Defending the skies

IT is more than 70 years since legless RAF Squadron Leader Douglas Bader defied the odds to help see off Hitler’s aerial warfare arm, Luftwaffe, in the Battle of Britain.

While the Spitfire has become a symbol of Britain’s fighting spirit during the Second World War, its modern-day equivalent, the Typhoon, is now a key part of the RAF’s fighter fleet.

As a new television series Heroes Of The Skies celebrates Bader and other flying aces from history, Flight Lieutenant Noel Rees, a Typhoon pilot with 29 (Reserve) Squadron at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire, is busy defending the skies in the 21st Century.

His base is one of two – the other is RAF Leuchars, in Fife – to provide Quick Reaction Alert (QRA), which means scrambling their jets within minutes when a potential threat is detected.

Two pilots at a time will begin their day at 7.45am in the Aircrew Ready Room, which lies between the “Q-sheds”, where two single-seat Typhoons sit poised for instant action.

Here Flt Lt Rees describes a day in his life...

"TYPHOON pilots do “Q”, as we sometimes refer to it, anything between once a month and once a week, depending on what other tasks we have. It’s a 24- hour shift and most of our time, if not all of it, is spent on the ground waiting for a scramble.

Theoretically there’s plenty of free time if it’s quiet, but there’s a lot of reading, study, checking the aircraft and other things that keep you busy.

After the handover brief at 8am, which covers weather, incidents over the past 24 hours, Notices to Airmen (Notams) that help us avoid other air space users such as balloonists, or a temporary ground event such as an agricultural show, and other mandatory avoids like hospitals, we formally accept the responsibility for the air defence of the UK for the next 24 hours as the duty Q crew. Even if there is a shout in the minute before formal handover, the earlier crew would take it.

The weather element of the brief is interesting as it takes in a huge chunk of Northern Europe and the North Sea out to Norway, as well as the whole of the UK. Because we never know where we might have to fly, we have to take into account all flight levels weather-wise.

The next highlight is breakfast. Because we are remote from the rest of the station, it arrives by van at about 8.30am and they set up within minutes.

As pilots, we eat modest amounts and often, because we never know when the shout will come and we need to be able to cope with G-force and the obvious adrenalin rush.

Instinctively, we keep an ear out for the modern equivalent of the Tannoy, called the Telebrief, that still operates in the ready room.

It crackles when controllers at RAF stations monitoring the UK’s “Recognised Air Picture” flick a switch to start alerting us of something not quite right about an aircraft over or approaching the country.

When it crackles, our eyebrows rise and we look at each other as we privately try to guess which of a dozen or more scenarios might lead to a launch.

At night in the bunk room, we sleep in our flying kit so that even if there’s a scramble at 2am, all we have to do is wake up, run to the aircraft and put on our jacket, helmet and gloves. When we launch, the aircraft take off as a pair, usually within seconds of each other.

More aircraft from each station are then brought forward in their readiness state as back-up if needed. If it’s a target way out at sea we will be supported by a tanker aircraft, usually a VC10 from RAF Brize Norton, so we can re-fuel in mid-air.

There may only be a couple of jets in the air during an incident, but the whole QRA system is a huge organisation. The primary function of the RAF is defending the skies over and around Britain, so people on the ground stay safe.

WE maintain the highest level of readiness under the direction of controllers at RAF Boulmer, in Northumberland , and RAF Scampton, in Lincolnshire, so we can be scrambled to identify, intercept, and, if required, engage unidentified aircraft approaching our shores – 24 hours a day, 356 days a year.

At the start of the scaled response, which at its zenith means two Typhoons will launch, civilian air traffic controllers might see on their screens an aircraft, such as a light lone aircraft simply not responding to calls, or note that a transponder – the “fingerprint” ID of an aircraft – is not functioning, or it is behaving unusually.

Most times, it is human error, as in the case of a small aircraft such as a Cessna that is wandering because the pilot is looking for somewhere to land through lack of fuel, and has forgotten to put his radio on or it is broken.

The attention given to an unknown, unresponsive or non-communicating contact goes up a gear when it is a non-UK military aircraft or a jet airliner.

More frequent than a scramble, which is when the aircraft take off and has a specific target aircraft in mind, are “calls to cockpit”, where everyone races to the Typhoons, the sirens are blasting and the HAS (Hardened Aircraft Shelter) doors slide open, but we stop short of launching. A lot of incidents end there as the aircraft of interest is determined as nonthreatening.

BACK on the ground, the jets are kept in tip-top condition by ground crews who live in and around the Q sheds for a week at a time in four-man teams. These are the people I have the highest respect for.

At a set point each day we “re-cock the jet”, where we go out and sit in our jets to help them carry out servicing, perform cockpit, engine and system checks and set it at high readiness.

I joined the RAF ten years ago after experiencing flying in the Air Training Corps and being sponsored through school and university.

I always wanted to fly, from a very young age, and soon realised I would be happier flying military jets.

I feel honoured to be following in the steps of Battle of Britain pilots like Douglas Bader. He was one of my boyhood heroes and I grew up thinking he defended Britain’s skies singlehandedly.

Little has really changed since then, except the aircraft are faster and the system of detecting suspect aircraft is integrated with Europe, including Germany, and of course at far longer range than the Chain Home System pioneered by Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding.”

• Heroes Of The Skies, a six-part series presented by Lord Ashcroft, continues on Channel 5 on Thursday