XM607 Falklands' Most Daring Raid

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this is the untold story of the most daring bombing raid since the dam Busters almost a one-way ticket I didn't really see how we could survive it the RAF s opening attack of the Falklands War designed to strike terror into the hearts of the Argentinians it was a secret but very British mission Monty Python couldn't have done it any better the crew has never seen action before dope yes it's us now I must admit I didn't like the idea of doing it and all they have is an aging British bomber it had a computer this was driven by wheels puh-leeze bits of bicycle chain to prepare they learn techniques not used since World War two and a lot of the work was done on a five pound pocket calculator bought in soif and market but it all seemed to be going so well but what can possibly go wrong and then it did it will be the longest bombing raid in history if they succeed BBC news at 6 o'clock the Falkland Islands the British colony and the South Atlantic has fallen that's what Argentina with the news that Argentina had seized the Falkland Islands Britain's military bases were put on high alert at precisely 10:15 this morning HMS invincible flagship of this extraordinary fleet slipped her moorings and RAF Waddington they watched Britain's mighty task force set sail to recapture the islands the operation and Britain's commitment to this task force had begun but they didn't think they'd be seeing any action I racial thought was all kidding me and but can't see us being evolved like most people I heard about the invasion of the Falklands on the television or copies with radio news I had not the faintest thought that we would be involved Waddington had once been the home of Britain's nuclear V force but the nuclear deterrent had been handed over to the Navy and now the V force was facing extinction not war it's once shining fleet of nuclear Vulcan bombers Bush as three months away from being broken up by bulldozers I think there was a feeling in the 80s it was the end of an era the Vulcans were closing down they'd never been greatly improved and they weren't going to be improved now but all that was about to change Prime Minister it is a government's objective to see that the islands are freed from occupation and are returned to British administration as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stirred the nation into a patriotic frenzy behind the scenes head of the RAF so Mike Rowbotham went to see her with a cunning plan she was very enthusiastic and I said well we've got some more work to do but hopefully we can do it Ethan's plan was breathtakingly bold to send a lone Vulcan bomber 8000 miles down to the Falklands to blow up the runway at Port Stanley at one stroke it would stop the Argentinians using the runway as a base to attack the task force and it would put the fear of God into the Argentinean people that the Vulcan might be back to bomb them but there was age the Vulcan itself back in the coldest days of the Cold War the Vulcan was state-of-the-art it could be in the air within two minutes delivering nuclear bombs into the heartland of the Soviet Union but devised in the late 1940s by the designer of the Lancaster the sinister tin triangle was now showing its age what was a very nicer high-tech herb not quite so sure high-tech maybe when it came into service I mean I can certainly remember showing ex Bomber Command people over the Vulcan in the ACS and they'd say oh look at that Fred we had that of a Berlin in 1944 the technology in the vulcan was very old they said they had a bombing computer this was driven by wheels puh-leeze bits of bicycle chain etc there was nothing electronic in it on Good Friday RAF Waddington was told to prepare for war at squadron level people start a thing yes there just might be the final hurrah coming up here suddenly we were making this change from a peacekeeping role I'll be a rather stranger an evolving nuclear weapon to peacekeeping role to one that would be a war fighting role it was vital they destroyed the runway before the task force reached the Falklands that left them just three weeks to get ready but the challenges that lay ahead to get the old Vulcans fit for action looked insurmountable the Siddeley so much that the Vulcan lacked and the crews lacked when we were told that we were going to be flying for thousands and thousands of miles over the sea the Vulcan was never really designed with that sort of mission in nine the biggest hurdle was the sheer distance to the Falklands and back 16,000 miles they could use the British island of Ascension as a Midway base but that still left a round trip of 8,000 miles to the Falklands double the Vulcans maximum range the only solution was to refuel the aircraft in the air but no one had attempted this in a Vulcan for twenty years and it's refueling system no longer worked Engineers raced to unblock the pipes and refit probes they tore through rusty junkyards and scrapped aircraft looking anywhere to find vital parts and unless we could find them the sortie is going to be a non-starter we couldn't gather one crucial item was found in the crew room being used as an ashtray while the engineers patched the aircraft together the crews assembled to discuss midair refueling somebody wisely said em he ever done it before they uncle Neil who was a little bit older than the rest of us said we were hired ago and it was bloody awful I tell his dead most dangerous thing I've ever done he said oh yes Neil tell us more but he said it was so dangerous that's the reason the Vulcan stopped doing it which yeah it was a great start really carrying out this dangerous maneuver meant flying within feet of the refueling tanker to take fuel the pilot then had to try to stick the Vulcans probe into a metal basket trailing behind there's all sorts of expressions to talk about air-to-air refueling to insects mating in flight --is is one of them it is of course arranging midair collisions between aircraft three of the top Vulcan crews were selected for training but only one would fly the mission the RAF did not have enough resources to refuel more than one Vulcan all the way to the Falklands the chosen pilots were Squadron Leader Alistair Monty Montgomery a charismatic and tough Scotsman there was a rumor mill merely started by fighter pilots the only fighter pilots could do this stuff of refueling in the air so we thought hey this is our chance and we were desperate have a go at it believe me Squadron Leader John Reeve also eager to have a crack at the runway then I personally had absolutely no moral qualms whatsoever about doing this and in terms of you know introspection are we going to get away with this well compared to having a go at Leningrad Port Stanley every time for me please if you don't mind and lastly the most junior of the bunch Flight Lieutenant Martin withers I really genuinely thought that I was going to get through my whole time in the RAF without getting involved in any form of conflict not actually dropping a bomb on anybody in anger and I must admit I didn't like the idea of doing it could do it they must and learning to refuel was the first of many techniques they were going to have to master before they set off for war closing up behind the big tanker is really quite straightforward but to actually get the probe into the basket it was another matter I spent the next 15 minutes missing to the left missing to the right missing below the crews soon find ways of describing the experience stabbing a wet donut shoving very warm spaghetti uppercuts back say endless fun frustrating until you get a hang of it in peacetime this would have taken months and months of intensive training they only have two weeks and if they fail the task force would be at the mercy of Argentinean jets with the Royal Navy task force now just two weeks away from the Falklands the pressure was on in charge of the Vulcan operation to bomb the runway at Port Stanley was wing commander Simon Baldwin he lived on a diet of bacon sandwiches and pipe tobacco I can't overemphasize how quickly things were happening I had no time to think we were just reacting we were doing things and trying to make things work Baldwin sent the crews on practice runs to attack the island of Garvey off the coast of Scotland the crews had been skilfully trained to drop nuclear bombs but it had been ten years since they've done any conventional bomb now they had to relearn techniques that dated back to World War two using the same iron bombs dropped from Lancaster's we dropped these bombs and you felt them go off underneath you it's pretty exciting stuff just to do that without anyone shooting at you the crews loved it but the Royal Society for the Protection of birds were understandably not happy and the RSPB were absolutely devastated that we were wiping out seagulls of Garvey Island and requested that we stop doing immediately we were trying to go to war but they didn't seem to appreciate that we self felt very sorry for seagulls the crews were going to have to hit a runway just 120 feet wide this demanded a degree of accuracy not normally required with nuclear bombs with the Vulcan the accuracy that we had we'd be quite lucky to hit the runway at all and while the crew might miss the target it looked increasingly likely that the Argentineans would hit the Vulcan when Baldwin received the latest intelligence on the air defenses at Port Stanley it made sober reading the dossier revealed the Argentinians had state-of-the-art weaponry including the tiger cat built by the British we were going in against the Argentinians with really modern radar laid guns big shells explosive shells that they could fire it goodness only knows how many per second which could easily shoot a Vulcan out of the sky I'm going at low level that night I didn't really see how we could survive it crews were told to make their wills you can't get around the fact it's a war and you write out your will and you take the dog for a walk around Harmsen village and you think wonderful ever see that place again right should you be captured at all and they will give you the opportunity to write a letter and in case they did survive and were captured they were taught how to write secret coded messages and what to do if they were paraded in front of enemy TV cameras I found it quite amusing when they said what if you're telling the truth scratch the right-hand side of your nose if you're telling a lie under duress scratch the left-hand side of your nose we have to recover those islands for the people on them our British a British stock and they still owe allegiance to the crown as the task force continues sandwich the government has given more details of the merchant ships with the task force a week away from the Falklands mrs. Thatcher still hoped that regular TV updates showing that the British mint business would be enough to send the Argentinians packing troops have been going through their weapons drill and readiness for a possible landing on the Falklands the Air Force has already shown pictures of their Vulcan bombers converted from the nuclear bombing role to that of conventional bomb exhausted from round-the-clock training the Vulcan crews now found that their supposedly secret mission was part of that message watch out the Brits are come to reach the Falklands they would have to fly the bombers from Ascension Island refueling them indeed and our attitude to it was not great why don't you give them the date and time you've given them everything else on Monday the 26th Sam Michael Beetham head of the RAF arrived to rally the troops and told them the mission was on I really wanted then recruiters to see me and to wish them well they were after all embarking as I told them on a dangerous mission but they could do Reeve volunteered for the mission for once I put myself for a little bit because normally I'm not bothered like give me an aircraft to fly and I'm perfectly happy but I remember saying there is no way you can keep me out of this Reeve landed the top job withers was told he would also be flying but only as backup Monty was sent to oversee the operation from ascension soon they would be off to war saying goodbye was not easy it's a thing I've never done before I never had never said goodbye and got off to war I know it sounds very dramatic but it was possible that we might not return it was probably ideal I saw her for about half a minute just time to say goodbye and the strangest thought crossed my mind you know my father was in the war in the Navy during the war he didn't see my mother for years on him and I thought you know in just a little way this is what tens of thousands of people have done before that's my son the night before we fly down obviously a chapter the wife Pat was tremendously supportive and I had no qualms at all about God I knew if anything happened to me she'd look after the kids fine there was no problem at all the to volcan crews prepared to take off for their Midway base on Ascension Island equipment it was a miracle in just three weeks Waddington had gone from a peacetime base onto a full war footing transforming near obsolete bombers into new fighting machines 8 hours later the two Vulcans were circling the British island of Ascension this remote volcanic outpost was a perfect base for the attack on Port Stanley Ascension Island was was amazing it was just unbelievable around and seeing this strange-looking island of volcanic island look like one big slag heap really on the western side very unattractive the place was heaving absolutely heaving it really was something where something was happening you think huh what pleased to be part of this ascension had become the busiest airport on the planet the Vulcans arrived to find a huge Armada of 12 victor aircraft the refueling tankers that would take the vulcan down to the Falklands that evening with a 50th birthday party to celebrate withers and his crew hit the town we had to find somewhere to go and celebrate that night and we found more than one place to celebrate we had a few drinks and we had a few drinks more and suddenly I'm 50 years old we must have got to bed help us to in the morning waking up with a little bit of a hangover the next day later that morning the RAF sent a signal the mission codename operation black buck was on for 11 o'clock that night it was time for one final check on the Vulcans payload suddenly you're looking at 21 1,000 bums and you realize that that means business it was going to take a staggering 11 Victor tankers to refuel the one Vulcan on its 8,000 mile round trip group captain Jeremy price led the team to thrash out a plan the refueling plan was very very complex it was something that had never been tried before and a lot of the work was done on a 5-pound pocket calculator bought in suave market the plan is that this vast Armada flies to the first refueling point half the victors refuel the other half one victory fuels the Vulcan and then those aircraft return to base the procedure is repeated at the next refueling point and again until there's just one victor left to refuel the Vulcan before its final run into the target and it was really a question of Victor's refueling Victor's refueling Victor's review and it went on and on and on and all the time the formation was being reduced as one victor had given all its fuel and had to go back to ascension we had never seen anything like this refueling the real unknown was just how much fuel I thought he was going to burn we used the best information we had but we had a horrible nagging feeling that it might not be good enough if they got the plan wrong aircraft could end up ditching in the freezing South Atlantic Ocean with no hope of rescue the air crews assembled for the final briefing on Ascension Island okay gentlemen this is a secret briefing in a few hours the mission to bomb the runway at Port Stanley would be taking off on the 8,000 mile round-trip well as you know the reason that we're here is to have a look at the whole refuelling operation it was the most complicated refueling plane I'd ever seen to be honest I picked up probably 60% of what was going on I couldn't take it all him that I've been taking the ages but I was able to turn to dick Russell and say to him did you understand that and I had to draw a breath and say well yes I do with my fingers crossed behind my back and these are the final coins so and from that cup of tea dispersed out to the aircraft ready to go the lead John Reeve and his crew it would be a hard 16 hours ahead for reserve Martin withers his crew it was supposed to be four hours but then back for a beer but that's if withers could get into the air he already had a problem the microphone in his helmet his bone dome had stopped working my first time going to war and my bone dome doesn't work and I like my bone oh my god that sense of security in it in the bag Gordon Graham the Navigator was also having to make do the RAF didn't have any maps of the South Atlantic our navigator finished up using a map of the northern hemisphere turned upside down Gordon changed the Azores into the Falklands when we started the launch on that night I felt that we had about a 40% chance of of success there was almost our silence but you could feel this air of expectancy and then bang I think to start it up I don't know I don't know and the noise grew and grew and Emmas a sudden change in the noise it was the first of all kin stuff they're Vulcan just looped faggots menacing full of authority is attaching onto the runway I mean I was desperately sorry not to be in it and I had a lump in my throat as it went off down the runway followed by the second 23:06 second bolt man and then they were gone I Lois silence in radio silence to make sure there were no listening ears that could alert the Argentinians the vast Armada set off for the Falklands but in the lead Vulcan it wasn't about to be Reeves Knight Monty Python couldn't have done it any better they all seemed to be going so world the engines have started the aircraft's working but what can possibly go wrong here this hissing sound from the window Bell Bell we got airborne the whistling got worse and the indication said the aircraft isn't pressurizing and I thought no no it's happened once before in nine years on the V Force it can't be happening now and it was with no cabin pressure Reeve and his crew will slowly freeze and run out of oxygen there's no official drill what to do but you try all the things you can think of we had sandwiches in polythene wrapping and got the polythene off and try to jam that I think I tried to jam a fly-in jacket anything in there to try and stop it of course we had to turn back then obviously not a happy bunny just four minutes after takeoff it's all starting to unravel Reeve breaks radio silence to say he's returning to base on the backup vulcan withers also here's the transmission we were now the primary Vulcan we were on and there was a deathly silence nobody actually said anything gulp yes it's us now so I came up with a real sort of Boyzone statement pike whichever daredevil will turn in fellas the success of the whole mission now rests on withers and his crew withers starts refuelling with the victors it's the first of four contacts over the eight-hour journey to the Falklands but when the empty victors start returning to ascension they make a terrible discovery the aircraft are so low on fuel they have barely made it back the victors coming back made it quite clear the Vulcan is using more fuel than we got we were lucky I'm sorry with not enough fuel the whole mission is in jeopardy but in radio silence withers in the Vulcan is blissfully unaware of the impending disaster we weren't really keeping an eye on how much fuel we got and it's a bit like in a motor race you know that you just go around as long as you got fuel in the tank that's all you wanted then with two refuelings left the sortie hits a major electrical storm it's always the same when you the chips are down you run into turbulence and did we run and it's now that the last two remaining victors must refuel flying in the rear victor bob Duxford knows if he can't get fuel the mission is over I was becoming acutely aware that the whole success of the mission now rested on the shoulders of me and my crew maybe gone a little bit crisis is difficult a miracle happened I couldn't believe it he not only did he get in he stated yeah Bach talks what I take my hat off good job Bob but as Oxford's Victor completes refueling and flies out of the storm the crew make an alarming calculation there isn't enough fuel we were well short to the point where we wouldn't actually be able to make the island back at ascension Duxford asks the crew what they want to do right whether the turn back now pretty sharpish or at least press on in the noise that we've got to come up with some sort of alternate plan I need your speaker and give me your view where we continue or turn back without hesitation each one of my four crew members said that we've come this far we'll press on their decision means that they may be forced to ditch with little hope of rescue six and a half hours since leaving ascension it's time for the final refuel but Duxford in the victor can't risk breaking radio silence to tell the Vulcan there's barely enough fuel to complete the mission everything seemed to be going well taking fuel quite normally and then much to my surprise and dick surprise sitting beside me they put the light on the red light flashed and so we have to bring which the red light flashing you break come what may you break privilege but I think this must be a mistake because you know we'd still needed about another 7000 pounds of fuel we will have to report the mission the Vulcan had expected a full tank but they've had all the fuel the Victor tanker can spare so we broke off I was absolutely amazing and actually very annoyed because I couldn't believe they could do that to us as the victor turns to head back to ascension a furious withers briefly breaks radio silence we received two words which sounded like we're off was he off to attack the target or was he off to ascension we felt dejected we felt that all our efforts had been in vain in the vulcan withers faces the hardest decision of his life whether to give up the attack or press on and gamble the lives of his crew captain martin withers and his crew are within striking distance of the runway at port stanley but their vulcan bomber doesn't have enough fuel to get back to base in theory we should have then gone back to ascension and aborted the whole attack but because we'd come this far and the whole force had come this far martin decided we would carry on I made it clear that that was what I wish to do nobody trying to say otherwise so we we pressed on it's time for the attack withers takes the vulcan down to 300 feet to get under the argentinian radar but navigator Gordon Graham can't work out exactly where they are all his navigation systems are showing different positions if we don't know where we are relative to the island we could bomb anywhere we could bomb the town itself they switch on the ground scanning radar to get a fix but this risks the Vulcan being picked up by the Argentinian defences on the radar screen there was nothing withers chances taking the Vulcan higher to see if that will help bang the falkland Holmes appeared right in the middle of it on her screen only about a mile away from where we death however just as we got up to about filin feet I suddenly picked out a search radar Broder pop rock the Argentinians have spotted them but there's no turning back withers must now climb up for the final running pulled up using full power fairly steep climb to get to 10,000 feet we have about a 20 mile run in and we felt very vulnerable because you're sitting there they know you're there I'd pulled the visor covers down we thought flat would be coming up at us and they're like you see in the war films we haven't done this before getting fairly close we suddenly got a lock on from one of their fire control radars so I thought what can I do so I switched on the dash 10 jamming pod so that they'd be fooled into thinking we were in a different position I open the bomb doors early to make sure it wasn't the problem of the doors themselves open nav radar Bob Wright checks the antique bombing computer its pulleys and bicycle chains must calculate to the split second when to release the bombs as we got to about two miles away the airfield was still lit up as when the bombs started to drop off expect and they dropped off at half second intervals 21 bombs from 10,000 feet it'll take 20 seconds for the bombs to hit the ground once the last bomb went Marvin pulled the stick climbing turned to the left to get away from any Argentinian air defensive threats the sky opened up the short one art that with for every gun blazing there's the climb you could see the flashes obviously from the bombs going off I felt a bit sorry for the people on the ground I mean not every day in your life you dropped live bombs on somebody we had no idea at that point where the bombs had actually hit the runway it was a real sort of aah all over you know I'm safe now even though yeah we still did have quite a major problem too to cope with they still have to find their refueling tanker in thousands of square miles of Atlantic and they have only a few hours of fuel left but just as they thought they were out of range of argentinian missiles the whole of my read our warden receiver front sector lit up were threatened unsure whether they are Friend or Foe every anti-aircraft weapon of the british task force is now trained on the vulcan I said a little prayer hoping that somebody on board the ships was aware that we were a friendly coming towards them this is one Delta over I opened up in my radio past the present areas of the day good morning and I passed the codeword super fuse to let them know that we considered the attack had been a success the taskforce stands down while a codeword is also picked up 4,000 miles away back on Ascension suddenly out the blue somebody shaky super fuse I mean fantastic any news there was elation everywhere in Bob Duxford Victor rapidly running out of fuel the vulcans transmission tells them that at least their efforts were not in vain there was elation in our airplane the whole mood changed and after all we were able to say well he's done it he's done the job but time is also running out for the crew of the Volcom there's no sight of the refueling tanker they're supposed to rendezvous with the co-pilot state he never seen a Vulcan flying with so little fuel in its tanks which was quite a frightening situation to be in we knew we had to make contact if we didn't make contact we were in the sea we had immersion suits to keep us dry we had dinghies he had little radios but I don't think any of us was a survive unless an absolute miracle happened and the next thing I know the victor rolled out right in front of us I can't tell you how that felt I can't tell you to me at the time it was the loveliest sight in the world just in time duxford Victor was also meant by a refueling tanker there were quite a few whoops and hollers in the airplane as as people celebrated and as the Vulcan neared ascension it was time for them to celebrate two prior puts on Chariots of Fire I put that on the aoe's tape recorder and we played it at full blast they'd survived withers and his crew had achieved the longest bombing raid in history thanks to 13 Victor tankers and 65 victor crew not least to the final victor but it sacrificed its fuel to get the vulcan on target there to meet Martin withers with a can of beer was the pilot Bob duxford as I fought my way through the crowds I'm not sure that Martin even recognized me in the first instance but nevertheless he received the can of beer nicely and I decided that we done a bit that night went off to our billet and the rest was history we didn't hear that whether we'd hit the runway until at least 24 hours later we dropped 21 bombs and the first one to explode was on the runway the bomb put an end to Argentinian ambitions to use the runway for fast jet attacks on the task force but it had been a close call just half a second later in releasing the bombs and they might have missed altogether the impact of that one bomb was to be felt far beyond Port Stanley airfield we had made a statement we had made a huge statement but we were not giving up the Falkland Islands once that first bomb tumbled out of Martin's Bombay it's a declaration of war it really it was the opening shot of the still ities and there was no going back for the michael Beetham the raid had achieved its ultimate goal the effect on the Argentinians was that they could see that if we could do that you can also do much more frightened that their cities would be attacked the Argentinians withdrew their fighters to the mainland the result was fewer Argentinian air attacks on British troops and ships but for the Vulcan the Falklands War was its first and last action six months after the war it was scrapped withers Vulcan 607 now rests in peace beside the runway at Waddington where almost 30 years ago it raced off to the Falklands Chairman Mao why is he still so idolized separating the man from the myth China triumphs and turmoil continues tomorrow at eight next tonight Brody has the knowledge to unsettle a captive or does he have something even more deadly intelligent riveting drama homeland is on the way

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Channel: Lala Allison

Views: 1,721,404

Rating: 4.7804918 out of 5

Keywords: Falklands War, Guerra, Malvinas, Falkland Islands (Country), United, Kingdom, war, bombs, planes, conflickt, conflict, America, Nuclear, Tango, Destruction, Nuclear Weapon (Invention), States, Atomic, Weapons, Europe, Power, Germany, World, England, United States (Country), War (Swedish Band), United States (album), Canada, China, Australia, Blast, United Kingdom (Country), Russia, Nations, Japan, Spain, Soviet Union (Country), Asia, Brazil, European, Destroy, India, Africa, Britain

Id: PBJ99bIhAVk

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Length: 47min 1sec (2821 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 08 2013

Reddit Comments

Not the longest in history, but it held the record for a long time.

IIRC, it finally got topped by the USAF sending a B-52 or B-2 (don't remember which) from the US to bomb Afghanistan, and then back again.

👍︎︎ 15 👤︎︎ u/Skorpychan 📅︎︎ Jan 13 2019 🗫︎ replies

It’s sad the UK couldn’t update the Vulcan the way the US did the B-52 to keep it relevant. The Vulcan is hands down my favorite non-US aircraft.

👍︎︎ 5 👤︎︎ u/Orlando1701 📅︎︎ Jan 13 2019 🗫︎ replies

Thanks for sharing, this was great to watch! Didn't hear about this before

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/Wobsel 📅︎︎ Jan 13 2019 🗫︎ replies