Ready when the call came.
InsideAIR explores the incredible story behind the RAF and British Army’s emergency parachute drop on Tristan da Cunha.
Speaking to personnel involved in the mission, this episode goes behind the scenes of how it all unfolded.
Listen on your favourite podcast app or on our dedicated podcast page.
InsideAir Podcast Episode 143 Transcript
Please note that this transcript is automatically generated, and may have some errors. The original audio is the authoritative wording.
Narrator: You're listening to Inside Air, a ‘behind the wire’ view of the Royal Air Force: its people, technology, and operations.
Squadron Leader Peter Lisney: Hello, I’m Squadron Leader Peter Lisney and in this episode, we hear from the RAF doctor parachuted into Tristan da Cunha on a life-saving mission.
Group Captain Andy: This came up as a scoping request, and ultimately, we've saved a life.
Wing Commander Toby: There was great relief when we saw the island, and we could see that we were gonna make land because one of the big fears was that we might have to land in the sea. And it's a six-day sail to either Cape Town or to the Falklands, and they don't have an airstrip, so the only way to get onto the island was that rapid flight in and then the power drop.
Squadron Leader Peter Lisney: Also, in this episode, we'll reheat a few stories just in case you missed them, and we'll be finding out who is under the hat this week.
Air Specialist 1 Ben Russell: What's the best thing about your job?
Air Specialist 1 Technician Dawes: One of the best things about my job is probably deploying all over the globe and seeing some interesting locations.
Squadron Leader Peter Lisney: Find out who is under the hat at the end of this episode. Now, the slogan says, "No ordinary job." So imagine being asked to parachute into a tiny remote island in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean for a life-saving mission. Oh, and you've never jumped out of an aircraft before. Squadron Leader Amy spoke with an RAF doctor who did just that.
Squadron Leader Amy: Tristan da Cunha, the most remote inhabited island on Earth. No runway. Six days by sea from the nearest land. When help is needed here, there is no routine option. And in May 2026, the call came. Wing Commander Toby was at work in the NHS when his phone lit up
Wing Commander Toby: So I got a signal message from my military clinical director asking me if I wanted a holiday by parachute at lunchtime on the Thursday the 6th. I think it was the 6th of May. I actually missed that because I was in theatre. And then I got a signal call from him asking me to get to a terminal where we can have a call. And it became clear that things were evolving then. I was actually on 48 hours’ notice to move at that point, so I was working as usual. And then I left the NHS at about four o'clock that afternoon, having let people know to go home, pack see the kids, and then head up to Brize Norton ready to deploy.
Squadron Leader Amy: That call would lead him and a small team from 16 Medical Regiment and 16 Air Assault Brigade to a volcanic island in the South Atlantic Across the RAF, the request was landing too. Group Captain Andy, Commander Air Wing Air Mobility Force, was overseeing the air operation. Just how rapidly did the RAF go from receiving the request to generating an operational response?
Group Captain Andy: So in the Air Mobility Force we take scoping requests and queries all the time. This kind of came into that bucket on Thursday morning as routine scoping, but certainly by that evening, it looked like it was really going to go from seriously this is happening to airborne was about twenty-four hours.
Squadron Leader Amy: Within a day, the RAF had gone from a scoping request to a global reach mission. On the 8th of May 2026, an Atlas A400M and a Voyager departed RAF Brize Norton for Ascension Island And on the ninth of May, after refuelling, they pushed forward to carry out a historic ten-hour airdrop mission over Tristan da Cunha.
Group Captain Andy: The big challenge was just getting people out the door. So putting that crew into rest nice and early on Thursday evening. A well-rested crew are the best start point. Others can do the detailed planning, and in fact, it became more about what needed to be on that A400, who needed to be on that Voyager to give the maximum range of options. You can't move fast if you're not moving, so getting them moving was the most important thing.
Squadron Leader Amy: But the destination itself posed challenges unlike anything the crews routinely face.
Group Captain Andy: The two things that, that leap out are obviously the challenge of geography, the, the-- how far away it is from Brize, and then you've got the challenges of the island itself. A little volcanic island. The topography is a challenge. The weather factor is a challenge. It's surrounded by the sea that is all-consuming.
Squadron Leader Amy: No runway, no easy way in, and a patient running out of oxygen. Back in the UK, the Air Mobility Force began shaping a plan that would project power and care thousands of miles from home.
Group Captain Andy: Quite quickly, you're into a situation where you're funnelled down a primary plan a primary course of action that says you're gonna need to fly there if you wanna get there as fast as you can. We're familiar with Ascension Island. That would be a good staging point, and then you can focus in on that last bit, supporting 16 Air Assault Brigade. They had a good idea of what they wanted to achieve and how they wanted to achieve it. So then it just becomes a bit of a discussion about the way we achieve that together.
Squadron Leader Amy: The solution was a combined air mobility and airborne operation. Six paratroopers from 16 Air Assault Brigade, two tandem jumps, one with a doctor, one with a nurse, and medical supplies, all delivered by an A400M with a Voyager extending its reach.
Group Captain Andy: It's absolutely pivotal. Voyager enabled it to get there far quicker by air-to-air refuelling on the way down. It was the next day that was really critical. The Voyager can project south from Ascension Island and set up a tow line, link up with the A400 and give it enough fuel to go and do the mission. Now, on paper, that looked okay, but there was a potential outcome if the A400 was delayed, holding off for weather or whatever, where it would've been using its valuable fuel.
Now, nobody wants to run out of fuel. That would be uncomfortable enough in a car. Can you imagine putting yourself in a position where you're trying to fly back to Ascension Island knowing that you don't quite have enough fuel, and you need that Voyager to give you some on the way back? W-we call that tanker dependency, and we weren't quite sure if we were gonna be in that position, so this is all in the planning. The Voyager is absolutely fundamental to all of that on the way back through.
Squadron Leader Amy: The plan was fast, but it also had to be controlled. Operating at this range with no runway, no diversion airfields, and no margin for error meant every decision had to be weighed carefully. Risk wasn't an afterthought. It was a constant companion in the planning.
Group Captain Andy: So we'll always set out with a broad parameters of what level of risk is going to be acceptable. So we wanted long crew duty days in this case for the A400 and the Voyager, but with minimum crew rest to keep them moving. If we do, how do we mitigate it? And so when the crew woke up, everything's prepped for you and off they could go and do the delivery phase, the execution phase.
Squadron Leader Amy: And none of it could happen alone. This mission relied on every part of defence and every part working together.
Group Captain Andy: It's not just a team effort, it's a team of teams effort. Just that way that it, it all went together, to see it all come together so well is just an utter privilege.
Squadron Leader Amy: On the 9th of May 2026, the A400M left Ascension Island and headed south. On board, Wing Commander Toby deploying with 16 Medical Regiment alongside six paratroopers from 16 Air Assault Brigade.
Wing Commander Toby: This was my first jump. I'd done ground school And the whole parachuting course, we didn't get any jumps on my course. I hadn't done any jumps at all, but that did help me with a sort of a broader understanding of how things were gonna work for the tandem. But yeah, it's my first actual exit from a, from an aircraft.
Squadron Leader Amy: You're an anaesthetist by trade, so not somebody people instinctively associate with parachuting out of the back of an A400. That moment before you jumped, were you just questioning your life choices?
Wing Commander Toby: Anaesthetics and ICU and because of my job role, despite being an RAF regular I'm in an army unit, we are trained we know that parachuting is potentially part of the role and we're trained in different entry techniques. It was something I was relatively prepared for, but yeah standing on the ramp, obviously nerve-wracking, but I had every faith in the pathfinders that were jumping us in.
Squadron Leader Amy: For Toby, this was a first, but for him, the jump itself wasn't the challenge. His mind was already on the patient waiting below.
Wing Commander Toby: I was pretty caught up in the medical elements because I knew that I was deploying as the only physician, and I had some details about what was going on the island, but hadn't-- didn't have all the details. And there'd been obviously a very rapid planning cycle for the kit and equipment we'd taken and what we might face and evacuation timelines and what to do with contacts and the public health emergency.
My mind was on my job. My head was in the space of what happens when we land, when I get to the hospital, when I assess the patient? What am I gonna need to do with the patient? Have we got all the kit required if we need to do that? What happens if stuff doesn't make it out the back of the aircraft or doesn't survive the drop? And if we do need to do things, how are we gonna evacuate the patient from the island? So my headspace was very much in the medical.
Squadron Leader Amy: So as you shuffled towards the ramp, what was going through your head?
Wing Commander Andy: Anybody who's been on an A400, they're pretty loud anyway. So I've spent a lot of time on them over the years. So when the ramp goes down, obviously you get air coming in, it cools down. It's pretty noisy. I was pretty focused. At that point, I was already strapped to the pathfinder that I was jumping in with, and I had a fifty-four kilo Bergen hanging from me as well. So really, it was all very professional. We had the PJIs from the RAF there with us as well. We'd done the jump brief. It was just a question of making our way right to the back of the ramp to the edge, and then the countdown to drop zone green on and go.
Squadron Leader Amy: And then, free fall.
Wing Commander Toby: We did about 1,000 feet to free fall. The free fall is actually quite nice because you feel weightless and it's thrilling and you have the wind and all the rest. The canopy opening is pretty brutal on a tandem because it's a huge chute and there's a lot of weight. So that was quite hard. You could actually get a sensation of trapdoor and falling as the canopy opens, which I've been warned about.So it was a little bit unpleasant, but it was fine. And then we were under canopy and the Pathfinders were flying us in. That was all a bit harder than expected. There was a lot of cloud. When we jumped, we were a long way out over the sea, about five kilometres out over the sea. We couldn't see anything.
Actually, on the footage I've seen since, you can just see the tip of the island poking out above the clouds, but it was in thick cloud. We only popped out of the cloud at about 3,000 feet, I think, so really quite low at that point. There was great relief when we saw the island and we could see that we were gonna make land 'cause one of the big fears was that we might have to land in the seaAnd then it was just a question of being flown in on the canopy. The winds were stronger than expected, so there was a bit of fairly quick planning. Pathfinders were super professional and very good at getting us where we needed to be, and we made the primary drop zone. But it was hard work for the Pathfinder that was flying me.
Squadron Leader Amy: The successful drop included Wing Commander Toby, a nurse, several Pathfinders, and medical supplies from 47 Air Dispatch. Your feet hit the ground. What happens next, Toby?
Wing Commander Toby: We got dragged a bit 'cause it was very windy, and then we managed to sort the chute out and unclip. I actually watched Aidan, the nurse, come in as well 'cause he was just behind us, so I was relieved to see him land safely. And we got news that the other guys had landed off the drop zone but were fine as well. So that came through very quickly, and I think there were lots of people who wanted that message 'cause there was a bit of anxiety around it.
We'd already decided then we wanted to get hands on the kit that had been dropped as well, 'cause that was dropped after us. So the Pathfinders and Aidan set about that. I looked around for anybody who looked like they were in a position of authority, and fortunately saw the one police car that there is on Tristan with a policeman by it in uniform. So I went and found the policeman, had a chat with him, and asked him to take me to the med centre.
Squadron Leader Amy: Within minutes of landing, Toby was at the medical centre. The island doctor had already done everything possible, but oxygen was running out and the patient was deteriorating.
Wing Commander Toby: We weren't sure what we were gonna find if I'm honest. But actually they've got a modern, well-equipped medical centre that was running out of oxygen. A sick patient, we were very much required at that point. I met both of the island doctors and some of the nursing staff as soon as I got here, and assessed the patient fairly early on. He was fairly sick at that stage. Reasonable thing to do was to assess and wait and watch, and the island doctors had done a fantastic job of caring for the patient to that point.
Squadron Leader Amy: The mission wasn't only clinical, it was human.
Wing Commander Toby: The patient care was front and centre, but I knew there would also be the integration with the island and dealing with the sort of wider public health of the island and the ramifications for that. The medical team were very on the ball when I arrived. That was seamless and I've worked in austere environments with medics from lots of places in the past and different nationalities, and that's often fairly seamless 'cause we all kinda speak the same language and have a similar background and similar training. The bigger, broader concern was the rest of the island.
Squadron Leader Amy: The islanders were frightened. A sudden airborne arrival, parachutes in the sky, a highly contagious virus, all of which had unsettled them.
Wing Commander Toby: They'd never had COVID here, so they'd never seen people in PPE really. I think it, it all came as a big shock and it's a very isolated community, and they were worried that they were gonna have a, an epidemic on their hands.
Squadron Leader Amy: Reassurance mattered as much as medicine.
Wing Commander Toby: The island administrator actually arranged a meeting a couple of days after we'd landed, when things were under control and we'd got everything sorted, with the whole island community, where we did a bit of a introduction of who we all were and a chat through what was going on, and then a Q&A to allay any of their fears about what was happening. And the atmospherics flipped literally the next morning. It went from people being quite scared to the next morning people stopping and chatting and saying hello.
Squadron Leader Amy: The remoteness of Tristan da Cunha shaped every decision. No runway, no quick evacuation, just weeks of care on an island in the South Atlantic.
Wing Commander Toby: There is nowhere quite so remote as Tristan da Cunha. There's a bit of a dichotomy 'cause we're so well-connected because with Starlink that I'm able to chat to you, and I've been able to speak to my children before bedtime at home, which has been lovely 'cause we often don't have that when we're away on ops.And yet we were a four-hour flight from Ascension and it's a six-day sail to either Cape Town or to the Falklands, and they don't have an airstrip. So the only way to get onto the island was that rapid flight in and then the power drop.
So I was also very mindful when we were doing the planning that if we had to get a patient off the island for any reason, it was seven days for the ship to get here and potentially a few days to be able to get onto the ship because the sea states in the South Atlantic, especially this time of year, we're looking at five, six-meter swells, and there's no harbour that can take a big boat or big ship, and then a seven-day sail back to the Falklands. So potentially a very very long transfer and extended timelines. So yeah, it's easy to forget just quite how remote we are 'cause of the connectivity, but then when you do the maths, it becomes weeks of caring for somebody poorly before we can get them to anywhere else.
Squadron Leader Amy: Back in the UK, Group Captain Andy reflects on what the RAF achieved.
Group Captain Andy: I really do think it, it represents the RAF at its best because this came up as a scoping request, and ultimately, we've saved a life. We've also demonstrated that we can look after and provide direct support from the air to our British overseas territories. We've asked our crews to really come together in a coordinated way, all dependent on each other, but also on their own skill set, all came together for one weekend to deliver something really special.
Everybody showed up. Everybody involved in that task, whether you were handling the aircraft, loading the aircraft even back as part of the planning team, analysing the drop zones, having those risk-based discussions through headquarters. Wherever you looked people are trying to achieve the same aim, and it just focused minds, focused conversations, and just meant that quite an extraordinary endeavour got delivered really quickly, really well, and it just showcased the RAF at its best, in my view.
Squadron Leader Amy: And for those who jumped, the experience will stay with them.
Wing Commander Toby: It's probably the most unusual op that I've done. I've found myself in lots of funny places doing funny things with the military over the years. But yeah, it's just, it's a very special place here. And I think for all of us actually that have been on the island, it will last long in our hearts because the kindness we've been shown by the residents on the island and just what a special place it is.
Squadron Leader Amy: When the call came, they moved across distance, across organizations to deliver support where there was no easy way in.
Corporal Victoria Andrews: This is Reheat for Inside Air. I'm Corporal Victoria Andrews.
51 Squadron have recently deployed the Rivet Joint aircraft to Ørland Airbase in Norway as part of an agile combat employment exercise. The UK Rivet Joint is a specialized airborne intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft. Its primary role is to collect, analyse, and share electronic signals and communications intelligence, providing critical situational awareness. This supports decision-making in complex operational environments, significantly enhancing the warfighting potential of allied airpower. The exercise enabled NATO airborne early warning assets and Norwegian F-35 aircraft to operate together, improving mutual understanding of capabilities and enhancing operational effectiveness.
Elsewhere, the Poseidon P-8 force have played a central role in Exercise Dynamic Mongoose 26, NATO's main anti-submarine warfare exercise. Over two weeks, NATO brought together surface ships, submarines, and aircraft from the UK, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, Germany, and Denmark in the challenging waters of the North Sea and High North. Acting as both the hunter and the hunted, the exercise sharpened allied capability to detect and defeat underwater threats. A region of growing strategic importance, critical shipping lanes, and undersea infrastructure make the High North essential to both NATO security and global stability. And the final two aircraft from the UK's initial F-35B procurement program have arrived at RAF Marham, bringing the UK fleet to forty-seven operational F-35Bs.
Operating from both land and sea, the F-35 combines advanced stealth technology, sophisticated sensors, and powerful capabilities to support the security of the UK and its allies. That's Reheat on Inside Air.
Air Specialist 1 Ben Russell: I'm AS1 Ben Russell, and this is Under the Hat, where we get to know an aviator in less than a minute. Name you're known by?
Air Specialist 1 Technician Dawes: I am Air Specialist One Technician Dawes.
Air Specialist 1 Ben Russell: What's your profession?
Air Specialist 1 Technician Dawes: I'm a cyberspace communication specialist based at RAF Leeming.
Air Specialist 1 Ben Russell: What's the best thing about your job?
Air Specialist 1 Technician Dawes: One of the best things about my job is probably deploying all over the globe and seeing some interesting locations.
Air Specialist 1 Ben Russell: Hardest part of your job?
Air Specialist 1 Technician Dawes: On the downside of being able to deploy, it can be hard to sometimes plan your social life.
Air Specialist 1 Ben Russell: Best location you've served?
Air Specialist 1 Technician Dawes: Is probably Diego Garcia. You can only access it through a military aircraft, so it's pretty unique.
Air Specialist 1 Ben Russell: What bit of luxury kit do you never deploy without?
Air Specialist 1 Technician Dawes: Got to be a Starlink. Make some good friends providing internet to everybody.
Air Specialist 1 Ben Russell: And what's your proudest moment in the RAF?
Air Specialist 1 Technician Dawes: Proudest moment would probably be receiving a commendation for my efforts on Op Chambray.
Squadron Leader Peter Lisney: That's all for this episode of Inside Air. Please give us a review and subscribe on your favourite podcast app, and join us again soon
Narrator: You've been listening to Inside Air, a behind the wire view of the Royal Air Force, its people, technology and operations. If you're serving in the RAF and have a story for us, please speak to your unit media and communications officer. Inside Air is written and produced for the Royal Air Force by RAF Media Reserves
