Page 50 - Demo

50to learn how to refuel in the air. I was so lucky to have the son of BillBedford, the test pilot, as the Flight Commander of my trainingsquadron, as (just like his father) he has the most marvellous flying skillsand he did all the conversions for me, only four trips per crew beingallowed before they were sent south to Ascension to do it for real overthe South Atlantic.We did encounter some problems because we did not receive our firstHercules tanker until after the war had ended, so all of the earlyrefuelling had to be done from Victors and Vulcans. The discrepancybetween the speeds of the aircraft means that you cannot really do it inlevel flight because, at operational weights, the Victor (the Vulcans wereonly involved in UK-based training sorties) can%u2019t go slow enough andthe Herc can%u2019t go fast enough. In the end we developed a techniquewhich involved fuel being transferred in a gentle dive starting at about20,000 feet. That way, the Victor could manage to keep down to 230knots and (thanks to Isaac Newton) the poor old Herc could bump up itsnormal 210 knots to match this. This procedure meant a prolongeddescent at 500 feet per minute, the exercise usually being completedabout 5000 feet above the ocean, before commencing the long haul backup to altitude. That said, depending on the conditions, it could be a lotlower!A typical mission would require three tankers to get a Hercules all theway down to the Falklands and back (not counting any involved inmutual Victor-Victor transfers). The Herc would be overtaken by thefirst Victor and refuel from it about 1500 miles south of Ascension. Thesecond Victor would catch up with the Herc after another 1500 miles andjust short of its descent to the Task Force, that tanker having to berefuelled itself on the way back. Once down to about 1000 feet theHercules would depressurise, open its ramp, drop the stores to the ships,close the ramp, repressurise, climb back up to cruising altitude beforemaking a rendezvous with its third tanker halfway home. Each of theseflights would take a minimum of 25 hours but one crew, commanded byFlt Lt Terry Locke, set a world record for the Herc on 18/19 June whenthe sortie lasted 28 hours and 3 minutes! %u2013 which puts our annual holidayflight to Malaga into perspective, doesn%u2019t it?I should, perhaps, expand further on these very long flights becausethey really did push my crews to the limit. Sustaining the Task Forcerequired a daily flight but I had very few crews who were trained to air