The Code by Nick Elliott

Author:Nick Elliott [Elliott, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-05-18T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

North Berwick, Scotland

8-9 June 1999

We landed at East Fortune, once home to a First and then a Second World War airfield that had since been transformed into a flight museum. Neither of us had passports, and having gone through a perfunctory customs and immigration check in an old and damp concrete hut some way off the runway, we walked out past a decommissioned delta wing RAF bomber parked on the apron outside a hangar. It reminded me of the giant manta rays we used to see breaching off the Mexican coast.

‘One of two surviving Vulcans to have engaged the enemy in those hair-raising Black Buck missions,’ the Admiral announced. ‘They flew them down to Ascension, then on to the Falklands with in-air refuelling along the way. Bombed Port Stanley airfield, but to be honest those raids weren’t terribly effective. And this particular old bird caused an international incident when it had to divert to Brazil. You can see both mission markings and a Brazilian flag painted on the nose.’

‘Why weren’t they effective?’ I asked.

‘Because they weren’t intended for that kind of work. They were part of the V-force, the backbone of our airborne nuclear deterrent during the Cold War. And for the most part they were armed with nuclear weapons. Theirs was more of a high-altitude strategic role to patrol over Europe. Bet you didn’t know that, did you, Valdis.’

‘Of course I knew,’ he said winking at me. ‘It was our job to know everything you were doing.’

‘Humbug!’ the Admiral grunted. ‘I bet you didn’t know that you could roll those beasts either.’

‘Impossible!’

‘No. One was famously rolled back in 1955 by Avro’s chief test pilot. His name was “Rolly” Falk. He received a sound bollocking of course from the Avro directors but they were secretly delighted.’ We all laughed. Anything unrelated to the events we’d just left behind brought on a sense of elation.

From the airfield we were taken in a black unmarked Ford eastwards along the backroads of East Lothian until we reached the coast.

‘Welcome to Gin Head,’ declared the Admiral with satisfaction and a note of relief at having finally brought us to our destination in one piece. ‘You’ve never heard of this place and you’d be well advised to forget you were ever here. It was used as an early warning station to alert the RAF to incoming enemy aircraft. Not any more though.’

On the face of it, it was just a long-abandoned collection of grey, nondescript concrete huts, albeit on a spectacular clifftop site overlooking the North Sea. But I didn’t want to spoil things for the Admiral, whose guided tour would have been a credit to any estate agent.

‘This place allowed the RAF to scramble fighters to the exact areas under attack; that’s why the RAF always appeared to be in the right place at the right time. The Luftwaffe never recognised its importance. And the “Window” technique was developed here too: dropping bundles of aluminium from an aircraft which would deflect enemy radar signals and jam their stations.

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