The Vulcan had five crew. It was the Air Ministy specification which only required ejection seats for the Pilot and Co-pilot so nothing to do with bad design as such despite Avro coming up with a proposal to fit seats for everyone (which was rejected).

All blackpower/cordite etc are supposed to do is to convert themsleves from a smaller quantity of solid into a larger volume of gas at the required speed. I’d imagine that the slow buring properties of blackpower plus its stability etc would make it ideal for ejection seat cartridges.

I can hear the Lawyers sharpening their fountain pens from here!

I read something recently about a $77 million fund that had been set up to compensate those bereaved and injured but one of the conditions of accepting any money was that they waived the right to any future litigation. A sceptical person might wonder if that was attempting to pre-empt the findings of this report?

I go back to page 114, if there was latent defect in the pipework on one side then the canopy was always destined to jam on ejection. It is a matter of conjecture whether the cartidges were any good but there was no evidence pointing to a misfire. With the benefit of total hindsight, an early landing may have been a good option with a happier outcome.

It also says that each time the seats are removed the canopy system should be checked and tested as well. This didn’t appear to have happened. If it had it may have picked up the fault in the pipework (or at least the corrosion inside which would have prompted a change). Who knows though!

Sitting in a disabled ejector seat is one thing as presumably the pilot would know its disabled and would have planned alternative methods of evacuating the aircraft. Sitting in one that you think is working then finding at the very last minute that its not leaves no time!
However from the first radio message to the tower informing them of a double hydraulic failure till the time of impact was over five minutes. If the pilot had followed the SOP’s and tried to abandon the aircraft immedialty then he may well have time to get out (if he could have manually released the canopy).

The .30 version crops up now and again on milweb and wwiireenacting.co.uk although I’ve never seen a .303 aircraft version if that the one you are after. The .30 cal version sells for £800 – £1000 depending on what comes with it.

I’ve just been out on the airfield again and this time all the US 4 bladed Hercs have their props like this X, all the civvy ones have them randomly positioned.
Maybe someone has been reading this thread!!

Its like trying to pull away in your car in fifth gear. Its also why the early speed record planes were sea planes – they had fixed coarse pitch props and they could use a much longer take off run at sea than they could with a normal runway on land.