Dragon Fire

Newsroom, BBC Television Centre, London

The midnight radio bulletin had just finished. On the second floor, BBC News 24 interrupted its sports news to flash the Pakistani nuclear attack. In another part of the BBC’s giant newsroom, World Service Television News had broken into its programming fifteen seconds earlier. Only a handful of staff was on duty in the main news-gathering area, a horseshoe of desks, computers and banks of television screens. The World Duty Editor had made one telephone call to the home of the World Assignments Editor, who was on stand-by.

He then called the Asia hub bureau in Singapore, from where correspondents, producers, camera crew and technicians were despatched to the BBC bureaux in Islamabad and Delhi. They left from Hong Kong, Singapore and Beijing. Reinforcements joined them from Jerusalem, Cairo and London.

Satellite transmission dishes, satellite telephones, portable edit packs, flak jackets and nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) warfare protection suits were loaded on commercial flights with the reporting teams. Within a few hours, the BBC would have the most formidable news reporting system in place to cover what could become the world’s first nuclear war.