A Gulf Story (Part 5)

On January 20th 1991, the air war had been going for 3 days, we as the Tornado force at Dhahran had already lost a jet and its crew, Kieran and Norman were not from my squadron, but I knew them both, tragically they had been killed during a low level training sortie just a few days before the start of hostilities. The RAF had now also lost a Tornado in combat, the jet was from the unit based over in Bahrain, it had been hit by enemy fire over the target and the crew had ejected from their stricken jet, been captured and were now being paraded battered and bruised on the TV News as Prisoners of War (POW) the same TV News, that I’m watching in my hotel room! War had become a very strange and very personal thing, but somehow detached from reality? That very morning in the portacabin that we used as a crewroom, while not working on the jets, I’d watched ‘Ob’ & ‘Gedgy’ a crew from my squadron and good friends being interviewed on TV just a few hundred yards away from where I was sitting, after they had completed the first Tornado mission of the war, absolutely surreal! These were just fast-jet jockeys that I worked with, shared beers with, took the piss out of, and there they were talking about being shot at by Iraqi AAA on bloody Sky News, BBC, ITV, the lot!
Now, off shift back at the hotel I’m watching the downed Bahrain crew, ‘JP’ & John, (I didn’t know them at the time) as I’ve said battered, bruised and clearly under duress on Iraq TV. I can remember thinking right at that moment, I’m bloody glad that I don’t know those two guys personally! It upset me to see two RAF aircrew, probably lads who I’d strapped in when they trained on the at the Tornado Weapons Conversion Unit, that I’d been on before my current squadron, but it would have upset me a bloody lot more if the swollen and severely pissed off faces on the screen in front on me had been my squadron mates at the time and I make no apology for that. Our unit at Dhahran was very soon to lose a jet in combat too! Everyone thought that the crew had been killed due to the circumstances of it’s loss over the target area and nothing was heard about them being captured? It wasn’t until 5 or so weeks later when the war was over, that ‘Budgie’ & Bob were seen on TV climbing off an aeroplane ‘alive and kicking’ in Damascus, Syria after being released from captivity. So maybe, it was better to be seen battered and bruised, than to be missing, presumed dead, especially for the families involved?
Sadly after escaping from a crippled jet over an Iraqi airfield that was still being bombed the shit out of by your mates, then going through the trauma of being in captivity, Budgie was to lose his life in a flying accident in Wales that had been caused by a groundcrew error! Another thing worth mentioning about this surreal televised war was this; We were watching this CNN reporter broadcasting live from a hotel rooftop very close to our Dhahran airbase, actually reporting ‘live’ in his shitkicking, redneck, septic drawl, that “in the background, you can hear the roar of the British Tornaddooos taking off for a mission deep into Iraq” Now, I’m not a tactician or military strategist, but it doesn’t take a fucking rocket scientist to realise that any artillery man watching CNN, who didn’t flunk the equivalent of the Iraqi 11+ exam at school can work out how long it’ll be before these screaming pink death bombers are going to be overhead his little square of sandpit and prepare to chuck up as much shit at them as him and his mates possibly can!
Well done Mr Charles Jaco of CNN, you’re soon going to get a visit from a rather irate RAF Tornado Squadron Boss to show you the errors of your ways! In fact I’m sure a few navs that I know would have happily swapped their Iraqi targets for the CNN hotel right at the end of the Dhahran airbase runway!
Other than watching TV when back at the hotel, we drank tea and talked shite, not quite as much fun as drinking beer and talking utter shite, anyway this was frequently interrupted by Iraqi scud missile attacks, sometimes genuine, sometimes false alarms! We didn’t have any Air Raid Shelters back at the hotel as we did at the airbase, the drill was, when the alarm sounded ‘Mask Up’ get our NBC Suits on (Nuclear Biological Chemical) if we didn’t already still have them on from the last alarm? Then get into the corridors of the hotel, basically away from the windows in case of flying glass from any explosions. I’d criss crossed our hotel room windows with masking tape from work, a bit like in wartime movies set in the Blitz (I actually think it might still be on those windows, because when I tried to remove it 2 months later, it was baked on solid!).
We had at this stage of the war not realised that the American Patriot Missiles were so good at taking out the inbound scuds, that going to watch them instead of taking cover would become so popular, but frowned upon! We didn’t get a great deal of sleep due to constant air attack warnings and we were in work early the following morning! Dhahran Annie and her crew however were just being firing up and getting ready for their mission to bomb an airbase in Southern Iraq, they were in the safe hands of ‘Shit Shift’ and I would more than likely see them back to their parking slot first thing in the morning, at least, I bloody well hoped so! To be continued tomorrow..........