Джеймс Блатч - The Final Flight

“Good morning, Flight Lieutenant. It’s good to have you back.”

Wing Commander Jock MacLeish greeted him with a beaming smile.

“Thank you, sir,” Rob replied to his new commanding officer.

With Jock and Mary’s help, he pulled himself upright and tucked the crutch under his arm.

They made their way to the double doors of TFU.

“I hoped we’d be the first here,” Rob said, again alarmed at the busy car park.

“No chance of that, Robert.”

Jock pushed open the door to the planning room.

“Welcome back, Rob.” Red Brunson was the first to greet him.

“Welcome back,” said the next man, and the man after that.

Each officer stood by the planning desk made the effort to personally greet him.

The admin team, including Jean and a group of young corporals—men and women—who Rob didn’t know were lined up on the way to the CO’s office.

“Welcome back, sir,” each one said as he passed.

Rob finally made it to the office. Jock closed the door behind him.

“So, this is your office now?”

“Certainly is,” Jock said.

“Feels odd, doesn’t it?” Rob looked around at the room that was once Mark Kilton’s lair.

“I’m used to it now. We’re working hard to move on.”

“It feels different,” Rob said. “Just walking in here.”

Jock took his seat behind the desk. “Good. We nearly lost TFU, but a few of us argued it still has a role. It just needs to do things… differently. Boscombe oversee us now. Projects are ultimately signed off by them when they’re happy. We’re free to concentrate on the flying, testing and evaluating. Leave the politics to the others.”

“Sounds ideal.”

MacLeish turned serious as he pulled an A4 report out of a desk drawer.

“How was the Board interview?”

“I couldn’t tell them much. I remembered snatches of it but… nothing solid.”

MacLeish nodded. “They did their best to piece it all together.” He opened the report. “You told them you were low, very low, and that you think Kilton and Stafford swapped places?”

“Yes, it’s a strange, cloudy memory. Quite surreal, actually, but I can see Kilton unstrapping Stafford.”

“They think you were ejected,” MacLeish said, then seemed to study him for a reaction.

It took Rob a second to understand the meaning of the sentence. “I was ejected? I didn’t choose to eject?”

MacLeish shook his head. “It’s a best guess, but Kilton had a badly fractured right arm and smashed up hand. The best theory they’ve got is that he was withdrawing it just as your seat fired and it suffered a glancing blow. It would have been very nasty for him. As for your route out of the aircraft, you appear to have missed the summit of a hill, floated for a bit under the canopy, and then bounced your way down on the other side. Bit of a mess when they found you, but you don’t need me to tell you that.”

“Why didn’t Kilton eject?”

“They can’t be sure, but they think a combination of his excruciating injury which took one arm completely out of action and the fact that as you ejected, it pushed the nose down from what was already a treetop-skimming height. As you know, you were found less than a mile from the crash site.” MacLeish paused for a second before adding, “It’s not in the report, but the chairman of the BOI did wonder about Mark’s mental state. I think we all know he carried some scars from the war.”

“And poor old Ewan Stafford?”

“A hapless onlooker who paid the price for getting into bed with Kilton.” MacLeish closed the report. “Of course what’s also not in here, and I doubt will ever be in any official capacity, is the fact that a young technician at DF Blackton has confirmed that Stafford was aware of the flaws of Guiding Light and he actively covered it up. We have to assume Kilton was in on this, rather than a victim of Stafford’s scheming, as it explains his extreme behaviour toward Brian Hill, Millie and then you.”

“All the same, quite a price to pay.”

MacLeish tapped the desk idly with his fingers. “The technician told us they calculated the odds of causing a crash if Guiding Light went into service with its gremlin. They worked out, with future crewing, it would lead to as many as 14.25 aircrew deaths a year. And yet these men were prepared to roll it out and hope for the best.”

A flash of a conversation on board the Vulcan came back to Rob. “I remember confronting him with the figure Millie had deduced. 8.75. So the real figure was even higher?”

“It would seem so.” MacLeish handed over a copy of the report.

Rob picked it up, it was just a few pages on thin white paper marked Her Majesty's Stationery Office .

“I’ll let you read it in your own time. A censored summary will be released more widely. But I’d draw your attention to the recommendations at the end of that version. A thorough system for examining any reported deficiency or concern, regardless of the rank or position of the person raising it. And a requirement that every project is signed off by every team member, again regardless of rank. We thought about calling it the May Check.” He smiled.

“How about the Milford Agreement?” Rob said.

MacLeish nodded. “That would work.”

Rob opened the first page of the report. It was perfunctory, to say the least. His eyes caught the crew list.

Flt Lt Robert May (Captain) – Seriously injured

Wg Cdr Mark Kilton – Deceased

Mr Ewan Stafford – Deceased

He thought about Kilton, the larger than life character who had steered him and dominated him for so long.

“You know Millie told me he used to be kind,” Rob said.

“Who?”

“Kilton. Back in the war. They worked together at Tangmere. Millie even said he was shy, but always polite and unassuming. Hard to imagine.”

“The war changed many people, Rob.”

“He went on to Malta, then took part in D-Day and the aftermath. I guess there wasn’t much kindness left by the end of that.”

“Are you suggesting he somehow wasn’t responsible for his own actions? That his death on a Welsh hillside in 1966 was just another victim of the war?”

Rob shrugged. “I don’t know. But we’re shaped by our experiences, aren’t we?”

“We are, Robert. We are. And how has this experience shaped you?”

“I’ve made a few vows, that’s for sure. A man in plaster has a lot of time lying on a bed to think.”

Jock studied him for a moment. “Good.”

FOR THE REST of the day, he discussed his duties and Jock gave him an initial plan for getting him back in the air, once the plaster could be removed.

“I can’t wait, boss,” Rob said, as he looked at the programme.

“And I can’t wait to sit alongside you, Rob.”

At the end of the working day, or 3.45PM to be more accurate, the men helped Rob down to the mess bar.

It didn’t take long before he felt decidedly squiffy, having fallen out of practice.

He looked at the clock above the bar, expecting it to be nearly 10PM, only to find it was 6.30PM.

The new TFU boss got up to replenish glasses.

“Just one more for me,” Rob announced to mock jeers.

Red nipped out to the hall and called Mary to pick him up, assuring her they were having just one more.

MacLeish came back with seven tumblers of whisky.

He placed them on the table in front of the six men.

“To absent friends,” Jock whispered in his soft Scottish accent.

It took a moment before Rob noticed the empty chair with a glass of scotch in front of it.

Released under the UK Government’s ‘Thirty-Year Rule’ – would you like to read the official Board of Inquiry summaries for the two Vulcan crashes in this story?