Glad you answered that Rob, I was struggling to write a decent response!
In fact it was the Phantom that really introduced the permanent catapult bridle catcher for the Royal Navy, on Ark Royal.

That explains it, thanks Rich.

Tourist area, Coventry or Cornwall, hmm.

I’m from Newquay, the mojority of the ‘kiss me quick hat’ brigade don’t travel there for aircraft!

BTW, have anymore aircraft, besides the Hunters and Sea Hawk, moved to Newquay yet?

I might have missed something here, but if Coventry airport stays open for the operation and maintenance of aircraft, then why move the rest of the known and established collection away from there?

BTW: did the Nav in the Canberra have a bang seat?

In all versions except the interdictor/strike B(I).8, where the nav was expected to bail out of the side entrance door, there was a hydraulic wind deflector ahead of the door to help a little.
The PR.9 nav position and escape wasn’t much better than that of the Sea Vixen.

Mention is made of the B-66 Destroyer ejection system, it’s longer lived naval equivelent, the Skywarrior didn’t have any ejection seats or system at all, along with its naval designation of A-3D, leading to the grim nickname of ‘All 3 Dead’.

with having the engines mounted at the back, were there big differences to design into the airframe in terms of balance etc etc, as opposed to a standard wing mounted set-up.

I don’t know an awful lot about the design aspects of the rear engines installation, but the wings and main undercarriages are quite far aft, which suggests there’s a lot of weight rearwards to counteract. You can add the weight of the fuel in the tail fin tanks (10 tons I believe) to the equation as well, something which was possibly ovelooked with the incident that befell XR806!

The Canberra would certainly become a tail sitter if the tanks were filled in the wrong order!

I think Tony is refering to the fact that no VC-10, or passenger, was lost to a problem with the aircraft itself.
Of the two fatals, the Nigerian one was rapid descent in fog, and the East African one was caused by debris on the runway left by a previous aircraft, this bursting tyres and fouling an engine, if it wasn’t for the incorrectly fitted brakes there may have been more survivors, some of whom died in the ground fire.
The VC-10 was a very safe aeroplane, the incident with G-ASCK goes some way to illustrate that.

The Comet really was unfortunate bad luck, the price we paid for being at the cutting-edge.

As John Cunningham said himself, “we paid the price of progress”.