My “Nearly” War

By Col (Ret) Stan Brygadyr There are real..war stories and then to many of us, there are benign..war stories of the 40-year Cold War..where not a shot was fired to achieve victory. But in 300 carrier landings and 20 years/6 tours of flying, there have been several apprehensive events for me which came close to disaster. The Cuban missile crisis comes to mind.

In Sept 1962, the Carrier HMCS Bonaventure sailed for the UK and the Netherlands with me aboard in VS-880 Sqn (Trackers) as the OIC.s co-pilot. About 600 miles west of the UK, our crew was launched to take Cdr (Supply) to London to arrange for Bonnie.s..visit to Portsmouth for a mini-maintenance period...

The next morning CDLS London advised that we couldn.t return to our carrier as she was now over 1,000 miles away. She had turned back west to aid in the rescue of passengers from a USAF chartered Flying Tiger Airliner that had ditched. After a few days in London and a few days in Portsmouth, we were ordered to fly to the Netherlands. Our carrier was now so far behind schedule that we couldn.t be taken aboard until after the Rotterdam visit (tough duty).

After a week in Rotterdam, the Bonnie sailed for the UK and we finally landed aboard while she was steaming through the busy English Channel. During the maintenance period in Portsmouth, the Cuban missile crisis arose and the Bonnie was recalled to Halifax. We steamed at high speed (20 knots) and arrived in Halifax on 02 Nov.

The carrier and VS-880 were fully loaded with war stores and sailed on 05 Nov to a position ahead of the US Navy embargo/ intercept arc, east of Bermuda. The OIC of the Sea Detachment VS880 remained ashore for two days so that I, his co-pilot, could carry out flights testing some new acoustic detection equipment with VX10.

We had been given a 07 Nov position for rendezvous with Bonnie so launched appropriately to meet the planned intercept and recover on board. After a four-hour flight, we reached the planned intercept position but, guess what? No Carrier! We had no place to go so climbed a few thousand feet to increase radar range and messaged the ship (blind on HF as she was in radio silence) that we were here, running out of fuel. Could she please advise position?

Bonnie did break radio silence and gave us her position which was still an hour.s flying-time away. For that one hour flying, I physically held the fuel mixture controls aft of the auto lean detent and thus kept our fuel flow to the absolute minimum.

We landed aboard Bonnie after 5.3 hours flying with not more than 15 minutes of fuel remaining. This is only one story that I, like many other Cold War Warriors..have tucked away for posterity. Per Ardua Ad Astra! ..Col Brygadyr is a member of RUSI VI.

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