Wings (41 page)

Peters and Nichol were captured, interrogated, beaten up and displayed on Iraqi television. After seven hellish weeks they were released after Saddam Hussein’s adventure in Kuwait ended in
defeat and humiliation. In all, twenty-nine Allied aircraft were brought down, most of them by SAM missiles. The danger of air-to-air interception passed when the Iraqi air force defected en masse
to Iran, or the figure would surely have been higher.

The lessons learned from the 1991 Gulf War and the counter-measures adopted meant that, thereafter, the threat from ground defences was greatly reduced. Between the end of that conflict and
Britain and America’s return to war with Saddam in 2003, their aircraft enforced no-fly zones to prevent him from using air power against the Kurds in the north of the
country and the Shias in the south. In that time, British and American aircraft flew more than 300,000 missions and sustained not a single casualty. The air war that led the overthrow
of Saddam in 2003 came at virtually no cost to the allies. Two British aircraft were shot down, but as the result of deadly American mistakes, rather than enemy action.

NATO aircraft also found themselves facing ageing Soviet technology when they attacked Serbian targets in the spring of 1999. The Yugoslav pilots showed exemplary pluck, coming up to face their
enemies, but they presented no real threat. Missiles – even the old-fashioned and poorly maintained types in the Serbs’ armoury – still posed a danger, however, and an American
F-117 stealth bomber and F-16 fighter bombers were brought down by SAM strikes.

By the time the West launched its air war against the regime of Colonel Gaddafi in March 2010 the procedure developed in two Iraq wars and the Kosovo intervention had a well-practised
smoothness, which quickly eliminated the threat from the ground. In the opening phase, more than a hundred Tomahawk cruise missiles rained down on all the key points in Libya’s air defence
infrastructure, so that operations to dominate the regime’s forces could carry on virtually unhindered.

Technological advances mean that air strikes are now far more devastating and carry far less risk than they did even in the 1990s. The advent of the laser-guided bomb, then of satellite-directed
weaponry, means that ordnance can now be delivered with uncanny precision. The result is that the volume of bombs dropped has shrunk. One bomb can now be used
to destroy a
target where fifteen would have been needed just twenty years ago, and perhaps a thousand during the Second World War. Aircraft no longer have to get close to the objective to increase their
chances of hitting it, and the weather and the fact that it is day or night are increasingly irrelevant. As accuracy has soared, risk has fallen. The increasing use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
– UAVs or ‘drones’ – as weapons platforms has removed the possibility of operator casualties altogether. Precision and lethality, however, only have value if they are
directed at the right targets. The interventions in Bosnia, Iraq and particularly Afghanistan have been blighted by horrific intelligence blunders, resulting in ‘smart’ bombs blowing to
scraps the very people the mission was purportedly launched to save.

The one area of military aviation where risks are regularly taken is that of flying helicopters. In Iraq, American rotary aircraft proved alarmingly vulnerable to ground fire, even from such
primitive missiles as Soviet-designed rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

In Afghanistan in the early days of the British deployment to Helmand Province, Chinook pilots flying in troops to remote and embattled locations frequently came under small-arms, machine-gun
and RPG fire as they landed their machines. Flight Lieutenant Chris Hasler, a twenty-six-year-old Canadian flying with the RAF’s 18 Squadron, underwent a particularly harrowing experience
when inserting 3 Para soldiers on an operation to seize a key insurgent leader in Helmand in July 2006. As he approached the target area with more than thirty
men on board
reports came in that the enemy was waiting for them. The Chinooks carried on regardless. Hasler raced into the landing zone behind two helicopters piloted by a Royal Navy pilot, Lieutenant Nichol
Benzie, and his boss, Wing Commander Mike Woods. As Benzie touched down the shooting started. When Hasler’s turn came to land he ‘wanted nothing more than to pull in power and get away
from that place as fast as possible’. But the first Paras were now scrambling down the ramps at the rear of the lead Chinooks. Hasler realized that ‘if I didn’t put my own troops
on the ground to bolster their strength they would surely be cut to ribbons’.
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He continued his approach ‘for what seemed like years’. There was so much incoming fire and floating ribbons of tracer that he ‘didn’t realize how fast I was going until
it was almost too late’. To slow down, he pulled up while only a few yards from the ground, putting the underbelly of the chopper flat on, so that it acted as an air brake. If the angle of
approach was more than twenty-six degrees, he risked digging the rear rotor into the ground and a catastrophic crash. But he just ‘managed to check the nose forward to under twenty-five
degrees, half a second before we touched’. It was a hard landing, but they were down. Hasler’s first reaction was ‘jubilation that I hadn’t killed everyone on
board’.

Then there were other things to worry about. A heavy machine gun was hosing bullets from a position about a hundred yards away to the left. One of the RAF crewmen tried to return fire from one
of the Chinook’s door-mounted GPMGs, but ‘was having a tough time . . . the enemy had sent
out groups of women and children ahead of them while they fired over
their heads at us’.

Operational procedures dictated that a helicopter should spend no more than thirty seconds on the ground, even if there were still troops on board. Hasler had been down for more than a minute
and his crew and co-pilot yelled at him to lift off. He was unaware that three men were still on the ramp, struggling to unload mortar bombs. As the Chinook rose skywards, rather than head back to
safety the soldiers jumped for it. Hasler poured on the power and the helicopter lifted ‘like a cork’, chased by ‘big green bulbs of tracer swishing past my co-pilot’s head
at what seemed like only inches away’. Hasler was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his Afghan exploits.

This organic integration with army operations is just one of the RAF’s twenty-first-century functions. Once again its primary duty is one that emerged early in the history of British
military aviation. Just like the RFC and RNAS, which took to the skies over London to try and shoot down the looming Zeppelins and Gothas in the First World War, the RAF carries the responsibility
for defending Britain from enemy air attack. Since the attacks on the World Trade Centre of 11 September, 2001 a force of Typhoon fighters is held at constant, round-the-clock ‘quick reaction
alert’, ready to scramble within five minutes to intercept any aircraft that enters the United Kingdom’s airspace without authority. During the heightened threat period of the London
Olympics in 2012 they were joined by Sentry airborne warning radar aircraft.

Since the end of the Cold War the RAF has moved from a static posture, operating from bases in the United Kingdom and Germany, to becoming essentially an expeditionary air
force. This means it is in a position to project British air power – usually in alliance with American and European partners – to operations across the globe, both military and
humanitarian. Following the earthquake in Pakistan in 2005, for example, C-17 and Hercules transports were in action almost immediately, flying in food and vital supplies.

The RAF is the world’s oldest independent air force. It has played a central part in the nation’s history throughout the twentieth century, and could reasonably be said to have saved
it when, in the summer of 1940, the skill and courage of its airmen averted the possibility of defeat and enslavement in the greatest air battle ever seen. The RAF’s contribution to Allied
victory was enormous and its losses, particularly in Bomber Command, were heavy. In the post-war years it was at the heart of our system of defence against the threat of attack from the Soviet
Union, and since then it has been intimately engaged in every conflict the country has faced.

The RAF is universally admired for its technological sophistication and skill, and respected for the power it yields. It is the biggest air force in Europe and the second largest in NATO after
the USAF. The cost of maintaining it – especially in a time of global recession – has meant that just as in the early days of its existence it is compelled to restate frequently its
raison d’être
. The RAF’s best argument is that its technological virtuosity makes it uniquely capable of
reacting to the multiple dangers emanating
from conventional and unconventional adversaries across the globe. It is now faced with the challenge of defending our interests in space, where the satellites that control 90 per cent of all
military capabilities reside. It has also to develop defences against cyberspace attacks, which seem likely to be a new theatre in future wars.

At first sight the identity and preoccupations of the modern air force might seem to bear little relation to those of the bold aviators who in August 1914 climbed into their fragile craft to
head out over the English Channel on their way to the battlefields of France. Yet there is a direct, linear connection between the two, which modern airmen cherish.

‘Every RAF squadron has a history linking it back to units from its formation,’ said a young serving officer who has done intensive service in combat roles. ‘Our history is
relatively new and so is perhaps remembered more vividly.’
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The RFC, the RNAS and the RAF were born of new technologies. To survive, to succeed, it was essential that they stood ready to exploit every new scientific development that brought the prospect
of advantage. That attitude ensured that the reputations of the RAF, along with the Fleet Air Arm and Army Air Corps, have stood so high for a hundred years. It is matched by the spirit of the men
and women who have served over the last century, a unique mixture of boldness, ingenuity and optimism that remains as fresh and inspiring as it was in the heady days of the pioneers.
Per Ardua
ad Astra . . .