It was to be one of the most ambitious operations since 617 Squadron bounced their revolutionary bombs into the dams of the Ruhr Valley in 1943.. . April 1982. Argentine forces had invaded the Falkland Islands. Britain needed an answer. & fast. The idea was simple: to destroy the vital landing strip at Port Stanley. The reality was more complicated. The only aircraft that could possibly do the job was three months from being scrapped & the distance it had to travel was four thousand miles beyond its maximum range. It would take fifteen Victor tankers & seventeen separate in-flight refuellings to get one Avro Vulcan B2 over the target & give its crew any chance of coming back alive. Yet less than a month later a formation of elderly British jets launched from a remote island airbase to carry out the longest-range air attack in history. At its head was a single aircraft six men & twenty-one thous&-pound bombs facing the hornet's nest of modern weaponry defending the Argentine forces on the Falkland Islands. There would be no second chances.. .