Page 31 - Demo

31Operation CORPORATE was critically dependent upon air-to-airrefuelling and thus upon (American-supplied) stocks of fuel. This is aVulcan%u2019s eye view of a Victor tanker.The only snag appeared after three weeks or so, when the admiral toldme that the tanker then en route to Ascension had broken a shaft, andwas not going to make our deadline. He had found a replacement but itwould be at least three days late. It rapidly became apparent that wewould be out of fuel before then. Wideawake was up to over 400 aircraftmovements per day. I asked him if we could use US stocks then on theisland, limited though they were. He agreed, but it was soon obvious thatthey would be used up too. Confronted with what seemed to be anintractable problem, the admiral produced a chart showing US warstocks at Ascension. The war emergency fuel supply was just enough tofill the gap until the next ship arrived. %u2018Hell!%u2019, he said, %u2018there is a war on,isn%u2019t there?%u2019 and we got our fuel.What I did not know when I first visited J4, was that Secretary ofDefense Caspar Weinberger had, as soon as he heard about theArgentinean invasion, told his staff that the Brits were to be given everyassistance possible short of actually engaging in operations, and that hewould not tolerate any bureaucratic interference with British requests,which were to be given maximum possible priority. Given that attitude