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25THE VIEW FROM BDLS WASHINGTONAir Vice-Marshal Ron DickRon Dick graduated from Cranwell in 1952 to flyMeteor F.8s; he subsequently became a QFI andwon two aerobatic trophies as such. His subsequentflying career took him, via Vulcans, to command ofthe Buccaneer Wing at Honington. He retired in1988 and settled in the USA where he writes andlectures on air power and aeroplanes and, throughhis association with the warbird movement, haskept his hand in by flying such types as the P-40and P-51 and, perhaps most significantly, ferrying the RAF Museum%u2019sB-17 across the Atlantic.When the Falklands crisis began in 1982, I was the British AirAttach%u00e9 in Washington and had been for about eighteen months. In thecourse of my career, I had also been fortunate enough to have been anexchange officer with the USAF, to have flown in a number of exercisesin the US, to have been a guide for the RCDS in North America and tohave served on General Haig%u2019s staff at SHAPE. My face was thereforefairly familiar to the US military, particularly to many in the Pentagon.Even if that had not been the case, it is true, I think, that US militarypeople are generally comfortable with their British counterparts, if for noother reason than that so many members of the British and Americanservices have suffered together in each other%u2019s staff colleges or haveenjoyed tours of exchange duty. As I was to find out in 1982, these interService contacts prove their worth time and again in an emergency.There is nothing to equal the sight of a friendly face when you have aproblem, unless it is the sound of a well-known voice on the %u2018phone.This proved to be particularly true at the highest levels of command,when Commanders-in-Chief who were old friends were often able to talkfreely and solve difficulties quickly on a transatlantic link.I was, by early 1982, well settled into an extremely pleasant tour ofduty as the friendly RAF spy in the US. The idyll began to fade on 19March when some Argentinean scrap metal merchants hoistedArgentina%u2019s flag on South Georgia. The initial reaction in the US wasthat the whole thing was too much like a comic opera plot to be takenseriously. However, when it became apparent that the comic opera was