Vulcan 607 (book review)
Towards midnight, local time, on April Fool's Day 1982, Argentina's military government invaded the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic--one of the few far-flung colonies that Britain still claimed as part of her dwindling overseas possessions. Over the next few weeks, they fortified the islands non-stop, in anticipation of the former colonial power's response.
Then, on 1st May 1982--exactly twenty-five years ago today--the world woke up to learn that the British Empire had struck back. A single Avro Vulcan bomber had laid twenty-one 1,000-pound bombs across Port Stanley airfield.
Vulcan 607, by Rowland White, is the story of that mission. This book is not the greatest literature, but the prose is clear and competent, and spiced with a few catchy turns of phrase. More importantly, it is an impressive telling of an impressive story, admirable in both its thoroughness and clarity, and in its even-handedness towards all concerned.
On the political level, White manages to seem fair to the Argentinians, giving a balanced account of their historic claim to the islands and their belief in their own cause. True, some of the Argentinians are presented as "bad guys" in a way that no-one on the British side is, but this is a subject where passions run high on both sides, and it's good to see such a restrained treatment, especially because it allows the reader to experience how it was at the time, from the points of view of all involved.
The stars of the book, however, are the "V-bombers" and their crews: big, graceful aeroplanes with swept-back delta airframes, that looked like a vision of the future... in the 1950s.
The Vulcan, together with its stablemate the Victor, was originally conceived after World War II as a replacement for the legendary Lancaster bomber. Some of the plane's systems, including her radar, were simply upgrades of the wartime equipment used on the Lancaster. And the bombs she dropped at Port Stanley were the last remains of the Royal Air Force's wartime high-explosive stockpile, originally built so that the Lancasters themselves could rain them on Nazi Germany.
By 1982, the Vulcan was already in the process of being retired from active duty--a process that didn't stop even when they were sent off to fight. As the planes assigned to the bombing flight lifted off from their airfield in England, the roar and howl of their engines on the runway disturbed the ceremony that marked the retirement of the next squadron in the rolling decommissioning of the RAF's Vulcan fleet.
They had originally been designed as nuclear bombers, the mainstay of post-war Britain's independent deterrent. In the 1970s, they were reduced to a supporting role, training to attack specific targets with small nuclear weapons--which the novel, in a phrase presumably borrowed from the aircrew, brilliantly describes as a "cup of sunshine". When the plan to attack the Falklands was put together, Vulcan aircrews needed to retrain to lob the WWII-era conventional bombs that were to be used in Operation Black Buck--barely a hundred of which could be desperately scraped together from the Royal Air Force's ammunition dumps.
And then, the ageing Vulcan had to fly from Britain to the edge of the Antarctic, a long-range combat mission unparalleled in aviation history, to attack a target guarded by state-of-the-art air defences.
In telling the story, White's even-handedness comes into play again. He gives the needed space not just to the Vulcan, but also to the Victors--fellow survivors of the V-bomber fleet, which by the 1980s had been converted to long-range refuelling and reconnaissance planes, and as such, became vital to the success of Operation Black Buck.
In a manner that's probably deliberately reminiscent of a Holywood movie, the author intriduces his disparate characters at the start, then brings them together, and then follows them through their journey to the conclusion of the mission. Maybe the movie-like techniques are designed to cue the media-age reader into the mood of the book, or maybe the author is pitching to sell the film rights: in true Holywood style, the first V-bomber crew are introduced flying down into the Grand Canyon on a training mission in Nevada, before the crew head out to the Vegas Strip to party. You can practically hear the soundtrack, and see the camerawork.
But, when this sort of scene is put together with a novel-like narrative structure, with tight character POVs based on the recollections of those involved, Vulcan 607 succeeds in doing something rather interesting. It conjours an action adventure out of something that's palpably real life, with all its inconsistencies and disgareements; and it creates a sense that this is a story that should compete with bestsellers and blockbusters, even if it's true.
The narrative style is too short on dialogue to be truly novellistic, and in place of the enemy fire that we would expect in an action movie, the aircrew face their most serious dangers from dropping fuel levels, filthy weather, and the simple, staggering distance itself. But allying a movie-like narrative structure to the actual events of the real-life situation, White is able to capture both the truthfulness and the emotional stress of the situation, the challenges that professional military personnel face, and the ways in which they respond. He also makes a good case for the value of the bombing mission, the contribution which it made to ending the war.
The story closes appropriately, with the Bomber Command veterans' dinner in London on the night of 1st May 1982, the night after the successful raid. An annual celebration for World War Two veterans, this year it just happened to close the day of the RAF's most important bombing raid for a generation: the guests of honour were "Bomber" Harris, mastermind of the Lancaster campaigns in World War II, and General James Doolittle of the USAF, whose Tokyo raid provides both the most famous prototype for Operation Black Buck--and the clearest justification for why it should be considered a success.
As a depiction of the role of the armed forces, answering human challenges, military objectives, and above all, the demands of national honour, Vulcan 607 could hardly be bettered.
Then, on 1st May 1982--exactly twenty-five years ago today--the world woke up to learn that the British Empire had struck back. A single Avro Vulcan bomber had laid twenty-one 1,000-pound bombs across Port Stanley airfield.
Vulcan 607, by Rowland White, is the story of that mission. This book is not the greatest literature, but the prose is clear and competent, and spiced with a few catchy turns of phrase. More importantly, it is an impressive telling of an impressive story, admirable in both its thoroughness and clarity, and in its even-handedness towards all concerned.
On the political level, White manages to seem fair to the Argentinians, giving a balanced account of their historic claim to the islands and their belief in their own cause. True, some of the Argentinians are presented as "bad guys" in a way that no-one on the British side is, but this is a subject where passions run high on both sides, and it's good to see such a restrained treatment, especially because it allows the reader to experience how it was at the time, from the points of view of all involved.
The stars of the book, however, are the "V-bombers" and their crews: big, graceful aeroplanes with swept-back delta airframes, that looked like a vision of the future... in the 1950s.
The Vulcan, together with its stablemate the Victor, was originally conceived after World War II as a replacement for the legendary Lancaster bomber. Some of the plane's systems, including her radar, were simply upgrades of the wartime equipment used on the Lancaster. And the bombs she dropped at Port Stanley were the last remains of the Royal Air Force's wartime high-explosive stockpile, originally built so that the Lancasters themselves could rain them on Nazi Germany.
By 1982, the Vulcan was already in the process of being retired from active duty--a process that didn't stop even when they were sent off to fight. As the planes assigned to the bombing flight lifted off from their airfield in England, the roar and howl of their engines on the runway disturbed the ceremony that marked the retirement of the next squadron in the rolling decommissioning of the RAF's Vulcan fleet.
They had originally been designed as nuclear bombers, the mainstay of post-war Britain's independent deterrent. In the 1970s, they were reduced to a supporting role, training to attack specific targets with small nuclear weapons--which the novel, in a phrase presumably borrowed from the aircrew, brilliantly describes as a "cup of sunshine". When the plan to attack the Falklands was put together, Vulcan aircrews needed to retrain to lob the WWII-era conventional bombs that were to be used in Operation Black Buck--barely a hundred of which could be desperately scraped together from the Royal Air Force's ammunition dumps.
And then, the ageing Vulcan had to fly from Britain to the edge of the Antarctic, a long-range combat mission unparalleled in aviation history, to attack a target guarded by state-of-the-art air defences.
In telling the story, White's even-handedness comes into play again. He gives the needed space not just to the Vulcan, but also to the Victors--fellow survivors of the V-bomber fleet, which by the 1980s had been converted to long-range refuelling and reconnaissance planes, and as such, became vital to the success of Operation Black Buck.
In a manner that's probably deliberately reminiscent of a Holywood movie, the author intriduces his disparate characters at the start, then brings them together, and then follows them through their journey to the conclusion of the mission. Maybe the movie-like techniques are designed to cue the media-age reader into the mood of the book, or maybe the author is pitching to sell the film rights: in true Holywood style, the first V-bomber crew are introduced flying down into the Grand Canyon on a training mission in Nevada, before the crew head out to the Vegas Strip to party. You can practically hear the soundtrack, and see the camerawork.
But, when this sort of scene is put together with a novel-like narrative structure, with tight character POVs based on the recollections of those involved, Vulcan 607 succeeds in doing something rather interesting. It conjours an action adventure out of something that's palpably real life, with all its inconsistencies and disgareements; and it creates a sense that this is a story that should compete with bestsellers and blockbusters, even if it's true.
The narrative style is too short on dialogue to be truly novellistic, and in place of the enemy fire that we would expect in an action movie, the aircrew face their most serious dangers from dropping fuel levels, filthy weather, and the simple, staggering distance itself. But allying a movie-like narrative structure to the actual events of the real-life situation, White is able to capture both the truthfulness and the emotional stress of the situation, the challenges that professional military personnel face, and the ways in which they respond. He also makes a good case for the value of the bombing mission, the contribution which it made to ending the war.
The story closes appropriately, with the Bomber Command veterans' dinner in London on the night of 1st May 1982, the night after the successful raid. An annual celebration for World War Two veterans, this year it just happened to close the day of the RAF's most important bombing raid for a generation: the guests of honour were "Bomber" Harris, mastermind of the Lancaster campaigns in World War II, and General James Doolittle of the USAF, whose Tokyo raid provides both the most famous prototype for Operation Black Buck--and the clearest justification for why it should be considered a success.
As a depiction of the role of the armed forces, answering human challenges, military objectives, and above all, the demands of national honour, Vulcan 607 could hardly be bettered.