Billiere: Well, obviously Norman's temper did curtail people's enthusiasm to go forward with ideas and suggestions or even to question decisions that were impending. The military don't question a decision that's been taken, you question it before it's been taken, that is a perfectly reasonable thing.

And people were reluctant to do that with him and, I think he lost a lot of very valuable commentary as a result of that. But, on the other side of the equation, he was a man of the most immense professional capability and judgement and he had a tremendous intellect and so he could actually in many ways cope with things himself. And where a lesser man might have needed this e comment from other people he could actually make things work without it. So, perhaps there was a degree of intellectual arrogance there, if you like, but it did balance itself out in many ways.

Q: Could you sum up his contribution-strengths, weaknesses?

Billiere: Oh, his contribution was unique and immense. I mean he ran the whole operation and it stood or fell on his management of it.

And nobody, whoever you are, can side issue that. His weaknesses, I think, were his temper whatever way he cares to explain it, it did subdue his staff. He didn't get the best out of them as a result of it. And I think that really was his major shortcoming. But it was more than made up for really by three things.

First of all, he was an exceptionally fine soldier. He knew his job inside out and therefore all the military people working with him had no trouble at all, in accepting his decisions and his judgment, in military matters.

Secondly, he understood the Arab world. He'd been brought up there in his young days when his father was in Iran. And he knew that you don't do things in Arabia the American way if you want to get 'em done. And he was able to adjust his pace of doing things and the way in which he did things, to meet the Arab style, which was very important. You must remember we were guests out there.

And thirdly was his diplomacy. He was a great diplomat when dealing with other nations. And because of this diplomacy, he was able to keep the coalition together. For example, there was the move of the British division, which he didn't want at all.

There was the occasion when the Syrians were extremely unhappy with the role they'd been given, right at the last minute. And he changed it. It didn't make any military sense, but politically it was extremely important. If he hadn't made the adjustment it could well have been that the Syrians would have fallen out altogether.

Q: Tell the story of how you and Andy Massey persuaded Norman Schwarzkopf that the British Special Forces had a role to play?

Billiere: Well, for personal and historic reasons, which are none of my business, Norman had reservations about the value of special forces. And he did not want to find that his own forces were diverted to rescuing failed special forces missions. Very understandable. I had to convince him that British Special Forces would make an important contribution towards the war. And he ultimately agreed that he would listen to a formal presentation and then, from that, he would decide whether or not he was prepared to agree to British Special Forces being deployed.

Q: And a briefing took place. Talk us through the briefing, who was there, what did they say.

Billiere: Well, Paddy Hine, myself and Andy Massey who was heading up our own special forces in theatre, got together and really put together the case for our special forces, which was nothing to do with Scuds, incidentally, at that stage.

It was everything to do with diverting Iraqi forces away from the main front into an area that they did not want to be involved in the battle. And we put this presentation together. Polished it up in good staff college fashion. And off we went, and Andy did the presentation brilliantly well. And, Norman was persuaded.

I can't remember exactly what he said. But the effect of what he said was, 'OK, I agree, you can go ahead with that mission. But,' and he made one condition, I always remember this. He said, 'Don't expect me to come and rescue you if they get it wrong'. And I was able to assure him, our special forces won't get it wrong.

Q: What were you saying to Norman Schwarzkopf they could achieve? What was the mission at that stage?

Billiere: The mission was to divert the Iraqi. Two, twofold really. To divert the Iraqi forces away from the main area of battle, so that there would be less facing the troops that were going to be taking on the main assault.

Q: No Scud hunting at the time? Scud hunting wasn't the mission?

Billiere: No, Scud hunting was no part of the mission in the early stages. They're infinitely flexible, special forces, and , if the task changes they can adjust to it. Provided you're asking them to do a task which is within their capabilities. And I suppose I was as good a person as anybody to judge that, having spent most of my life with them.

But their role was to draw Saddam Hussein's forces away from the main front so that he would have to deal with what would appear to be a major threat in western Iraq. And secondly to keep under surveillance the main Baghdad-Amman road and just see what traffic was moving up and down it. And if it was military traffic to take it out.

Q: When did you learn that the air war was going to start? How did that happen?

Billiere: Well, the Prime Minister, John Major, came out, and we all knew and I knew, but it was kept extremely secret. Very, very close indeed, and I'm not sure too many people knew exactly when it was going to start, in that it was tied in with the authority from the United Nations for the operation to go ahead. And quite rightly it was kept on a very tight net. And nobody really needed to know too much about it. Everybody was getting ready for it, and the exact date wouldn't have made any difference really to their degree of readiness.

John Major came out and he visited us about ten days before the war started. And he'd clearly got a date in mind and he took me on one side, actually, personally, just on my own, away from all my staff, and he said 'Look, Peter, I think this date's beginning to look like 20, 21 February'. And that was the first I knew of it. I then kept that to myself because it was, there was no need to pass it on. Once you pass these things on they leak.

Q: The night the air war started, what's your most vivid memory, that night?

Billiere: Well, it's like all these things. All the decisions had been made, forces had been deployed and from the point of view of senior commander, there was nothing more to do until things started to go wrong. And I knew it was going to start moving at midnight. The important thing to me was to get a night's sleep, so I was fresh to deal with the problems next day. Not sit up sort of watching television or watching the news. And so I went to bed.

And I can remember these American aircraft taking off in Riyadh and roaring over the headquarters. Oh, an immense sense of power, unending power as these heavy, powerful aircraft roared overhead. And it was both impressive and awesome, and exciting.

Q: And was there a degree of fear about casualties mixed in?

Billiere: Oh yes, I mean we didn't know how many were going to come back next day. Who was going to come? Had we made a mistake? Had we misjudged the Iraqis? And the effectiveness of the Iraqis capability to respond. Had we got the right priority of targets to attack? Because, we went initially to eliminate his capability of launching aircraft against us and to emasculate his air defence system. And did he know we were coming?

I mean there were a thousand one questions we didn't know the answer to. And, of course, it was perhaps one of the great moments of the whole war, for me, when we saw that so vast a majority of our aircraft returning.

Q: That story of the first night, the Tornado pilots and people. Can you tell me the story of what happened from your perspective?

Billiere: Yes. I was deeply concerned that we were losing proportionately far more than anybody else and the first thing I did was to say why? And it was actually fairly obvious why, when you talked to the air crew. When you analysed the flight reports. When you talked to my extremely able and experienced deputy commander, and really responsible for running the air war, British part of the air war.

And that was, we were flying low level. And whatever reasons may have been given after the war, the reason those aircraft crashed was because they were flying low level. For one reason or another. It may have been they flew into the ground, it may have been they were hit by flak. Maybe they were avoiding flak. But they were flying low level.

And so, one said, well is this necessary? Is this a sensible thing to do? And the answer was, no it isn't necessary, it's not a sensible thing to do. And I don't want to go on doing it.

Q: Were you saying this to Bill Wratten? Were you saying to Paddy Hine?

Billiere: Yes, I said it to Bill Wratten. And Paddy Hine came out and visited within 24 hours. And we sat round a table and discussed the matter. I mean, we all agreed that it was not an acceptable way to continue with the war. And that the RAF had got to go medium level and if that meant a deterioration in the accuracy of their bombing, well so be it. The first thing was to stop this loss of aircraft and loss of life.

Q: Do you think that the missions itself, the original JBG233 missions were well conceived? Were they against the right targets? These airfields were huge.

Billiere: We were locked into JBG233. It was all we had. Apart from iron bombs dating back to the last world war, pattern bombing. And for a very good reason. That was the philosophy for fighting in Europe and that was where the British taxpayer had been spending their money in defence to fight the European war. And this system had been developed for Europe.

It wasn't right for the Gulf War and it was very quickly apparent that it wasn't right and it should in my view have been dropped at an earlier stage than it was dropped. But it didn't mean to say that the system was wrong for Europe, for which it had been developed.

Q: But in the Gulf should it ever have been deployed at all?

Billiere: Yes. Because it wasn't until we'd used it in its early stages. And remember that the RAF had spent 15 years developing this system, training their pilots. Developing tactics. It would have been equally crazy to have changed that overnight without trying it out. And we did try it out and it didn't work because the runways were made differently to the way they were made in Europe. And, because actually the Americans had so decimated the Iraqi air defence capability, that it wasn't necessary to put the runways out of action.

Q: Why did it take so long to take the decision to go up to medium altitude and what did you think about it?

Billiere: The reason why it took so long to change the tactics, is because first of all it was a decision of substantial magnitude. It was going to impact on the whole of the RAF's strategy as developed for Europe and put it into question. And as a result of that there was a great reluctance in the MoD for it to change. And we weren't allowed to change it.

The commanders on the spot were forbidden to change it. And indeed, I saw a letter from a senior Air Force officer in the Ministry of Defence saying in effect, that if we changed it, then my air commander wasn't doing his job. I've never seen such a disgraceful letter in my life.

My air commander was an extremely fine commander, Bill Wratten. He was deeply concerned about his men's lives and yet he was put in a position really, of whatever decision he took it was going to be wrong. If he went on conducting these operations the way he was, then his job was threatened. If he didn't go on with it, then people's lives were being lost. And it was only when Paddy came out and we sat round a table, it was decided Paddy would go back to the Ministry of Defence and sort the thing out of this.

Well, I mean it was obvious they weren't going to hit things with a degree of accuracy. You see, just let me give you an example of the way things change in defence. And this is a very general statement and I'm sure some technician will pull it to pieces in detail. But in the last war, you required 50 aircraft, 140 odd air crew to do the same destructive pinpoint damage that now requires 1 aircraft with 1 precision guided bomb.

We hadn't got precision guided bombs at that stage. We'd got old World War II high level techniques for the reasons that we hadn't developed that particular side of air war. For very good reasons. It wasn't required in Europe, in our judgement.

And so it was inevitable that when we went up to a high altitude we were going to start missing things. And we were back into pattern bombing - dropping a lot of bombs and hoping that one of them would hit, rather than sending one bomb in knowing it would hit. And it wasn't until we got a rather out-dated precision system that required another type of aircraft to help us deliver precision bombs, and those other aircraft were sent out. And then we were back in business, again.

Q: Were you surprised that the key to resurrecting the RAF campaign was a 30 year old plane?

Billiere: Yes, I was actually. I found it personally difficult to see that this sort of aircraft which after all was at the end of its life, and I think one would therefore expect it to have a lot of mechanical failures. I found it difficult to believe, that this was really the right way to go ahead. But again, this was for the airmen to decide and I happily accepted their advice and from what Bill Wratten and Paddy Hine had told me, and we had those aircraft out there. And of course, they were right. And they were a great success.

Q: And so we have a new aircraft that can't do what the old aircraft could do stunningly well.....

Billiere: Well we come back to this business of development and how much you as a taxpayer are prepared to invest in defence. And it's so expensive now, you are forced to specialise for the theatre in which your operations are going to take place. And our operations were taking place in Europe. Low level. OK. So medium level and other defence options were dropped. And rightly so. We couldn't afford them.

So, I wasn't surprised that we hadn't got this capability, and I could understand why we hadn't got it. In fact, though, it had been under development and the manufacturer's released in the end the equipment that was necessary for precision delivery of weapons. And before the end of the war, we got it in service and that was a remarkable achievement again by industry.

And I do think that the British defence industry deserves a particular credit here for the way in which they supported this war. I told you how they supported the army at warfare, and now here is another example of how they were supporting air warfare.