Prince William (37 page)

Because of the security implications, in that their messages were often about the Princes' flights and movements, the police brought in the anti-terrorism squad, who very quickly confirmed that their messages were being hacked and discovered who was doing it. Although, as one of them says, ‘It wasn't rocket science.

‘We decided very quickly to prosecute – William and Harry were very angry and very keen to get something done about it. We told the police, and off we went. There was quite a long period when we carried on as normal while they gathered the evidence, knowing that they were listening to our voicemails. It was evil stuff. I never believed it was just us – as it all subsequently unravelled.' In that unravelling, in November 2011, it transpired that while the
News of the World
was being investigated for hacking into William's voicemail, it had hired a private investigator, ex-police detective Derek Webb, to follow him. It was no surprise; both boys had known for years that they were being followed.

Diana had talked about telephone tapping, the Squidgy and Camillagate tapes had been the result of some sort of interception; from an early age William and Harry had lived with the fear of leaks and betrayals. William particularly was wary of people, questioning motives, wondering whether they could be trusted. Their reaction to the hacking was anger, not disbelief. The
News of the World
had been prying into their lives for as long as they could remember, and to discover that they had found some new way was not entirely surprising.

‘The phone-hacking thing was a complete liberation to them,' says a friend, ‘because all those stories just stopped; they don't appear any more. If you look five years before the hacking arrests and five years after, it's like night and day in terms of what appears and what doesn't. It's unbelievable. Every week there would be something in the news: an argument William was supposed to have had with his commanding officer at Sandhurst … masses and
masses of stuff, some of it trivial, some a bit damaging when presented the wrong way. With those arrests, they realised that their friends weren't talking and don't talk and that has helped them relax about things.'

GOING SOLO

For the next eighteen months after his graduation from Sandhurst, William was a part of regimental life but he had signed up for a short-term commission and it became clear that, because of the way the squadrons within the regiment were rotating, he was not going to get out to Afghanistan within that time. Rather than doing more of the same, he decided to spend the remaining eighteen months experiencing life in the other services. One day in the future he would be Commander-in-Chief of all three, the highest rank he could hold, and he wanted to know more about how they worked at the other end of the scale. It would make him unique among monarchs but also among high-ranking servicemen, and put him in a position to contradict anybody from the Chief of Defence Staff down, none of whom would have had his breadth of experience.

So at the beginning of January 2008, as Flying Officer William Wales, he arrived at RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire, where he was stationed with 1 Squadron of 1 Elementary Flying Training School. It was the start of four months of specially tailored, intensive training with the Royal Air Force, where he spent just enough time with each aspect of the service – from logistics to flying – to soak up the ethos and traditions of the RAF as well as its military role. Flying was where his passion lay. It was very much in the blood. His father had started his military career in the RAF, and already had a private pilot's licence when he'd arrived at Cranwell in 1971 to train as a jet pilot. Charles loved flying, as did his father, but both men were ultimately persuaded to follow the family tradition
and join the Navy. Charles finally got his wish to join the Fleet Air Arm and did a helicopter conversion course to become a pilot on the commando carrier HMS
Hermes
. He described those as ‘the happiest and most rewarding' days of his naval career, but he was perpetually frustrated by restrictions forced on him because of fears for his safety. He would wonder why an aircraft deemed too dangerous for him to fly was safe enough for his friends. The Duke of Edinburgh took up flying when he gave up his naval career. He gained his RAF wings in 1953, then his helicopter wings, then his private pilot's licence, and when he finally gave up flying in 1997 at the age of seventy-six, he had flown 5,986 hours in fifty-nine types of aircraft. And Prince Andrew had been a naval pilot in the Falklands War.

So it was not surprising that after eight days, and just eight and a half hours' flying time, William made his first solo flight in a Grob 115E light aircraft, known as a Tutor. ‘God knows how somebody trusted me with an aircraft and my own life,' he said afterwards. ‘It was an amazing feeling, I couldn't believe it. I was doing a few circuits going round and round, then Roger my instructor basically turned round and said, “Right, I'm going to jump out now,” and I said, “What, where are you going?” He said, “You're going on your own,” and I said, “There's no way I'm going to do that,” but he said I was ready for it and jumped out. The next thing I knew I was taxiing down the runway and I was sitting there saying, “Oh my God, this is a bit odd, there's no one in here.” Going solo is one of those things – if you had a list of the top fifty things to do before you die, it would be in there.'

From the Grob he graduated to the faster Tucano T1 based at RAF Linton-on-Ouse in North Yorkshire, and from there he moved to RAF Shawbury in Shropshire and helicopters, starting with the Squirrel.

After the four months, he had flown most of the aircraft in the service including a Typhoon jet fighter and, as one of his Household describes it, ‘had had the most amazing panoply of experiences'. He even made it to the front line. He was on a thirty-hour mission
to Afghanistan to repatriate the body of Robert Pearson, a twenty-two-year-old trooper killed in action. He wasn't qualified to fly the massive four-engine C-17 Globemaster military transport plane, but did take the controls of it under supervision during the flight. During the three hours on the ground at Kandahar, he met fellow servicemen, and surprised them all. Only a handful of people knew he was on his way, because of a news blackout, but his visit was a huge morale boost. The news only broke when he was safely back on British soil when he said how ‘deeply honoured' he felt being part of the crew that brought the body home. After they landed at RAF Lyneham, he asked for a private meeting with the parents of the dead soldier. He had gone to Afghanistan as a regular serving officer, but he was always a member of the Royal Family first and has a real understanding of the impact that a sympathetic word could have on people in times of distress.

Very serious efforts were made to get William to the front in more than a token way, but they were thwarted by the fear that his being there would put in danger the lives of those around him. Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton and the Prince himself still harbour the hope that one day it will be achieved.

In April 2007, at the end of his bespoke course, he was one of twenty-five students presented with their RAF pilot wings by the Prince of Wales, in his capacity as Air Chief Marshal. The Duchess of Cornwall was in the audience, as was Kate Middleton and Diana's sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, the only member of the Spencer family with whom he has much contact. His training in the RAF had been accelerated but he had forty or fifty flying hours at the end of his time – as many as most people who get their wings conventionally are able to achieve over three to four years. He felt as though he had slightly cheated, but he came away a competent if not an operational flier with a real understanding of the Air Force and its capabilities, which was the original intention.

It was in the clocking-up of that flying time that William landed himself in trouble. In the last week before his graduation he was based at Odiham in Hampshire, learning to fly Chinooks – tandem-rotor
heavy-lift helicopters. Two incidents happened within a couple of days of each other, the second making the headlines before the first. ‘Prince William flies multi-million-pound RAF Chinook helicopter to cousin's Isle of Wight stag do … and picks up Harry on the way,' announced the
Daily Mail
. ‘Most young men,' it went on, ‘are happy to jump in a taxi to get to a stag do. But not Prince William. The second in line to the throne used a £10 million RAF helicopter to fly to a drunken weekend in the Isle of Wight. He even stopped off in London to pick up his brother Prince Harry on the way.

‘The 80-minute journey – it is understood it costs more than £5,000 to keep a Chinook in the air for an hour – saved William seven hours of driving through rush hour traffic and waiting for a ferry, meaning he and Harry arrived by 4 p.m., ready for the start of the three-day stag party for their cousin Peter Phillips.

‘The Ministry of Defence claimed the sortie had always been planned as part of William's training and included important elements of a pilot's skills.'

This was not strictly true, and after a series of other ‘joyrides' came to light and a variety of MPs had fulminated loudly and the anti-monarchy group Republic had asked to know the costs involved, the RAF admitted the flights had been ‘naive' and a ‘collective error of judgment'. The Isle of Wight trip cost the taxpayer £9,000.

The truth was the Chinook had flown up to Cranwell from Odiham on the day of William's graduation to put on a display for the passing-out students. William knew the pilot who said, ‘Where do you want to go? We're going back to Odiham, we'll give you a lift.' William said he had to get to the Isle of Wight, whereupon the pilot said, ‘That's no problem, we've got to do our three hours today to get our hours up, we'll drop you.' William turned to one of his team for reassurance, ‘Do you think that's okay?' ‘Yeah,' he said, ‘go on,' thinking no more about it. On the way, which was perhaps the mistake, they diverted across London to pick up Harry from Woolwich Army Barracks. They touched
down in a field on the Isle of Wight, William and Harry hopped out, and the helicopter flew back to Odiham. There was nothing unusual in what happened; RAF pilots do their hours and get in their landings wherever they can. Had anyone else jumped out of the Chinook, there would have been no story.

But it wasn't anyone else and the proverbial rapidly hit the fan. The moment it did, William put his hands up. As that same member of his team is quick to point out, ‘He has a very good instinct for what is right and wrong', and will always do what is morally right. Those who have worked for his father say that Charles is not always so good at admitting ownership of plans or decisions that backfire. William immediately said it was his fault, that he had asked the crew to take him to the Isle of Wight. It didn't stop them being dropped on from a dizzy height, but if he had not come forward, their plight might have been considerably worse. As one of them put it, ‘If it wasn't for him we'd be hanging from a gibbet.'

The second incident caused equal outrage and was equally legitimate. William had taken a Chinook the week before while he was training at Odiham, and ‘bounced' into a field belonging to the Middletons behind their house in Bucklebury. The RAF have been doing this for seventy years. Trainees, needing to practise their takeoffs and landings, choose a field belonging to somebody they know so they don't have to pay a landing fee. No one had got in or out of the Chinook; he was simply practising, and his planned route and descent had been cleared and authorised before he left the base. Somehow there was a crossed line between the RAF and the MoD and when the press (tipped off, no doubt, by someone in the village on the make) started making enquiries, the MoD said they knew nothing about it. The
Daily Mail
lost no time in declaring ‘RAF fury over Prince William's £30,000 helicopter stunt in Kate Middleton's backyard.'

Righteously indignant on William's behalf, his team at Clarence House wanted to object but William refused to let them. ‘No,' he said, ‘what will happen is that it will bounce down the line and
some poor pilot in the crew planning room who misunderstood the question will get it in the neck at Odiham and I'm not prepared to do that. We can ride this. Let's do the right thing, which is for us to take the hit.' He wasn't going to have that guy, whoever he was, swinging from a yardarm.

At the next meeting of the Princes' Charities Forum, which is a periodic gathering of the chief executives of all their charities, Harry lost no time in taking the mickey out of his brother. While William chaired the meeting, Harry made continual references to helicopters, which had everyone in fits of laughter. Each time William simply put his head down in an embarrassed way while struggling for a suitable riposte.

LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE

With his wings successfully won, and the flying bug well and truly established, William moved on from the RAF to the Royal Navy, in which his father, grandfather, great-grandfather George VI and great-great-grandfather George V had all served. After the first four weeks of basic training and learning about every aspect of the service, which included taking part in war games exercises on board a nuclear submarine and a minesweeper, he was sent on an operational attachment to the West Indies. He joined HMS
Iron Duke
, a frigate under the command of Commander Mark Newland, one of several ships deployed to the Caribbean during the hurricane season in case they are needed for humanitarian purposes. The rest of the time they work with the US Coast Guard on counter-narcotics patrols, stopping and boarding suspicious-looking boats. Typically the traffickers they intercept are from South America bound for Europe and North Africa and use speedboats packed with petrol and drugs, known as ‘go fasts'.

Commander Newland had been told to expose the Prince to every aspect of front-line operations on the ship and, as luck would have it, within four days of his arrival, they seized a massive cocaine haul from a 50-foot speedboat 300 miles north-east of Barbados. It was the culmination of a three-day operation in rough seas and stormy weather. William was part of the frigate's helicopter crew that first spotted the boat, suspiciously far out to sea for such a small craft, and after a high-speed chase, ordered it to stop. He hovered overhead while US coastguards boarded the speedboat and arrested five men. They found forty-five bales of cocaine – with
a total weight of 900 kg and a street value of £40 million – bound for Europe.