The final stretch - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

. . .  continued from here

Anyone who has been to, or through, Dubai in the last 20 years or so would not believe how empty it was in 1972. There was only the one hotel; we saw no shops or houses during the drive to it but we did see what seemed like hundreds of houseboats jammed into moorings in Dubai Creek. Apparently that was where the great majority of Dubai citizens lived. There was no sign of any other guests when we booked into the hotel. We were allocated rooms and that was all we needed at that stage - but I had to sign another chit for all the rooms. There were no means for me to contact anyone either by military signal or civilian telephone and the staff sergeant had disappeared (we never saw him again). In the evening we decided to try to eat out but all we could find was a sort of Wimpy place - and it was dreadful. Dubai village was, as they say, as dead as a dodo.

We met up again for breakfast and the friendly Arab who had driven us to the hotel the evening before was waiting in the foyer to take us back to our aircraft. I assume he was on a retainer! Fuel bowsers turned up as we arrived and we set about filling our tanks to full as quickly as possible. The armed guards were still around but they were less threatening than the day before. A few locals had gathered and they stood around silently watching. I assumed that we were going to be permitted to leave and it seemed a good idea to go just as soon as we were ready. I gave only a passing thought to whether the diplomatic clearances for the next leg were in order; I was determined to leave Dubai as quickly as possible.

It was very hot, in the mid-30s, and humid. Our take-off run seemed to use up most of the 13,000 feet of concrete. Thankfully the flight to Akrotiri went as planned and there were no problems with any of the air traffic control authorities. A direct route from Dubai to Akrotiri would have crossed Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iraq, countries where the RAF was not welcome. Instead, we flew north across the Gulf to Bandar-e-Abbas on the southern coast of Iran, joined the Iranian civilian airways system and then flew the length of Iran from south to north, passing close to Tehran, before turning west at Lake Van and continuing along Turkish airways. Most of our flight was at around 40,000 ft, well above any civilian traffic. Eventually we turned south, finally crossing the Mediterranean and so to Cyprus. It was just like a navigation exercise for the navigators but quite a pretty route for the pilots, especially flying in clear skies over the high mountains in the north of Iran and over the remote Lake Van and Diyarbakir areas of Turkey. It was, of course, forbidden to take any air-to-ground photographs.

In order to make up for the extra day we'd been delayed at Gan, I'd already planned, after discussions with my crew, that we would double-stage through Akrotiri, staying on the ground there just long enough to refuel. We were all pretty desperate to get home. To save us the bother of repacking the tail braking parachute, a lengthy, tedious job at the best of times, I checked the landing conditions to see if we were within the limits for landing without streaming the parachute. We had to be below 135,000 lbs all up weight on landing, there had to be 9,000 feet of runway available and there had to be no tail wind component at touchdown. I confirmed all three of those conditions on the final approach.

It was the Al’s turn to do the approach and landing at Akrotiri. He flew a perfectly good approach but in the last couple of hundred feet we clearly picked up a few knots of unexpected tailwind. Al flared for the landing but the aircraft ‘floated’ about 15 feet above the concrete and continued to do so. I took control, forced the aircraft down onto the runway and simultaneously streamed the tail parachute. It was a heavy landing, the worst I ever made in a Victor.

The tail braking parachute is most effective at high speeds but by the time it was fully streamed it produced little noticeable retardation. For a few seconds I thought we might be going off the end of the runway into the salt flats. However, the Victor's wheel brakes are very efficient and we slowed sufficiently to allow me to turn left off the runway and onto the taxiway right at the very end. ATC told me that sparks had been seen from one of the main wheels on touchdown and they thought a tyre might have burst. They advised me to hold my position so that the wheels could be checked.

I suddenly realised that there were several Marham tankers waiting to take off on an operational refuelling sortie. It was a good job I'd managed to clear the runway because to have delayed tankers on an operational take-off would have been extremely embarrassing. The Marham detachment engineering officer came out to us at the end of the runway with a crew coach and inspected the undercarriage. He reported that one tyre had burst and that the other three on the same bogie would have to be changed as a precaution. He told us to go to the Transit Mess, have breakfast, and stay there until he called us. His men would change the tyres, refuel the aircraft, re-pack the tail parachute and prepare the aircraft for the flight to Marham. He clearly wanted us up and away before the other tankers returned from their sortie.

Within two hours we were airborne again and less than five hours after that we taxied into our usual squadron dispersal at Marham. As we climbed down our Flight Commander welcomed each of us back and introduced us to our new Squadron Commander. The new Boss said he had followed our adventures with great interest and was most impressed with the way our crew had handled all the difficulties we had encountered in the 32 days since we’d left Marham. There was no mention of the landing incident at Akrotiri.

Postscript 14 January 2012. We never did learn what had caused the alternator failures at Tengah although, when the aircraft went into the hangar after our return to Marham for an investigation, handfuls of swarf (stuff rather like wire wool) were found in a couple of cooling ducts around the alternator. It was thought the material might have been left over after a major servicing some months earlier. Whether that swarf had in some way caused a short circuit when the ducts flexed in flight and thereby caused the alternator to trip, was never proved. It was agreed by the engineers that the swarf should not have been in the ducts anyway! We, the crew, never heard anything more about our diplomatic clearances nor did I ever have any feedback from Sharjah, or anywhere else, about what happened to all the signals I had sent them and to which they never replied. I never heard anything more about the bills I'd signed at Dubai - although I must admit I did keep a check on my personal current account for several months.

I handed over to the RAF Marham Operations Staff the signals file I'd maintained throughout the Lone Ranger. The final enclosure, number 100 exactly as it happens, was the copy of the signal we had sent at Akrotiri giving our estimated time of arrival at Marham. Of those 100 enclosures almost 90 were signals I or my crew had sent; the rest were signals we had received. That is a measure of the extent of orders and instructions we received en route. It really been a Lone Ranger.

I was most impressed by the professionalism of all my crew during this my first Lone Ranger as a Captain. I'm especially grateful to my AEO, Neil Flowerdew, and my co-pilot, Al Skelton for proof-reading my words and for making several suggestions and corrections. Neil has told me that there were 29 unserviceable items to be entered in XH667's engineering log when we got back to base – many related to items that we had carried for most of the Lone Ranger. The item I particularly remembered concerned the auto-pilot, which had failed on our initial approach to Tengah. Co-pilot Al Skelton and I had to fly the entire route from Singapore to Marham manually - 16 hrs 30 mins; non-pilots will not appreciate how very tiring that was.