GROUP CAPTAIN NIGEL WALPOLE DESCRIBES HIS COLOURFUL FIRST EXPERIENCES IN A FRONT LINE SQUADRON IN GERMANY DURING THE COLD WAR.
COLD WAR | A VETERAN’S STORY
A USAF F-104 Starfighter passes a pair of RAF Germany Hawker Hunters.
(KEY COLLECTION)
From 50,000ft on that beautiful, clear morning just before Christmas 1955, North Germany looked so peaceful, but to the east across an invisible border and far below me, Russian MiG fighters were wheeling and soaring as in some ritualistic aerial war dance. This was the Cold War; they were my adversaries and I, in my brand-new Hawker Hunter F.4, had just joined the business of ‘deterrence’.
