The Combustor starter on the Victor was, as I recall, essentially a tube which had high pressure air out of the bottles and fuel forced in at one end, lit and the expanding gases coming out of the other were used to start the engine.

As you can imagine these got flippin’ hot in use and so had a lagging jacket fitted to them.

These jackets used to get soaked in oil and I was on quite a few Ground Runs on Victor Servicing Flight when you could see them start to smoulder a bit after they were used.

Robert Hilton will be able to tell you a lot more – I just remember him giving me the fire extinguisher off the Land Rover ‘just in case’; as we would want to keep the 10Kg CO2 bottle for a real fire.