Vulcan 607 [Hardcover]

This is a rattling good read, as history and as a Boys' Own adventure story. Rowland White manages to draw together the big picture of the Falklands War and the personal experiences of the crews into a coherent, compelling whole. You will not regret time spent with this book.

Hitting back after the Falklands invasion by the Argentinians in 1982 was always going to be a tricky business, but this book explains just how tricky - and how damned dangerous too. As world events unfold the book sets out the RAF idea to bomb the airfield at Stanley to stop any Argentine fighters using it during any campaign to recapture the islands. The problem is that attacking the Falklands means flying an insane distance in 20-year-old Vulcan bombers that were not designed to drop conventional bombs, refuel several times on the journey, penetrate modern NATO-style air defences in a bomber that has very old electronics designed to counter Warsaw Pact AA weapons, hit a small target without having adequate maps or intelligence - and a dodgy navigation system - and then get home again. Easy. Not.

The run-up and the mission itself have all the elements of a techno-thriller. The Red Flag exercises in the US set the scene by showing that the RAF's antiquated best can give even the highest of hi-tech air forces a run for its money. The crisis erupts, and suitable Vulcans have to be found with the right mix of avionics, engines and airframe - not easy, given that each plane was virtually hand built and bits from one don't necessarily fit on another. When the right planes are found, they have to be improved from spares, scrap and museum displays. There's more than a touch of the Star Trek-style "I canna change the laws of physics" in the way the ground crews make-do-and-mend-with-Araldite to get the planes in the air with the right gear. Meanwhile, the bomber crews have to learn how to do air-to-air refueling in the dark at high speed and with only a couple of weeks' practice. The Victor tanker crews have to do the same, because they are used to refueling small aircraft - they also have to practice Victor-to-Victor refueling as well, because the misson profile calls for tankers to be used for the tankers which in turn refuel a tanker for the final bomber run in, otherwise everyone's mission will become horribly one-way.

The heroes are the RAF crews, air and ground alike. The heroine is the V-bomber itself - an old warhorse, finally used in anger just before it is due to be scrapped. And as you might expect, this kind of thing is now beyond UK defence capabilities.

At the end of it all, you're left with a sense of gratitude that people will set off on missions like this, and then press as things go wrong. I wonder if the movie rights have been sold yet...

The reviewer who stated that they missed the runway may like to read the book again!

This is a great story and describes the RAF's "minor" contribution to the Falklands war in gripping detail. Of course many people state that these raids would have been better launched using the Sea Harriers much closer to home, but as the book only slightly elludes to, the whole point was to make the Argentinians sit up and realise that even though the UK was thousands of miles away, they could still be hit. It must have scared them silly.

Overall the book is well written, but I find some the authors descriptions of people a little twee. They all come across as rather perfect "good eggs", and I think less sycophancy in this area would have made a smoother read (for me at least). It also seems to skirt certain issues in terms of RAF involvement and how the Navy might have felt and the overall effect of bombing the runaway on the Argies. It was all covered, but I felt these areas were a little light in places.

For anyone interested in history, aircraft, the RAF or the Falklands War, this is a great read and will leave you amazed that a team of men, trained to drop a nuclear bomb can in a matter of weeks retrain to drop convential weapons using an aircraft that was so old it was a wonder it would still fly with technology that came essentially from WWII. No matter that only one bomb hit the runway, it had a dramatic effect, not least the surprise that they got there and back AND hit anything at all! And that does not even consider the Victor pilots and the problems they had....

Personally I am glad that there are people who will do this type of thing so that I can sleep soundly at night!

I ripped through this tome in a soingle transatlantic flight last week, and enjoyed every page of it. The daring do leapt off the page, and you could allmst smell the jet fuel as the refueling runs went in. If there is a problem with it, it's that with such a complex story there is always going to be a large cast of characters- litterally hundreds of people were involved in this tale- and it's all too easy to loose track of who the narrative is really about. It's also tricky to follow the mission in the air- diagrams of the complicated (and almost disasterous) refueling plan help, but don't quite make things crystal clear.

Also, the book perhaps over states the ultimate impact of the raids- the strategic acheivements claimed are tenuous to say the least.

None the less this books reads brilliantly well, and as an inflight book it's probably the best thing available today. Certainly made economy plus feel downright luxurious compared to what those chaps endured!