The pilot spoke in a matter-of-fact, folksy tone as if alerting holidaymakers to a noteworthy landmark out of the window.
‘Chaos 1 just pulling up on the left wing now,’ he said.
It was the early hours of yesterday morning and our RAF Voyager tanker and transport plane was 25,000ft over Poland, not far from the Russian border, the same ‘danger zone’ which saw Kremlin drones on a reckless incursion shot down last week.
Peering out of the window we saw strange flashing lights and a formless shape just beyond the Voyager’s 200ft wing that briefly suggested, to my mind, a close encounter.
But then its dark outline loomed into view revealing a Top Gun pilot silhouetted in a RAF Typhoon fighter jet.
Another Typhoon, Chaos 2, appeared seconds later. They had joined us for ‘a drink’ – RAF parlance for refuelling and were less than 40ft away.
It was an extraordinary spectacle, the stuff of Star Wars. And it was instantly reassuring to have these super-agile combat aircraft armed with infrared-guided air-to-air missiles flanked either side of us, if only for ten minutes or so, as we cruised the night skies.
For if the world was already in a dark place before last week began, the shadows have only grown longer since.
An Typhoon flies alongside an RAF Voyager tanker and transport plane to refuel at 25,000ft
View from inside an RAF Voyager air-refuelling tanker, which are helping Typhoons in their mission to shoot down unmanned Russian drones and dispel rogue fighter jets
Indeed, as we took off from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire at 8.30pm on Friday, we learned that Russian president Vladimir Putin had raised the stakes even higher on Nato’s eastern flank, adding an extra frisson to our mission to bolster air defences in the region.
Three Russian warplanes had flown into neighbouring Estonia only to be chased away by F-35 fighters.
Next on Putin’s hit list came Finland, which was threatened in similar vein to Ukraine prior to the 2022 invasion.
All this, said one minister, left Britain and her allies ‘closer to conflict than at any time since World War Two’.
And so we set off with some trepidation. The Typhoons, from RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire, had orders to shoot down unmanned Russian drones and dispel rogue fighter jets, and it was Voyager’s job to help them do it – ‘to keep them in the fight’.
Defence officials stressed, though, that the RAF wasn’t looking for trouble. Rather, the mission was about acting as ‘the bouncers on the doors’ of Nato’s eastern flank.
The Voyager’s cockpit was a model of calm. Manned with two pilots and a Mission Systems Officer (MSO), all three only learned of the sortie the previous day when they were on a training exercise.
Short interactions with the Top Guns were punctuated with library-like silence. Listening on a headset, you could hear your own pulse in your ear.
An RAF mission system operator commands Typhoons from the cockpit of a Voyager
‘Clear contact,’ came one instruction to the Typhoon pilots, signalling they were free to approach and line up with the 88m (288ft) fuel hose being dragged behind the wing of the Voyager.
All this was done with routine insouciance – not to mention dextrous skill.
And it was easy to forget that it was happening at 439mph. Below us, Polish towns glittered like upturned jewellery boxes.
Twice the size of a Lancaster bomber, the Voyager is the largest aircraft in RAF history and can refuel at a rate of 5,000 litres per minute. Garage pumps, in contrast, deliver fuel at only 40 litres per minute.
The Voyager, a converted Airbus A330-200 airliner, can carry 291 troops for more than 6,000 miles (9,600km).
Yesterday there was just 15 of us on board, a small group of journalists and crew and it felt like a ghost plane.
When the refuelling process was over, the Typhoons turned 180 degrees and peeled away into the murk.
Wishing them well, one of the Voyager pilots said: ‘Happy hunting!’
The refuelling was overseen by the MSO, a man of rare composure, who sat with his back to the pilots, his face illuminated in the semi-darkness by the glare from a bank of screens.
He controls the formation of the Typhoons, instructs them when to engage and controls the release of fuel.
In all yesterday, he dispensed 27.4 tonnes – though it is possible for the Voyager to feed another aircraft in the air with 100,000 litres of fuel – more than the amount contained by two large petrol tankers.
Afterwards the MSO stood in the galley doorway, coffee in hand, calmly answering questions like a brain surgeon speaking to relatives post op.
Over Poland, the Voyager followed a racetrack-shape flight pattern while the fighter planes policed the country’s borders.
They came back several times to refuel and each coupling in the clouds was executed without the slightest hitch.
In another intimidating move on Friday, two Russian jets conducted a low pass over the Polish-owned Petrobaltic offshore production facility in the Baltic.
Polish forces were alerted as the platform’s safety zone was violated.
A Russian MIG-31 fighter jet was seen flying above the Baltic sea after violating Estonian air space on Friday
The developments have increasingly rattled European governments as US-led efforts to stop the war in Ukraine have come to nothing.
Estonia, along with other Baltic states Lithuania and Latvia, are seen as being among the most likely targets if Russia one day decides to risk an attack on Nato.
Neighbouring Poland, though much larger, also feels vulnerable. All four countries are staunch supporters of Ukraine.
The Typhoons reported that they found nothing significant during our eight-hour sortie.
However, both the fighter jets and the Voyager expect to play a key role in defending the eastern flank in the coming weeks and months.
‘All will do so with a great sense of pride,’ said a defence official as we touched down back at Brize Norton.
