Hiding a Vulcan?

Seems odd to paint the underside in camo of any shade on something as large as a Vulcan. I can understand it on a smaller fast jet (Tornado, Buccaneer, Jaguar, Hawk etc) which will be twisting and turning and may well be near-inverted at times at very low level, and which can therefore blend into the background to avoid detection by airborne or ground based observers, but I would have thought that a Vulcan was near impossible to hide due to the size of its shadow, and it’s noise. I know Vulcans were (are!) manouverable, and flew very low in Red Flag but surely not to that extent?

Would a Vulcan ever really apply sufficient angle of bank to make wrap-around camouflage work against the background terrain (even for a ground-based observer)?

Perhaps it was as much an exercise in countershading as in outright “invisibility”? Painting the underside a paler shade than the upper surfaces might counteract the upper surface highlight and lower surface shadow, and thus create a few moments confusion in the mind of the observer trying to find/track the aircraft. A similar trick to that intended when dummy cockpit shapes are painted on the underside of fighters?

The moment or two it takes an observer to work out which way up the aircraft is may make all the difference in a combat situation.

Or maybe I have misunderstood the rationale for wrap-around camo on fast jets altogether – perhaps it is designed to avoid observers being able to judge the attitude of the fast jet when they see it, rather then trying to hide it against the background terrain to avoid detection in the first place?

Cheers
Paul F

My worry for the Vulcan adventure is the HUGE amount of operating capital it will absorb over the coming years, spares and down time. The large sum of money spent on this one aircraft will not go to other projects. If people pay good money to see this bird at a show and she goes “tech” how many other aircraft will be there to take up the slack since she will have taken such a huge share of the airshow’s operating budget?

Just thinking out loud. I think it is a wonderful thing for her to be flying….just a bit afraid of the long term consequences.

A very valid point, and well made CShep. , no emotive criticism, just a straightforward statement of a real concern.

I think only time will tell whether the Vulcan Effect is for Good or Ill, but for the time being let’s be glad the team at Bruntingthorpe, and all their contractors, plus those of us who chipped in a few pounds every now and again, have achieved the impossible, and let’s live in hope that the overall effect is positive.

Paul F

Our Station Nav officer mentioned that he operated out of Sculthorpe on Victors when the runway at Marham was being resurfaced in the 70’s.

From memory, that would have been the summer of 1977 (or possibly 78?). My ATC squadron had it’s annual summer camp at Marham that year, but the place was devoid of aircraft apart from the (then camo) Valiant gate guardian (now at Cosford via Hendon) and a couple of Canberra hangar queens. The Marham main runway was being resurfaced that summer. The air cadets were taken on coach trip to a very foggy Sculthorpe, where the Victors were lined up on the hardstanding. There were still a few T33 and Mystere’s around the place then too.

I went back to Sculthorpe about five years ago – much of the domestic area had been sold off and was now a private housing estate, some of the communal buildings were in use, one was a residents’ club IIRC, but the main airfield proper was still securely behind barbed wire, and some of the larger buildings, plus the hangars looked to be a in fair condition.

Paul F

Gawd this site is so slow at the moment! Anyone would think something important was happening……;)

BLOODY MARVELLOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well done to all involved, an “impossible” dream fulfilled.

Paul F

I will post it to Paul F when i am done

Trumper,

Pls check your PMs.

Thanks

Paul F

Hendon Meet

1st Dec should be okay for me too.

Paul F

Wasn’t around when Sputnik was launched, being a child of the sixties (by eleven months 😀 ), but I do remember the Apollo series, and watched as many of the BBC TV “Specials” as I could. Raymond Baxter and James Burke were the usual presenters, with Reg Turnbull as well IIRC.

I remember being woken in the middle of the night by my father, and blearily going dopwnstairs to watch on TV as the shadowy figure of Neil Armstrong made that “One Small Step…”

Apollo 12 was on (or leaving) the moon on my ninth birthday, and my school friends and I watched them while we ate the birthday tea my mother had prepared…her fears that a houseful of nine year old boys would be a real handful obviously unfounded as we sat and watched TV in awe.

I never had the full 1/144 Airfix Saturn V kit but I did receive their 1/72 Apollo Lunar Lander kit, probably that same birthday, and so was able to re-enact the moment of touchdown and blast off from the lunar surface.

I also remember getting very cross when an Aunt and Uncle turned up as I was watchign one of the TV Apollo 13 updates, and they kept getting in the way of the TV screen – didn’t they realis ethis was amtte rof life or death! :mad:.

Two years ago, and again this Easter, I finally achieved one of my boyhood dreams and visited Kennedy Space Centre and saw a real Saturn V, the Apollo launch pads and so on. What a big beast that rocket was! My teenage kids were bored rigid, and didn’t seem to think going to the moon was a big deal until I pointed out that the on-board computer in the Apollo capsules was probably a damn site less capable than the most basic PC you can buy these days, yet it managed to get men safely to and from the moon.

I remember that at school we were told we would see men would get to walk on Mars in our lifetime – well, I’m not so sure my generation will now, but it would be good to see us at least get back to the moon. After all, its nearly forty years since we were last there…

And to everyone who says “What’s the point? All that cash could be used to sort out some of the major problems on earth…” then my answer is “1. Because it’s there” and “2. because who knows what the spin-offs might be”. Just think how many useful things came out of the Apollo program – it ultimately did so much more than just let twelve men walk on the moon…

Paul F

“Mornin’ Flynn…..”

“…Mornin’ Greaser….”

followed by some short skit on a current topic if I remember correctly.

Wasn’t Flynn simply a mythical character that NE “pre-recorded”?

I’m afraid to admit that I remember that far back too – that was in the days when the Noel Edmonds breakfast show handed over to Tony Blackburn’s mid-morning show……:o

Paul F.