Leaving Montreal - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

It was quite tricky turning around so that my bottom was level with the access panel in the vertical bulkhead. I stuffed the torch, still lit, into the top pocket of my flying suit and then gingerly started feeding my slim, six-foot body feet first through the extremely narrow hatch. Every now and again the captain called out to me to enquire as to my progress. There was now no going back; even had I wanted to, I doubt if I had sufficient strength in my arms to pull myself back up to the hatch and then through into the organ loft. I lowered myself, as slowly as my aching muscles would allow, until I was at full stretch but my feet were still dangling in space. I worked out from my knowledge of the aircraft that my feet must be quite near the inside walls of the bomb doors so I simply let go. I fell and just about managed to remain standing. The torch was jerked out of my pocket and fell with a loud clatter onto the bomb doors.

"What's going on?" shouted the captain. He sounded quite peeved.

"I’ve fallen onto the bomb doors - and I dropped the torch," I replied.

Some daylight percolated into the bomb-bay through various cracks. I retrieved the torch and looked around the cavernous space. It was very eerie; this was where a single 10,000lb nuclear weapon or 21 x 1,000lb conventional bombs could be carried. Our aircraft had a virtually empty bomb bay. There was a strong smell of aviation fuel mixed in with the characteristic smells of airframes and electronic equipment but that did not seem important at the time. I turned around to the forward bulkhead where there was a low  shelf which held the batteries. Then I had a brainwave. Close by was a short tube which led to the outside world - this used to be part of the 'Window' chaff dispenser. I prised the cap off the top and more daylight appeared.

"You don’t have to feed the cables through the organ loft after all – you can pass them up the chaff chute," I shouted down the tube. "You'll need much shorter cables."

I could sense the relief outside. It was quite a while before someone pushed the first cable up the tube. I grabbed the bulldog clamp on the end of the cable and pulled a good length through.

"That one’s the negative cable," shouted the Crew Chief helpfully. "Don’t get them mixed up otherwise you’ll likely explode the aircraft battery!"

Only then did it occur to me that we had not considered the problem of how I was going to fix the cables onto the battery terminals. The Crew Chief, as usual, had the answer.

"Not much current is needed to operate the battery master contactor so you just have to hold the cable ends onto the battery terminals. 24 volts won't hurt you. As soon as I get 24 volts in the cockpit I'll switch the 96 volt battery on and open the bomb doors."

Great idea – except that I was standing on the bomb doors!

To cut a long story short, I collected the second cable passed to me through the chaff tube and I then held them both tightly while I clambered off the bomb doors onto the narrow battery shelf, muttering to myself 'negative left hand, positive right'. Fortunately by that time my eyes had grown accustomed to the limited amount of light percolating into the bomb bay and I could just about see what I was doing without the aid of the torch. After double-checking which terminal was which on the battery pack, I pressed the cable ends as tightly as I could onto the terminals and shouted down that I was ready.

There was a loud clunk as a contactor in the Organ Loft above me closed. At the same time the bomb bay lights came on unexpectedly, momentarily startling me. My hands gave an involuntary jerk and a large spark flashed across one of the battery terminals. I almost let go of both cables.

"Hurry up," I shouted in some desperation. "Get the bloody bomb doors open before I drop the cables."

A few seconds later there was another loud clunk, which I assumed was the 96 volt contactor and almost immediately I heard the bomb door motors start up. As I recall it there were four motors spaced equally along the length of each of the doors so it was quite noisy. A huge gap opened up underneath me as the two long doors slowly wound themselves up the ratchet rails into the upper fuselage. I must have been temporarily frozen into immobility because after what seemed an age the captain appeared under the doors and said quietly, "You can come down from your perch now, Tony, if you want."

Things moved swiftly after that. The captain started the first aircraft engine using the batteries and then the crew chief switched the generator on line. This immediately provided a reliable source of 28 and 112 volts. The captain and crew chief then started the three remaining engines and moved the aircraft off the runway onto a nearby dispersal. The captain decided that we should run the engines for quite a while to give the internal batteries time to charge up.

Another airport vehicle arrived with flashing lights and the driver came over to us clutching a piece of paper. "There’s a priority signal for you from Bomber Command. It came through overnight but no-one thought to bring it out to you until just now."

The co-pilot took the flimsy piece of paper and read it to himself before passing it into the cockpit for the captain. He told us, the navigator, signaller and me, what it said.

"Instructions from Bomber Command HQ. We’re not to fly out. We’re not to touch anything. They’re sending an engineer on a Vulcan with new batteries and a Board of Enquiry team are flying out civil air to find out why the battery went flat overnight. They all arrive in a couple of days."

"I know why the 24 volt battery went flat overnight," said the Crew Chief a few minutes later when the Valiant was once again standing silently. "I must have left the bomb bay lights on when I closed everything else down. It’s part of the original bomber fit. When you switch the battery master switch off in the cockpit, everything goes off except the bomb bay lights. They have their own switch in the bomb bay. Something to do with the armourers checking the nukes without having to go into the cockpit when the aircrew have secured everything."

So that was it. The two members of the Board of Enquiry, although happy to have an unexpected trip to Montreal, were not impressed either with the cause or with the way we had handled the problem. The airport authorities were not impressed because we had held up movements for a couple of hours. And I was certainly not impressed when the senior engineer who arrived two days later on the Vulcan told me that the large spark I created when my hands jerked was quite potent enough to have ignited the fuel vapour I had smelled in the bomb bay when the doors were still closed. That could, indeed should, have been sufficient to explode the aircraft, its full load of fuel and all those standing in the vicinity. St Hubert airport authorities would have been impressed at that! I imagine their runway could have been out of action for quite time.

We flew back to base a few days later having spent several nights being entertained splendidly in and around beautiful Montreal by kind Canadians. No-one back at base ever referred to the incident. No-one ever thought to say thank you to me for risking life and limb clambering around in the darkness of the bomb bay of a nuclear bomber even if we were not carrying any weapons. However, every time I watch the final sequence of the film Dr Strangelove I think of how I, and all around, might have been blown to smithereens.