘One of the turbine warnings just requires you to throttle back, but the other requires you to shut down Number one engine fast – better shut down the engine while I get the flip-cards out and have a look at which is which.’ Shutting down the number one engine shut down the electrics – the Phantom had no battery – and to restore them, and specifically, the lighting to the cockpit, required the auxiliary generator to be deployed into the airstream. In trying to do this in the dark the student pilot grabbed the emergency flap-lowering handle, and the flap-jacks, reacting to the pressure of the airstream above the maximum speed for lowering flaps, sprang a leak. The loss of the Number one engine generator lost him, among other things, stability augmentation and electrical nose-wheel steering – nothing too serious in themselves. However, the loss of hydraulic pressure meant that he would have to contend also with a heavy load on the rudder and hence difficulty in kicking the aircraft straight if he had to deal with any cross-wind component as he approached the touchdown point. Steering would still be possible using the toe-brakes on the rudder-bar. In these circumstances the recommended course of action was to lower the tail-hook and catch the threshold wire that by now was stretched across all runways where Phantoms operated. As it happened, on this occasion the damper on the tail-hook did not work as advertised and the hook bounced at the point when it should have caught the wire (the sort of thing known to everyone who flies as ‘Sod’s Law’ or ‘being nibbled to death by ducks’). The pilot was about to overshoot and try again – which was the correct thing to do – when the navigator, fearing that the swerving that the aircraft was doing as the pilot fought to steer it on touchdown was going to take them off the runway, decided that he had had enough and ejected.⁶ The pilot had just opened the throttles for the overshoot but, thinking that the staff navigator must know something that he did not, followed suit. The aircraft gathered speed down the runway, veered off, struck some obstacles on the V-force dispersal at the end of the runway and ended up as a complete write-off. Now, I know that the pilot was inexperienced, and could have hoped for much more from the navigator, but I suggest that had he been required to memorise the emergency procedures on the basis that they were his sole responsibility he could have avoided the loss of this aircraft. The sad fact is that all he had to do when he first saw the warning light was to throttle back.

From the very beginning of my tour as Station Commander I found that life was never going to be dull. For example, the first night I was in charge, part of the Sergeants’ Mess burned down. While answering a string of questions about the fire from Group the following day – questions that I was in no position to answer – and concurrently setting up a Board of Inquiry to determine cause, my PA came in to alert me to the presence in my outer office of a small group of irate locals who had come to protest about disturbingly loud music coming from the Airmen’s Club each evening. I escaped from the call to Group and set about placating the noise delegation. They got my sympathy as I had heard the din the night before from my bedroom a mile away from the Club – a din that was probably quite a few decibels above the level that airmen working on aircraft were exposed to, and to counter which the MOD had provided expensive ear-defenders. I promised to see what I could do. A couple of days later I had an angry retired Admiral on the phone to protest about a Comet that he claimed had flown past below the level of his loch-side retirement home. I told him that Leuchars was not an air-transport base, but that I would pass his concern to the appropriate people; I didn’t intend to hurry to do so as I couldn’t believe that a four-engined strategic transport aircraft would be low-flying in the highlands, but I had to amend that belief when a Comet from the Royal Aircraft Establishment touched down at Leuchars an hour later.

My next, and rather more serious, protester was the Master of St Andrews University. St Andrews was just three miles away across the Eden estuary, a proximity that was unfortunate at the best of times. When a prolonged cold spell established itself in late October with an associated temperature inversion at a height of about 2,000 feet agl, from which sound waves readily reflected, I don’t doubt that the noise of aircraft taking off and engines being ground-tested was particularly irritating. Unfortunately the Master made his first protest while lunching in London with a member of the Air Force Board. The latter telephoned me almost immediately afterwards to tell me that we must stop ‘over-flying St Andrews’ at once. His assumption that we were doing this was annoying as Leuchars’ air traffic procedures had been designed to keep aircraft as far from the town as possible. He went on to suggest that I invite the Master to look around the airfield and to have lunch in the interests of mollifying him. I found it difficult to refrain from the shortest of responses as my predecessor had told me that he had tried this tack with the Master several times and had not had the courtesy of a single reply. The Master continued to protest for most of my first year at Leuchars, and continued to ignore all invitations. However, one night in the following year, when poor weather had in fact prevented flying, and no noise whatever was issuing from Leuchars, his wife telephoned me at two in the morning ‘to show me what it was like to have one’s sleep disturbed’. The next day I got a call from the great man’s secretary extending an invitation to the Master’s Lodge ‘to explain what you are doing to avoid noise over St Andrews’. The invitation included my wife. When we got there, me equipped with all sorts of maps and diagrams with which I hoped to show the efforts Leuchars made to minimise noise, I was greeted warmly by the Master and ushered into a drawing room in which several senior members of the University staff were chatting, drinks in hand. Seeing my maps he smiled disarmingly and waved them aside. ‘Never mind all that; no need for any explanations, just come and meet some of my colleagues,’ he said. It was a pleasant drinks party and an unspoken apology for a rather inappropriate telephone call. I had no further protests from him – but he never did get around to answering any invitations.

Without question one of the great pleasures of commanding a flying Station is to be able to shove aside the files when nothing out of the routine of Station life is expected and to go and fly. Out-of-routine events at Leuchars, sometimes arising at very short notice, were more frequent than one might have wished and not always convenient. Visits were the most common of these and sometimes contained within them the unexpected – for example when a visit by the new SASO of 11 Group, Air Commodore John Curtiss, overlapped with a visit to 892 Squadron by an Admiral from the MOD. I had just handed SASO off temporarily to Mike Gautry, and, was giving the Admiral a welcoming cup of coffee in my office, when the crash-warning sounded and I was informed that a naval Phantom had declared an emergency. I bundled the Admiral into my car, raced to the Air Traffic Control tower and got there just in time to share with the SASO and the Admiral a grandstand view of one of 892 Squadron’s aircraft making a bit of a mess of the runway.

Happily most visits were less dramatic and some merely involved the meeting and greeting of Royals and other VIPs who regularly used the airfield as a point of entry to Scotland. More time-consuming was the continuing requirement to entertain Admirals and Air Marshals on tours of inspection or other official visits. (I didn’t understand at first why three Admirals directly concerned themselves with the naval element – until I learned that FONAC had responsibility for aircraft ashore, FOCAS had it for them when they were afloat, and FOSNI, who was just down the road, had responsibility for what happened in the sea area to the north of us.) Then, from time to time, one had to provide a briefing and lunch for visiting members of the Government or officials from the MOD and, occasionally, senior NATO acquaintances of C-in-C Strike Command who came up to be introduced for a day to the Royal and Ancient Club at St Andrews and be entertained overnight. Sounds bad but, fortunately there was time for flying, and nothing could match exchanging the office for a cockpit, and the earth-bound routines for the adrenaline rush of a spell on the high-wire.

I had got airborne in my second week in command, starting with a sortie with 43 Squadron’s QFI and then moving almost straight away to the PTF to try out the naval version of the Phantom. From then on I alternated, depending on which outfit had an aircraft to spare, doing the usual air defence stuff with 43 Squadron and finding a lot of fun getting to grips with the naval approach to circuit work – at 500 feet as opposed to the RAF’s standard 1,000 feet – and with the MADLS.

Staying in the green lights of the MADLS required a steeper approach on finals than was standard in the RAF and a landing that was deliberately firmer than light-blue pilots felt to be proper. The Phantom had a splendid little device that I had not come across before that greatly aided precisely correct approaches to the ‘deck’: the Angle of Attack Indicator. Instead of having to calculate a stalling speed for the weight of fuel remaining the pilot simply flew the recommended angle of attack, 17 units on the AAI on finals, increasing (with decreasing speed) to 19.2 units during role-out to wings level. The aircraft was also fitted with a stall warning vibrator, electrically actuated at 22.3 units, but this was more for use in combat than for the salvation of the inattentive in the circuit. All RAF Phantoms had the AAI, but as far as I am aware only the Navy and the PTF made use of the aural warnings of approach to the stall-angle that the AAI could produce as a supplement to the visual ones.

One Friday afternoon, at the end of week ‘happy hour’ in the Mess bar, one of the naval pilots suggested that I should take my MADLS practices to their logical conclusion and have a go at landing on Ark Royal. At the time that seemed like an entirely reasonable suggestion even though I knew it was in fact a challenge and a proffered opportunity for me to make a fool of myself on behalf of the light-blues. Mike Layard took it seriously as a means of promoting ever-closer relations between the two Services at Leuchars and cleared the proposal with his superiors. When I put the idea to Bob Freer during a visit to the Station in early March he wasn’t very enthusiastic about it, but Mike Layard joined me in attempting to allay his doubts – and finally tipped the balance in favour of it by mentioning that an invitation from FOCAS was already on its way to me, and that it would be embarrassing to refuse it.

None of us approached the enterprise lightly. I concentrated on ‘deck’ landings at Leuchars throughout March, breaking off briefly to do a stint in the Q shed with 43 Squadron over Easter, and a spell with PTF firing 2-inch rockets on Tain range in the Moray Firth. In late March I had flown down to the Royal Aircraft Establishment’s airfield at Bedford where a steam catapult was mounted on a concrete ramp and got myself fired off twice, landing twice into an arrester wire. I didn’t manage much time in the air in April – just four hours, three of them at night with 43 Squadron. May was much the same: one hour at night with 43 Squadron and five on MADLS with the PTF. And I achieved just another four hours in June before my date with Ark Royal.

On the great day Ark Royal was steaming not far off Bognor Regis on a calm sea under a cloudless sky. The requirement for those who have not previously landed on a carrier is to produce three consecutive acceptable approaches before being allowed to ‘touch down’ and then, if that is satisfactory, to put the hook down and ‘land’ on the next approach. My first approach was satisfactory but I was waved off on my second and third ones by the man with the bats, the Flight Deck Officer. I was beginning to get just a tingle of concern when he let me approach almost to touchdown, and then to touchdown twice on the next two approaches. As I overshot on each occasion I was acutely aware that the upper surfaces of the ‘Island’ were covered with naval aviators, all watching to see if ‘Groupie’ would make it. My next approach was ‘hook down’ and to my great relief I picked up the second of the three wires. This was later, and of course, begrudgingly, acknowledged as not bad for an amateur. I don’t at all doubt that in heavy seas, or at night, naval pilots earn their pay, but in the calm conditions that day the whole thing seemed easy.

My invitation was for an overnight stop aboard. However, before I left Leuchars that morning I received a signal from Group requesting my presence at a meeting at Bentley Priory the following morning. I therefore had no choice but to curtail my cruise, and just had time for a brief look around the ship and have lunch. On departure, I had a hard time manoeuvring the aircraft onto the right position for the catapult-launch. I only managed it by lurching around using the toe-brakes, all the time feeling just a touch of apprehension as I saw how close to the deck’s edge I was being directed. The manoeuvring problem was entirely of my own making – as I realised when I noticed that my thumb was pressing the bomb-release button on the stick rather than the adjacent nose-wheel steering button. Me nervous? Perish the thought!

Some very sensible person had fitted the naval version of the Phantom with a wire that could be pulled out from the console just below the instrument panel and attached to the control column. When lined up for the catapult launch the pilot would pull the control column back until he got a signal from a sailor that the tailplane had reached the right angle of incidence for take-off. He would then lock the wire. This simple device, plus a nose-wheel leg extension that could be activated by a switch from the cockpit, virtually guaranteed that the Phantom would fly itself off at the end of the catapult run. Having watched several Buccaneers take off while I was on the bridge, and seeing how they all sank below the level of the deck as their wheels left it, I realised what a very carrier-friendly aircraft the Phantom really was. I was glad of this when I was launched myself for I don’t think that I can really claim to have been in control at the precise moment I was slung off the deck a matter of seconds after beginning to move.

As I flew homeward, glad to have done the carrier bit, I wasn’t sure whether I should be irritated at being forced to miss a night on board, or be glad that Group’s intervention was going to save me from a seriously sore head. As the meeting the following day turned out to be of little import and less urgency, and involved two uncomfortable overnight journeys by British Rail, mild irritation eventually won.

By August 1974 I felt that it was time to have a flight or two in 23 Squadron’s Lightnings. A new AOC, Paddy Harbison, had taken over. Hoping that his predecessor would not have mentioned the order he’d given me not to fly more than one type, I told Paddy what I intended. He was quite content with this. I began with an instrument trip with 23 Squadron’s IRE and gradually increased the frequency of my Lightning flying – though ‘frequency’ is perhaps not quite the right word as it suggests that I had rather more time to devote to getting into cockpits than I actually had. In fact, I achieved only thirty-three hours on the Lightning during my last fourteen months as Station Commander. During the same period I did most of my Phantom flying with 43 Squadron and, because PTF had gone to lodge at the Royal Naval Air Station at Yeovilton for part of that time, managed just six sorties with them.

For some time I had been urging the squadrons and the various sections on the Station to think about what we might have to contend with in war. I was not simply concerned about Tacevals – though clearly any realistic measures that we might take to enhance our preparedness for the unexpected would carry an advantage when we were NATO-tested. It seemed to me that it would be sensible to get everyone thinking about a ‘worst case’ situation. There are plenty of historical examples of the military being unprepared for surprise attacks, mentally as well as physically – and this has been particularly so when people thought they were at ‘peace’. The NATO tactical evaluation system, and the tests of our ability to generate armed aircraft via NATO and Strike Command practice ‘alerts’ had done a lot to enhance our ability to react fast, but there was still a lot of evidence to suggest that people did not take their thinking far enough.

The conventional NATO wisdom was that we would have about a fortnight’s warning of an attack on Western Europe by the Soviet Union. It was felt that this would allow time for negotiations and, if these failed to head off the threat, a gradual and, hopefully, non-chaotic progression to a war footing. There were various alert stages that would have to be debated in NATO capitals and in Brussels before being ‘declared’, and the cynics among us could not help wondering whether any of the agreements that would have to precede the declarations would be achieved in the available time.

My own doubts were reinforced during a lecture I gave early in my tour to the Scottish Police College about Leuchars and its place in the NATO scheme of things. The other speaker there was Professor John Erickson, an acknowledged expert on the Soviet Union, and especially on Soviet military doctrine. As I was giving the official line about warning time he spoke up from the audience.

‘Tell me Group Captain, why do you believe that you would have any warning at all?’ When I responded with an explanation of the various indicators that were thought likely to be available, from intelligence on the ground to evidence of preparations gathered from, among other things, satellites, he asked why I thought the right interpretations would be made and the correct conclusions drawn. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘that our Ambassador in Prague gave it as his firm conclusion that the Soviets would not intervene to suppress the Czechs during their bid for freedom in 1967; the very next day Soviet forces rolled across the border and the so-called Prague Spring was over.’ It was a little embarrassing to be contradicted from the floor but I had to acknowledge that he did have a very valid point.

There were a lot of things that we needed to do to make sure that we could function, and continue to function, effectively at Leuchars in the event of trouble. There was a need to prepare to defend against sabotage in the run up to war, quite apart from the requirement to do what we could to reduce the effect of any attack on us from the air. The great problem was lack of cash for adequate defences against any would-be Soviet saboteurs (or indeed against any acts of terrorism by the IRA). Of course, we could position sentries at the gate as a visible suggestion that we were alert, and we did; and, thanks to a local Territorial Army engineer unit that was willing to come and practise the erection of barbed-wire defences, we managed some of that form of protection. We liaised with the local police about the possible threat from Russian special forces (Spetsnaz) in the run up to war – and the IRA in peace – pitching up with hand-held surface-to-air missiles. I organised the cleaning and patching up of the concrete blast-wall protected dispersals that had been built at Leuchars in the early 1950s and never used – rather unkindly labelled ‘Embry Follies’ after the man who happened to be C-in-C Fighter Command at the time – and required the squadrons to operate from them during alert exercises. We reinforced a number of buildings with sandbags and, when a building or a vehicle was scheduled for repainting, used drab green paint. And we persuaded Strike Command to ‘loan’ us an arrester wire that was in storage for use, if the need arose, at any poorly equipped deployment airfield that might have to be used at short notice overseas; we put this at the centre point of the subsidiary runway (too short for normal landings) thereby giving us a chance to recover aircraft should the main runway be put temporarily out of use by enemy action in war – or, indeed, by an aircraft in emergency during normal every-day operations. Happily our improvising did not have to be put to the test in wartime conditions – but it was not wasted as our various measures unquestionably earned us a point or two when we came to be ‘Tacevaled’.

One of the highlights of the Leuchars year was the annual Open Day. This involved a fair degree of hard work for OC Operations Wing during the course of the months leading up to it – and close control of the flying display during the day itself. Apart from the flying programme, there were static aircraft displays to be organised, catering concessions to be allocated, publicity to be seen to, crowd control measures to be agreed with the police, and security to be thought about. Traditionally, the Station used the occasion to offer hospitality to people who had helped us in one way or the other, or whose goodwill we wished to have – the Master of St Andrews University would have been one in the latter category, and he would have been very welcome had he come. However, on reviewing the numbers, which had been continuing to grow each year, I felt it was time to do a bit of weeding. The problem was not one of cost, but of accommodation. The ‘VIPs’ had always been given lunch in the Mess and then invited to 23 Squadron’s crew-room to watch the flying display. Lunch was easy, but the crew-room, on the upper floor of a former air traffic control tower, and ideal as a viewing platform, had limited space. When I began to get telephone calls from local worthies telling me ‘something must be amiss as we have not received our invitation yet’, I realised that my culling was likely to do more harm than good. I decided that all I could do was to leave the list as it was and apologise for the crush on the day.

The weather for the display was perfect. Enthusiasts came from as far away as Southampton – Caroline and Julia had surprised me earlier in the year by reporting that they had seen a poster on Darlington railway station advertising the event as they were on their way home from Whitby. The Flying Scotsman locomotive steamed into the airfield on our private spur from the main line. Pipe bands marched up and down, competing for a trophy. And most important of all, the display went off smoothly and safely, closely controlled by Mike Gautry. A crowd of some 80,000 had been entertained and sent on their way happy with what they had seen – one person particularly happy, having won a car in our prize draw. I was simply relieved to have it over.

I continued to fly when I could during the rest of 1974 and into 1975, glad to hog the longish sorties that the Phantom produced, and to look for the real pleasure of flight in the Lightning. When April – and Easter – came round I once again took a turn at holding Q, and my recompense for sitting in the ‘shed’ for twenty-four hours was a three and a half hour Phantom sortie during which we chased after, and intercepted, two Bears halfway to Iceland. At the time there was plenty of action to keep the QRA crews happy – in fact, Leuchars’ aircraft had made some 360 interceptions of Soviet aircraft during 1974. The only slack period had been towards the end of the year, which was unfortunate, as Independent Television News had asked the MOD if they could send a cameraman to us to be flown in a Phantom to film an interception of a Russian aircraft. He sat in 43 Squadron’s crew-room for a fortnight waiting for one to turn up and none did. The people at ITN became increasingly unhappy about having him hanging around unproductively and kept telephoning the MOD to complain. Eventually Paddy Harbison rang me to ask what we might do about it. As there was really nothing that we could do to get the man the pictures he wanted (without the cooperation of the Russians) I asked, tongue in cheek, if Paddy had thought about ringing Moscow and asking for some help. ‘How could we do that?’ he fired back, in a voice that suggested he wasn’t immediately sure whether I was being serious or making a joke. Then he laughed, and asked if I knew the number, and all was well. Actually, if anyone behind the Iron Curtain had had a sense of humour a call might have provoked an interesting reaction.

At the end of April all changed at Leuchars. Throughout the month machines and materials had been arriving for the task of digging up and resurfacing the main runway. This annoying but necessary disruption to the Station was scheduled to begin in May, last through the summer, and hopefully be complete in good time to allow the airfield to be swept free of loose stones, dusted off and sorted out for the 1975 Open Day. Plans had been made for the resident flying units to be detached while all this was going on: 23 Squadron to Wattisham, 43 to Kinloss, and 892 and the PTF to Yeovilton.

The day after the last aircraft had departed, and noise at Leuchars had reduced to that of the machines being set up to deal with the runway, I got a letter from the Secretary of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club asking me if I might consider stopping flying for the duration of the Open which was to be held that summer at St Andrews. Normally all I could have done would have been to explain the impossibility of closing down and give an assurance that we would redouble our normal efforts to minimise noise. On this occasion I was happy to assure him – without immediately saying why – that there would be no aircraft noise whatsoever while the Open was on. When I got a rather handsome note of thanks and an invitation to lunch at the Club I felt I had to telephone and tell him the truth. I still had a rather good lunch though.

Leuchars was normally open twenty-four hours a day, and every day of the year. Two things required this rate of working: its operational role in meeting the Northern QRA commitment, and its status as a Master Diversion Airfield. Quite apart from the noise generated by our own aircraft on a daily basis, we also had that of aircraft from elsewhere. And, it didn’t stop at weekends: we were a popular destination for fly-in visitors, particularly golf-playing members of the USAF stationed in Europe. As a result, neither Mike Gautry, with his responsibility for keeping the runway open come ice or snow in the winter, or emergencies of any sort at any time, nor myself, with overall responsibility for safety, security, welfare, and what have you, could ever feel totally relaxed or be off-duty. The runway closure, therefore, allowed us to relax a little and take some leave without worrying unduly about what might be going on in our absence. Of course, the normal work of administration, planning and essential social intercourse went on, but the burden of this too was lightened, and sufficiently so to enable me to find time to get down to Wattisham or up to Kinloss to spend time and fly with the deployed squadrons. I didn’t go to Yeovilton because of the journey time involved and so had to content myself with simply keeping in touch with the PTF by telephone. I spent the summer doing many more hours in the car than in an aeroplane but still managed about eight hours a month in the air.

Esmé and I had had an invitation from Jerry Seavers and his wife to go and stay with them at the HQ of the USAF Tactical Air Command in Virginia, where he was on an exchange tour. With the runway repairs well under way I was happy to take this up. The night before I was due to start on this promising break I attended a Ball at the United States Navy’s facility at Edzell, some forty miles north of Leuchars. While there, my RAF driver succumbed to the hospitality of the US ratings’ Mess, and when it came time to leave I found him to be so drunk that I had to throw him in the back of the car and drive myself. Approaching Leuchars I found the sentry at the main gate, a sailor on this occasion, sitting on the floor of the sentry box asleep. Furious, I called out the guard, had both the driver and sentry locked in the guardroom, and tore a strip of the guard corporal for his failure to see that the sentry was alert. First thing in the morning, before setting off on leave, I telephoned Charlie Ram, Wing Commander Engineering, and told him to charge the driver and remand him to Bruce Hopkins, 23 Squadron’s boss, who would be acting Station Commander in my absence. Bruce would be able to use the full force of a Station Commander’s legal authority to deal with him. I also telephoned Mike Layard and suggested he deal with the sailor. Perhaps this was undue interference on my part with the course of justice but I felt that the driver had forfeited his right to remain in the RAF trade category of driver, and the sailor ought to be made to realise that guard duty was a serious responsibility. I was not very pleased when I returned from the States to find that the driver had simply been Reprimanded. This mild punishment contrasted dismally with the fourteen days in Colchester military prison that Mike Layard had awarded the sailor.

We had an enjoyable fortnight in Virginia, doing a lot of sailing on Chesapeake Bay, totally relaxing without responsibility. However, at a cocktail party given by the C-in-C of Tactical Air Command for a visiting group of senior NATO officers, responsibility returned. I was taken aside by one of the visitors, the current RAF Air Member for Personnel, Air Marshal Sir Neil Cameron. He told me that he would be sending back to me the annual report that I had completed on one of 43 Squadron’s officers at the end of the previous year. ‘I’ve got a problem,’ he said, ‘his father cannot understand why, with eight year’s seniority as a flight lieutenant he has not been promoted and is pressing me for an explanation. Have a re-think about what you have written.’ When I got back from the United States a newly raised Form 1369 was waiting on my desk under a short covering letter from 11 Group explaining that the one that had been forwarded in the normal way with the squadron commander’s assessment and my own comments on it had had coffee spilled on it. I was requested to have the new one completed and returned to Group. I gave Keith Beck the new form telling him simply that somewhere up the line it had been thought that we had reported on this particular officer over-harshly. I said nothing to influence what he might write and was pleased to find that he did not change his original assessment. I had no intention of doing so either. Some weeks later I had a letter from the father of the 43 Squadron officer concerned, a very exalted and much admired former Chief of the Air Staff, asking me if I might explain why we thought so little of his son. I responded as fully and as clearly as I could and, almost by return of post, got a very gracious reply from the great man thanking me for my candour. By contrast, Neil Cameron, who went on to become in turn Chief of the Air Staff and Chief of the Defence Staff, never spoke to me again.

Back from leave, I began hustling the people doing the runway, probably irritating them with my questions about progress – but I was concerned to urge the importance of the Open Day, preparations for which were already under way. By late August the new surfaces had all been laid and then, to my consternation, circular plugs were lifted from them for analysis of the quality of the asphalt, and time slipped maddeningly by until it had been confirmed that this was fine, and the holes were filled in. Then came repainting, the replacement of runway lighting, and a slow clearing and removal from the airfield of the mini-factories for mixing and preparing materials and all the other bits of contractors’ machinery. With about ten days to go all was clear and the runway was handed back to the RAF – a bit tight in time but enough. I organised the entire Station complement to emerge from offices, hangars, the armoury, bomb-dumps, stores, Messes and dark corners, to walk the station surfaces, bin-bags in hand and pick up everything that should not have been lying about. Jet engines have been destroyed by objects sucked off the ground – objects that had come to be referred to throughout the RAF, inaccurately, as FOD, the acronym for Foreign Object Damage. Everyone pitched in willingly, many of the airmen, airwomen and officers obviously quite intrigued to be walking the holy surfaces of an airfield for the first time.

Mike Gautry had planned to include formation fly-past demonstrations by our own squadrons in the Open Day flying programme, as on the previous year. I briefed each squadron commander as to what I wanted from them – essentially, as decent a show as they could produce while adhering to the rules and endangering neither the public nor themselves. As formation aerobatics were specifically prohibited unless especially authorised by the Air Force Board, the squadron commanders could plan to do little more than turn as tightly as possible around the airfield, displaying changes in formation as they went past the crowd. The Lightnings had the ability to add interest by doing the Lightning party piece. The Phantoms were not quite as spectacular and so Keith Beck, unknown to either Mike Gautry or myself, decided to add a ‘Canadian Break’ as his finale. The traditional – and normal – fighter ‘break’ involves a run in to the airfield at speed with aircraft arranged in echelon away from the intended direction of turn onto the downwind leg. Over the airfield each aircraft peels off in turn, usually at intervals of one or two seconds, in order to achieve separation downwind. The high-speed approach was an old wartime practice designed to minimise the risk of an enemy ‘jumping’ a formation as it returned to land. The hard turn that the break involves knocks the speed off quickly to that required for lowering flaps and landing gear, and thus contributes to getting the formation on the ground in minimum time. A Canadian Break requires the last numbered member of the echelon – number five in the case of 43 Squadron’s display formation – to go first, rolling away from and pulling underneath his fellows. The rest follow suit, one after the other. The whole thing takes quite an act of faith as each member of the formation, after number five, has to roll without being able to see the one that has gone immediately before him, and therefore has to hope that everyone is doing the thing correctly. The 43 Squadron formation started practising the Canadian Break while still at Kinloss but, after a couple of trips Keith Beck abandoned the idea, largely because of the expressed unhappiness of number three in the formation.

As soon as the squadrons were settled back at Leuchars I got them to show me what they were proposing to do. The 43 Squadron formation finished an entirely satisfactory display with a normal break and I cleared them formally to repeat on the Open Day what I had seen them do. I knew that Keith Beck intended to fly another couple of formation practices and accepted this as entirely normal. What I didn’t know was that he had decided to try the Canadian Break again. He did so at a couple of thousand feet; the pilot flying number three lost his nerve as he rolled underneath on the first practice and somehow contrived to enter an incipient spin. His navigator, spurred by the proximity of the ground, ejected. He followed suit, and the aircraft crashed.

At the subsequent Board of Inquiry I argued on Beck’s behalf for, despite 11 Group’s initial misgivings he had commanded his squadron up to that point entirely satisfactorily. I suggested to the Board that there was room for doubt as to whether the Canadian Break should strictly be classed as an aerobatic manoeuvre, and that this doubt should raise in turn a question as to whether the squadron commander could be considered to have deliberately contravened orders or merely misinterpreted them. The Board took the view that while there was indeed room for some doubt, the manoeuvre was sufficiently risky to require anyone wishing to try it at low level to seek advice and authority for it. I could not disagree with that logic. My argument may or may not have affected decisions at Group and Command, but the outcome, a Reprimand delivered by the C-in-C Strike Command, was more than fair to him; Keith Beck could well have lost his squadron.

During the Open Day all went well with the display – apart from a ghastly moment when I thought that a naval helicopter was going to hit the control tower full of VIPs while showing its paces. Nos 23 and 43 Squadrons did what was required of them and did it well. Our principal guest, the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Andrew Humphrey, seemed well pleased with it all, at least until he and I had a short conversation about the loss of the 43 Squadron aircraft. ‘That accident was unavoidable Alan, was it not?’ he asked. ‘It wasn’t one of those silly ones that shouldn’t have happened?’ At that point I was conscious of Paddy Harbison, a pleasant and normally supportive man, moving away from us as if to distance himself from anything I might say to the CAS, or possibly from blame by association. I had known Andrew Humphrey since Aden. He had been C-in-C Strike Command when I commanded 5 Squadron. I had entertained him on several occasions overnight in the Station Commander’s house at Leuchars. But, as I replied ‘I’m afraid, Sir, that it was indeed a silly accident and it most certainly should not have happened’ I knew that I could not expect much sympathy from him. In fact, as I learned later, when he heard that Beck had been treated, in his opinion, too leniently, he told his successor as C-in-C Strike Command, Splinters Smallwood, that ‘someone should be sacked’. Happily for me Splinters did not follow that suggestion through. A year later Keith Beck was out of the RAF as a result of some misguided actions on his part; I couldn’t help thinking how pointlessly irrelevant this made my attempt at Leuchars to save his career, and put myself unwittingly in the firing-line by doing so.

Shortly after the crash, and compounding the air of gloom that had descended on 43 Squadron’s crews, a rather sad human tragedy struck. The teenage son of one of 43 Squadron’s flight commanders, hitch-hiking into St Andrews on a Saturday afternoon, was offered a lift by one of 23 Squadron’s pilots. The latter, driving faster than was prudent, crashed his open sports car just before reaching the town and the teenager was killed. The driver was breathalysed and found to be over the limit, the result of a session in the Mess bar over an extended lunchtime period. The boy’s parents were distraught and almost beyond consolation. To compound matters, not much sympathy was evident from above. In fact there was a distinctly chill air blowing down the chain of command as people considered the possibility of seriously adverse publicity arising from the likelihood of a serving officer being charged with manslaughter. My concern, however, was primarily for the boy’s parents – and there was a secondary one: countering the consequent frisson of upset within 23 and 43 Squadrons, and the rumours of heads rolling, principally my own, that were beginning to go the rounds. The Station had to continue to function smoothly and efficiently. I had my last two flights as Station Commander on 16 October when I decided, imprudently as it turned out, to fly down to RAF Benson, the nearest suitable airfield to Strike Command HQ, on the morning of my scheduled farewell interview with the C-in-C. As the interview was to be at 1000 hours, a more sensible travel scheme would have been to have taken the overnight sleeper from Leuchars. However, the date of the interview had been fixed after 892 Squadron had made firm arrangements to dine me out on the night of the 15th, and so I had asked 43 Squadron to produce a Phantom for an early morning take-off. The weather forecast had given fog as a possibility in southern England but the risk hadn’t seemed serious enough to force a change of plans.

On the morning of the 16th, however, the reality was much worse than the forecast had suggested: the whole of southern England was blanketed by heavy fog. As this was expected to begin lifting as the sun began to make its effect felt, I took off hopefully. Sod’s Law prevailed, and the nearest airfield to High Wycombe that I could get into was RAF Wyton, about fifteen miles north-west of Cambridge. The Station Commander there loaned me a car and driver and, having telephoned the C-in-C’s office to say that I would be a trifle late, I set off across country. I arrived over an hour late. Given this discourtesy to a very senior man, coupled with the recent misfortunes at Leuchars, Splinters was remarkably courteous and kind in his farewell good wishes.