John Nichol - Tornado Down

The huge scale of the attack we were involved in only became clear during the course of that war briefing. We came out of it silent, slightly stunned, our heads buzzing. There was a lot to think about. If you have to go to war, then this was probably the way to go. It had a certain monolithic style to it. In the words of General Schwarzkopf, Supreme Allied Commander in the Gulf, we were ‘the thunder and lightning of Desert Storm’.

We went back to our rooms later to put our affairs in order, which is to say, we prepared for the fact that we might die very soon. It sounds melodramatic, but you have to think this way, it would be wrong to leave it to someone else. Never one to write letters much in the past, I found myself scribbling a lot. My brother, Mark, said that a lot of people in the UK were very gung-ho about ‘teaching Saddam Hussein a lesson’, but then it was not their little pink bodies in the jets. Over on this side of the world, in the Kuwaiti Theatre of Operations, closet pacifists were suddenly popping their heads up above the parapets!

It was better not to reflect that every letter you sent back home, every letter you received, might be your last, so you didn’t. These are two that crossed:

Dear Hellie,

Well it looks like this is it. Very close, anyway. We have known our targets for a while, but now we know our package and the ‘War Plan’, as well. All briefed today, though interrupted by an air-raid warning. Another false alarm, but in the midst of a briefing saying ‘You are going to war’, it set the pulses racing. We are now basically waiting for the ‘go’. Everyone is obviously twitchy, but having finally been told what is going to happen, there is a certain relief.

All I keep thinking of is seeing you, Guy and Toni. I want to go on holiday with you. Anywhere, you name it! We will on my return. Somewhere expensive! Get to know each other again after this time apart.

It could be tomorrow that we start. With what we are involved in, we feel reasonably confident – if it works! I am not going to write any ‘goodbye’ letter, as I intend to return. You know I love you, and you have made me so happy over the last ten years or so. If it is the worst – enjoy yourself! We are so lucky with Guy and Toni. I look forward to being a proper family for a change.

Dear Johnny,

The deadline has expired and everyone here is waiting with bated breath to see what is going to happen. We are all pretty scared, but I am sure nothing like as nervous as you lot. Please pass on my love to everyone, especially John [Nichol], and tell them how much we are thinking of them. Sorry to hear about the jet that went down on Monday, were they based in Bahrain with you?

I got a 10.30 a.m. ferry at Dover and was back in at No. 7 by 5 p.m. German time. Things have already started well. There is a families’ happy hour in the Mess on Friday. The Broughs are having a party on Saturday. We ladies have all been invited to a station dining-out night on 8 February, etc., etc…

The kids have settled back to Germany well. Toni is sleeping better and only wakes up twice a night… Guy seems fine but still uninterested in his potty!

Please find enclosed your birthday present from kids, and some photos. I have chosen the one to be enlarged, no prizes for which one.

Do try to be as careful as possible, we are all keeping our fingers crossed. Love you lots and miss you all the time, Helen, Guy and Toni

PS: When you write to your old girlfriends, you want to make sure you give them the correct BFPO!

John Nichol: We woke in the Bahrain Sheraton at midnight, after eight hours of pill-induced oblivion. It was the night of 16-17 January, 1991. At least, JP woke from oblivion – but then, that’s his normal state anyway. Several times, well-meaning relatives and friends had woken me, telephoning to see if all was well, to find out what was happening. As far as I knew, the answer to the second question was ‘Nothing’. Which just goes to show how wrong you can be. What I did not realise was that just about every TV channel on the planet was running live discussions with ‘experts’ on the imminence of the air war. Bottoms across the globe were firmly planted on the edges of seats. The Squadron had simply been stood to, but warned the attack could go in any time over the next ten days, so no sweat.

We sat around in the incongruous marbled splend-our of the hotel foyer for a bit, chatting idly with the rest of the guys, as they emerged sleepily from the lift. The transport drew up for the three-mile trip to the airfield. As it swung into the hardened squadron revetment, the double rows of sand-filled oil-drums loomed ghostly grey in the narrow headlights. I was the first one suited up.

A wall of sound hit me as I approached the Intelligence Room for the usual evening update. This racket was unusual. What could it mean? If they were singing, that could only mean one thing: they had a mission. A tight little feeling of apprehension grabbed at me. XV Squadron had been split into two formations, our own formation of four aircraft, and the eight whose crews were briefing now. The door was locked when I tried it. Someone opened it to my knock, and I saw a room full of people, in full war kit, trying very hard to deafen one another. On XV, we had this tradition of singing a ditty made up for us by the Army Ground Liaison Officer (GLO), or ‘Glow’ as he is known, before every exercise mission. This one was sung to the tune of ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’. The sixteen aircrew taking part in whatever this briefing was about were singing at the tops of their voices.

When the singing stopped, the GLO said, ‘John, give us twenty minutes, we’re still briefing.’ I knew then, for certain, from his face, the song, and the tone of his voice. I had just been looking at the aircrew on the first RAF attack wave of the Gulf War. As I turned on my heel, I bumped into JP coming along the corridor. Just from my expression, he knew too, but I said it anyway: ‘Shit, we’re really going to go and do this. I can’t believe it; we’re really going to go and do it.’

We drifted into the Ops Room, weirdly quiet with all the crews in briefing. Pablo Mason, who would be leading our formation, breezed up. He was wearing a First World War leather flying helmet.

‘We’re going,’ he said cheerily, as if he were talking about a day trip to the seaside. ‘We’ll have a chat later. But first, let’s go and have breakfast at Billy Smart’s.’ Billy Smart’s was what we called the huge mess tent where everybody ate, because it had red-and-white stripes, like the Big Top at the circus. There was no way in the world I wanted breakfast, not at this point. I went off with Gary Stapleton, the lead navigator, to go over our own sortie, while the other two, typical pilots, went off to have steak, egg and chips, leaving the real men to do the work.

It was a pre-planned raid, but some of the details, like the refuelling schedule, still needed sorting out, so Gary and I went through the times for tanker join-up, the final attack, all that kind of thing. We planned it using the Cassette Preparation Ground Station (CPGS). We loaded our mission route into the computer, placing the crosshairs of the glass mouse, or cursor, over the grid square intersection on the map marking our start point, and typing the latitude and longitude readings into the terminal. By moving the cursor over each of the turn points along the route, the computer automatically loaded all these into its memory, too. Having finalised the route to our satisfaction, we could use the electronic brain to juggle times, speeds and headings, on-screen, in real time; we could also print off hard copies of the route, and use these if the Tornado’s own onboard computer failed in the air. Switching to a larger-scale map, the navigator repeats the above procedure for the final attack run onto the target.