(continued from here)
The Admiral left the aircraft and was driven off – without, I hoped, having been aware that anything was amiss. I got down from the aircraft to view the scene in the pouring rain. The green centreline markers, meant to indicate taxiways safe for aircraft, continued ahead all the way through the car park towards a distant hangar! We had indeed parked in a car park that was occupied by many cars and other vehicles! When the Wing Commander Operations approached me asking frostily why I hadn’t turned right as instructed I told him, equally frostily:
"1 - The right turn was not lit;
2 - if I had turned right when ATC had ordered me to, I would have collided with several F4 aircraft and caused a lot of very expensive damage;
3 - the taxiway lights were non-standard, dangerous and illegal since they led, not along a taxiway, but into an active vehicle park."
The wing commander blustered and muttered that he'd only just taken over the job and he wasn’t aware of those failings.
“Thank goodness the Admiral is OK,” he said lamely, adding “will you be leaving as soon as possible?”
I asked him if he had any idea how I could turn my aircraft through 180 degrees on the narrow taxiway without colliding with, or blowing over, dozens of vehicles. There was no reply and he disappeared into the rain and I never saw him again.
Coningsby had no tug capable of manoeuvring a Victor aircraft, let alone a suitable tow bar, and there was no way we could turn round under our own engine power unless the car park was cleared of all vehicles. An inspection of our starboard wing showed that there was a small graze on the under-surface of the starboard refuelling pod, only about 2 feet from the ground, but otherwise no damage. I retired with my crew to a nearby squadron crew room where the F4 pilots and navigators thought the whole thing was hilarious. The station started the process of clearing the car park of vehicles and I telephoned our own squadron engineers at Marham for a ground crew chief to come as soon as possible by road to assist us to turn the aircraft around using our own engines – there was no way I was going to manoeuvre the aircraft without professional assistance from a reliable man on the external intercom. Marham did not even ask for an explanation.
It took over two hours before we were ready to start. It seems the entire station had turned out to watch! I started one engine on each side (No 1 and No 4) using the Victor's internal batteries and then gingerly moved forward under instructions from the Crew Chief, who walked in front of the aircraft on a very long communications lead and always in my sight, until we reached an area in front of the hangar where there was room to make a right-hand turn through 180 degrees. The noise outside must have been horrendous since it takes a lot of asymmetric engine power to turn even a lightly loaded Victor. It was essential to keep all 18 of the Victor's wheels turning during the manoeuvre to avoid scuffing and probable damage to the nose wheel assembly and the main undercarriage legs. At last we were pointing in the right direction. The crew chief climbed on board and settled himself into the 6th seat (he was authorised to fly in the seat facing forwards). I started the other two engines and we were soon on our way back to Marham – a flight lasting exactly 10 minutes from brakes off to touch down.
There was no mention at Marham of what had happened and no-one even asked me any questions – whether Station Commander Marham spoke to Station Commander Coningsby I never found out but I would wager that the runway lighting at Coningsby was very quickly brought up to NATO requirements! A few days later I received a very nice handwritten letter from Admiral Leach in which it was obvious that he had realised I had dropped him off in a car park! The letter ran to two pages: click here to read page one and here to read page two.
There was in fact a tragic corollary to this story. Just three months later, on 24 March 1975, Flying Officer Andy Price, my young and highly promising co-pilot on the sortie with Admiral Leach, was killed when he was the co-pilot of Victor K1A XH618 of 57 Sqn at Marham that was struck by a Buccaneer aircraft from RAF Honington which was attempting to make a refuelling contact on Towline 5. The Buccaneer was undamaged and the crew returned safely to their base. The three rear crew members of the Victor and the co-pilot were killed when the Victor, minus its complete tail plane assembly, exploded in a fireball and crashed vertically into the North Sea; the captain, Keith Handscomb 'was ejected' (the inverted commas are deliberate and important!) from the aircraft and was picked up by a merchant ship within about an hour. He survived with serious injuries but eventually returned to flying. I was a senior member of the subsequent Board of Inquiry into the accident and because the official findings were privileged I cannot comment further on this matter - but all was not as it first seemed. Keith Hanscomb, a highly experienced and respected Victor operator, died of natural causes in 2009.
Postscript. Sadly Admiral of the Fleet Sir Henry Leach died on 26 April 2001 at the age of 87 - the Daily Telegraph obituary is here
