It is not an aircraft you would kick the tyres and light the fires and go

Well, we used to go around the world with only a crew chief and there is not really any reason why the crew cannot do their own Pre Flight Inspection and transit servicing. The Daily inspection can be done prior to departure from base and could normally be expected to remain valid for the departure the following day. However if required the crew could carry out this inspection as well. If the stop was more than one night then there might be a case for some engineering cover. Any parking would of course have to be self-manoeuvring. Whilst most ground handling agents have Boeing and Airbus towbars, Vulcan ones are in pretty short supply. Unless of course the organiser accepted the additional expense of having the item pre-positioned.

If you have any defects that’s another story. If they cannot be carried under the terms of the Minimum Equipment List then you are going to require engineering support and spares. The spares are going to have to come from the main operating base as it would be impractical to carry around or pre-position a sufficiently large range of items to cater for any likely problems.

It is worth bearing in mind that this is now a civil aircraft and the engineering schedule will be be approved by the CAA and not Bomber Command Engineering Staff. The latter would have had a very large pool of manpower (I know it didn’t seem like it at the time!) to carry out the tasks and would have utilised them all. The CAA regulations do not make such assumptions they just require that the schedule is adequate.

The bottom line however is cost. The aircraft is going to be expensive to operate and it will have to be done with the minimum number of personnel.

exmpa

Boulton Paul I believe….;)

You are most probably right. Hobson stuck in my mind for some reason, maybe because I spent so long understanding the innards of their injector!

The last I heard some young engineer had “invented” this sort of PFCU recently for commercial a/c. Something about being less susceptable to hydraulic failures and redundency.

Yes, I have sometimes pondered that one, but having also flown a couple of the modern “electric jets” I’m not so sure.

exmpa

Vulcanpilot has the reason correct, reduction high speed buffet and associated lateral control issues. Remember that the Mk1 series had separate ailerons and elevator surfaces (outboard and inboard resp.), the elevon system was only intoduced on the Mk2*. The high speed buffet affected the aileron hinge loading and limited the amount of control that could be applied in certain circumstances. There was concern about the loads imposed on the structure and a fear that this could lead to failure of the outer wing section. The cure was the compound sweep and the reflex camber on the outer leading edge. The primary aim of these modifications was to reduce Centre of Pressure movement with change in Mach No.

It is also worth bearing in mind that the Mk2 had in effect a new wing. The main difference was a larger outer section with a further refined section. Both Thickness/Chord and Aspect Ratios altered significantly although because of the higher Max Takeoff Weight (MTOW) the wing loading remained substantially the same. The trailing edge was also swept on the Mk2.

*A hangover to the Mk1 flying control system was still present on the Mk2. The Power Flying Control (PFC) panel on the left outboard console still had start buttons labelled E,R,A. The E button started the inboard elevon PFC units and the A the outboard units. The R started both Rudder units although only one was engaged at any one time, the second unit acting as a standby.

Vulcanpilot can no doubt recall the additional function of the R start button.

exmpa

There was a good thread on there about the accident with the Victor at Hamilton airport and the causes etc and that is why I want to try and find out if it is still online?

The captain regularly posts on Pprune (under his own name). You could try asking there.

exmpa

Then there was the T4 visual bombsight. The only time I recall seeing one was in the classroom at bombing school at Lindholme. We certainly didn’t use it and the nav rads were not trained on it. I am fairly sure that it had been removed from the Mk2 although the wiring was probably still present. I shall ask my tame navigator and see if he remembers.

I have communicated with my directional consultant. One has to wait until they’re having a lucid moment, but it was like that in the old days anyway. He recalls the T4 being used on the Mk2 in its early days in service. He says it was used for simulated, RBSU scored, attacks in the UK and for live bombing at El Adem. He also told me that the T4 was the province of the Nav Plot and not the Nav Rad.

exmpa

I learnt recently of a story that suggested one of the crew was briefly hung up on the exit door but was able to get free and away.

That’s correct. The rear crew Personal Equipment Connector (PEC) which supplied oxygen and intercomm had to be manually disconnected before abadonment. IIRC the sequence was to pull the Emergency Oxygen Toggle and undo the PEC then operate the assistor cushion. Apparently one of the crew did not not undo the PEC and was hung up on the door for a period until he managed to free himself.

exmpa

Most of the reasons have been covered above, but there are a few other considerations. The fitting of an ejection syatem for the rear crew only really became an issue when it was realised that the aircraft was going into the low level role. Nevertheless, work had been done before this as a result of incidents such as the Heathrow crash. Cutting an aperture in the structure to allow egress of the seats was a major modification and would have been expensive and difficult. Added to that the sequenced ejection system itself was a very complex piece of kit and making sure it worked as advertised, without fail, every time would have been challenging. Remember we are talking electro-mechanics here, clockwork timers etc., no electronics and the whole sequence would have been relatively slow. The system may have had quite high lower speed and height limits for successful operation.

You also have to remember that many (most?) of the rear crew were not happy about having to spend all the trip strapped in to a live seat and were not fully convinced of the necessity for it. It is an emotive issue, but I certainly felt this was the case with the crews I flew with. They recognised the necessity of an escape system for the pilots because there really was no other practical way for us to abandon under any circumstances but they felt that the systems installed in the rear would be adequate under most conditions. These systems were the swivel seats for the Nav Rad and AEO, the seats swivelled inwards towards the door and the assistor cushions that inflated to propel the occupant out of the seat towards the door well. The Nav Plotter’s seat moved rearwards (i.e. towards the nose as the crew faced backwards) and was also fitted with an assistor cushion to help him stand up. The entrance door was armed so that it could be opened either by the door handle itself, in a quadrant on the rhs of the frame (facing rearwards) or by a switch at the Nav Rad’s station. Use of the Emergency Opening system directed 3000psi air into the jacks, the door would go down!

Abandonment with the gear down was somewhat problematical and involved holding onto one door jack and swinging to one side to avoid the nose leg, Hmmm. But on the other hand was the VC10 or Comet fitted with escape systems? The Vulcan was/is a Group A aircraft just like them and judged no more at risk of a low speed incident than those other types. Yes, I know about Heathrow, Cottesmore, Luqa; but that was the thinking at the time. I also recall the successful abandonments of the Mk1A over Anglesey, XM610 near Durham and the one in the vicinity of Spilsby some years later. A riskier scenario for the rear crew was, in my opinion, abandonment with the Blue Steel fin extended. We all saw the film, but he didn’t miss it by much.

So at the end of the day it was all about the weighing up of the considerable additional cost and the probable delay in getting the Mk2 aircraft into service if a rear crew escape system was to be fitted against the likelihood that it would prove its value in service. It might have saved the lives of 3 crew at Cottesmore in 1968 but this is by no means certain. The Captain finally ejected very near the seat limits and was lucky to survive. At Luqa there may have been a different outcome, but remember they had a crew chief on the aircraft and there still would have been no provison for him. Detroit, well I don’t think it would have made any difference there, although that one is a bit more complex.

So that’s the story as I see it, albeit looking back some 35 years.

exmpa

If is wasn’t fitted all the time

The purpose of the F95 was to enable low level simulated attacks to be carried out and assessed on targets outside the coverage of the Radar Bomb Score Units (RBSUs). The F95 was run during the attack and a pulse was transmitted to the camera at the point of release. The release pulse produced a series of markers on the relevant film frame(s) and given that the frame rate, aircraft height and groundspeed were recorded the accuracy of the attack could be assessed. Providing of course that the target could actually be found on the film; this was not always the case.

IIRC by the late 60’s all aircraft had F95 mounts and wiring, the only reason a camera would not be fitted was because there were insufficient to go round. They would always be fitted where necessary, e.g. Goose and Akrotiri rangers, but they were present most of the time.

The above is applicable to free-fall aircraft. Whether the Blue Steel aircraft had the F95 as part of the normal fit I do not know.

Whether the F95 fitting was a production feature or an in-service mod. I do not know.

Then there was the T4 visual bombsight. The only time I recall seeing one was in the classroom at bombing school at Lindholme. We certainly didn’t use it and the nav rads were not trained on it. I am fairly sure that it had been removed from the Mk2 although the wiring was probably still present. I shall ask my tame navigator and see if he remembers.

exmpa