Cold war stories

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After WW2 the RAF was engaged in keeping the Russian bear in check, along with NATO.
The Maritime A/C were heavily involved in this, the Shackleton was the platform we had at the time for this task, Lightning and Canberra, the V Force and others were also heavily involved.

How about some “War stories” from this era?

My offering………..

Circa 1971 in the depths of January and from St. Mawgan, as a radar techie I was detailed to fly to Bodo in the arctic circle of Norway with one of 42 sqdns. Shack MR3`s with a `lecky crew Chief and two mates, airframes and engines off the flight line. The “Task” was to locate a Russian Capitol ship
A Cruiser I believe, that was not at its predicted position.

After takeoff from Mawgan we flew up the Irish sea and through the Scottish islands at low level, including the Minches between the West coast of Scotland and the Hebrides.

Then on to Scapa flow in the Orkneys, what a sight! the tide was in full flow, German WW1 battleships that had been scuttled were visible with huge flows of sea breaking over them!

Then North to the last recorded position of the Russian capitol ship.

The Aircrew started a search pattern, after some time one of the scopies reported a radar sweep on the Orange Harvest (Radar ECM).

The Captain ordered the A/C to “Passive” ie no transmissions radio or radar which could be picked up by the BEARS.

The procedure was then to descend to low altitude I reckon about 100`, to avoid detection and to continue to “listen” for further radar sweeps, they got one, the Orange harvest then gave a bearing for the Russian surface vessel.

The Anti surface vessel Radar (ASV21) with then was activated for one sweep with the scanner at the “attack” position ie at maximum depth below the airframe (hydraulic scanner jacks) for maximum accuracy.

They got a contact.

The Aircraft was then turned on a heading to intercept the contact.

After some time the Russian Warship came into view, it had stopped and was at anchor, with washing hanging out! We flew around it for a while and many photos were taken by us, and most likely by them! lots of waves were exchanged, some of the two finger type!

The siggys reported its position and we were away to Norway.

Meanwhile the weather was deteriorating and the surface wind got up to around 40/50 knots.

I have never seen the sea like it, the water was like whipped cream.

Onboard a Shack everyone was “plugged in” with electric “hats”.

I listened in to the general chat between the pilots , Navs and Flt engineer.

It transpired that a fuel tank booster pump was not working and that the fuel from the outer tank on one side was only flowing to the in use tank by gravity. Lots of chat went on about this, the Engineer did not know what the rate of fuel transfer would be on “gravity”.

After a while the opinion was that we had just enough fuel to get to Bodo, but that a go around was undesirable!

The weather got worse and night fell, yours truly vowed never to fly again if the good lord got him out of this.

The weather at Bodo was reported as strong winds and snow blizzards. Oh sh*t!

I made my way to the front of the cabin to better view the proceedings, the atmosphere on board was nervous to say the least.

We were a lucky crew in as much as our Captain was a Canadien exchange pilot who regarded such appalling weather as “normal”

The approach commenced with an Auto ILS (autopilot flying the instrument landing system)

The view ahead was dreadfull, in the landing lights the only view was horizontal snow, no lights on the ground.

At short finals the autopilot kicked out (fault) the Captain had now to take control, the co pilot was calling out the height from the radar altimeter, normally at 200` if no sight of the runway then a go around is commenced, our fuel state was uncertain (OMG) the captain continued the approach to about 100` then…..runway lights, phew, we landed, I had never felt love for a man before this!

The runway was totally snow covered and the depth of snow on the taxiway necessitated shutting down the outboard engines to avoid damage to the props.

Flight time 13 hours!

The OAT was -25 degrees.

Subsequently we had an intershaft seal to fix as well as the booster pump. But thats another story!
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