For Air Cdre Alastair Mackie CBE DFC and Bar, being part of Britain's nuclear vanguard was once a fact of daily life. As the first commanding officer of No 101 Squadron on the Avro Vulcan Bl, he found himself at the forefront of that Cold War capability. The relentless training, the regular exercises, the constant state of alert - all were part and parcel of the job, waiting for the Soviet attack that never came. Make no mistake, many feared just such a strike. But was that fear misplaced, even stoked by the very defensive posture that Britain had adopted? Mackie came deeply to question it. So deeply, in fact, that some years after leaving the RAF, once no longer a public servant, he became a supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). For more than 25 years he has been one of its vice-presidents.
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