Posted on 05/01/2007 6:45:26 AM PDT by lowbuck
The first thought that crossed the mind of Flt Lt Martin Withers, precisely 25 years ago today as he brought Black Buck 1 up to attack height for his bombing run on Stanley airfield, was: "This isn't cricket."
The lights were on all around the only concrete runway on the Falkland Islands, and it was clear to the RAF bomber pilot that he had taken the Argentine invaders completely by surprise.
"It somehow seemed wrong to be dropping 10 tons of bombs on these people who apparently had no idea we were coming," Mr Withers, now 61, remembered.
"It seemed a rather nasty, cold-blooded thing to do."
At 7.38am on May 1, 1982, those 21 1,000lb bombs carried more than 4,000 miles from Ascension Island by Vulcan 607 were Britain's first military strike in the campaign to restore the sovereignty of the Falklands.
They made just one hole in the runway of the Stanley airfield, but a much bigger crater in Argentine hopes of resisting the onrushing Task Force sent from Britain. advertisement
"They never again tried to land a fast-jet fighter on that strip which could have been used to attack the Harriers when they supported the landings at San Carlos," said Mr Withers, then a senior pilot with 101 Squadron based at RAF Waddington, Lincs.
"More importantly, maybe, it showed we had the will to strike at that range and we let it be known diplomatically that we were looking at targets in mainland Argentina.
"We may never have meant to attack them, but it meant the Argentines had to keep fighter squadrons further north on the mainland so they couldn't take part in the Falklands fighting."
There were a total of seven Vulcan raids on the islands, with the crew of 607 flying the first and the last.
But they had not been meant to make that first, historic flight, the longest bombing raid ever made at the time.
"We were the reserve crew and although we took off with the other guys, we were supposed to turn round after two hours and let them get on with it.
"But as they were on the ground, the pilot had opened the little window in the cockpit to get a bit of fresh air in and when it came to closing it at the last minute before they had to pressurise, something went wrong with the rubber seal.
"They couldn't pressurise the aircraft, so they couldn't make the flight.
Martin Withers and crew, Bombing Argentines 'just wasn't cricket' Martin Withers and crew (in the middle) with Vulcan 607
"Suddenly it was up to us.
"The bomb crew in the other plane had won all sorts of bombing competitions, but my guys were very inexperienced by comparison.
"You just have to accept it.
"We weren't going to be back in the bar on Ascension in four hours, we were going to be bombing the Falklands."
To fly a Vulcan to Stanley required the help of all of the 14 Victor refuelling tankers that the RAF possessed.
The V-bomber was intended only for low-level attacks carrying nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union.
To adapt the Vulcan to air-to-air refuelling and to conventional bombing - required finding various bits and pieces that had not been used for decades.
Some were reclaimed from museums.
"One part they needed for the bomb-aiming equipment was being used as an ashtray in the engineers' mess at Waddington," said Mr Withers, who is now a pilot for Zoom, a new no-frills airline flying across the Atlantic from Gatwick.
"Elements of the preparation for those flights were Heath Robinson in character."
The pilot from Easingwold, near York, hopes to fly a Vulcan in the Falklands memorial flypast over Buckingham Palace on June 17.
Restoration of the plane, XH558, is nearing completion after the Vulcan to the Sky Trust raised millions of pounds for the project. But the charity is still trying to raise money to get the plane airborne in time.
Mr Withers reflected on his strongest memories of that flight a quarter of a century ago.
"You have to remember that things were totally different then.
"We really were a peacetime air force.
"We were trained to do the job in the air, although obviously we hadn't done much work on conventional bombing or air-to-air refuelling.
"But from the point of view of the mentality, I don't think we were ready.
"That's why I thought the way I did, that it didn't seem fair, when we appeared over Stanley."
Good to see that they’re going to get XH558 in the air soon, I know that’s been a long and expensive road to get a Vulcan airborne again. Impressive airplanes, those Vulcans.
}:-)4
I remember seeing a Vulcan flying in Transpo ‘72 out at Dulles Airport. It crashed the next day, killing the crew. Impressive plane!
Maybe the Argentines thought that the Brits were only presenting a show of force. Too bad they miscalculated so badly.
General Harris...pick up the white courtesy phone
> To adapt the Vulcan to air-to-air refuelling and to conventional bombing - required finding various bits and pieces that had not been used for decades.
> Some were reclaimed from museums.
One of the museums that they recovered a Vulcan from was the Offutt Air Museum in Bellevue Nebraska.
There have been some revisionists here that insist that nothing was actually recovered from museums, but I was here when it happened and there were several articles at the time in the newspaper about what the British technicians were doing.
I don’t really understand why revisionists are trying to rewrite history in this case, but they are.
I was stationed at Offutt AFB in Nebraska in the early 80s when they had a rotating contingent of Vulcans there to do training on our plains bombing ranges. Watching one take off, almost straight up (or so it seemed) was very impressive compared with the way a buff seemed to lumber into the air.
Nice shot too.
I went back and Googled Transpo ‘72, and it turns out it was not a Vulcan that crashed, after all. I was 9 at the time, so I guess I figured that huge plane I saw doing aerobatics at low level the day before was the one that crashed.
‘Back when Britain had a navy - and a backbone...’
I suppose voting a dem majority into both houses and planning your surrender in Iraq shows what a backbone the US still has does it? :(
‘Wasn’t fair? They didn’t know the Brits were coming?’
Blimey, you make it sound like Pearl Harbour all over again! :D
Twas stated with a bit of tongue in cheek.
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