Shot down Behind enemy Lines
It should have been a routine mission that would see British airman John Nichol back at base in time for lunch, but by the time he should have been tucking into his bacon and eggs, he’d been shot out of the sky, captured, pistol whipped and thrown into an Iraqi cell. And that was just the start of his ordeal…
The RAF Tornado was screaming over the Iraq desert at over 600 miles per hour when the heat seeking missile slammed into the rear fuselage. “It was like being hit by an express train,” says former XV Squadron Navigator John Nichol. “One minute I was flying at 50 feet above the sand looking up at bright blue sky then bang, the jet was tumbling like a sycamore leaf and we were an instant from hitting the ground. Fear really hit me, it stomped on my head for three or four seconds, but my pilot got the plane back under control and it was time for me to get my fear back under control. The aircraft was now on fire, the oil light came on, the low pressure light came on, everything lit up in front of me and I had to sort it out.” The airmen began desperately wrestling with the controls in an effort to try and limp back across the border, but Nichol could see that they wouldn’t be able to make it to the safety of Saudi sand. “I looked back in the rear view mirror and all I could see was a wall of flames behind me, the plane could explode at any minute. We decided to eject; our last ditch chance, and I reached down to pull the black and yellow handle beneath the seat.”
Three Tornados had taken off from a secret RAF airbase on an island just off the coast of Saudi Arabia at 8.30 in the morning to carry out the seemingly straightforward attack on what military intelligence referred to as “an undefended deserted airfield.” But as the ‘package’ of jets roared towards the target it became clear that military intelligence was wrong, and that the mission was going to prove more perilous than anyone had imagined. “You’ve got to remember,” says Nichol “that in the early 90s, ours was a Cold War air force. We’d practiced manoeuvres hundreds of times, yes, but few of us had seen battle. When we approached the airfield we could see heavy flak, scores of shells being fired at us – it was fucking dangerous.”
Nichol and his pilot, John Peters (JP), pressed on to the target, lower and faster. The plane bounced hard in the low altitude turbulence and was buffeted by the shells that were exploding all around, raining chunks of molten metal onto the desert sand. Nevertheless, the mechanics of throwing eight thousand pounds of high explosive into the enemy’s back garden were in place, the target was in the sights. "Weapons armed, happy to commit," yelled Nichol to JP "Three, two, one, NOW."
For some reason the bombs don’t release, the plane was now high and slow above the target and, from the barrage of enemy flak that was exploding around them, it was clear that the pilots would have to beat a hasty retreat, or they’d be picked out of the sky. Seconds later the heat seeking missile struck.
“Ejecting from a Tornado is an interesting experience,” says Nichol. “Rockets fire, the Perspex canopy above you explodes and straps tighten. You're propelled upwards under I8 times the force of gravity. You accelerate from zero to 200 MPH in just under a second. It's like being grabbed by a giant and tossed into the centre of a hurricane. You go through flames and explosions and suddenly the parachute opens with a crack and there's only silence.” Seconds later the airmen found themselves collapsed in a heap in the middle of enemy territory.
The pair, dressed in their flying suits, trudged desperately through the searing heat of the desert towards the nearest search and rescue point, where special forces guys would be holed up, ready to get them out of there. “It was over 30 miles away though, the terrain was flat and we were leaving footprints in the sand. The enemy were going to find us, but me and JP decided that we were going to keep fighting until there was no fight left.” Within three hours the airmen were faced with an advancing Iraqi platoon, and they gripped their standard issue Walther PPKs in readiness.
The troops from the airfield the British airmen had just bombed were not pleased to see them. They beat them to the ground with fists, boots and rifle butts and a soldier held a pistol against Nichol’s head and in broken English told him he was going to execute him. “He pulled the trigger and the hammer thumped against an empty barrel. It sounds trite now but at the time I thought, ‘What a fun few weeks this is going to be.’”
Nichol and JP were blindfolded and handcuffed, taken to the Iraqi military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad and kicked into separate 7ftx7ft concrete cells as allied bombs carpeted the district. “They kicked the crap out of us for that. That was our introduction to Baghdad.” Over the next three days Nichol was mercilessly interrogated at the hands of his Iraqi captors in an attempt to extract information. “The interrogation took many forms; sleep deprivation and being stuck in stress positions for hours on end. I was beaten by a group of guards with fists and boots, chained to a chair and beaten with rubber hoses. At one point a guard was stubbing his cigarette out on my ear. I knew I would crack, I just didn't know when. More importantly my only thought was, "What will they do to me, to make me give in?"
He found out on day three. One of the interrogation ‘specialists’ stuffed a wad of tissue paper down the Brit’s neck and lit it. “I thought, ‘This is enough, ask me another question, I'm yours, I've given in.’ The ludicrous part was that they didn't know what they wanted to find out. They would ask stupid questions about the weight of the Tornado or how fast it could fly; stuff anyone with a copy of an aircraft magazine would know.”
On the fourth day Nichol was forced to read a statement at gunpoint by his captors, which was soon broadcast all around the world and his image splashed over British front pages. “That was my lowest ebb, no doubt about it,” he says. “They threw me, chained and blindfolded back into the cell and as I lay on the freezing floor the enormity of my situation came home to me, what would my parents say when they saw the TV footage, how were they going to cope.”
The emotions faded into the background as Nichol began to exist as a POW. The next seven weeks were punctuated by isolation, fear, boredom and beatings. “It was fucking boring. Just boring. On your own 24 hours a day – for three weeks I never saw another human being. There was no table, no chair, no pen, nothing. You can do some sit ups or press ups or whatever, but all you can do is think.”
Then, as surreally as it had started, the British airman’s ordeal was over. As the war reached it’s dying stages, the bombing of Baghdad stuttered and finally stopped on 28 February 1991. “A chap in a fancy suit came into my cell and said, "the war is over, you can go home." Just like that,” says Nichol. The malnourished airman was led out of his cell into the sunlight and handed over to a representative from the Red Cross.
“The ordeal was over and life could get back to normal, except that the rest of my life was just beginning. There was no great change for me; I had faced death and survived, yes I valued life more, in some ways I was a calmer person but seven weeks of unpleasantness doesn't change a lifetime, not in the way you might think.”
END
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