Tony Cunnane's RAF Years

This story was written 27 October 2009

When I was writing my story about my entire crew falling asleep whilst flying at high level over the Mediterranean I recalled, for the first time in more than 50 years, another dangerous incident from earlier in my flying career.

In the early 1960s I was an Air Electronics Officer on No 18 Squadron at RAF Finningley – now Robin Hood Airport (Doncaster-Sheffield). The squadron operated Valiant V Bombers. Like all three types of V Bomber (Valiant, Victor, Vulcan) the Valiant had a crew of five: two pilots, two navigators and an AEO. The pilots had ejection seats while the other three rear-facing crew did not. I won't go into the politics of whether or not is was acceptable for two of the crew to have far better chances of escape in an emergency than the other three; that argument raged for the entire life of the V Force and was never resolved. (As an aside I can say that I spent considerably more time flying as a pilot on Victors than I did as an AEO on Valiants. As an AEO it never really worried me that my pilots had a better chance of escaping from a doomed aircraft than I did, but it certainly worried me when I later became a pilot and a Victor Tanker captain.)

Generally speaking, all flying in the V Force was boring – forever rehearsing the single one-way sortie to the Soviet Union that we all hoped never to fly. Today's story happened one day between 1960 and 1965 while we were flying from Akrotiri in Cyprus back to Finningley. As you read on you will realise why I do not identify either the precise date or the names of our crew. In those days some aircraft captains allowed their crew members to smoke whilst airborne. That seems an astonishing thing especially when you consider that the Valiant crew compartment was very small, pressurised, and contained copious quantities of flammable material, not least the 100% oxygen coming through the crew's oxygen masks. On this particular day our co-pilot was badly hung-over from a party he had attended the previous night and he'd even arrived late for the pre-flight briefing. The captain and the rest of us were not happy! However, to have delayed our flight would have required lots of awkward explanations to HQ Bomber Command so the captain elected to continue as scheduled.

Once we had reached our cruising altitude, which would have been around 40,000 feet (it always was in the Valiant!) the co-pilot told the captain that he needed a smoke. That particular captain never smoked in the air but he asked if any of us objected. We all said we had no objection to the co-pilot smoking if he really needed it. After a few minutes there was a muffled cry from the co-pilot. He had dropped his cigarette and he could see it glowing on the cabin floor beneath his ejection seat. I volunteered to go and retrieve it. To do that I had to unfasten my parachute, leave my seat, and peer down into the bomb-aimer's position located several feet beneath the two ejection seats. To my horror I saw that the cigarette, well-lit by now, was resting on a Perspex tube that fed de-icing fluid to the inside of the bomb-aimer's window.

De-icing fluid is, of course, highly flammable. I reported the situation to the captain. He ordered me to replace the seat safety pins into the co-pilot's ejection seat (that was the AEO's job anyway but it was never done in flight). He then ordered me to get back into my seat and fasten my parachute. The captain then uttered the immortal words etched into my memory: "OK, Co-pilot, you dropped the damned thing: you go and retrieve it."

The hapless co-pilot, muttered something to the effect that it would be dangerous to get out of his ejection seat in flight to which one of the navigators replied that it would be a darn sight more dangerous if the cigarette burned through the Perspex pipe and caused an explosion.

The co-pilot did as he was told and the danger was averted. He returned to his seat, chastened and humiliated. The captain had the job of explaining to the ground crew why there was a lengthy scorch mark on the Perspex tube adjacent to the bomb-aimer's panel. Had the aircraft exploded in flight over the Mediterranean it would have been just another unexplained accident involving a V Force aircraft.

I have no photographs of my time flying on Valiants because, Cold War xenophobia being what it was, private photography was banned. The image alongside is one I took from a 38 Squadron Shackleton flying over Luqa airfield in Malta in 1959. It shows a group of Valiant bombers parked on a remote area of the airfield.

There are other stories about my time flying Valiants on my RAF Years web site – including the curious story of the exploding chocolate teacakes.