Before taking up my appointment as the senior pilot of 800 Naval Air Squadron in the spring of 1965, I needed to get back into flying practice having spent the previous eighteen months as an air warfare instructor in the classrooms at Whale Island. So it was up to Lossiemouth, an old haunt from my Seahawk and Scimitar days, to spend a few weeks on a refresher course with 764 Squadron on the Hunter.
Having completed this I went across the airfield to the Buccaneer training squadron, No. 736, for my conversion to the aircraft, which was enjoyable and uneventful. It was also an eye opener for me. Flying the Buccaneer was the first time i’d had the benefit of an observer and the pilot/observer crew gave a whole new dimension to my flying. I could concentrate on flying the aircraft to its limits while the observer handled the navigation (never my forte), a lot of the weapons systems, and the variety of checks required during different phases of flight. I knew I was going to enjoy operating the Buccaneer, and was looking forward to a front-line squadron. My conversion to type complete, it was back across the airfield to join 800 Squadron.
The Buccaneer was an all-weather strike aircraft and ‘all-weather’ meant night as well. My boss’s dislike of night flying had not gone unnoticed by the staff at Naval Air Command HQ and we were soon ordered to get each pilot forty hours on it before we embarked in a few weeks’ time. This was a very tall order and there wasn’t much night at that time of the year so far north. On top of that the Buccaneer Mark 1 wasn’t too hot on serviceability and we had pre-embarkation checks to complete so we were always short of aircraft.
We tried. We took off from Lossiemouth late in the evening, let down to 200 feet in the Moray Firth where it was dark, headed east to Fraserburgh before turning right to fly down the North Sea to Dover and into the English Channel where it was truly pitch black. We landed at Yeovilton and, after a quick turn round, took off and climbed to height until we had to let down to remain in the dark, landing at Lossie at dawn. This was pretty tiring stuff but was the best we could do to meet Command’s orders. I did seven trips but still clocked up less than half the required hours. Even so, we had done more night flying in that short period than the squadron had achieved in the previous year.
So, off we went to sea embarked in Eagle. I had been looking forward to the traditional Air Group embarkation party in the wardroom and meeting up with many old buddies. I was aware that everyone was having a good time, except the aircrew of 800 Squadron. Our teetotal boss rarely visited the bar and, as the squadron’s senior pilot present, I was taking a lot of stick and couldn’t understand why.
Eventually I took a friend, one of the observers who had been on the previous embarked cruise, outside and asked why we were taking so much criticism. Steve explained that the previous tour had been a disaster with aircraft constantly unserviceable and regular engine changes. The amount of flying the Buccs had achieved was very limited and, worse still, the carrier appeared to have lost patience in operating them. If there was the slightest hiccup with a Buccaneer preparing to launch, and who could blame the aircrew for being cautious, the flight was cancelled and the aircraft immediately taken off the programme. Hence the opinion of the rest of the Air Group about us, and the hassle they were giving us at the party.
The boss had not warned me what to expect. I realised I had a job on my hands if I was to turn the ship’s attitude around.
The loudest mouth in the wardroom, and the most unpleasant in terms of what he thought about 800, belonged to a senior pilot on the helicopter squadron. As I returned, I got the loudest jeer from him, so I grabbed him by the lapels and lifted him clear of the deck. I snarled at him, “in six months’ time, i’m going to piss all over you”. He stopped laughing and I put him down. 800’s recovery started right then.
After an embarkation a carrier usually had three work-up periods. The first two had been in the Mediterranean then trouble in Aden escalated and we headed down the Red Sea and started the third concentrating on night flying. The more senior of us merely required a few dusk refresher deck landings (touch and goes with the arrestor hook up until the final land on in the dark) but a handful of junior pilots had to be selected with some care to make up the night-flying team. To start with they were given dusk deck-landing practice (DLP). When they were considered proficient they were launched at dusk, flew an undemanding sortie and came back when it was fully dark for some demanding touch and goes before being recovered. We had about six crews in the night-flying team.
The more we flew the better we got, the aircraft serviceability improved, as did the morale and 800 started smiling. We flew by day, by night and we flew a lot. We were now fully a part of the Air Group. Off Aden we did most of our flying overland, when we made a lot of use of the photographic pack in the bomb bay, in what is now Yemen, using RAF Khormaksar as a diversion airfield.
By the completion of the third work-up the squadron had flown more hours than it had done during the whole of the previous tour. I never actually pissed (other than metaphorically) over the unpleasant senior pilot, but it would have been fully justified. He had got the message.
Pre-dinner drinks in David Howard’s cabin aboard the Eagle, 1966.
For some months, most of our flying was off Aden or around Malaysia, the latter whilst disembarked at RAF Changi in Singapore. On 2 March 1966, we re-embarked from Changi having been ordered to relieve Ark Royal on the Beira Patrol. Harold Wilson had just established this operation after Ian Smith, the prime minister of what was then Southern Rhodesia, had made a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (Udi). After unsuccessful attempts to resolve the problem politically, the Labour government had decided to blockade oil supplies to the errant colony. Since Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was landlocked and had no natural oil, her only access to this essential commodity was by overland supply or by sea through the port of Beira in Mozambique. Our job would be to intercept oil tankers approaching the port to try and prevent any of them carrying oil for Smith’s regime entering the harbour. I never discovered how we were supposed to stop them but presumed that Lloyds would have their details and politicians would then put pressure on the ship’s owners. We wouldn’t have the right to stop them, just report them.
Our passage from Singapore across the Indian Ocean was to be discreet and we avoided other shipping completely, making detours as necessary to keep out of sight. Ark had mechanical problems and we had to make as fast a passage as possible so there was no flying en route.
We were tasked to cover as much as we could of the Mozambique Channel. With the carrier some sixty miles east of Beira, our patrols headed out north and south to our maximum range. There was no shore diversion airfield for us to use so we always had to be back at the carrier (‘mother’) with a set minimum fuel state calculated to give us some waiting time in case the deck was not available. To minimise any problems the carrier kept the deck ‘open’, i.e. available for landing whenever it was required by a returning aircraft. This meant that we had to calculate the fuel and time required to get back to mother no matter how far away we might be, so that we could give the ship as much notice as we could of our required recovery time (known as Charlie time). This requirement really sharpened up our attention to range and endurance flying.
Keeping fit during the Beira Patrol.
Our mediocre Gyron Junior engines were heavy on fuel and therefore our range was poor. We used Scimitars modified as airborne tankers. We would rendezvous with them at height some 100 miles outbound and refuel to full before carrying on to our patrol area. The observer picked up contacts on his radar before we let down to low level to investigate them.
After a little practice we all became adept at calculating exactly how much fuel we needed for the climb back to altitude and transit back to mother with the appropriate reserve. This allowed us to work out how long we could stay at low level for any visual sightings and a photograph of any oil tankers.
Intelligence staff had been alerted that a tanker called the Joanna V was making for Beira from the south. A Sea Vixen from 899 Squadron found it at maximum range but then it disappeared and further efforts to locate it failed. It was thought that the ship might be trying to creep up the coast and slip into Beira un-noticed. The intelligence officer was desperate to get a photograph of her and I was keen to get it for him and to succeed in what had become fierce inter-squadron rivalry. At first light on the morning of 4 April, two of us took off and headed south. My observer was the squadron’s photo recce officer and he picked up a contact on his radar and we homed in and there she was. We made a couple of photo runs using the port F. 95 camera before heading back with our precious photographs.
Interception of Joanna V during the Beira Patrol, 1966.
One of the shots on the oblique overlap photographs was perfect with our wingman’s Buccaneer in the foreground and there, in clear white letters on the ship’s black hull, was her name, the Joanna V.
During our time dedicated to the Beira Patrol, from the time we’d sailed from Singapore to the time we got back there, we spent seventy-two days continuously at sea, thought to be the longest peacetime cruise by a Royal Navy carrier, and we hadn’t seen land once.
After some mid-tour leave, we re-embarked in early June taking passage to the Philippines area. There we used the US air-to-ground ranges. This included dropping 1,000lb inert bombs on a shipwreck on Scarborough Sholes. We enjoyed using real, as opposed to practice, bombs albeit inert, until we noticed a few local fishing boats tied up alongside the target ship. When we had finished the bombing exercise they would scavenge for bits of scrap metal, either off the ship or from our bombs. I don’t know now whether we were upset because they considered themselves safe beside the target, assuming we would never hit it, or whether they were prepared to risk themselves for the chance of a bit of scrap from the target ship. We eventually learned from the Yanks that it was the latter and our pride was restored.
In early July we started our passage home. As we left the Malacca Straits we were exercising off Butterworth, an Australian air force base on the west coast of Malaysia. My wingman, Fred Secker, was unable to get his undercarriage down in the carrier circuit. Up to this incident, the emergency checklist made it clear that it was a mandatory ejection if the undercarriage remained up but Fred agreed to try and get the aircraft down so I shepherded him to Butterworth. I had insufficient fuel to hang around and get back to the carrier so I landed first since Fred would have to make a wheels-up landing and would inevitably block the runway.
Over the radio I briefed Fred on what to do. He already knew but he was a young first tourist and I guessed it would boost his confidence if the senior pilot ran through the procedure with him. One part of the drill was to jettison the canopy, quite a chunky piece of kit, just before touch down.
Fred carried out a copybook approach and landing. His observer, Noel Rawbone, jettisoned the canopy and Fred touched down gently in the centre of the runway. He came to rest two feet off the centre-line after an immaculate piece of flying. He and Noel, a fitness fanatic who had ejected just a few weeks earlier, were out of the cockpit and away in seconds.
Later in the day, a deputation of Malayan natives arrived at the air station out of the jungle surrounding Butterworth. Their neighbouring village had found the canopy and could they have one too?
The wheels-up landing caused minimum damage to the fuselage and the engineers were able to jack the aircraft up, manually free the undercarriage and lock it down before it flew down to the Naval Air Support Unit at Changi, minus canopy.
On 14 August, in the area near Majorca, eight Buccaneers were ranged at the aft end of Eagle and we took off to fly direct to Yeovilton. After refuelling we headed for Lossiemouth and arrived overhead in formation, almost a year to the day since we had left. This was to be my last flight from a carrier.
The squadron had a couple of weeks much needed leave, returning in September when the first of our Marks 2s started arriving. This was quite an experience after the sluggish old Mark 1s. I hadn’t known thrust like the Mark 2’s Spey engines since my Scimitar days. The acceleration down the runway on my first familiarisation sortie was exhilarating to say the least and the marks 2’s range was considerably better than its predecessor.
Despite my comments on the shortcomings of the Mark 1, and they were justified, I had come to love the aircraft, knew all its characteristics, good and bad, and considered it the most stable aircraft I had taken to the deck. It sat on the approach path, constant at the correct speed, with both engines steady at their optimum setting and you simply arrived in the wires, having been steady on the meatball all the way down, day or night. And at night, this was a supreme advantage. Much as I was to come to love the Mark 2, its engines had to be throttled back on the approach to land below their optimum revs making them a little less stable. Even so, I would take the Mark 2 every time. That was really something.
At the end of December it was time to leave 800 Squadron. I had been re-appointed to take command of 736 Squadron.
Torrey Canyon ablaze.
A few weeks later the Torrey Canyon ran aground on the Seven Stones rocky shoal near the Scilly Isles. This super tanker was full of thick, black glutinous crude oil, which posed a huge threat to the nearby coasts and to wildlife. A political decision was taken to set fire to the cargo before it leaked out and spread. The navy was capable of the precision bombing necessary to do the job and the Buccaneers were the natural choice.
The two squadrons at Lossiemouth were 800, very operational with their Mark 2s, and 736 with their tired Mark 1s, lack of spares, a bunch of trainee ground crew and, except for the experience of my instructors, far from operational. We would follow.
Once we were put ‘on notice’ my ground crew started work and really got the bit between their teeth but there was much to do and I began to realise that we were going to be very much ‘also rans’ when it was all over.
I had to give a lot of thought to the flying aspects of the operation and how my Mark 1s would cope. I had major doubts about our automated dive-bombing system and the limited endurance of our aircraft. The wreck was at the extent of our range with four 1,000lb bombs on the wing stations. Any delays, always likely, and we would have to jettison the bombs and head for Brawdy – embarrassing in front of the world’s press who were gathering.
Lossiemouth’s captain, Doug Parker, was aware of my concerns and told me to go first. I was surprised and was unhappy that people might think that I had upstaged my old chum, Jimmy Moore, the CO of 800. So 736 was to lead the operation involving four aircraft from each squadron. A compromise was affected; I would lead and 800’s senior pilot would be my wingman.
We took off at lunchtime on 28 march 1967 and headed south. In the event the operation went pretty smoothly. My initial bombs blew a hole in the side of the tanker. My wingman, Dave Mears, put his first bombs smack in the middle of her. She was on fire and the stiff breeze blew the towering, thick black smoke clear so that the six to follow could still see something to aim for on successive attacks. We then landed at Brawdy to be met by a posse of journalists, including TV crews and we were left to their mercy, which, by today’s standards, was a pretty tame affair. When we got back to Lossiemouth that evening we went through much the same routine.
Over the next two days we flew back to Brawdy to re-arm with four 1,000lb high-explosive bombs, struck the tanker repeatedly to release the remaining oil, then returned directly to Lossiemouth.
When we got back to Lossiemouth for the last time, after it was all over, the impact of what we had done finally came home to me. Every newspaper in the country seemed to have covered the operation and 736 Squadron’s name, and pictures of her aircrew, and 800’s, were everywhere. And most important, my squadron lads were ten-feet tall. They had worked their backsides off, our second-line outfit had come up trumps, and the whole world knew about it. There was one final touching moment for me, and one that made it all worthwhile. The squadron’s junior rates awarded me the ‘Torrey Canyon Cross’ with the gaudiest ribbon and an appropriate citation:
‘In connection with your heroic exploits during the offensive action against the helpless, defenceless, stranded tanker Torrey Canyon, we have much pleasure in sending you the one and only “Torrey Canyon Cross”.’
I still have my cross and I am very proud of it. It was my ground crew’s way of saying thank you for the publicity of their endeavours.
The squadron continued with its training task punctuated occasionally with night exercises to try out my ideas for new Buccaneer tactics. What we achieved in 736 with my experienced instructors laid the groundwork for things to come.
Another ‘extra to the normal task’ was a flypast for the launching of the QE2 on the Clyde on 20 September 1967. We could spare only a few hours but managed a few rehearsals, flying an anchor formation with twelve Buccaneers. We had been given the job because the QE2 was the 736th ship to be built at that shipyard.
We were to fly down to the Clyde area, hopefully not have to wait too long due to the Mark 1’s fuel consumption, and overfly the ship as she moved down the slipway after being launched by Her Majesty the Queen. While we were confident we could be overhead the slipway on time, we guessed there might be some delay so we had arranged to orbit if necessary. We had also put our tame Lossiemouth pongo (army officer) high up on a crane with a radio to keep us briefed.
Sure enough, come the appointed time as we were running in over the hills to the south of the Clyde below a low cloud base, there was no sign of the ship moving and we went into an orbit, a large one with twelve Buccaneers, those on the inside very close to the hill tops. On the far side of the orbit our pongo screamed into the radio, “she’s moving”.
The 736 Squadron QE 2 flypast.
I called “tighten up” and I swung the formation into as tight a turn as I dared and we managed, still in perfect formation, to overfly the ship just as she slipped into the water. By this time the mark 1s were getting very short of fuel as we headed for home, some of us joining straight into the downwind leg rather than do a circuit. We all made it safely but, yet again, working with agencies unfamiliar with our problems, we had been extended uncomfortably. It was the professionalism of the twenty-four chaps in the team that made it all work.
The time on 736 Squadron was extremely rewarding as a steady stream of very capable young aircrew converted to the Buccaneer before heading for the front line where I was to join them in December 1968 when I took command of 800 Squadron, but that is another story.