On the edge of war: A V-Force pilot during the Cuban Missile Crisis (458)

14:48Tony Dobbie:Yeah I mean we could probably have gone from there I don't know it's so that's the closest we got yeah.

14:52Cold War Conversations Host:And what was your readiness status was it like 15 minutes?

14:56Tony Dobbie:When we were on on call out you were in QRA and we had seaco huts these long wooden huts on a cricket pitch not far from the mess because when you're in QRA you stayed in blanket and you'd have one of these hooter your plaxton's going off and so you get into we had i think a voxel estate car which had a gear change column column gear change and it was like stirring porridge you eventually found it and you get down to the aircraft you strap in and the ground crew were there have the hooter the auxiliary power supply you get the engine started up and you hear a voice saying this is the bomber controller alert state zero five which meant you're now in the aircraft with engines started ready to taxi and that would happen odd times it could be lunchtime it could be two o 'clock in the morning so whatever you were you go out and do that and you're told bomber controller let's take revert to 15 minutes you go back to be on QRA which was fine during the weekdays but unfortunately at the weekends the aircrew feeder and the op-block didn't open so you had to eat in the mess now the station miner lovely old guy a guy called bob wayhoe he was very much a man of the old school and he did not like officers in flying kit in the mess so he insisted we wear number one uniforms and not only that that it didn't have a hooter in the mess either they had a tinky little bell so that if you're going to start nuclear war, you don't want to alarm anybody else.

16:30Tony Dobbie:I've had this illustration, if you were at the dining table, you hear the bell, you say excuse me to everyone around you, get up, mark your mouth with a napkin, push your chair to walk out, get your flying suit from the cloakroom, put it on, very much Battle Britain style, and go to war. Wow. It worked, but it was getting very much a considering consideration.

16:51Cold War Conversations Host:Yeah, I'm still trying to get over the fact you had this dodgy car that had to get you to your aircraft.

16:57Tony Dobbie:That was our nuclear deterrent. A calm year change. It was like, it was incredible. And it didn't have a fantastic acceleration either. Sometimes you had a crew bus, but they were even worse.

17:07Cold War Conversations Host:Wow. So after your service at Cottesmoor, you're posted out to Malaya.

17:15Tony Dobbie:No, that was a detachment. Yeah. Yeah, it was during the confrontation. And I think the first time we went out was in December 63. And we went to Tenga. we were out there with I think it was 55 squadron they were victors from Honington so we had I think 10 victors out there and yeah that was quite good brilliant because it was it was in the the northeast monsoon season so it was quite dry and sunny very warm and yeah we had a good time we saw the island we did some trips out there we did a spectacular one when they decided to show the flag and we had it was a done at night so we had i think four or five or six victors get airborne and fly around the island at about 1500 feet show the locals that britain was taking care of them

18:00Cold War Conversations Host:and this was the confrontation with indonesia so indonesia wanted to annex malaya whereas malaya wanted to become an independent state there so was the mission potentially a nuclear mission

18:13Tony Dobbie:there or was it conventional oh it was it was a thousand pound bombs and it wasn't in fact we came we're out there from i think december to february yeah it was december february because i came home in the march and got married and then in the april i think or may i went back out there to this time we went to butterworth the australian base and i know we had thousand pound bombs there because on one mission we got airborne with about 10 1 000 pound bombs which were i think ex-world war to stock and we were told to go up to a range called Song Song Range which is about 20 miles north of Butterworth Penang Island a little island off the west coast of Malaya and dropped the bombs and Jim my skipper said you will go down the nose and watch the bombs drop I did and the first bomb exploded and the shockwave set off the proximity fuse in the second bomb so the bombs will slowly come back up the column well fortunately we only had 10 so it never got near the aircraft and then after that they had the it's a well-known publicity shot of what's the i think i remember the number xh 588 which is actually the victor which is now in duxford which i've actually flown about 15 trips in that got airborne with 36 1 000 pound bombs which is quite a high load now So the Victor 1 was underpowered, and it was very hot.

19:39Tony Dobbie:And so you just had enough fuel to get safely airborne, heading on the northern direction at Butterworth. They go up to the range to drop the bombs to come back and land on the reverse runway. But the publicity shot was brilliant, because it basically said to the Indonesians, this is going to be your lot, a bit like Trump in Iran. So it was a great publicity shot, but it would never have happened, would it? But not with 36, right?

20:03Cold War Conversations Host:No, I understand you had a challenging takeoff from Gan Atoll in Evicta.

20:08Tony Dobbie:Now that came about because Gan at that time had a runway which went from one end of the coral to the other end of the coral and it had no taxiway. So there was a, you backtracked on the runway and went off into a big semicircular dispersal. And on the morning in particular, we were heading from, we come from Kormaksa to Gan to go out to, I think it was probably Tengar. Hi, this is Rhonda in Virginia, and I support Cold War conversations because I think the work that Ian is doing is critically important. I think it's vital to record the firsthand accounts of people who lived and experienced the Cold War because it illustrates history in a way that a book never can.

20:53Tony Dobbie:So thank you so much for the podcast. It's my favorite podcast, and I look forward to it every week.

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21:39Cold War Conversations Host:So do me a favour and hit that pause button and leave a comment. It'd be great to hear from you and your interactions help push Cold War Conversations up the Spotify rankings. whatever you do thanks very much for listening and now back to your episode

21:56Tony Dobbie:and my skipper said okay it's your turn for a takeoff as i said each crew had to do a certain number of and we got out to the runway taxi down the runway and turned back to head towards the east and it was a shower cloud on the far end of the runway and it looked dark the rains out there when they become non-stream rains are intense incredibly intense i've i've been in them and They're amazing. So we started the takeoff, and it started to rain. And Jim was steering the aircraft on the nose wheel, steering on his side, on the left-hand side. And he put the windscreen wipers on. He said, you have control.

22:31Tony Dobbie:And the rain is coming down in buckets. And so he put the windscreen wipers on to high speed, and it's still to make any difference. And so we're now accelerating down the runway. And as I say, the Victor had a takeoff run, which was probably about 500 to 1 ,000 feet short of the whole total rent of the runway. And so in the back, the navigator said, rotate, which means you've just pulled the stake back and get the nose wheel off. I pulled it back and immediately got a buffet, which meant I'm on a stall. So Jim euphemistically said, get the nose down. And I loaded it a bit. I was now aware we're getting quite close to the end of the runway.

23:11Tony Dobbie:So I pulled it back again and still a slight buffet. and so I couldn't go forward and I couldn't go back and the navigators in the back were screaming because they could see the Indian Ocean just about level with the aircraft at the back and it wasn't until many years later I found that when you get a downdraft from a Q &M the wind can basically burst on the runway and spread in all directions so essentially we've got effectively a 10 or 15 knot tailwind anyway we went out to this cloud and all of a sudden we're in the clear the speed picked up and we climbed away and gian control was seen as vanish still basically on the runway and he was saying mike alpha bravo charlie delta come in and we sat there eventually said mike alpha bravo charlie delta climbing away and nobody said anything and we had a cruise chief with us who was on a temporary seat between the two ejection seats and he got a packet of spangles he said everyone like a spangle at that point everyone just burst out and it was the close It was really hairy.

24:13Tony Dobbie:Incredible. Yeah.

24:14Cold War Conversations Host:Incredible. Now, after your time in Malaya, you're posted to the Bomber Command Operations Centre. And there's a bit of an incident there where you almost started World War III. Yeah.

24:28Tony Dobbie:Yes, it was. Yes, the 15th Corps disbanded in the early September of 64. And I was Turex for my five years in September of 65. so essentially I got a year left to do which was too short to get crewed up with another crew and obviously post another by training they wouldn't get any money out of me so they posted me down as an ops officer down to Bomber Command Operations Centre near High Wycombe I went down there and it's an interesting place because I was a flying officer and I think there were probably some squad leaders but most of the other ranks were wing commanders group captains, air vice-marshals and air marshals So it was interesting life in the mess.

25:09Tony Dobbie:I was a very junior officer. And yeah, it was good because they had a shift system that operated from 8 in the morning until lunchtime. And then from lunchtime to 5 o 'clock. And then from 5 o 'clock until 11 o 'clock. And then from 11 o 'clock to 8 o 'clock the following morning. So on the first day, you did the morning, had the afternoon off, and then the evening. Then the next day, you had the afternoon on, the evening off, and then came in all night. You then had the day off, then you had that shift again for two days, and then you had two days off. So there was a certain amount of built-in jet lag the whole time, especially as I was married.

25:51Tony Dobbie:I got a baby and also a dog. so sleeping was yeah so yeah the op center it was basically a an oblong box building it was probably roughly about 30 meters long as long as i remember and about 15 meters high and 50 meters square and the entrance door was a little door with a big glass panel which was the one-way mirror you could see in the mirror when you looked in but looking out you could see who was calling so you got entrance once recognised and there were officers little glass fronted cubicles down the length of the wall you just come in there was a corporal a couple of wafts and a telephonist on the right and then there was the sergeant ops the ops officer which was me and then the controller on the left hand side and then across the floor there was this huge great board which was probably used by Bomber Harris during the war and it had A big board with the number of squadrons, the number of aircraft and the stations available.

26:53Tony Dobbie:I think the V-Force had something like about eight operational bases and about 30 diversion airfields. In addition to that, they had, I think on the top left and high side, they had a notice saying Tule, in other words, American base in Tule in Greenland and clear in Alaska. And they'd have something like a let's state there. and then on the right hand corner they had Farringdales and this is where it gets interesting because they had a notice which was a digital display. Now 1964 electronics was just coming in so the digital display had figures about a foot high and it had whatever the left state was and it had test in black and white or it had real in red and it seems like an ECM state the number of minutes to impact, the number of missiles coming in.

27:47Tony Dobbie:Now normally when you got in there, it would be on rail, and every so often the Farringdales would ring up. Now here's another thing, it's an old-fashioned system. We called it a Hadley box, which I've never been coming across the name, but essentially it was a 10-channel communication system of a toggle switch which had red, amber or green. So if somebody called you, it would light up red. you put it straight to green unless you weren't talking to somebody else in which case you put it to amber we should let them know you were talking to somebody else so we had two of these together we had 10 on one side and 10 on the other so we had 20 20 20 channels in total anyway Farringdale's would call you up and say we're doing a test run at whatever time select test on your system and we will and the test would come up a number of missiles minutes to impact alert state, all sorts of things which showed you that the test was running and they say the test finished go back to real ok, on this particular day, we came in for the morning shift and sometimes in the morning we did quiet other times we had an excise on and there'd be signals flowing through and you'd get a signal passing to this, so send this to someone send this to somebody else, and a signal came in from Fangdale saying, test oh fine, I thought, they'll let us know I'll put it on one side but what it said was we're running a test but we want you to maintain real so don't change the test we will give you a verbal backup telephone backup what's happening so they didn't tell us which is quite significant anyway we came back in at five o 'clock and we sat down and it was dead quiet nothing was happening and the ops controller who'd been a nav bomber bombing ever on Lancaster was full of stories about his time over the Third Reich and all of a sudden a couple Chris, I can't remember his second name, looked up and there on the far wall, the top right hand corner it got real, number of missiles diminished and number of missiles to impact, alert state and so the controller said, call out the V-Force.

29:58Tony Dobbie:So I picked up the phone the red phone and just said alert state 02 and And obviously this went to every airfield with Bomber Command on Gaz and QRA. And so they all leapt in the aircraft and started up and captured out the ORPs at the end of the runway. Now this got fed back to Fangerdales fairly rapidly. And of course they went on the phone and said, stop. This is a test. We revert to zero to 15 minutes. Now I picked up the phone and went, Bomber Controller, revert to 15 minutes. but I didn't use the proper code word and so the crews didn't react. Now I know for a fact, I think it was at Scampton where the ops centre is very close to the OIP.

30:45Tony Dobbie:The station miner just happened to be visiting the ops centre when the call-out was made. And so the crews ran out and they got four Vulcans on the end of the runway and of course the call down, the stand line came from Fallondales, so he got on his car and rushed out, parked his car on the edge of the runway and went out on the runway and waved his arms to the crew to say don't go now of course the guys on the aircraft the adrenaline level's been really high they said he could be a commie sleeper so if he doesn't get out of the way just drive over him anyway they all stood down oh yes that was the other thing when they got this call out zero two the hardly boxes they all lit up i felt like a guy had hit the jackpot and I thought, who do I answer first?

31:33Tony Dobbie:So I pulled one switch down and this voice, it said, I don't know, Wittering Ops here, this is Wing Commander Schleser, I think, son of the air marshal, this is Wing Commander Schleser here, my boys are ready. That's a good call, see? And he picked another one and it was, I think, Witten, I don't know. But this voice said, you mean to say this is war? So, it's kind of a streak. So anyway, it all came back to normal but I was informed that although I was meant to stand down tomorrow morning, I would have to appear in the group Captain Knox's office at 8 o 'clock in my best number one. So I thought, I know I'm going to get a rollicking for this.

32:12Tony Dobbie:So I went along to his office, and I was also aware that the Manual of Air Force Law, which is a massive great tome, has all sorts of infringements of failures. But I thought, no one has ever dreamed up of the fault of, shall we say, an official jargon he's war thermonuclear inadvertent causing of. So I thought, they can't charm me with that, okay. So in the group captain, Griffiths, as the guy was, he was a big lad. I think he played rugby as a pop forward in the area of rugby team. And he said to me, he said, Dobby, sir. He said, what you have just done has been unofficially approved of. We would never have received political permission to do that.

32:56Tony Dobbie:however and so he gave me a real turning off now it's funny but years later i think it wasn't the 90s there was a guy i think he's he became a lord hennessy i think his name was and he wrote about the nuclear call out in the 50s and he had a comment he said in the 60s the americans are now regarded to having a guy with a gold bag chained to his wrist at following the president he said Now, Britain didn't have that. Okay, Americans had Pearl Harbor, so they were making sure they didn't get caught out a second time. But in Britain, who knew where the Prime Minister was? Was he in his car on the way to somewhere?

33:34Tony Dobbie:Was he in the house? Mike McMillan, was he out playing golf? I don't know. So, apparently, the release authority was given to the C &C Bomber Command. Now, I can't remember, I think it was Sir John Drandy who was C &C, the Bomber Command, when I arrived there, but I can't remember who it was when I did the call out, but unofficially he thought, yeah, it worked just as advertised. And yes, you would never have received permission to do that. When I read that, I thought, yes, I've been receiving unofficial thank you for something that you would never have been allowed to do, and it worked. So in a sense, I was relieved not to have.

34:14Cold War Conversations Host:Yeah, your career continued, so it wasn't a career end decision.

34:18Tony Dobbie:Well, no, no.

34:21Cold War Conversations Host:okay so you're then moved over to flying the canberra yeah in west germany and again this is nuclear strike yeah but this is low level yeah so how different was that for you because previously you were flying at like 40 000 feet in the victor yeah and now you're just above the

34:43Tony Dobbie:treetops the camera actually was a lovely airplane to fly and two engine it was no problem it was really maneuverable we had the the bih which was the one bought by american funds so there are no bih now because they're bought with american funds they all had to be destroyed which is a shame but the bih was a lovely airplane to fly again though it had a system where the pilot had an ejection seat and the navigator had to do a nosedive out the front with no ejection seat saving money but yeah it was super to fly and i had a bit of a problem going through basic through the training on it but i got through that and i had a great time on 16th squad yeah what else about

35:19Cold War Conversations Host:it i was just going to say it must have been challenging the navigation at low level and being because presumably the navigator saying turn oh yeah it's net steeple or something yeah

35:31Tony Dobbie:okay yes when you it was a bit funny because on the v4s you were allocated to a crew on the camera squadron i know when we went through training we were put in this big room and had all the pilots and all the navigators and he's basically who am i going to marry so yeah and yeah dudley brown was my nav he was a young lad he'd only just finished training so i got a tour ahead of him and yeah he we got on fire no problem but i know that was on one occasion we were flying around germany and he said okay turn port onto 135 so i turned port on 135 low level and we were down in southern germany and within about a minute we went slap bang across the Luftwaffe base at Leipheim, which was their main G91 training base.

36:15Tony Dobbie:And they were an aircraft everywhere, and I went through at about 250 feet. And then they thought, oh, he said, I'm sorry Dobbs, he said, I went 315, not 135. So we turned around and went straight back across again, which was bad enough, but we were just about to do a squadron exchange, and our guy had just arrived there to talk to the Germans about the exchange, and they thought we were being cheeky by bombing the airfield. Anyway, so So after that, I took the precaution of having my own map in the back. So I didn't get any of it in the head. But no, that's just an aside. Yeah, it was good fun.

36:48Tony Dobbie:It was good fun.

36:48Cold War Conversations Host:And was the delivery of the nuclear weapon parachute retarded, or was it a lob? No, it was a lob.

36:54Tony Dobbie:Yeah, we had this. It was basically a roll off the top maneuver. Now, they had a, I think it was called a zero reader in the cockpit. and it was like two needles one from a horizontal pivot one from a vertical pivot and you got up at something like 420 knots which was about as fast as you go on a camera without running out of authority and you ran into the target and at a specific range from the target you pulled up with a sufficient pull to put the horizontal needle in the middle of this little instrument you kept the vertical needle vertical and as long as you did that you went over at some point you dropped a weapon and it would go off in a big arc you pulled over got the loose pony down rolled out and got back down to low level it was academic because a nuke was probably the best part of a megaton and um hopefully you get away from that so yeah we

37:45Cold War Conversations Host:practice that quite regularly i think you had an incident with your dog at this posting

37:50Tony Dobbie:yeah okay i had um yes when we got married it was one of these things that every area I also should have a dog. Well, it's a long story, but I got myself a Great Dane pup, which was, she was lovely. It was a kennel selling up pups, and we got her for 20 pounds, which is incredibly cheap for a Great Dane. And we took her out to Germany, and my wife was trying to cope with me flying odd hours on detachment, night flying, with a Great Dane who wanted regular feeding, and a baby who was fed whenever. Anyway, she got talking to one of the wives one day, who said, oh yes, my husband Ken takes his golden labrador with him into the QRA.

38:29Tony Dobbie:Anyway, I thought, that's a good idea, when my wife told me she wanted to go coffee in the morning. So I took Sookie with me into the QRA. Now, in Germany, the QRA site was, oh, it had real 20-foot-high wire fences, big strong gates, guards everywhere, two brister hangars, each with a camera BIH, three scorn and ourselves with a nuke. They were American nukes, so they had not only British guards, but American guards guarding the aircraft. And we also had an American exchange officer who he had to do with release authority as well. Anyway, I went in there with my dog one day, and we got a call out in the middle of the day.

39:11Tony Dobbie:So I got my dog and shut her in this box-sized bedroom. I thought she'd be fine in there. Got my navigator, we ran out of the aircraft, got strapped in. while I was getting strapped in my dog appeared because I'd left the window open and being a great Jane she leapt over the window frame and she got out of the pan now when she got there we got the two guards one Brit, one American and she came to the door looking up in the camera entrance door going can I come in sloggering, I said no you stay out there dog anyway the call out was because a new boss Winkamander Swalve just arrived and he's taken over from a South African guy called John Newby so they came down to the pan and the dog, of course in doggy logic, had got the crew in the aircraft and the two guys got in the aircraft but when they all survived they were enemy, so she barked them very fiercely and wouldn't let anyone hear the aircraft so that didn't do my career very much good either, plus the fact at a later stage, the dog also the gardens had little three foot fences and she steeplechased over those gardens, about ten gardens down and got to Stacey Mander's garden where he got peacocks in the garden so that was another thing, it was a black mark against me however, I digress

40:26Cold War Conversations Host:Surprised you didn't get drummed out Unbelievable With the Canberra, your flying nuclear missions what were your targets going to be for that low level?

40:38Tony Dobbie:I think again we're talking about the late 60s by which time the Canberra was reaching the end of its useful life you've got Phantoms and I can't remember where the French were flying, but the Phantoms were the up-and-coming aircraft and the camera could not compete with that. So most of our targets, of our memory, were on the Baltic coast of Poland. I know we had a Russian airbase that was only just inside the coast, so presumably you could drop the bomb without infringing too many nuclear or some sites. Yeah, that's the only one I remember, I'm afraid.

41:09Cold War Conversations Host:And again, like with the Victor, what did you consider your options were after you dropped the bomb on that basis?

41:15Tony Dobbie:Probably diverting to Sweden. Yeah, yeah. That's another aside. We were, I think we went, I went on a holiday with another guy, both of our families, and we got on our cars, we went up to Denmark, we went across to Malmo, we went up to Oslo, and as we got back to Malmo to go back to Denmark, we saw the newspaper headlines, and it was just when the Soviets had moved into Czechoslovakia. And we thought, we're in a nuclear country, there's going to be a war, we'll stay here. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back.

41:52Tony Dobbie:So I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required.

42:09Cold War Conversations Host:$15 per month equivalent. taxes and fees extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy see terms hey are you still there that's great now if you're enjoying the podcast and you listen via the apple podcast app you can leave a written review positive reviews really help me gain new listeners so hit that pause button and give me a five star rating thanks very much for listening now round about this time you have an interesting encounter with a luftwaffe officer

42:39Tony Dobbie:Yes, one of the exercises we did was what is it called interoperability of NATO aircraft. In other words, there were lots of different aircraft operated by all the NATO forces. And so to make sure it worked, every so often you would send an aircraft to another NATO base so they could have practice at turning down new particular aircraft. On this day, we went down to, I think it was Furstenfeldbruck, somewhere in southern Bavaria. And we landed there. And we got to the reserving line, got out and got the ground crew during the turnaround. And we were planning our route back when this little utility Volkswagen open-top car came along.

43:21Tony Dobbie:And this guy got out, and he was probably in his 50s, forage cap, oak and neck shirt, no rank, looked like just a driver. And he said, would you like a coffee? And we said, oh yeah, yes please. so we got in his car and he's chatting away to us good english and asked us how we liked germany and what we'd seen where we'd been what we'd done and it helped great so we got to the air traffic tire and a big tire three-story thing and he drove around to the back of it and there's a far escape ladder all the way up the back so he's climbed up the staircase and on the middle floor he opens this door we went in now this police office with his front windows looking out across the airfield and on one wall there's this very ornate uniform with gold braid and lots of medals topped by a cap with lots of gold braid and on the other wall there's this picture a well-known picture of Hank O3 flying over the East India docks in London and we stopped to look at it at which point this guy said ah yes he said I have visited your country too and the guy was really friendly he was a really nice guy and yeah he said I was flying that hanko and I wish I'd asked him for a copy of that and he had it ordered up it would be a fantastic thing to have but anyway

44:42Cold War Conversations Host:there is plenty more in the book the book is called Suki, Me and World War 3 and there'll be links to the book in the episode information in amongst your dog upsetting various people you also do a Canberra tour to Kenya which I think was quite challenging.

45:03Tony Dobbie:It was one of these things that when you got to the end of your tour in Germany, they had what was called an extended southern ranger all the way to Niobe. And it was basically a three-day journey there. Now, on the day I was meant to go, the weather was rubbish. It was down on the deck. There were no diversions. And I knew I'd got a cold coming on, but I thought, I want to do this. So we hung around until late morning when there was a couple of dodgy diversions came in north of Scotland and Ken Meehan, my flight commander, said, OK, you can go. Myself, Dudley Brown and a guy called Jock Adams, there was another navigator, he came along as a spare navigator.

45:40Tony Dobbie:I just just have the trip.

45:45Tony Dobbie:So we got airborne and got down across France and as we were going down across the west coast of Italy, there was a simultaneous problem with the radio was a bit intermittent and one of the tip tanks wouldn't feed. So we thought we'd better divert into Luca. So we landed at Luca and he solved the problem with the tip tank and so we went on our way to... This time, the wind is gusting. It's a crosswind on the runway and I thought, it's just over the limits. But I thought, I know I can get round this. So I got on the end of the runway on the left-hand side and went up to full power because you could get the engines going without surging and got a bit of head of steam up and then booted it down the runway, which was a bit dodgy because if we'd had a surge, Malta has got stone walls and houses all around it.

46:33Tony Dobbie:Anyway, we got airborne from there and it was getting dark by now. And then we had a strong easterly wind in the med, which is not that regular. And then we had the forward Bombay tank wouldn't feed. So we got as far as Cyprus and he said, negative Akruchiri, the runway's been refurbished, go to Nicosia. So we got to Nicosia and we had to let down and burn our fuel until the tanks were in balance again. We landed late at night time and then told the annual mess ball in the mess so you're going to have to go to a hell hotel downtown. Now this time it's about midnight. So we got down to this hotel and we had to be up at five o 'clock.

47:18Tony Dobbie:The hotel was literally a foggy tower space with a manual labor. so he got us up, we got a breakfast we got a taxi from the hotel to the, back to the airfield and got on time again got on the aircraft, started up at which point the crew chief said stand by, there's a leak in the hydraulics so we shut down again and got out in the tarmac the ground crew fixed the hydraulic leak and we're now aware of the fact that we've only got a certain time to get into Turkish airspace, we've got diplomatic clearance. So we got the aircraft up in service again. Now behind time, obviously we couldn't get through to our man in Nara and got everyone from Nicosia, climbing non-controlled airspace, no airways in the way, and so when the Turkish airspace controller came out and said what is your altitude?

48:14Tony Dobbie:We went, sorry you are unreadable. And when she got up to a suitable level went via I think a place called Inkuklik, Lake Van which is the one just south of Mount Ararat down to another big lake as you enter Tehran and got into Tehran now we're now late so by the time we get turned around in Tehran it's dark one other incident there was I think we were marshaled out against a stream of transport aircraft but we marched to saw that out and Manav, Darley says we can catch up sometime by going direct from Mohorok across the empty corner to Mazira. And there were no aircraft that could catch us. There were no airways.

48:58Tony Dobbie:The only thing you could see were the oil flares of the oil that was burnt off. Anyway, we're going down there and I thought, better call up Mazira to see if they're expecting us. And I called them up. No answer. And then there was this polite cough from my nav, he said, oh, we said, because we were three hours late taking off from Mahuruk, they probably haven't got our civil yet. So that means they're not open. So we're now somewhere over the middle of Arabia. So we turned around and started hanging back to where we come from. And all of a sudden, this very quiet little voice came up saying, Michael, this is Mazira, come in.

49:36Tony Dobbie:So we turned around again. And they said, okay, steer Anyway, we were flying along at 40 plus thousand feet and it's a clear for a straight descent to Mazira. Now, we're flying an aircraft at some incredible altitude with the temperature is, I don't know, minus 40. And we're now into subtropical air. It's a southeast monsoon. Fortunately, no cloud, but it's very moist. So when the aircraft comes down, it immediately mists over. And inside of the cockpit is totally covered in mist on a foggy day. so this is where my spare nav comes in so he's scrubbing the windscreen like crazy and I eventually managed to do a landing on the runway, not a good landing but I landed anyway, went to bed, next morning clear blue sky and everything's ready to go, the aircraft's serviceable, my ears weren't clear now the navs are not happy about this because if you ever meet Mazira, it's a strip of runway in the middle of sand nothing else but sand on Mazira so I spent some time with my nose spray trying to clear my ears I got them clearing and it was okay I could do it yeah anytime I liked and so I thought okay I'll take a chance so we get her born and we're going down the south coast over what's the little place Salala down over Kamaxar and that's one point I thought I wonder if my ears still clear because I'd actually had a student when I was on J.P.

51:01Tony Dobbie:as an instructor when he couldn't clear his ears at 2 ,000 feet and he was really in pain so I took my mask off and I got my little spray bottle out and blew it into my nose now the bottle is pressurised at sea level so I just almost got drowned in this nose of spray and the aircraft is wobbling all over the place so we get down to let down into Djibouti and again the radio is acting up I can't transmit on UHF until we get down quite low level the VHF is working so we land at Djibouti Turn round, head down to Nairobi. And we're going down to Nairobi, and we're now above 8X Cloud. And as we get to, within calling range of Nairobi, the radio doesn't work again, and all it gets is a screech.

51:51Tony Dobbie:Anyway, I think Nairobi was RAF until fairly recently. It's now Nairobi Airport. So I get onto the speechless procedure, which is four blips on the transmit button, which means speechless aircraft. And there's a guy there who's ex-RAF, and he basically said, speechless aircraft, use the call sign, speechless one. So he pressed one for yes, two for no, three for say again. So he said, commercial descent. So great, we got it in. Because they were aircraft we couldn't let down without control. So we're bombing down the high rate of knots, turn in on the inbound heading. Somewhere on the way down, because of all the problems, we forgot to set the altimeter to the Nairobi QFE, which is 5 ,000 feet high.

52:35We're on 1013 and all of a sudden we punch down through

52:39Tony Dobbie:the clouds which is probably about 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 feet. Oh yeah there's the ground! So level off and make a landing. No problem. Anyway but this time I'm exhausted because I've been going through cold, headaches, you know it and so the day off we have there I tell the Navs okay you guys go downtown I'm gonna stay in bed. So I'm in bed having a straight sleep and a knock comes to the door with this voice saying, can you come down to the dispersal sir, the ground crew wants to see you. So I get a taxi or a crew bus down to this concrete pan and the concrete pan is saucer shaped, concrete has always settled and the aircraft is sitting there up its hubs and after.

53:22Tony Dobbie:So the fuel has been overfueled and the tyres are now covered in petal so i don't know what effect petal has on rubber but i thought this is going to be interesting and so the crew chief says yeah we'll get this petal cleared very shortly sir and i'm aware of the fact he's not moving you know what's this the soothsayer saying to julius beware the eyes of march i said what's the problem chief he said sir he said you've only got i think five cartridges left.

53:52Cold War Conversations Host:Just to explain here the cartridges that Tony's talking about here are used to start the aircraft.

53:59Tony Dobbie:Basically we've got spare cartridges in the back of the camera so everywhere you go the ground crew take their own supplies and leave the supplies spare but somewhere down the line they'd be using the ones in the back so now with crew to get airborne from Nairobi we can get as far as Djibouti, I will have one spare. Now, I know for a fact that the cartridges, which were the size of a small artillery shell, are classified as dangerous air cargo. Now, they did have RF Herx coming out to Nairobi about once every two weeks, but my flight commander would not contest me staying in Nairobi for two weeks.

54:37Tony Dobbie:You couldn't get them on a civilian air staff, so I thought the best thing to do is get as far as Djibouti, because being French, I'd be impossible to get hold of you think about it, French air traffic to Paris, to London, to Rendallan, Germany, to the Squadron I would be impossible to get hold of so we did that, we got airborne from Nairobi and another interesting thing was it's 5 ,000 feet, so we thought we're full of fuel, we need every year being yet, so we went right to the end of the runway turned round, at the end of the runway there's this huge great net it's about 15 feet high, which is I don't know why it was there, but it was covered with local guys all waiting to see aircraft getting airborne so i went up to full plow now i don't know whether i blew them off but never heard in the market went back to jibouti and Dudley earned his money here because air traffic said you're going to descend in cloud and Dudley said don't go down to 6 ,000 feet because there's a 7 ,000 foot mountain between us and them got down to jibouti got the turn around and we thought we've got three cartridges left now we always start up the port engine first so we put two cartridges in the starboard engine and one in the port engine so if it doesn't start we can take the spare one out and still be able to use the other one which we did so we left jubilee with one cartridge and got far as mazira and then we got home actually what we didn't get home because when we got to the weather was bad

56:02Cold War Conversations Host:in germany so we had a week off in equity anyway so it was an epic but yeah very epic yeah i mean

56:08Tony Dobbie:there's a lot of stupid things there because it's like what's it called is somebody wrote an article about presonitis when you decide to stop being doing when is it worth not doing i should have thought about my ears because if i'd lost my eardrums that would be impossible the fuel tank were working hydraulics for part of the course cartridges problem that was a one-off but to go down to mazira at night we hadn't been clear for night landing if we landed in the sea the sharks would have got us. If we'd land in the desert, we'd probably been dead anyway. So there's a lot of stupid things about that.

56:40Tony Dobbie:Yeah, I learned about being not so gung-ho from that.

56:42Cold War Conversations Host:Absolutely.

56:46Cold War Conversations Host:You mentioned RAF Akrotiri, the flight to Kenya. Now, you're actually stationed there in 1974, and you're there for the Turkish invasion. Yeah. What were your experiences of that?

56:58Tony Dobbie:Okay, it was quite interesting, because the morning that the Turks came into northern Cyprus, I'd actually been given the task of an exchange to Turkey to fly on the back seat of a twin seat 104 on a natural exercise. I got down to the dispersal with a thousand US dollars in my pocket of spending money to be told it wasn't happening because the Turks had landed. And the base went on to complete alert in just in case the Turks were going to try and take over the whole island. And it was absolute chaos because the local Greeks and the Turks were shooting each other in Limbesol, the local town, and they were getting busloads of people out of town to get onto the camp.

57:39Tony Dobbie:The funny thing was they'd had an exercise of that about the previous weekend, which makes you wonder if they knew this was going to happen. But they got, I don't know, how many thousands of people and dependents were in the local town, and they showed up human nature, because some people filled up the cars with people to get them out of the town, some people filled their cars up with the fridges and television sets to get their stuff out of turn and they all arrived on the sports pitch and there were thousands of families there sheep that have lost their children sheep and lambs and they're all bleating for husband to try and get organized they it was quite chaotic and within a matter of hours all the air crew and the ground crews had been split up and we were packed into something like 15 guys to a room with beds, camp beds, you name it, living very basically with all the families being allocated to different married quarters so they could get together.

58:36Tony Dobbie:I think my wife had about five couples come in with children and it got amazing. They were giving the RF ration packs and they got on fine. What else happened? Yeah, but it got quite funny because we had a phantom squad come out to reinforce the base and there were various things happened. I think the Mount Trudos, which is what, about 6 ,000 feet high, was a lovely mountain. They had a resort up there for families. Someone had set fire to the forest, a big, huge forest up there. And there was this massive great column of smoke going up. It really looked like Armageddon. And I say the Phantoms arrived.

59:13Tony Dobbie:And because they had Phantoms on, I think it was 43 squadron. They had four Phantoms. They had 56 squadron lightnings. And they used to have a competition to see which was the best aircraft. and so I can remember one evening we were on the patio at the bar having again something to drink and this phantom would come in down the runway at about 50 feet, pull up and go to full burner and reheat and see how high you could get and you see this contour going up into the sky topping out, then the lighting would do the same and see who'd get higher, it was great it was fantastic fun. One other thing there was a guy called Steve Horridge, now he was a real gung-ho guy and he got scrambled on i think when the first the turks first landed and he got airborne on the western runway he went into full reheat at whatever height it wasn't full very high turned sharp right and went across limasol supersonic so the shockwave must have been horrendous that height and then he pulled up so he wouldn't get caught by the turkish radar

1:00:16Cold War Conversations Host:yeah he was an interesting guy wow wow as you said there's this confrontation between the greeks and the turks and at one point you're driving through limasol and the guy's following you with

1:00:28Tony Dobbie:a machine gun okay on 56 quatern they had the lightnings but because the lightnings had to do practice in deceptions we had the what's called a 56 quatern target facilities flight which i had the acme of my career as a flight commander and we had three crews three pilots three navigators we decided it was a time to go out for a flight meal and we had a lovely little greek restaurant i think it was in the far side of limousel so having had this lovely meal together and a few i don't know whatever we drank keo beer or cochinevy we decided to have a race back to the camp and i had a volkswagen variant which is it's a pretty slow beast and so we took off from this restaurant and i can't remember what cars cars the other guys were driving but they were faster than mine.

1:01:16Tony Dobbie:Now, on the road back to the camp, there was a roundabout. And in the middle of the roundabout, they got sandbags and guys, I think they were Greeks, obviously, but they were armed. And so all of a sudden, in the dark, you've got these three cars stretching around this roundabout, one after the other. We were the third, and I was very conscious of the fact that, no, these guys were, no, they were all young guys. I remember reading them. They're all spotty kids with guns. and I thought, this guy's ticket happy, I'm dead.

1:01:46Cold War Conversations Host:You're now a qualified flying instructor, you're training new aircrew and you're at RAF Valley with the Folland Gnat. Yeah. What's the Folland Gnat like to fly?

1:01:58Tony Dobbie:It's an amazingly small aircraft. The first time you see it, you can actually stand on the counter to the tarmac and look into the cockpit. It's that small. Yeah, I can't remember the exact size of it but it was one of these aircraft built by, was it W.E. Petter? I think he designed the whirlwind, the Canberra, the Gnat and it was another aircraft he had designed he was a great guy but he was very adamant that what he designed it was going to stay that way and when he designed the Gnat it was power controlled but because it was so small and it was supersonic there was a very interesting, sonically talking aerodynamics for a moment the centre of pressure moves rearward as you can go supersonic which means that the stick has to move an amazing amount of distance to hold the aircraft level.

1:02:45Tony Dobbie:So he'd got this built-in system that automatically compensated for this happening. So that was one complication in the gnat. But it was a beautiful aircraft to fly. If you did a roll, I think you could do a 360 roll inside a couple of seconds. It was that fast. It was, yeah, I mean they used to say that the expression was that gnats bite because when we trained the students on them, students okay it was a typical normal distribution curve of guys you get you know guys who were really sharp a few there were guys who shouldn't have been there and in the middle there was a lot of guys who could just about do it and that sorted guys out because one of the first tasks was being able to land the gnat because of its sweep you actually had to fly fanals in light buffets which means you're getting near a stall and it was very it was interesting to fly i know when i was first posted to it, I was fortunate because I left the cameras in St.

1:03:39Tony Dobbie:Morgan in Cornwall and I got to Valley about a month early and you had a cockpit trainer where you could familiarise yourself on the drills. It didn't actually fly but you could go through the drills and I really majored in that because I was aware of the fact I was 38 and the other guys on the course had not only trained on that but they'd also been flying like buccaneers so they were up to speed and I was not quite up speed but anyway yeah it was a good time i know when the first time i went solo i thought my goodness me it's like being on a horse that's running away from you

1:04:09Cold War Conversations Host:but yeah so february 1978 you have an incident in a nat this particular day there's a guy called

1:04:18Tony Dobbie:dougie me who did air test now dougie had just been old enough to join the air force at the end of the war so we used to call him daddy and he also had a minor heart problem so he's a pacemaker which surprisingly he was the unit test pilot anyway he said to me you want to come along on this trip and we got airborne and he was i think the test was for the i think it was called the air fuel ratio controller now on a jet engine if you slam the throttle open it's a bit like flooding a carburetor in a car so if you slam the throttle open this air fuel control air fuel ratio controller, admits a little amount of fuel into the engine, and as it speeds up, it progressively builds up the ratio of fuel, so the faster and faster it goes, the faster it goes, and it has to be done within a certain time limit.

1:05:12Tony Dobbie:So we get up to, I don't know, 30 odd thousand feet, and Dougie slams the throttle a couple of times, and it was just within limits. I can't remember what the limits were, but it was within about 0.2 of a second of the minimum. Anyway, on the way back to Valley, I said to Doug I'd like to practice the forced landing now on the nap we used to practice these because it was another judgement exercise for the students and the technique was you'd throttle the aircraft back to idle and you'd glide towards an airfield and you'd endeavour to arrive over the upwind end of the runway at about 5000 feet clean and you'd turn down wind and you'd call high key you'd turn down wind keeping the aircraft set the runway on your right and And you get down to low key, which is roughly a beam of the landing end of the runway.

1:06:00Tony Dobbie:You call low key. At that point, you put the gear down. And you turn on Finos. And the idea was that, for real, you're aimed to be about the third of the way down the runway, in which case you would stop on the runway. Or, if you were going a touch and go, with full power, you get airborne again. Obviously, you don't want to land in the undershirt. So, you come and land Finos, put the gear down. and then selected flap. And when you select the full flap down, you stuff the nose down to about, I don't know, 15 degrees. So you're coming down at about, I don't know, 150, 160 knots. And when you judge it about, you pull back on the stick and you touch down, still doing about 150 knots, and then having touched down, back up to full power, back to mid-flap and get airborne.

1:06:49Tony Dobbie:I touched down, it worked out okay, went up to full power, and the engine went up to 80 % and stopped. And we both realised what had happened. Dougie Mee said, OK, he said, I've got control. Throttle back and stream the brake chute. We should have come out and stopped us, but it didn't. It just fell to one side. So we got to the end of the runway and we're still doing, well, 100 plus knots and took the barrier. Now, the barrier should have stopped us, but in fact, the speed of the aircraft pulled the barrier out by its roots and the tailplane hit the top cable it was a failure of substantial cable so it actually not only cut into the tailplane but it pulled the aircraft slightly above it again slammed back into the ground so the undercarriage had to a hefty hit and by which time we reached the aircraft boundary the airfield boundary which was, well, being Wales it's like a mud bank with stones at a small hedge on top of it so we went over the top of that and the nose wheel had completely collapsed and we stopped.

1:07:53Tony Dobbie:Anyway, we were still aware he was still alive and Dougie Mae opened the canopy and we made the seat safe. Now, the fallen seat was different from Martin Baker because the fallen seat had a...

1:08:05Cold War Conversations Host:So this is the ejector seat.

1:08:07Tony Dobbie:Yeah, the ejector seat, yeah. Had a handle, it was like a handle that stuck in the back of your head when the seat was safe with a knob on it and you pulled it out and pushed it to the right and the seat was live. So when we stopped, we pulled the handle out put it in the back of my head and the seat was safe. Anyway what I didn't know was that as I stood up on the seat and we were about to climb up the aircraft that the nose wheel had collapsed and pushed up into the underside of the seat and it had actually pushed the underside of the aircraft up into the seat pan ejection cable. So the cable was now taught to the extent that the seer on the ejection gun cartridge was right on the point of balance like a hair trigger at that point i had no parachute and i had even ejected 100 feet in the air i got out and the ground crew told me afterwards so i thought great so i went to the bar and had a few beers that was close anyway yeah about two months after that i was flying with a guy called dave newbury and we were doing a a flapless approach onto runway 14 at valley and on this approach i think we might have been in in manual which doesn't matter but we were flapless and we're about half mile out because we're flapless about 250 feet because on a flapless approach okay you haven't got the drag of the flap so it's another judgment exercise where the student has got to be able to fly the attitude correctly but not have too small a power too much power and i felt he's getting a bit low so i said dave i said you're getting a bit low put some power on now in the back seat the throttles are in connected so as he put the throttle forward i noticed the rpm was down we should have had about 85 but it was very slowly ticking at about 82 going down very slowly and I thought hey that's funny that's exactly what happened seven or eight weeks ago I said put the pollen Dave he said I am and then at that point I'm looking at the the warning panel and the warning panel was completely blank there's nothing wrong I thought that's very strange it's something odd here and this is amazing thing because I'm sitting there and there's this quiet but very authoritative voice said get out at that point i just i said eject eject now if you eject through the canopy which means you use the seat pan handle the ejection means that the guy in the back goes out first otherwise you get your face full of broken prospects so i can't eject pull my handle now the ejection seat works within a second a second of pulling the handle but i was I kind of hyperspeed and I thought it hasn't worked.

1:10:49Tony Dobbie:So I looked down to see if I'd pulled the handle and at that point the ejection sheet fired so I'm not in a good position to fire so consequently I clenched a couple of vertebrae in my back. Anyway, I went out and I remember seeing Dave Newby's seat go out ahead of me and I noticed the aircraft, because of all the loss of weight, was now pitched about 20 degrees nose high. Immediately I was aware that this parachute had deployed. I spun round and just time to go. I'm near the ground, grabbed the rigging and I went slam feet, knees, chest faced into a goss bush, now it was like a sack of coal, no partial any, and I hit the ground and I took my mask off and I could smell the goss, the wet grass and the earth, I thought at least I'm alive and I stood up and this is amazing because just beyond where the goss bush ended was about a 20 foot drop and there were these big armchair-sized rocks onto the beach.

1:11:47Tony Dobbie:And I thought, if I hit that, I'd be paraplegic at best. And with that, the helicopter arrived and I got carried off to the SIG quarters. And I told the Air Force about this. I said, hey, someone told me to get out of that. That was disbelieved. And OK, this is where it gets interesting because that morning, my wife went along to a coffee morning and she was there and the station manager, and a Boz Romeson came in, and he marched very purposely in, and she knew he was going to come and see her. Now, my wife had been going to church for some time, and she knew he was going to come and see him. And the Boz came up to my wife and she said, Babs, she said, Dobson's just ejected, but he's okay.

1:12:28Tony Dobbie:And so that was an answer to the prayer, that one. So anyway, with that kind of, my wife going on to church, and this happened to me, I thought, I better start going on to church. So I started going on to church, and the guys all said, hey Dobbs has got religion. I had got religion because from being a complete pagan, absolute pagan, I'm giving out the hymn books, I'm taking in the hymn books, I'm taking the collection, I'm trying to, I think, if God exists I better get some brownie points. And I was doing what I thought was the right thing. And then there was one day I was at home and I'm working outside trying to clear some brambles and I thought if I'd have died I'd have gone to hell.

1:13:06Tony Dobbie:I was, I just can't describe it. I knew that my life had not been thoughtless, but I knew whatever happened, and I thought, I've got to do something about this. And I went home, and I said to my wife, I said, something's happened. She said, why are you crying? I said, I don't know, I don't know. Anyway, we got some Christian books around. This had been happening for some time, because about, oh, I don't know, a few months before, I'd gone out, taking my dogs for a walk, before it got light. I thought, get the dogs to walk. And I looked at the stars, and it was a beautiful starry morning. and I thought, gosh, the star's gone forever.

1:13:38Tony Dobbie:What is eternity? I thought it was completely what happens. And so when this happened, I was at home and I thought, I've got to do something about this. And one of these Christian books said, what you've got to do, it sounded so simple, is you've just got to ask Jesus into your heart and ask him to be Lord and Saviour and everything, all your problems are over. I've certainly discovered it's not quite as easy as that, but I did this and it was a cold night and I thought, Lord, I said, what I've done, you know exactly what I've done, please forgive me and be my Lord and Savior. Nothing happened, you know what I mean, this book said, when this happens, you'll hear the Ha 'i Ruiya Chorus, nothing happened.

1:14:16Tony Dobbie:So I prayed it again, I thought, okay, I've done what is right. And then a few days later, I was at home, and I suddenly realized, I thought, I have been forgiven, I knew I had. Now that was okay, that was 40 years ago, and yeah, it's not as easy, it's a very hard road there are all sorts of things come along to show you where you're going, where you're going, where you're going wrong but I think I did what was right in the time yeah, okay

1:14:40Cold War Conversations Host:Tony, that has been an amazing story you shared with me today but I feel really honoured that you shared that with me, thank you so much for being on Cold War Conversation okay, great don't miss the episode extras such as videos, photos and other content, just look for the link in the episode information the podcast wouldn't exist without the generous efforts of our financial supporters and I'd like to thank one and all of them for keeping the podcast on the road if you'd like to help go to coldwarconversations.com slash donate the cold war conversation continues in our facebook discussion group just search for cold war conversations on facebook thanks very much for listening and see you next week

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