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As we s t re a ked low across the Romanian countryside, ‘Smokey’ fell uncharacteristically silent. Over the previous few days I’d got to know Richard ‘Smokey’ Young well and he was an affable and typically flamboyant American pilot. Minutes earlier we had led a formation of high performance aerobatic aeroplanes out to the coast off the Black Sea resort at Constanta and completed a ‘recce’ of the course that the crews would be racing around the following day. Now we had split formation and were transiting as singletons back to our temporary home at the former Romanian AF base at Tuzla. And, as our Harmon Rocket skimmed the treetops, the atmosphere had changed. Cold War Warrior “I’m sorry I went quiet on the runin,” Smokey said as we unstrapped and swung the canopy open to get some cool air. “It suddenly dawned on me that I was flying low-level towards a former Soviet Bloc airfield and I realised that ‘this’ was what I spent my career training to do, yet hoped I’d never have to. It was a sobering thought.” As we grabbed a cool drink Smokey told me more about his career as a USAF F-111 driver and the time he’d spent in the UK during the Cold War. It was fascinating and I vowed to one day get him to share his story to a wider audience. That was back in the summer of 2008 but I’m pleased to say I’ve convinced Smokey to put pen to paper and if you turn to page 58 you’ll see what it was like to fly General Dynamics’ revolutionary swing-wing nuclear bomber. I hope you’ll be as fascinated as I was. Happy Memories I have happy memories of the F-111. Growing up in the Midlands in the 1980s, the Upper Heyford-based Aardvarks would regularly disrupt school lessons as they tore past on ‘attack’ missions. Back then military types could be frequently observed from the school windows; I remember one day in particular when a ‘convoy’ of 17 C-130 Hercules filed past, seemingly following the river.