My working life in the corporate world is finally coming to an end – woo hoo!
I officially retire on 31st December but will be on garden leave soon – magic! I’m really looking forward to my “real life” to come as a proper person, not an employee… including reconnecting with friends, writers and all the new people I’ve now got time and energy to connect with.
It’s been 39.2 years coming, but my wife’s t-shirt gift for me says it all!
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Decades ago I saw two men climbing out of a hole in the ground just outside the perimeter of the former RAF Manston. I had always wondered what they were doing there, and last February I took a walk along the now abandoned road in that area to investigate.
I found a derelict ROC Observation Post in a very poor state of repair. The hatch was missing and the entrance shaft was missing its ladder. Even so, the main external features of this bunker were visible: the entrance hatchway, ground zero indicator mount, air vent, bomb power indicator baffle plate. For the ROC personnel manning these bunkers, conditions underground would have been quite cramped but I did not try to take a look here. There are good schematics of ROC posts available online, and the following two web pages give a reasonable overview:
I’ve always been interested in the technology of spaceflight, and particularly the 1960s solutions to the problem using the Saturn-V launcher. I think it is the complexity of the machine, combined with its extraordinary thrust and the drama of being the first to take humans to the Moon that is so captivating.
I was not excited by maths at school and have since worked hard to grow my mathematical abilities… its become a life-long project since my twenties to see how much I can learn as an adult. It had always annoyed me that my mathematical prowess is less than many people could achieve in the ’60s… spaceflight, general relativity, quantum mechanics… all things to be understood and conquered!
I’m really pleased to have grown my ability to mathematically understand spaceflight by constructing my own mathematical model of how Apollo 11 moved from the launch-pad to Earth-parking orbit (EPO). Using three separate stages (the S-IC first stage, S-II second stage, and S-IVB third stage) with a combined and fuelled mass of c2,938,315 kg, my calculations show that Apollo 11 used 2,894,920 kg of burnt fuel and discarded stages to reach EPO. Just 1.5% of the launched mass was subsequently needed to reach, land and return from the Moon (43, 395 kg).
In my mathematical model, Apollo 11 reaches EPO at 203 km altitude, moving at a speed of 7,791 m/s. The actual spacecraft had an EPO at 191 km, moving at 7,383 m/s. Given that my model treats the vehicle as a point mass and computes changes at 1 second intervals, I’m proud that the error in my calculations equates to less than 1.7 s of flight for the real vehicle. This pdf document summarises key results from the model.
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At the start of a short holiday break, I enjoyed a visit to the “East Midlands AeroPark” at Castle Donington, located right next to East Midlands Airport. They have a small but good collection of (often later-mark) Cold War era jets, mostly in reasonably good condition despite being kept outdoors.
I had not previously seen many examples of the DH Vampire, so the 2 T11 variants on display were interesting to see (XD447 and XD534). A curator explained to me that the yellow-painted aerials on the wings were part of a navigation system, based on timing differences of signals being received across the airframe. At other displays, I also had not previously noticed the large number of aerials mounted on the Nimrod’s upper fuselage. They were probably more noticeable here because a raised mound surrounding the displays gives you an elevated viewpoint.
The tandem-seat Hunter trainer, XL569, was interesting to see and in good condition, as was the FR10 mark XJ714. However, the GA11 variant WV382 was obviously in need of a coat of paint and not shown in its best light. Jaguar XZ369 was very-well displayed, with open avionics bays. Lightning ZF588 was also very-well displayed, and this was the first time that I had properly noticed just how large the Lightning airframe is.
For me though, the overall star of the show was Vulcan B2 XM575. The curator was on hand to talk about this airframe, explaining that the engines are still in place and all the electrics are working. Unfortunately the clutch plate for the bomb-bay doors was needing to be replaced, so they could not demonstrate that mechanism. That was more than compensated for by a view above and along the wing’s leading edge, showing that its shape is much more complex than the simple delta that you see from below. It was also interesting to see the Ram Air Turbine (“RAT”) deployed – this would have provided electric to the aircraft if all other systems had failed, ie a power source of last resort (“deploy and pray”, as the curator said).
Here are some photos from my visit – all copyright Lee Russell, 2024.
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I became interested in the technology behind medieval armour during Covid-19 lockdown (who didn’t pick up a new hobby?) and the opportunity to see reproduction armour in use during a joust was too good to miss. Over the May ’24 bank holiday weekend, Leeds Castle at Maidstone hosted 3 days of jousting, and I managed to get there for the final day.
It was great seeing the variety of armours in use, and the choices each “knight” was making about protection vs mobility and function. I’m not going to talk at length about that here, as the pictures will do a much better job – enjoy!
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I’m an irregular reader of the short fiction on 365 tomorrows. Time is precious and life is short, so a story needs a really compelling theme to draw me in. It feels odd over the Christmas holidays to say that I ‘enjoyed’ this tale by Benson. In 8 paragraphs it steps us through the last 17 seconds of all human life on a planet which might be Earth. And yet… Benson tells his story through the eyes of someone falling in love in the last seconds of their life… both fatalistic and poignant, yet somehow redeemed by that last moment of love – recommended.
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Completing my tour of the “big ticket” UK aircraft museums, I visited the Imperial War Museum’s (IWM) display at Duxford this weekend. The site presents both flying aircraft and static exhibits (mostly in hangars). It has a strong sense of being focussed on WW2 aircraft, although there are some Cold War military and passenger jets on display.
It was interesting watching how the pilot got into mkI Hurricane P3717, and then lovely to see it flying!
Spitfire ML295 looked very clean and obviously well-maintained (for flying day experiences). Several of us watching one particular flight also noticed that its engine sounded rougher than expected, leading us to wonder if a different engine variant was used in the 2-seater versions:
Another interesting aircraft to see flying was the PBY-5A Catalina ‘Miss Pick Up’. I’d only seen a Catalina flying once before and this was a real treat:
Two WW2 B-17s were on display – one the famous ‘Memphis Belle’ outside, the other inside a hangar dedicated to the USAF. These were complimented elsewhere by Lancaster KB889, although that was displayed in a somewhat unflattering location that made it hard to appreciate:
From the Cold War era, I enjoyed getting close to the B52D bomber ‘0689’, which apparently flew 200 missions during the Vietnam War. It was impossible to appreciate the size and engineering that went into this aircraft due to it being crammed into a hangar full of so many other planes – it deserves a hangar of its own in order to be properly appreciated. Of special note, it was the closest I’ve come to seeing the anti-flash curtains that were used in these bombers:
In that same USAF display I also saw this deactivated Tomahawk GLCM launcher, which had apparently been stationed at RAF Greenham Common. It was a very strange feeling being this close to such a potentially devastating weapon. I do not believe that any nation should possess nuclear weapons and my reflections on visiting Greenham Common can be found in this article.
A Vulcan bomber (XJ824) and a TSR2 prototype are also on display, but in such a poor location that I did not enjoy looking at them.
I had not expected to see Victor XH648 and it was interesting seeing the air-air refueling pods fitted to its wings. The aircraft seems very well preserved. I don’t know a lot about the history of Victor tankers, and wondered whether operational aircraft flew in camouflage paint schemes carrying bright orange pods!
My visit finished with a look at a deactivated Polaris missile (a submarine-launched ICBM). I had not seen one of these before and was disappointed with the tiny bit of information displayed with it. However, this exhibit did give me a genuine laugh-out-loud moment when I noticed the ‘INERT’ markings on the casings – thanks for removing the warheads before putting it on display!
On the whole, my visit to IWM Duxford was enjoyable but I won’t visit again unless it is for a special ‘flying day’. Overall I found the exhibits to be too closely packed in the hangars, making it hard (or sometimes impossible) to properly appreciate the aircraft. A much better display of many of the aircraft found at Duxford can be seen at the RAF Museum at Hendon. And probably the best display of a Vulcan can be found at Solway, even though the aircraft is left outside to the elements. Here are links to my articles about those:
Life in my day job is very demanding, but over the past week I have just found the physical & emotional energy needed to publish 3 paperbacks with Cold War / New Cold War themes:
“Cold War – How The Cold War Nuclear Arms Race Affected The World” collects together a series of non-fiction articles that I first released on this website.
“Black Ops – 4 Secret Missions from the S.I.G. Archive” is a set of short stories based around the UK’s Special Investigations Group that features in my new Action-Thriller series.
S.I.G. are on the front line with…
* Underwater espionage in the Black Sea,
* Cross-border raids into the Ukraine Occupied Territory, and
* The daring extraction of a defecting Russian colonel, code-named Malachite, from under the noses of her FSB handlers.
Set between 2070-2071, the five short stories in this collection explore a fictional road to war and a nuclear attack on the United Kingdom.
The United States and Russia remain ideologically opposed behind arsenals containing thousands of nuclear warheads. But now they also contend with the emergent strength of China as another Superpower, as well as considering the possible actions of smaller powers caught up in the struggle between them.
When tensions run high between the major powers, what would it be like to endure a thermonuclear attack?
It has been fun to finally pull these three books together and I am looking forward to getting my own hard copies from Amazon in a couple of days time. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed writing them!
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It has been a while since I posted on my blog. In the background I’ve been working on my ‘Lissa Blackwood’ action-thriller series, preparing these articles about the Cold War for publication and considering how I want my website to look in 2023. I hope you like the new-look banner!
As time passes we are forgetting what the Cold War was like. We are forgetting what it means to live in a country under the threat of a four minute warning before the bombs start to hit. We are forgetting how dangerous nuclear weapons are to both our individual survival, and the survival of every living thing on the surface of this planet. We are forgetting that these weapons are not toys to be played with as counters during political negotiations.
My ‘Cold War – How The Cold War Nuclear Arms Race Affected The World’ articles present some key facts and stories from the Cold War. Sharing them will help to ensure that the Cold War is still talked about, and provide some context for the ‘New Cold War’ which seems to have already started.
I have very strong memories of the closing years of the First Cold War. For a teenager growing up in those times, the news was full of reports about anti-nuclear protests by CND, the Falklands War, the Reagan Administration’s “Star Wars project” (ie SDI) , social uprisings in Eastern Europe, the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification. Films like ‘When the Wind Blows’, ‘The Day After’ and ‘Threads’ had shown just how devastating a nuclear war would be. I remember news reports of US Cruise Missile launchers prowling the UK countryside on manoeuvres, practicing for the day that they might need to rain nuclear hell on the USSR.
‘The World’ seemed like a very dangerous place. It was. And it still is.
Culture played its part in the Cold War, of course. Over the years my sense of Cold War style conflict has been inspired by wonderful films like the James Bond series (of course), and ‘The Ipcress File’. As a reader I’ve been enthralled by more classics than I count from the likes of Ian Fleming, John le Carré, Tom Clancy, Jack Higgins, Robert Harris, Alistair MacLean, James Patterson… and too many more to list here! All of that has blended with my lived experience of the Cold War into themes that often appear in my own fiction.
I hope these articles inspire your own reflections on what it really means to be in a Cold War.
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This Jubilee weekend I ticked off two small entries on my UK Cold War bucket list.
First up was a visit to the National Cold War Museum at RAF Cosford, just north of Birmingham. I had been itching to see this exhibition ever since I’d visited the RAF Museum at Hendon in 2019.
Hendon is a superb museum with an excellent display of well-exhibited aircraft. I totally enjoyed seeing Tornado ZA457, Buccaneer XW547 (‘Guinness Girl’, in Gulf War colours), and Lancaster R5868.
Vulcan XL318, RAF Museum London – (c) Lee Russell
Tornado ZA457, RAF Museum London – (c) Lee Russell
Lancaster R5868, RAF Museum London – (c) Lee Russell
The star of the show was Vulcan XL318 – very impressive with its conventional bomb load in front of it, and almost as exciting as being able to climb inside Vulcan XJ823 at Solway Aviation Museum in 2019. Hendon also had two fascinating pieces of ephemera on display: an Operation GRAPPLE hydrogen bomb test Test flag (1957) and the original Vulcan Refuelling Plan for the Falklands War raid Operation Black Buck.
What more wonderful delights were waiting at the National Cold War museum?
Unfortunately the Cosford exhibition does not live up to its prestigious name.
There are some excellent and unique Cold War aircraft on display. I enjoyed seeing Nimrod XV249 (unfortunately exhibited outdoors, subject to the elements), the Lightning test-bed WG760, Valiant XD818 in white anti-flash paint, as well as the TSR-2 (of course). There was a somewhat morbid fascination to be had with seeing a Thor IRBM (1.44 megatons yield), a Red Beard ‘tactical’ nuclear bomb casing (yield 15-25 kilotons, mk 1 or 2) and a Yellow Sun strategic hydrogen bomb casing (yield 400kt or 1.1Mt, Green Grass or Red Snow warheads).
Yellow Sun fusion bomb casing, RAF Cosford – (c) Lee Russell
Red Beard tactical nuclear bomb casing, RAF Cosford – (c) Lee Russell
THOR IRBM, RAF Cosford – (c) Lee Russell
However, the aircraft are packed into too small a space to be properly appreciated and I was left mostly underwhelmed by the display, especially Vulcan XM598 which is in a miserable spot.
The following day I exorcised my dismay with Cosford by visiting submarine B-49 which is moored on the River Medway at Strood. B-49 is a Soviet Foxtrot boat, which was diesel-electric powered and conventionally armed with up to 22 torpedoes (6 bow tubes, 4 at the stern). It is currently known by its new owners as Foxtrot B-39 U-475 Black Widow. Foxtrots played a central role in the Cuban Missile Crisis when 4 were deployed to Cuba – three were subsequently forced to surface, while one managed to evade US forces.
ex-Soviet submarine B-49, River Medway – (c) Lee Russellex-Soviet submarine B-49, River Medway – (c) Lee Russell
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