Just to throw in a bit of maths.

The attacks were made at about 14000 feet. The time of bomb fall, allowing for bomb drag, would be about 31 seconds and the impact velocity just 880 feet per second.

At 420 kts (I am guessing) the bombs would have been released at just under 4 miles from the target with plenty of turn room so that the aircraft could be well on its way out having turned about 90 degrees and be about 3 miles away before the noise started.

They would have come over the sea and be well away over the sea and out of missile range even before the crews could wake up.

I have had the answers to my questions.

BB7 was indeed the last bomber mission flown by Martin Withers.

The last trip was planned as airburst because the army was expecting to take over Stanley within 36 hours and did not want any material damage to structures, just psychological damage to the defenders.

To the best of my source’s knowledge it never flew on any other sortie.

Quite why,as they had used TAIL and VT for the first raid they used only NOSE/TAIL and OFF on the second I have not idea but I can just see a small seed of confusion.

I have some other gems but we shall see if they are touched on.

hpsauce, rather older me thinks. I had been out of the V-force 9 years by that time hence my references to lost corporate knowledge. Yes, I was a Nav Rad and wpns instructor. By the war I was into my 3rd role on the Shackleton.

As a diversion from the bomb thread, we looked to see how we could join the fight. From a fag packet calculation I figured we could have made central America but there after the friendly bases were too far apart.

The brains trust higher up however asked the best question yet.

“Flying from Ascension to the exclusion zone, how long could you remain on task before you would have to ditch?”

Answer 30 minutes and we could do it 5 times.

I made reference in the item on fusing to loss of corporate memory. The captain of one Black Buck story is on record as saying that we practised high level bombing and we practised low level bombing and we practised pop up bombing but we then used an attack we had never practised. This is actually incorrect.

In 1970 we started to use an ‘exciting’ new tactic. We had tactics for laydown and for popups ‘under’ the SA2 umbrella and ‘above’ light AAA cover, but not one against heavy AAA in a non-high level SAM environment.

Enter the pop down.

This cunning plan, against 3rd world targets at long range where they had no effective high level SAM, fighters, or radar was for a high level, fuel-efficient, approach at about 43-45000 feet. Then, at 40 miles from the target, and possibly first landfall, we would do a rapid descent to about 21000 feet. The descent was at 10000 feet per minute and in the two minutes of so we would shake and rattle, strap hanging, and cover about 15 miles.

At 25 miles from the target we would level and fly at about 425kts in nice stable air and quite quiet too. In just under 3 minutes we would drop our bombs and execute an escape turn.

In theory the bombs would be more accurate as the medium level winds would not be as strong and have less effect on the bombs.

So yes, we had practised the attack but equally not at the time of the Falklands attack.

Edited to say that the profile was in fact a traditional Hi-Lo-Hi and very similar to a 2G attack which had been on the books but never practised as the 8000 ft release was in the MEZ for the primary enemy SAM – the SA2 Guideline. It was of course suitable against NATO SHORADEZ but of course we were not going to attack a NATO armed country were we?

I was a little older than some of you. At the time I was sitting immediately behind Maj (later Lt Col) Ewan Southby-Taylor (he will be in Sandy’s book).

Certainly the Nott cuts gave the Argentines whatever encouragement they needed. As usual, the new Tory Government needed to cut costs especially with the planned introduction and already spiralling costs of the Nimrod AEW and the Tornado buy and a reappraisal of the armed forces was undergone.

We had a massive pay rise and, at the same time, the Nott cuts, a businessman with no knowledge of the armed forces and no desire to learn. You can perhaps lay his appointment at Maggie’s door. Of course the MOD was not acting alone and Lord Carrington the Foreign Secretary realised that his department had also got things wrong. He would have resigned on the spot but was asked to stay on.

Certainly we had broadcast the wrong political signals and, as has been suggested elsewhere, might have handed the FI over to the Argentine in a year or so anyway.

The Illustrious was at its final stages of commissioning and was able take over from the Task Force soon after we won. The third carrier Ark Royal was still being built and one of the 3, could have been Illustrious, was to have been sold directly to Australia.

JB, in 1981 and before, the V-force was planned to attack with nuclear weapons and in strength. We would have needed sufficient tankers, to guarantee enough serviceable, to ensure that those strike missions that required fuel would get them.

In 1965, and before, there were 72 Vulcan, 16 Victor 2 and 32 Victor 1. They would have needed a significant number of tankers, admittedly less than 120.

The USAF, with 1600+ B47 and 650 B52 and about 100 B58 only had a limited number of KC97 and KC135. We simply could not afford to do bomber AAR. Our AAR effort was dedicated to the Javelin and then Lightning force.

For non-nuclear missions we had sufficient bases to reach anywhere we wanted, including China. For course there was an exception :diablo:

the book “Vulcan 603” reveals that the RAF had quietly decommissioned the Vulcan AAR capability (it quotes early 1970). I wonder if the politicians knew?

I mentioned loss of corporate knowledge. Well this is another case. The Loss of flight refuelling capability dated from Jan 1965 when the Valiant tankers were withdrawn from service.

The Victor 1 did not have a sufficiently useful offload and the Vulcan could flow down the reinforcement routes before the Victors could get ready. One Valiant could take one Javelin from UK to Singapore in 4 hops. The Victor needed buddy-buddy refuelling on departure and also an airborne recovery top up.

The AAR fit was still in place in 1975 but probably withdrawn after that as an engineering cost saving measure.

Thinking about it I wonder why some delayed-action bombs were not included in the twenty-one dropped. A bomb exploding two hours into the clean-up operation would have caused huge confusion (and alerted the Argentines to the possibility of more). Two more, one exploding at twelve, and one at twenty-four hours could have effectively closed the runway for another day and night.

There are several possible reasons why DA fusing was not used, although I cannot say whether it was or was not used.

First, the new multi-function fuse may not have got a delay function, I simply don’t know.

Secondly, they may not have considered the delay case – put it down to loss of corporate knowledge.

Finally they may have considered that a delayed action explosion might have caught incautious civilians going about their business. The delay, by its very nature, would probably go off when there was no raid in progress.

As for delayed action use, during Confrontation each aircraft was fitted with 3 No 79 fuses in the stick. IIRC Nos 2 and 4 were fitted with 30 minutes and one hour with No 18 set at 6 hours. We planned to lay 2 sticks across each target. You can imagine the confusion when two bombs would have gone off a few minutes apart some 25-30 minutes after the air raid.

I would expect that they would all have taken cover except for the ADA crews who would let fly once again. Then 30 minutes later, after a second all clear, there would be another Brock’s Benefit.

Some 5 hours later, in daylight, with no activity for some hours, the airfield target would have come to life again then BANG!

We could tell the difference between the 75 fused tails and the 79s. The arming vane rotated in a different direction. The delay was also signified by the colour of the arming vane. I seem to remember the ‘short’ delays were RED and the longer delays WHITE, but that is from 43 years ago!