Southend Vulcan XL426 is 50 today

XL426 is 50 Years Old!

Vulcan XL426 reaches a momentous milestone on 23 August 2012 – the day marking the 50th anniversary of our aircraft’s first ever flight.

Thursday 23 August 1962 saw XL426 take-off for the first time on a shakedown test-flight from the A V Roe & Co. airfield at Woodford, Cheshire. The flight lasted one hour and 35 minutes. XL426 made four further test flights before being delivered to 83 Squadron at RAF Scampton, Lincolnshire, on 12 September.

The official celebration of XL426’s 50th anniversary is our Visit the Vulcan day at London Southend Airport on Sunday 26 August (see http://www.avrovulcan.com or the other thread on the forum).

We are launching a number of souvenir goodies featuring our new XL426 50th Anniversary logo to mark the occasion, the first of which is a special t-shirt which is available now on mail order from our Web Shop. A new souvenir mug will be on sale soon and other products will be introduced between now and Christmas.

Despite carrying out various lines of research and enquries over the years, unfortuantely we have never been able to find out the names or current whereabouts of the crew who flew XL426 on her first flight or the subsequent test flights. Presumably they would have been A V Roe company aircrew – if you have any ideas of who they may have been, or know who may know, we would be very grateful if you could get in touch. XL426’s Form 4817 (illustrated above) shows brief details of these early flights.

Whilst XL426’s maiden flight will have been the major news story for 23 August 1962 :p, other notable events on that day were the wedding of Beatle John Lennon to Cynthia Powell, and the transmission of the first live Europe – US television programme via the communications satellite, Telstar.

Sadly, 23 August 2012 also marks the 65th anniversary of the deaths of A V Roe & Co. Chief Designer Roy Chadwick, Chief Test Pilot Bill Thorn, Pilot David Wilson and Engineer John Webster. All four perished in the crash of Avro Tudor 2 airliner G-AGSU shortly after take-off from Woodford on Saturday 23 August 1947. Roy secured his place in aviation history as designer of the wartime Avro Lancaster and had laid the foundations of the design of the Avro Type 698 (which was to become the Vulcan) before his untimely death.