I spoke to an ex Vulcan pilot turned priest a few years back, Brian Sharp – I asked him the same question, who has asked his CO back in the sixties when he was on QRA. Once the Valiant was named, they stuck with the V theme because the names beginning with V simply sounded powerful, and reflected a cohesive force that didn’t seem like individual aircraft, but a collective entity. He made me laugh by saying ‘Basically, all propaganda to keep Ivan looking over his shoulder!’
Fascinating bloke to chat to, and as cool a cucumber.

Just to clarify – The speculation was not formed of my own ideas, it was a legitimate article in the press that I read, with AAIB and RAF brass saying the ‘Initial’ findings suggested what I posted. I’m not trying to be clever, or give ill informed opinions, but on seeing the video, bird strike was what come to mind straight away, sorry if that is deemed offensive, but I ain’t an expert!
Its the speculation regarding things such as the pilots actions that is in severely bad taste and of ill informed opinions – Such as an article online that suggested pilot error, now that is where the line should be drawn!

I will leave other to decide is this comes under the heading of “speculation” or not, but there are Press reports coming in that are pointing to a bird strike as the cause of the crash of Hawk T1 XX308. The report is claiming that the preliminary findings of the aircrash investigators have come to this conclusion.

According to the link below, a bird strike caused an engine flame out, which precipitated the crash.

Story here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2028661/Was-Red-Arrow-hero-downed-bird–Investigations-discover-remains-crash-site-suggest-catastrophic-bird-strike.html

..although, I would caution that this comes from the Daily Mail, so should be approached with some scepticism(!)

Still, the pictures accompanying the item are worth a look, including pics of the wreckage, and a heartbreaking picture of John Egging, at six years old…

Well, any article with the words ‘Daily’ and ‘Mail’ involved is always going to have a large abundance of misinformation clouding over it, but to be completely honest, my first thought on hearing the circumstances was that it could of been a result of a bird strike, after hearing the reports of the Hawk not being under power – especially because of the area they was flying in, with many sea birds and wildlife reserves in the surrounding areas.
Lets just hope the speculation monster doesn’t rear its ugly head too much, and that the cause can be found quickly, so we can all see the Red’s back where ‘Eggman’ would want them to be – I’m sure he will be up there with them when they do.

Terrible news, very sad to read it – I cherish the pictures taken of me standing in her at Dux in ’08, sad end for a inspiring and graceful piece of engineering.

I also saw the Harvard yesterday, got excited thinking it was possibly a one David Gilmour’s..

Anything fox says, I’ll take with a very large handful of salt, fearmongering is their game.. but a jammer that can bring down a plane? Must of been a quiet day of the office when they came across that one on page 496 of results on “things that can scare the public because not much news has happened today”
Despite the risk being extremely low, they’ve obviously forgotten to consider that pilots are trained to deal with not just communication interference, but complete communication shutdown.
I’d say a nutter with a Stinger is more likely to be more of a problem than someone with a piece of hardware that most likely cost close to sod all to manufacture.