McDonald - Winged Warriors: Memoirs of a Canberra and Tornado Pilot

For Jackie with love,
for Hannah, the first reader,
for Matthew and Dionne and especially for
Joaquin

Winged Warriors The Cold War from the Cockpit is also dedicated to Ron Etheridge, Ian Johnson, Paddy Thompson, Roger Lane, Jerry Yates, Keith Holland, John Sheen, Steve Wright, Mike Smith, Alan Grieve, Stan Bowles, Neil Anderson, Ian Gristwood, Kieran Duffy, Norman Dent, Max Collier, Richard Wes Wesley, Hylton Price and Rod Leigh; and to countless more, all of them warriors.

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

PEN & SWORD AVIATION

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley

South Yorkshire

S70 2AS

Copyright Paul McDonald, 2012

ISBN 978-1-84884-748-4
eISBN 978-1-78337-868-5

The right of Paul McDonald to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Contents

List of Plates

Every effort has been made to trace copyright owners and obtain permission for the photographs in the book; however, the provenance of some is uncertain. If there have been any errors or omissions we apologize and will be pleased to make appropriate acknowledgements in any future editions. A number of photographs are UK MOD Crown Copyright and have been released under the new Open Government Licence (OGL). Their publication in this book does not imply any endorsement or official sanction for the book. Photographs not credited are from the authors own collection.

Plate Section 1 (mono)

)

Plate Section 2 (colour)

Preface

I was inspired to start writing so that our son Matthew and our daughter Hannah would have something to add to their many memories of growing up as part of an RAF family. Hannah followed in my footsteps and joined the RAF. Very soon she saw active service overseas as an air traffic controller, twice in Basrah in Iraq and once in Afghanistan engaged in hot conflicts so different from the Cold War that had been my experience. Matthews life, with his American wife Dionne in their Los Angeles home, is far removed from the experience of his youth living on various RAF stations. Their son, Joaquin, will grow up in California where little will be known about a distant RAF and a Cold War long consigned to the history books. So it is largely for them that I began to write what has become Winged Warriors The Cold War from the Cockpit .

The more that I wrote the more I remembered about the postings and about the places but mostly I remembered the people with whom I served. And then I would come across yet another log-book entry which would re-kindle long forgotten sorties and some forgotten faces.

I joined the Royal Air Force in 1971 and served as a pilot until 2005. My route to a fast-jet cockpit was untypical: I was a working class Geordie brought up in Consett in County Durham. I did not go to university but I had been an air cadet. Even so, it was to take three visits to the Officers and Aircrew Selection Centre at RAF Biggin Hill before I was accepted for training and that was as a navigator. I became a pilot because of a shortfall of pilot candidates.

Winged Warriors charts a path over many obstacles and challenges before I could wear an RAF brevet. I then spent fourteen years on operational flying tours abroad ranging from low level photo reconnaissance on NATOs vulnerable southern flank to tours on Tornado strike/attack squadrons in NATOs Central Region, only minutes from responding in full measure to an anticipated Soviet onslaught. All of this was at the very height of the Cold War. For four years I was at the heart of the RAFs flying training system, training young men and women for a war that we hoped would never occur. Thankfully, because of the Wests posture of deterrence, nuclear war against the Warsaw Pact was avoided, but other lesser wars were not.

I also had some other memorable tours: I was privileged to be a member of the Directing Staff of the prestigious Royal College of Defence Studies in Belgrave Square, London. From 1998 to the days preceding Gulf War II, I was an adviser in Kuwait. I was a fly on the wall in the Kuwait Air Force HQ and the only Brit in the Kuwaiti War Room to witness at first hand Operation Desert Fox , the air war against Saddam Husseins Iraq in December 1998.

During my thirty-four years regular service I visited and operated from some fascinating and intriguing places: Germany, Italy, Malta, Iran, Canada, the United States of America, Pakistan, East Berlin before the Wall came down, Israel and Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Cuba. There were also meetings with Royalty and Heads of State including one with Yitzak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, only a few short weeks before he was so cruelly struck down by one of his own.

The now long-forgotten Cold War was not just a hyphen between the Second World War and conflicts in the Gulf and Afghanistan. It dictated the lives of many people throughout the world for forty-five years. I hope that Winged Warriors goes some way in describing a Service and part of its history, and what that Service was called upon to do during the Cold War and the latter part of the twentieth century. It is also about a generation of RAF air-crew, many of whom gave their lives in preserving peace. And it is those aircrew who stand out for me, true warriors in every sense of the word, blessed with an irrepressible sense of humour regardless of circumstance, a humour that was typically British and very typically RAF.

I have tried to offer an open and honest account of my perceptions and my fears, my actions and my mistakes, from a flying career that spanned 5,000 flying hours in single or twin-engine RAF aircraft. While the tale touches on many aspects of military service, it is not about war or war-fighting; it shows that military service is about real people and their highs and lows, ordinary people who sometimes found themselves in extraordinary circumstances. And it is about training and tragedy.

The views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the author alone and should not be taken to represent those of HMG, MOD, the RAF or any government Agency.

Acknowledgements

There are a lot of people that I would like to thank for their support during the writing of this book. My wife, Jackie, who lived the reality of RAF life and then suffered a double-whammy as I re-lived it again over many, many months; our daughter Hannah who read the very first draft in less than twelve hours and then strongly urged publication. Hannah also continued to read and comment on further drafts between long arduous shifts at Camp Bastion in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Meanwhile Matthew made many helpful suggestions from California often reminding me of incidents when we lived at Leeming and Laarbruch and Linton. He also asked those important questions about things that I had described that perhaps only an airman would understand. I hope that I have explained them.