During the Falklands War in 1982, the RAF airfield closest to the action was on Ascension Island near the equator, thousands of miles away. Tasked with destroying the runway at Port Stanley, the RAF organized a complicated relay in which 11 tankers accompanied a single bomber (mauve), refueling it and each other in midair to support its journey of 3,400 nautical miles to the target. The attacking Vulcan bomber was refueled four times on the way out and once on the way back, using more than 220,000 gallons of aviation fuel altogether.
At the time this was the longest-ranged bombing raid in history — the return journey alone took 16 hours.
It put one crater in the runway, which was repaired within 24 hours, but it discouraged the Argentinians from using it more heavily.
Operation 'Black Buck' - the Vulcan bombing runs - was probably also the most militarily pointless bombing run in modern times. From Wikipedia:
ReplyDeleteCommander Nigel (Sharkey) Ward, the commander of 801 NAS, who flew a Sea Harrier to protect Black Buck One from fighter attack, was highly critical of Operation Black Buck. At the time, he estimated that for the same quantity of fuel expended by Black Buck One to drop 21 bombs, which he estimated at 1,800,000 litres (400,000 imp gal) at a cost of £3.3 million, the Sea Harriers of the carrier force could have carried out 785 sorties that would have delivered 2,357 bombs. Ward dismissed as RAF propaganda the claim that the raids led to fear of attacks on the mainland:
Propaganda was, of course, used later to try to justify these missions: "The Mirage IIIs were redrawn from Southern Argentina to Buenos Aires to add to the defences there following the Vulcan raids on the islands." Apparently, the logic behind this statement was that if the Vulcan could hit Port Stanley, the [sic] Buenos Aires was well within range as well and was vulnerable to similar attacks. I never went along with that baloney. A lone Vulcan or two running into attack Buenos Aires without fighter support would have been shot to hell in quick time.
He further alleged that "orchestrated attempts" were made by "the RAF propaganda machine" after the conflict to exaggerate the effectiveness of the RAF and overshadow the role of the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm in the public consciousness.