Bear Hunting - 2 - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

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 0400BST (0300GMT) and we had no sooner settled into the cockpit than we were scrambled to take off.

Our aircraft, XH650, was parked on a readiness platform at the eastern end of the runway, almost down on the St Andrews' beach. It was very foggy and pitch dark. Standard Operating Procedures required the co-pilot and I to agree on how many runway lights we could see from the take-off position: for it to be legal for take off even on an operational sortie we had to be able to see a minimum of three lights. We reckoned that we could just about see three, the third ones came and went as the fog swirled around, and so I elected to take off. Once safely airborne I turned sharply to the right and headed 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 end of the Leuchars 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. Here there were no clouds and the heavens were magnificently lit up with the sort of stellar display that can only be seen when viewed in complete darkness.

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 racetrack 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 when the undercarriage was still down and the flaps partially extended 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 civilian 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.

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