Col Leadbetter eased the throttle of his English Electric Lightning open a millimeter or so more and then back, feeling the pleasant sensation of power in the seat of his pants as he nosed into line alongside his Flight Lieutenant on the runway at Waddington. No one would call the Lightning an aesthetically pleasing aeroplane. It was in effect two powerful aero engines tacked together with a pilot and tail fin perched on top, two razor sharp wings set at a preposterously raked back angle and two Sidewinder missiles by way of armament, as deadly as the Arizona desert viper after which they were named. Maybe not beautiful but highly functional, the Lightning was designed in the cold war to deter Russian bombers from attacking Britain over the North Sea, and now the Cold War had suddenly warmed up, their function was just the same, except now their role was destruction rather than deterrence and they were protecting not just Britain, but Western Civilisation. There was a crackle in his earphones.

     "Attention Squadron 217, This is Wing Commander Malone. You are cleared for take-off, so switch on your autonavs so your Air Traffic Manager can vector you into strike position. Good Luck, I'm sure you'll do the name of the squadron proud. Over to you Squadron Leader." A series of figures appeared on the green screen of the autonav.

"OK everyone, this is Squadron Leader Carmichael. As soon as you unstick go to Engage on your Autonavs and squeeze up to full power which will take you to target in four minutes twenty.       Alphavic with me will take up position above and astern of the bandits just to double insure against any nasty surprises. Betavic will go in front and below to discourage the bandits from scattering and giving Deltavic and Gammavic a free run in. Don't hang around. Hawkeye Five tells me these bandits are Bears, with no fighter cover, which shows that Ivans can make mistakes too. They can also rectify them and I want to be back at base with a duvet over my head when the Ivans realise what hit'em. OK Tally ho. Alphavic One and Two, I'm rolling". Col in Betavic was annoyed, his first operation and he was a sheepdog, not a wolf. It really was not fair!     

Bang on four minutes from take off, Col called "I see them, twelve Bears dead ahead."

The Squadron needed no second bidding and swept into action. Broken bits of Bears fluttered down to splash in the Nort Sea, like confetti. Then one made a dash for it.

"After him Col" shouted the Deltavic Flight Lieutenant. Col carefully armed his Sidewinders, lined up the Bear and loosed off his starboard missile, which caught the Bear as he was attempting a violent evasive turn, right under the wing root, tearing it off, leaving the fuselage and other wing to twist like a Sycamore seedpod down to the ocean. Despite himself Col was appalled at the destruction he had wrought and was pleased to see six parachutes blossom from the aerial wreckage.

"Well done" chirruped a female North American voice in his ear,

"Uh?"

"Oh sorry, this is Hawkeye 5, your friendly Air Controller. All bandits down. Mission accomplished. I have picked up two blips making your way at mach 2.4 which can only be bandits. They are still miles away but I think now would be a good time to beat a dignified retreat, put your autonavs onto receive and I'll feed in coordinates for home."

"This is Squadon Leader 217. Thanks for all your help Hawkye 5. If you ever find yourself near Waddington, the drinks are on us"

"No probs, our pleasure. The next time you see an RCAF uniform, buy them the drink. Bye now, This is Hawkeye 5 signing off, over and out."

Ah that explained the accent, Canadian! Canadians dislike being called Americans almost as much as New Zealanders dislike being thought of as Australians. Good job he hadn't said anything. No doubt the war would attract young Commonwealth personnel, so that was something to look forward to. Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea getting engaged last month.

  As Col dropped back down to earth his adrenaline drained and the enormity of what he had done hit him. His first kill! probably literally. He saw six parachutes. How many crew were there in a Bear? And how many would survive a dunking in the North Sea? Men of his age, like him with mothers and girlfriends, now fish food. Yet into his solemn reverie crept lighter thoughts. Thank goodness he had drawn a hundred quid out of the cash machine as there wouldn't be much change from that after the purchase of 60 pints of Greene -King in the Mess tonight to celebrate his first kill. Well at least his car had a full tank of fuel and he would see his fiancee, tomorrow.

The Boeing 3A Sentinel from which Hawkeye 5 had directed 217 Squadron's massacre of the Bears earlier that day is a strange looking bird. It is also known by the acronym of its functions, Airborne Warning And Control System (AWACS). It is based on a four engined Boeing 707 airframe and is packed with electronics. Its most noteworthy feature is a mushroom shaped rotating radome strapped to the top of its fuselage, housing its look down radar which has a 400 mile radius. This particular Sentinel had had an intermittent electronic fault which the crew could identify but not fix. So when the plane was relieved from its station patrolling above southern England it was ordered down to Brize Norton just north of Oxford, the home of RAF Transport Command where it would find spares and expertise almost to the standard of its own home base at Tinker in the USA. As the plane was locking into final approach,with its avionics and electronic defences switched off for touch down, it was jumped by a Russian Mig 25 (NATO reporting codename) 'Foxbat'. The encounter was fleeting but the Foxbat got off a heat seeking air to air missile which hit the Sentinel's outer starboard engine. The alarm sounded in the cockpit where Captain Jill McLintock told her co pilot Bud Harris to deal with the 'flamer' while she landed the bird. Dealing with a flamer and landing on three engines were common enough emergency situations on the training simulator. So feathers were only slightly ruffled by the time McLintock pulled up on the apron in front of the maintenance hangar with her fourth engine now trailing foam rather than flames.

The Foxbat was less fortunate. Under the flightpath a platoon of British artillerymen had been tramping through the wet fields, on a training exercise with deactivated shoulder launched Stinger missiles (the kind the CIA issued to the Mujahadin in Afghanistan to see off the Russians there) The Lieutenant in command of the platoon, seeing the Foxbat take out the Sentinel's engine and then go into a tight right hand turn assumed (correctly) that it was coming back to finish the job. So he quickly keyed in the code reactivating the weapons and taking advantage of the Foxbat coming back over them, slow and steady at less than 200ft, the patrol shot off two missiles, one of which lodged in the port exhaust of the Russian fighter, taking out the port engine and degrading the starboard engine so badly that the pilot was forced to eject while the burning plane plunged into a barley field. The Russian pilot was chased by the local chapter of the Gloucestershire Young Farmers Club armed with rabbit guns and pitch forks, enraged by the damage done to the barley field and the trauma suffered by their dairy herds.

The pilot was rescued from the hen house into which he had crawled for refuge only by the timely arrival of a Land Rover full of RAF Police from the base and the help of an elderly Polish gentleman who had settled in the area after the Second World War and who still had enough schoolboy Russian to reassure the airman that his rights as a Prisoner of War would be respected. Dr Patel from the District Surgery, removed a half dozen 12 bore pellets from the pilot's buttocks- painful but non lethal injuries.

Back at the base the maintenance engineers swiftly released the twisted remains of the outer port engine from the Sentinel's pylons, replaced the connecting cables and pipes and winched another engine into place. A team of 'sparkies' descended onto the troublesome electronics unit and with the combined intellectual weight of two graduates from Aston University, one from Stanford and one from McGill, had the unit humming happily when dawn arrived and the Sentinel was cleared for take-off to resume its vigil over southern England.

Postscript:

A month later the diary of Mrs Gloria Bickerstaffe, Landlady of The Rose & Crown in Carterton (a village near Brize Norton) records that a mixed party of Canadian and British service personnel drank the pub dry by 10 pm and the not inconsiderable tab was paid in Canadian dollars.

Francis King

Oxford

August 2013