Bear Hunting - Soviet Style

As soon as the co-pilot touched down, I streamed the huge braking parachute. Then I saw something on the runway which put all thoughts of breakfast right out of my mind.

Low flying birds – the feathered variety – have always been a hazard to low flying aircraft – particularly fast low flying jet aircraft. Aero engines tend to object if they are forced to swallow birds at high speed. The high-precision blades at the front end of jet engines are quite fragile and it needs only one blade to be bent or broken off and the whole compressor is likely to be thrown out of balance and then anything might happen. Another hazard is that the bird, if it is large enough, might smash through the pilot’s canopy and injure the pilot or impair his or her vision. My crew once had a very lucky escape involving birds.

For many years the RAF, as part of its commitment to NATO, had been required to intercept all Soviet aircraft infringing a vast expanse of sky, known as NATO Area 12, which stretched from the UK westwards halfway across the Atlantic Ocean and as far north as our fuel would take us. The idea was that our air defence fighter aircraft would intercept any Soviet aircraft and fly alongside to let the crew see that they had been intercepted. The Soviet aircraft were not breaking any rules by flying in Area 12: the British Government just wanted to let the Soviet Government know that we knew where they were.

These operations, correctly known as Operation Dragonfly, were colloquially known as ‘Bear Hunting’ because the Soviet aircraft were usually the long-range TU-95 bombers and reconnaissance aircraft known collectively to NATO by the codeword Bear. These airborne meetings were usually quite friendly even though the Cold War at that time was still in one of its sub-zero phases. Every now and again journalists and photographers were invited along as passengers either in the Tanker or in the back seat of the fighter to see what we and the Soviets were up to.

The fighters employed on these operations were usually, but not always, based at RAF Leuchars near St Andrews in Scotland. The Leuchars fighters were preferred because the Soviet aircraft almost invariably came down from the north – either from the direction of Iceland or from around North Cape, the extreme northern tip of Norway.

The fighters were, at different times, F3 and F6 Lightnings and F4 Phantoms, and whenever possible the fighters were accompanied by Victor tankers to enable them to refuel in flight and so stay on task longer. This was particularly important when the fighters were the early Mark 3 Lightnings; they could fly very fast but not very far. Lightning Mark 3 pilots were often heard to comment that they were short of fuel as soon as they got airborne. Of course, the later marks of Lightning and the Phantom had much better operating ranges but, neverthe­less, it was always comforting for them to have a tanker nearby especially when operating far from land.

Sometimes, when there were indications far enough in advance that Soviet aircraft might be coming, the tankers were themselves detached to Leuchars from Marham. When that happened we were put ‘on state’ as it was known, as soon as possible after we arrived at Leuchars. This meant that we could be ordered airborne very quickly when needed. For example, with our tanker parked on an apron which was both close to the Officers’ Mess and the start of the runway, we could be summoned from bed and be airborne well within half an hour. On the other hand, we could be held on standby in the dispersal hut close by the aircraft and from there we could easily be airborne within ten minutes of the scramble message.

On August Bank Holiday weekend in 1975 my crew was detached to Leuchars for this very purpose. The Soviets seemed to know all about British holiday weekends and apparently took great delight in spoiling them for us. Many years later, following the break-up of the Soviet Union, I met a Russian Air Force colonel who used to fly these missions in UK airspace and he confirmed that they did know all about our activities and our holiday weekends. On this particular Monday morning we were called from our beds in the Officers’ Mess to cockpit readiness at about 0400 and we had no sooner settled into the cockpit than we were scrambled to take off.

On this occasion our aircraft, XH650, was parked on a readiness platform at the eastern end of the runway, almost down on the beach. It was foggy and pitch dark. Standard Operating Procedures required the co-pilot and I to agree on how many runway lights we could see: a minimum of three lights indicated the worst visibility that we were authorised to take-off in. We reckoned that we could just about see three. We thundered down runway 27 before turning sharply to the right and heading north. We liked using that runway on such early morning occasions because it meant that we passed very close to the Officers’ Mess. If we were awake, why should not everyone else be awake?

A pair of Phantoms had launched into the fog from the other runway shortly before us and they were already somewhere high above the Shetland Islands as we headed out over the north coast of Scotland somewhere near Cape Wrath. We met up with the fighters for the first time over the Faeroe Islands, still in complete darkness apart from navigation lights. We trailed our refuelling hoses from the pods underneath each wing and the two Phantoms simultaneously and greedily drank about three tons of fuel each. They did not actually need fuel at that stage but it was sound policy to keep their tanks as full as possible. After that, we went into a holding pattern at about 30,000 feet to await further instructions from the air defence controller.

Time passed. We watched the dawn start to come up – it comes up earlier six miles high than it does on the ground. Life was getting a little boring – as it often did. I remember getting my sand­wiches out; tanker crews made a point of carrying adequate supplies of in-flight rations although we always had a pre-flight meal on the ground when there was time and we usually had another meal soon after landing. This time, of course, having been summoned from bed, there had been no time for breakfast. I remember teasing the two man crew of the Phantom flying close on my port wing, by illuminating my sandwiches with a cockpit light. Although we could easily have talked to each other on the radio had we wanted, it was policy to maintain radio silence except for essential messages just in case the Soviets were listening. The Phantom pilot expressed his feelings by performing a tight barrel roll around us – thereby causing my co-pilot to spill some of his coffee as he caught a sudden glimpse, out of the corner of his eye, of the upside-down Phantom arriving unexpectedly on his side of the aircraft.

After quite a long time flying around in elongated race-track patterns over the white-capped waters of the Iceland-Faeroes Gap, the ground controller came up on the short-range radio to tell us that an unidentified aircraft, assumed to be Soviet, was heading in our direction. The aircraft was still a couple of hundred miles north of our position so we decided to top up the Phantoms once more before they set off on their own to intercept the intruder. This second refuelling used up most of our remaining fuel. There was no longer any point in our hanging around so we wished the Phantoms good hunting and turned south to recover to Leuchars – and a proper breakfast.

It was daylight but still very dank and misty when we arrived back on the airfield approach. It was the co-pilot’s turn to do the landing. We made an instrument approach from the sea end, leaving the still sleeping St Andrews and the deserted Royal and Ancient Golf Course on our port side, and we landed on the same runway from which we had taken off.

As soon as the co-pilot touched down, I streamed the huge braking parachute. Then I saw something on the runway which put all thoughts of breakfast right out of my mind. The runway surface was littered with seagulls – many were obviously dead while others were flapping around in great distress. I took control of the aircraft and applied maximum braking – to the great surprise of the co-pilot – and brought the aircraft to a complete and shuddering halt with about one third of the runway still in front of us.

At my request, a vehicle came out from Air Traffic Control to see if the driver could disperse the live birds and clear a way for us to taxi back to the dispersal without running over any carcasses. The driver advised us that most of the live birds had moved away from the runway but that there were literally hundreds of birds both on the runway and at either side of the runway and they appeared to be suffering from some sort of disease.

When we eventually got back into dispersal and closed down our engines, the ground crew pointed out that there were signs on our airframe of many bird strikes – well over a hundred were counted later. Some birds had clearly gone down the engine intakes, others had struck the airframe in various places, including the undercarriage legs and the landing flaps. We must have hit those birds on the take off run three hours earlier but there had been no indication whatsoever to us in the cockpit and the engines had behaved quite normally throughout the flight. The Victor had a good solid airframe and excellent Rolls-Royce engines.

We were told that the aircraft would have to be placed in quarantine and that no-one should touch any part of it until the local health inspector had examined the dead and dying birds. The health inspector arrived within minutes. Strange really: I had never imagined such a person would be on call – especially over a holiday weekend. He quickly diagnosed that the seagulls were suffering from some kind of botulism – probably highly contagious and dangerous to humans. Presumably the birds had been on the airfield all night but, because of their illness, many of them had been unable to fly out of the way as they usually did when they heard an aircraft bearing down on them. The aircraft would have to be disinfected before anyone was allowed to touch it, said the inspector.

It was decided that the holes and dents in the airframe would need specialist repair not available at Leuchars. I would have to fly the aircraft back to Norfolk at slow speed with the undercarriage and flaps extended and avoid flying over towns and villages in case bits dropped off! 

‘You might as well take off as soon as possible’, said the Victor ground engineering officer, who was obviously anxious to get rid of us without delay. He assured me that the aircraft was safe to fly – after all we had just flown for three hours in that condition. The logic of his argument was lost on me: if the aircraft was safe to fly, then why did I have to leave the undercarriage down? That certainly was not normal practice! But I had long ago learned not to question engineers’ decisions. If you do you are likely to get involved in pointless arguments on the following lines:

‘I don’t tell you how to fly the aircraft; don’t tell me how to do my job!’.

‘But you’ve just told me how to fly the aircraft – with the undercarriage and flaps down.’

‘That’s not telling you how to fly the aircraft – that’s an engineering recom­mendation.’

So I had the aircraft refuelled – the refuelling operators being very careful not to touch the airframe – and within the hour we were on our way – just after our pair of Phantoms landed having intercepted a Soviet Bear Delta. Incidentally, neither of the Phantoms had hit any birds. Curious that, but they had taken off from the western end and had not used up much runway. They must have left the ground just before reaching the birds.

I think everyone at Leuchars was glad to see the back of us. On the transit back to Marham we stayed out over the sea for as long as possible to avoid any contamination falling onto land. The engineers at Marham were not at all happy about being called out on a Bank Holiday Monday morning, still very early for them, to decontaminate an aircraft that was infected with botulism. But at least they had had time for their breakfast: my crew never did that day. 65 minutes after landing at Marham we were on our way back to Leuchars in a spare aircraft - XA936.

By the way, "we" were: co-pilot Al Butterworth; navigators Tony Binnington and John Hudspeth; AEO Tony Beetlestone.

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