Rowland White: Vulcan 607

As the two pneumatic rams pushed the door out into the slipstream, a cloud of dust ballooned up into the cockpit. Barker raised his knees up to his chest, clutched his arms around his ankles and vanished from view out of the 3-foot by 6-foot hole in the cockpit floor.

Jim Power was the next to go. Vinales looked at the AEO to his right – he seemed to be struggling with his oxygen mask, unable to free it. Vinales saw the concern in his eyes and quickly moved to help. As he reached out to tear it off, the mask came clear and Power too clambered down over the jump seat to the sill of the open crew hatch. He curled into a tight ball before sliding down the crew door and out towards the Cheviot Hills 9,000 feet below.

With Power gone, Vinales pushed his seat back on its runners. Unlike Power and Barker he didn’t trigger the assister cushion. Received wisdom among the Nav Plotters held that it would only wedge you under the chart table and trap your legs. Vinales wasn’t going to test the theory. He unstrapped, got up and climbed down towards the front of the door. A well-rehearsed escape drill. Second nature. He tucked up tight and let go, plunging quickly along the smooth metal door into the sky below.

As Vinales dropped out into the slipstream, from the corner of his eye he caught sight of the two pneumatic rams flashing past on either side of him. Then the elemental roar of the two remaining engines, straining on full power to keep the doomed bomber in the air, overwhelmed him. It was horrendous – an over-amped, thunderous howl that kept any immediate thought of safety at bay.

The parachute jerked open two seconds later and forced his chin down on to his chest. The lines were snarled. It might have spooked him, but Vinales was fortunate. An experienced sports parachutist, he knew there was no real cause for concern. He just had to ride it out and let the twisted risers unwind. But there was a downside to his confidence. He knew he’d never have chosen to jump for fun with a 25-knot wind coursing over rock-strewn hills below. He’d be lucky, he thought, to escape with only a broken leg.

As the receding sound of the burning Vulcan shrank to a low rumble, he struggled to catch sight of it. He strained to look over his shoulder as the parachute lines uncoiled, but a last glimpse of the dying jet carrying away the two pilots eluded him.

They’ve got ejection seats , he thought, they’ll live . He was more concerned now with his own predicament, because if the fates were against him when he hit the ground, he might not . And, with the way the day had gone so far, it was hard to say whether luck was on his side or not…

The road trip was going well. A few days’ break from flying had presented too good an opportunity to miss. Flight Lieutenant Martin Withers, Pilot Leader of 101 Squadron, RAF, had hired a vast American station wagon and with his five-man crew headed south into California. Hertz had been very clear. Whatever you do, don’t take the car into Mexico, they’d said. But that, of course, had only encouraged them. The RAF men all thoroughly enjoyed their day trip over the border to Tijuana.

Now, after a night staying with friends of Withers’ parents outside San Diego, they were drinking in a bar near Disneyland. And honour was at stake.

‘Weenies!’ the bullet-headed American Marine had called them. They’d only left the motel to have a couple of cocktails before heading out for something to eat, but that was the kind of challenge that Withers’ Navigator, Flight Lieutenant Gordon Graham, couldn’t let go. With dark good looks and a raffish moustache worn with conviction, Graham seemed every inch the dashing RAF officer. His precious Lotus Europa in its black and gold John Player Special livery only underlined that impression. As a patriotic Scot, Graham might have preferred a good malt, but on this occasion he’d make an exception. Tequila it was.

Round followed brutal round, but the odds were always stacked against the big American. He was competing alone, while Graham was part of a team, and the more he drank, the less he noticed. And he’d stopped noticing that Graham was passing drinks to his captain, Withers, and the rest of the crew. The Marine refused to be beaten. Semper fi . And then he passed out.

Even sharing the drinking, though, Withers’ crew were all over the place. If it hadn’t been for the pretty barmaid taking a shine to them they might have gone the same way as their loud-mouthed opponent, but she’d kept them going, plying them with coffee. Just as well too, because as the drinking had intensified, all thoughts of food fell by the wayside.

There were wide grins on their faces as the crew spilled out of the bar into the Californian night. If Withers’ grin was wider than the others’, it was with good reason: he had the barmaid’s address and phone number in his pocket.

Martin Withers was enjoying himself, really enjoying himself, for the first time in months. And that was supposed to have been why he’d joined the Air Force in the first place. He’d abandoned a career in law. As his then boss had gently pointed out, all he ever did was talk about flying and stare out of the window whenever an aeroplane flew past. Withers still had vivid memories of a summer spent at RAF Binbrook as a member of his University Air Squadron. To his student eyes, the lifestyle of the young Lightning pilots was seductive. In 1968 he joined as a graduate entrant and was soon enjoying all that life as a young RAF officer had to offer. He was posted to Vulcans and, although he still harboured an ambition to fly fighters, life was good. By the end of 1981, though, it had all gone sour. Withers’ wife, Amanda, had recently left him to return home to Australia. He’d been washed out of a fast-jet training course after the death of another student had cast a shadow over the whole class. Before his final check flight he was told that it didn’t matter how well he flew, they weren’t going to pass him. So, instead of a tour as a Qualified Flying Instructor on a Gnat he spent three years as an instructor on the less glamorous Jet Provost. Then, despite appearing to be an ideal candidate, he’d been overlooked for an exchange posting flying Alpha Jets with the Armée de l’Air in Toulouse. The weather in the south of France, he had thought, might be his only hope of persuading Amanda to come back. Instead he was sent back to the Lincolnshire fens where he had previously been stationed and back to the Vulcan Operational Conversion Unit. The OCU was the training squadron for all Vulcan bomber aircrew, but it was being shut down in anticipation of the jet’s imminent retirement. By the time Withers was qualified to instruct, there was time to take just one student through before the outfit closed and he was sent back to a frontline bomber squadron. To cap it all, now separated, he no longer qualified for free RAF mess accommodation and was living alone in a little two-bedroom maisonette on the edge of a Lincoln council estate. All of a sudden he had very little fondness for the RAF.