Buccaneer 1981 - 1984 (9)
Two station operations officers from Lossiemouth flew out to join the detachment and they took over the manning of the Buccaneer Ops Centre, much to my personal relief! This overall state of orderly preparedness continued for some time. Crews took their turns at Standby duties while pre planning any likely sorties. And we maintained a careful watch on the weather.
On 22 September, the French launched an air attack from
their Carrier, the Foch. At least two waves of attack aircraft flew against an artillery site outside Beirut. The French reported this air attack as a success. However, a few days later, I went with the Commander British Forces Cyprus to lunch aboard the Foch. l and there were some [47] US Navy and Marine guests as well. After the introductions, one of the Americans called to the French Admiral our host, “Gee, Jean Claude, do you have any idea how long this little party is going to last, we have to get back to business aboard the Eisenhower.” The French Admiral was brilliant! “Ah mon ami,” he replied. “We are here for lunch so the timing will all depend on the menu!” It was a good lunch of course! After the lunch, I excused myself from the table
and found some of the French navy pilots to try some very careful interrogation and investigation. I assessed that their attack had achieved very little. I also took the opportunity to question the US guests from CTF 60 on the pending arrival of USS Iowa with [48] her 16 inch guns and her mortar locating radar. I told them of our difficulty in deciding how to find and hit the guns threatening our British troops in their block of flats. “How are you going to employ the Iowa and her huge capability?” I enquired. “Is she going to sit and wait for the bad guys to fire guns, then locate those guns and fire back?” “Guns!” he said. “Guns! She ain’t going after no guns, she’s going to re-arrange the geography!”
On 30 Sep 83, an official cease-fire was declared in Lebanon. The Detachment continued the standby but it was relaxed to one pair on 2 hours and one pair on 4 hours. This was now the time to return some air and ground crews to Lossiemouth and bring out fresh replacements. We set up a two monthly rotation which continued until the end of the detachment. During this cease-fire period, there were several major events. One was the early repatriation of that particular ComBritForLeb because of - his exhaustion.
