From the 1st flight of the Lancaster to the 1st flight of the vulcan was 11 years!! It still looks like a spaceship 70 years later! And my god that howl
I remember being at Farnborough watching a Vulcan with a Conway (testing for the future Concorde) strapped underneath. On the Conway's power only, it just went straight up. I can still recall the vibrations I felt throughout my frame.
@@johnjephcote7636 concorde used olynpus not Conway. I think the vulcan used to test the tsr2 olynpus exploded as well. The vulcan had olynpus which got developed further for tsr2 with reheat. Then that got more development and ended up in concorde
@@Scoobydcs You are correct. It was 1964 when I witnessed XA903 fitted with an Olympus 593 underneath it (to test the Concorde intakes, I believe). It could still fly on full power with this extra engine alone and that is what I was treated to..
@@johnjephcote7636 yeh the tsr2 version had 30k lb of thrust. The concorde version had 38k!! Iirc the early vulcan had 40k lb thrust total from all 4 engines lol
One day in the summer of 1967, I was standing in the front yard of my aunt's house in Virginia. A white Vulcan flew over at low altitude. A Star Trek moment.
I could only dream of seeing a Vulcan fly with my own eyes. While we've got modern stuff, like the F-15 and F-16, I kind of prefer seeing the elder jets fly. I mean, they're major parts of history.
One day in the autumn of 1986 I had a similar experience as a boy in a school playground in Yorkshire only it was Concorde. More of a Star Wars moment for me..
When I was young, the RAF sent a Vulcan to an airshow at the Glenview Naval Air Station in the suburbs outside of Chicago. I was with my dad and brothers, and we were looking over the Vulcan on the tarmac - it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. Those lines! It was like a spaceship. When the crew took her up, I was amazed - and the Vulcan became even more beautiful - a true creature of the air. I never knew anything so big could fly so well and so gracefully - doing things our bombers couldn't even dream of. So impressed by the British pilot. And so powerful - I can still feel the vibrations of the engine noise in my chest 53 years later. Never saw another like her, and will never forget her. Thanks for taking us inside - a real treat.
I remember going to the RAF Waddington open day in the late 1970s. There was a simulated scramble with four Vulcans taking off simultaneously. It was one of the noisiest things I have ever heard, 16 Olympus turbojets on full power!
I was stationed at RAF Waddington from '74 to '79 - could never have too much of that noise, especially when the 'Rapids' popped off, such a unique noise.
I was just about to post my own recollection of Battle of Britain day at RAF Finningley about 10 years earlier. My Dad took my brother and I. The most impressive thing was a Vulcan Squadron Scramble - and I remember it as the loudest sound I ever heard. (There was a chance to sit in a Lightning too).
@@clovislyme6195 When I flew to RAF Goosebay in Canada the skipper let me fly it from Iceland to Greenland with the dire warning "Don't get us lost!" lol
The Vulcan is the coolest plane ever. I live in Chicago and each year we have the Air and Water Show. Planes would fly north from downtown to turn around to head south towards the show. They happened to make the turn around over the park where I played basketball and baseball. One day a Vulcan flew overhead making its turn and it was the loudest low pitch sound I had ever heard. It was flying so low I swear the pilot had brown eyes :-)
During my assignment at Andrews AFB, '67/'68 a Vulcan visited. As a departing show, the crew took off on the left runway, immediately did a 180 and landed on the right runway. Quite impressive!
The Operations Room channel also did a very detailed show on the Falklands operation where he shows the individual aircraft, their formations, and which aircraft refueled the others. This included the call signs. All three are excellent by themselves, and together they are even better!
One thing I would suggest which is lacking in most videos like this, is a panning shot around each cockpit area so you can see how the parts all fit together. It isn't always obvious when all you see is a lot of small detail shots , it is hard to tell what relationship they have to each other. It is hard to see for example, the way the cockpit is raised up above the rear cockpit with a ladder, and how the bomb aiming space is under it.
As a young teenager I saw one of these at an airshow in the 70s. It looked like a mantta ray as it floated over at a low altitude. So cool, wont forget it!
I also have fond memories of seeing the Vulcan in the 1970s. It would appear at the Abbotsford Airshow on the west coast of Canada. We were told that came from the UK and returned in a single hop, no refueling. The Vulcan banking at low altitude is the most awesome aviation sight i have ever seen. It was something beyond this world, like a massive dragon or alien spacecraft moving over the land. For the Soviets, as the intended recipients, it must have been a terrifying image.
Stuart Grant I think, for the Argentinians, it would have been a thunderous and terrifying image also. Talking off of the Vulcan banking at lower altitude, and it's gracefulness, one of its main advantages at high altitude was it's size. At nearly 60,000 feet, it could out turn any fighter jet due to to the enormous wingspan. And then, with self protection measures like flash and flare, it might, just might, stand a chance of getting away. As for Abbotsford in one hop, it would have refuelled somewhere on the East Coast because even without a bomb load, the Vulcan had a range of only 3,200 miles.
@@RB747domme Regarding the flight to Abbotsford, I must have misremembered what I was told. Perhaps they air refueled (i.e. I was told non stop, but interpreted as unrefueled) or maybe my memory was completely wrong. Regardless, a very spe
As a youngster, seeing the ASO desk at some air show formed in perspex so that everything behind the panel, wiring etc could be seen I was gobsmacked. Who could understand where all that lot went? It inspired me to get an apprenticeship in electronics and a few years later, I was building radars for Tornado aircraft. I've had a lifetime of fun working in manufacturing. I would not change a thing. Thank you to everyone who built the Vulcan, and who lead me into a wonderful career!
5:50 In 1956, that Vulcan flew over my school in New Zealand, one of the most memorable moments of my childhood. I immediately made a model out of cardboard. News of its subsequent crash before waiting VIPs at Heathrow was quite a shock. Thank you for a very well done video. I'm impressed by how lousy the view from inside was, though from the outside the cockpit was iconic.
Good to see a slightly more technical look. Loved working on them at both Waddington and Scampton back in the 70's and early 80's. Everything was accessible and large, compared to most other aircraft of that era. Although Health & Safety didn't exist much then. I can remember carrying ejection seats on my back up external steps to fit them.
8 of these bombers broke through American airspace in a wargames and some of them successfully reached their target destination. The Yanks were so annoyed about it they invited the RAF back the following year where they did it again. Incredibly underrated aircraft.
I was at school in North Wales in the mid 60s. Two Vulcans were based at RAF Valley as part of the dispersal programme (rather than have them all based at one or two stations where they could be taken out in one strike, they were sent in pairs all over the country). One beautiful sunny day when I should have been doing geography or something my attention was gripped by flashing lights in the sky, which was the sun reflecting off the wings of the two Vulcans. Which were dogfighting. They did this for about 15 minutes. Presumably this was training on evading enemy fighters which at the time would have had either cannon or rudimentary missiles. I read another account of an exercise in Australia where the Vulcans were going to penetrate Australian airspace. They did and interceptors were sent up to shoot them down. But they couldn't get missile lock for long enough to engage because the Vulcans were so manouevrable and eventually they got lost in cloud. One of the of the pilots reported to his ground controller that he had lost the Vulcan and didn't know where it was when an RAF voice came over the radio and said 'your six.' The point was that a Vulcan had plenty of fuel to spare and the interceptors didn't! The point about the rear three not having ejector seats is not as simple as people make out. Highly skilled and trained crews are NOT disposable. The problem was that although the pilot and copilot seats were a standard fighter configuration (blow off the canopy and out you go) nobody had ever had to invent a process for getting crew out. The development was done under incredible pressure and cost limitations and since the concept of nuclear war was a one way journey it didn't come at the top of the requirements list. The 'official' way out was via the crew door, but this had to be opened against the slipstream. It is a large door and opening it would have considerable impact on the plane's flight pattern. The pilots would have to stay in the aircraft to control it's attitude (if that was even possible) until the crew had jumped. The next problem was speed. Even held down to 100kt or so (if that was possible in a damaged aeroplane) how do you jump out of an aircraft travelling at 100kt? Answer, you can't. The likelihood is that as soon as you jump the aircraft will hit you before you are clear. The drill was to climb down the crew ladder which was folded against the hatch and push off from the bottom. Maybe. And repeat this for the other two crew while the aircraft is on fire and possibly out of control. If the nose gear was down it was completely impossible because the wheels were well below the bottom of the hatch. There was a proposal to fit a hatch above the middle crew's head which would blow off and the the middle man would be ejected, with his seat. The two other crew seats would then each in turn be fired sideways on a track to the centre position below the hatch, and then shot vertically through it. Someone did some calculations, and the force required to do that would probably break your neck. So what with one thing and another, it never happened. Bear in mind in the 50s and 60s the RAF were losing aircraft and pilots at the rate of two or three a WEEK and the problem of getting people out of an aircraft that very rarely fell out of the sky wasn't really a problem anymore. Getting killed in an accident came with the territory.
Chicago Air and Water Show in the late '70's early 80's were blessed with three Royal Air Force Vulcan Bombers. I saw XL-390's last flight in 1978; in 1980, It was XL-443; and in 1981 XM-575 rounded it out. Was fortunate enough to get an inside-outside tour of '575, and the RAF Nimrod that accompanied them. Why they came to Chicago -- I have no idea, but they put on one hell of a show.
Great video. I was an aircraft electrician in the USAF, and while TDY in Goose Bay Labrador, Canada, I got to see the Vulcan fly and go inside. I remember feeling how cramped it was for such a large aircraft. The mechanic who showed me the plane did a great job explaining how it worked. It stands as one of the highlights of my career. The Vulcan bomber was an amazing plane to see fly.
"Had it not been for the Falklands then the Vulcans would probably not be remembered half as much....." Sean Connery and Tom Jones would beg to differ.
I saw a documentary of the Vulcan missions during the Falklands war, and apparently, one of the important and difficult to find pieces of the aircraft that was needed for the missions was found in an officer's club, where it was being used as an ashtray.
@@scrubsrc4084 A chap I worked with was stationed with them up at RAF Kinloss , he said when they got a scramble order and they took off together using the Express start, the Noise was just deafening.
The bomb rotation rack, to release all the bombs, was still sat in the scrap yard where they were sold, when the Vulcan was decommissioned. The owner of the yard was sold a Lot of Vulcan equipment, for scrap. Turns out he just couldn't destroy most of it. He still had them in his sheds when the RAF phoned him, looking to get the Vulcans flight ready for the Falklands Conflict
First flight of the Avro Lancaster was 9 January 1941. First flight of the Avro Vulcan was 30 August 1952. Just over 11 years between the two aircraft!
Back in the 80s, when I was a B-52 pilot, one of the last operational Vulcans came through our base (Mather AFB). The pilots came over to our squadron (441 BMS) and asked if anyone wanted to go out to the ramp and check it out so me a couple of other pilots got to go inside. What struck me was just how dated the Vulcan was. B-52s are just about the same vintage, built in the 1950s to very early 60s, and though the B-52s of the 1980s were well worn and not exactly cutting edge, but compared to the Vulcan our B-52s look downright modern and in good repair. We had FLIR, low light TV and terrain avoidance radar, displayed on a CRT in front of each pilot, the Vulcan had nothing but steam gauges that looked like they were designed during WW-2. Our Nav and Radar Nav had the all glass OAS nav system, but the Vulcan still had an optical bombsight. and while our entire crew of 6 had ejection seats (0 and 90 knots for the upstairs crew and 200ft and 90 knots for the navs) while the Vulcan had ejection seats only for the pilots. (Must have made the decision to eject a guilt ridden exercise for the aircraft commander). The cockpit on the Vulcan was tiny, the pilots sat shoulder to shoulder. I seem to recall the pilot telling us that the plane was originally designed for a single pilot but adapted later for two, which would explain the cramped pilots station. The rest of the crew had chairs and some sort of bailout slide rather than ejection seats, but that cannot have been used successfully very often. As uncomfortable as the B-52 was on our typical 10-14 hour missions, the Vulcan was even worse, smaller, more cramped. While we practised air refueling everytime we flew the Vulcan guys a only rarely, if ever, practised, and had to use a probe and drogue system, while we used the flying boom from either a KC-135 or KC-10. I simply cannot imagine what it must have been like to fly those Falkland missions in that plane. All in all the Vulcan was a bit like an old car you keep in the corner of your garage. Not very well kept but something you might want to take out on a Sunday afternoon if you could can get it started and the roads are clear. And don't get me wrong, it looked great, from a distance, and from the outside, I just don't think the UK took it seriously anymore by the 70s and 80s, and weren't spending a penny more than necessary to keep them flying. A side note. The Vulcan was packed with junk that the crew had purchased as they flew the plane on it's goodby tour. I remember a Sears garage door opener, not even a particularly good example of electric garage door openers of the time, being a prominent box in the pile of stuff they had collected.
Strato man. I think you summed up the situation perfectly. Once Polaris took over the nuclear role the MOD were not going to spend a dime on the Vulcans. There wasnt that much point in truth. We scrapped it's replacement the TSR 2, which will always be controversial, but on balance we were right to spend what money we did have on Tornado which gave us 40 years of excellent front line service. Vulcans performance in the air was always remarkable given its vintage and size. Test pilots did double rolls off the deck in these things. Service pilots were strictly banned from such aerobatics.
@@timhancock6626 TSR2 was not a replacement for the Vulcan!!!! When the RAF started the Jet bomber game the first design to enter service was the Canberra. What entered service in the B2 version was not what the aircraft was originally slated to be, The prototype Canberra's had solid noses as it was going to be radar bombing only, with a H2S Mk 9 radar in the nose, an advanced electro mechanical / Electronic navigation and bombing system (NBS) and employ a guided bomb code named Blue Boar that would use either radar or TV guidance to hit the target. Needless to say the RAF soon found out that there was no way that all of that kit could be shoehorned into a Canberra, So it became a visual bomber only. Victor and Vulcan development kicked off first, but it was soon discovered that these aircraft would take some time to get into service, thus two interim types were developed to get the RAF into the long range jet bomber game. The one that did enter service was the Valiant. Which saw combat in 1956 during Suez and was the only one of the Three V-Bombers to actually drop live nuclear weapons during the British tests between 1956 and 1958. Blue Boar was canned in 1954, but H2S Mk 9 and NBS went into the V-bombers. Vulcan entered Service next, followed by the Victor. Why by the two? Vulcan was good at All Altitudes, Victor wasn't as they found out when the wings stated to crack up after the aircraft moved to the low level role. plus the Vulcan was easier to load. But the Victor could carry 66% more bombs (35x1000lb v the 21x1000lb on the Vulcan) a lot further (5000NM v 2100NM max internal fuel range). Valiant moved into other roles as the two more advanced aircraft took over the Deterrent role (NATO tactical Strike using US Project E nuclear weapons, In-fight re-fuelling tanker and long range photo reconnaissance). The Canberra's also got US supplied Nukes, while the British worked on their own tactical nuclear bomb to put on the Canberra and Buccaneer (which had the S designation as it was designed to lob a Red beard Nuclear bomb at Soviet Cruisers). 1957 saw Sandy's move to IRBM's as the RAF's primary nuclear strike option, but Blue Streak was going to take some time to get working, thus Blue Steel was developed to give the Vulcan's and Victor's some stand off capability. 100 Miles with the Rocket powered version and up to 1000 miles with the planned Ramjet powered Mk2. 1960 saw TSR2 enter the picture,but its job was to replace the Valiant and the Canberra, not the Vulcan and the Victor. Blue Streak and Blue Steel Mk 2 were canned and the Vulcan was going to get Skybolt ALBM. A few Vulcan's were built to carry the weapon which resulted in upgraded engines and wing hardpoints (which turned out to be very useful as these were the aircraft used in the Falklands war). Kennedy canned Skybolt in late 1962 which resulted in the British going for the Polaris SLBM. TSR2 was going to be a total pig, loaded with a shedload of design flaws across the board (When the RAF Engineers got their first look at it they had a fit!!!) which were not fixable in the time scale the RAF required, plus in 1964 the Valiant force started to fall to bits. Early Victors replaced the Valiant as Tankers and Photo Recce aircraft and soon as Polaris became operational, the bulk of the Vulcan's took over the UK's NATO nuclear strike role with WE-177 bombs (plus replace the Canberra Strike wing on Cyprus). Some Vulcan's did take on the Maritime radar recce role while the Victors became tankers. Phantoms and F-111K planned to do the Germany / UK based Nuclear Strike role, plus F-111K was planned to do East of Suez missions in Far East Air Force. Six Day War and the Closing of the Suez Canal did as much to cause the pull out of the British from the Far East as the shit state of the UK economy at the time (most of the UK's reinforcement plans were based around having access to the Canal for Sea-lift). Seeing most of the F-111K requirement was based around Far East operations, the F-111K was binned and the Buccaneer procured to replace the Canberra in Germany (the Short field requirement was to do with the NATO dispersal policy which was part of the Tripwire policy (any Soviet Aggression against NATO mean instant all out Can of Instant Sunshine chuck fest from the git go). The 1968 change to a Flexible Response (conventional war phase first if the Soviets only used conventional weapons at the start required aircraft to operated from main operating bases) . Anglo French VG aircraft development started to replace Buccaneer, with the Jaguar as a trainer. AFVG canned when the French pulled out. Must Replace Canberra Again project started. Jaguar morphed from a trainer into a nuclear strike aircraft which replaced the Phantom's to be rolled into Air Defence Fighters. MRCA became Tornado and as soon as the first UK Tornado GR1 squadrons became operational,the Vulcan force was on the way out. Of course thanks to the tanker requirements need to support the Falklands air bridge, 6 Vulcans were modified to Tankers and operated until the VC-10 Tanker force became operational. As for Service pilots doing not doing Aeros in Vulcan's, don't you believe it. While the Vulcans were stationed on Cyprus, an RAF Armourer I once worked with saw a Vulcan land on the Island after a transit flight from the UK. He saw a very shocked rear crew and Crew Chief get out of the aircraft.When he asked them what was wrong, the Crew Chief in tears stated, "bloody idiots in the front tried to Loop it!!!" Turned out that they screwed the loop up and the aircraft very nearly ended put falling out of the sky inverted.
Its rather typical of UK defence approach (then and now). We invest a lot to design and build the things and then underinvest in modernising them until they become obsolete. Unlike the B52 we never worked out an ongoing role post nuclear deterrent so never bothered to spend anything for the subsequent 20 or so years. I guess the RAF would love to have a modernised ones with guided munitions flying over the middle east in the same sort of role as the B52.
When I was 14 in the early 80s I won a school essay prize about 617 Squadron and my mum wrote to the squadron to tell them and they invited me down to RAF Scampton for the day during which time I got to sit in the cockpit of a Vulcan and even for an average sized young teen I was surprised at how cramped the cockpit was!
Superb plane cut off in its prime and relagated to being a tanker for the end of its life. Seen them fly multiple times (including the last flight not long ago) and they are extremely impressive. Had the chance to taxi in one too, was awesome!
Well done, Bismarck!! I'm really enjoying your channel. The HP Victor is one I've always been a fan of, and I feel it has been largely ignored by historians. I'm sure many people would enjoy your detailed and insightful take on it, if you were ever inclined... Thanks for what you do!!
In the old airdisplays the Vulcan would pitch nose up and come almost to a vertical halt. The engines would then be turned up to full, pummeling the audience into the ground as it launched vertically into the sky. Thats how I remember it
Vulcan doesn't have enough thrust to accelerate vertically. Only the most powerful fighters can do that. If it was lightly loaded they can pull into a steep climb using the speed they already have and maintain it above stall speed for a while on engine thrust, but it will be slowing down gradually the entire way. So if it looked like they "stopped" and then climbed it was an illusion. Even the famous "vertical climb out" of the Lightning was done by building up speed over the runway and then trading it for altitude with the afterburners sustaining the climb for a while until speed dropped. A Vulcan has significantly lower power/weight ratio.
I used to volunteer at an aircraft museum in North East England, they too had a Vulcan although outside and subject to the elements, it didn't look in great shape last time I paid a visit. When I worked there however I got to sit inside the Vulcan many times, it still had most of the instruments in the back section of the cockpit because it had been flown in when the museum was a functioning airfield. If you go into the bomb aimer position ahead of the perspex visual aiming window there is a door allowing access to the nose and radar of the aircraft. These planes carried an extremely powerful radar and electronic counter measure suite. The Vulcan I used to work on was being decommissioned in its new home by the RAF when the ECM jammer was accidentally turned on blacking out the local commercial airport some 9 or 10 miles away resulting in some frantic and rather angry phone calls. In case of emergency the Vulcan was not especially liked by its crew, in particular the three guys in the back who were not fortunate enough to have ejector seats. They would have to slide down the hatch and bail out, all well and good assuming the plane was the right way up. Also the nose wheel is directly behind the crew hatch so if bailing out with the gear down it would be almost impossible to avoid smacking into the landing gear on the way out causing nasty injury if not death.
Great work Bismarck ! Your "hands on" vids where we see the actual cockpits and interiors offer a great companion to all the info and history and your delivery and presentation are great too. Keep up the vids. Top job !
Good job with the video as usual. At 10:25 when he starts talking about the in-flight refueling probe being obtained from a museum in the US; that is likely a reference to S/N XM573 at the Strategic Air Command and Aerospace Museum in Ashland Nebraska. (Suppose they may have borrowed from other museums, too). About a month ago, they finally replaced it with a mock probe. If you’re in the area, stop in and check it out.
If you wanna see the area that is missing in Doncaster Air museum (UK) has a front end of a Vulcan with the nav section restored they are slowly working on a full restore of the cockpit.
Went there a while back , and visited the cockpit. Banged my bloody head. How they got in there in full kit and managed not to knock themselves out I do not know!
I remember them from my youth, I lived under the approach routes for Ringway, and woodford being so close, they used the same rout, deveiating at a very late stage. They were like an earthquake with wings. To quote Henry V, Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming, in thunder and in earthquake, like a jove.
I have visited the RAF museum on my way to Fairford Airshow (2018?) Next to the Lancaster (of course) the Vulkan was one of the most impressive airplanes to see there
The Vulcan is remembered by me for another reason: The appearance in the James Bond film 'Thunderball'! We had never seen such a cool looking bomber. It certainly was a real plane, that was sure. I always wondered what it really looked like inside. Now I know, thanks to you.
Saw it on its farewell tour at southport all I can say is breathtaking and when he opened up the engines in a climb just awe inspiring got to be one of the best planes I've seen in the flesh and I've seen most of them the v force fleet really were cutting edge at the time and you can see why British innovation at its absolute best
I was in air cadets at RAF Scampton when they scrambled four practicing. Hot summer day heat haze wow all very quite until they got close, we where not far of runway edge. The noise was unbelievable made my body shake. Wow
I remember when I was a kid I was at the Sunderland airshow when it flew over for its last time it was great, massive and the sound was like nothing i’d ever heard. I do wish that it had the funding and crew to see it fly and maintained again.
Where was this channel a few years ago when I needed it? I kept thinking we really needed a channel like this. I love the Vulcan but I am always more inclined to the more neglected workhorses, so I feel like the other V bombers are neglected next to the Vulcan. The Victor in particular was almost more interesting looking than the Vulcan, and actually had better stats in almost every category than the Vulcan .
I think my memory of the Vulcan was this! I was traveling down a road in England and my mum was driving, as I was not old enough! We then heard a huge roar! I opened the sunroof, to see a Vulcan flying over head! It was very low and it did make the dayling partially vanish! It was just amazing to see this huge plane that low! I will never forget this one moment.
15:23 An interesting quick start switch. Dont ser that sort of thing in most aircraft. Another stellar video on a iconic if sort of superfluous aircraft Bis.
And a hazard. A friend of mine was maintaining the engine when some idiot in the cockpit decided to test this. Hearing the telltale sound of the engine starting, he jumped out of the plane and hit the ground 15 feet below, breaking his back.
if anybody fancies a look around a Vulcan cockpit there's a Vulcan at the Newark air museum you can go in for a donation, and you get a full tour from a former crewman, it has all its instruments including the nuclear trigger release.
The Seattle Air and Space Museum has an excellent mockup cockpit of the SR-71 that any visitor can climb into. It's just to the right of the M-21 variant of the SR.
Go to Port Stanley Airport, Falkland Islands, on Google Earth and you can still see some craters from one stick of bombs just to the south of the runway. The rest appear to have been filled in.
A great video. As a child I saw Vulcans at the air show at RAF Valley and always thought they were very graceful if a bit noisy. I later saw the restored one on the ground and in the air at Farnborough in the early party of this century. Such a shame they couldn't keep it flying.
The ressemblance between the Vulcan and the Concorde is striking, at least to me, with 15 to 20 years between them. The RR engines are apparently also of the same family. The crew stations, especially the cockpit, show their age though. Thank you for this great experience and professional explanations.
Every time I visit the RAF Museum I have to stand in the corner at the front of the Vulcan and try to take in just how big it is. Duxford's B52 might be bigger, but it doesn't have the same presence that the Vulcan has. Nice video, as always.
I remember this awesome plane from air shows at Wolverhampton and Telford in the 1960s. So huge, it hardly seemed to move. At Wolverhampton one flew about 100 feet above the crowd. It went very dark, and deafening. That was followed by an EE Lightning doing a sheer vertical climb at top speed.
Saw it circling over my parents house a few years ago when waiting for it's Duxford fly by. Just amazing. Though, a little loud when it's under 1000 ft!!!
The plane that just doesn't fit into one picture. Really, couldn't get a good shot of the one in the RAF museum, but it is very inconveniently placed for photos there.
It's the same in alot of museums unfortunately lot of planes and a limited display area. Best off visiting one which is outdoors, newark air museum is a good example as they open the cockpit quite often.
Thing I love about the v bomber force is that it's such a modern, sleek design, powered by impressive jets. Just a decade prior, it was Lancaster/Lincolns. As flawed as the v force came to be, one can't deny they showed that time were'a changin'.
Retired member of 101 Sqdn, RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, Almost perfect however it was capable of 7 seats not 6. I was that 7th seat from Waddington to Goose Bay, Newfoundland, Canada. The rear crew do not exactly 'Eject' they slide down the door (steps out of the way) and hopefully get away from the aircraft if it is crashing, if it is too low, no chance. e.g. The IX Squadron crash in Malta in 1975. Sadly IX Sqdn lost some good men that day. Those of us that were in Malta (Luqa RAF base) felt the sorrow that still existed.
Outstanding video, you really are a top presenter! My comment would be that the Vulcan was so much more than the Falklands. I grew up as a kid in 60-70’s UK and Aden as an Airforce brat and these aircraft were really special! Airheads loved them (and still do) because in their time they were just so good. Wargames in USA and Europe proved the quality of the crews and the airframe. Just. Comment, in no way a criticism of your outstanding episodes.
during a airshow in basle (in the sixties)the Avro Vulcan flew only a some 100 meters over my house with fully extended undercarriage a very impressing view!
XL318 flew the last 2 Vulcan flights for 617 Sqn. back in 1981 and as such, featured heavily in a fly-on-the-wall documentary called "617: The Last Days of the Vulcan Squadron", which can be found on TH-cam.
A good and very interesting video and at last I can see the interior, that I never saw, although it is quite cramped. To think that the crew achieved one of the longest flight ever over the Falklands from England. Heroes...
Supposedly bombed America a few times during drills, but they didn't want that getting out at the time. Beautiful plane and stunning to see in the Sky.
Good video well done. I never understood why they did not put the quick start button on the outside, like on the B1 lancer . That way the engines would be starting "while" the crew were getting board. Could have saved 20-30 seconds on MITO start.
As a kid I was lucky enough to see Vulcans flying low and fast down our valley in the Yorkshire Dales on a regular basis, they were ridiculously agile - flying the same routes as the Tornados, Harriers, Hawks and Jaguars - just as quickly and just as low. While I agree that the Vulcan didn't exactly set the world on fire (haha) because there were so few opportunities for it to actually do it's job, I think it would have been perfectly suited to fly alongside the Tornados, Jaguars and Buccaneers in the Gulf War (in a parallel universe where the airframes still had enough life in them).
I was surprised the plane used joysticks instead of the traditional yoke. Also, instead of "Tin Triangle", the "Bat" in my opinion would have been more appropriate due to its shape. There's a outdoor static Vulcan at the Castle AFB in California which I visited. That thing makes the B-52 exhibit at the same location look small!
excellent objective review. I used to watch this plane at airshows as a kid (my ears are still ringing from the noise!!). It has a "Wow" factor from the look & sound of it that few other planes have - & has a "Mythology" here in UK second only to the Spitfire - it's only by watching your video that we can get an objective considered view of its actual worth - and that it was pretty much obselete in its intended role almost as soon as it was introduced - keep on making these excellent videos!
I've loved the Vulcan B2 from the first time I saw one. The other V-bombers are also very cool. Both, I think, are still in service, repurposed to other roles.
I was lucky to be able to sit in the cockpit of this magnificent aircraft - I sat in the pilots seat and as large as the whole aircraft is once inside it is very snug fitting for the 5 crew that man it. once in your seat though everything feels cosy! This Vulcan was in a air display museum near Manchester (I forgot the exact name) but they had retained everything that the operational crew had at their disposal. For example there was an eyepatch for the pilot to wear should the aircraft ever be used for it's ultimate purpose. The eyepatch was to be worn to help protect the eye from the flash of a released nuclear weapon , on top of that there were smoked glass screens that could be used to cover the small windows in the cockpit once again to help protect the crew from the resulting flash of released nuclear weapon(s). It was both an awesome and chilling experience to sit there and think of those whose who flew them never knowing one day from the next if they would be required to make their inevitable one way journey to enact what was then a vital part of our nuclear deterrent. Despite this I was in awe of the engineering achievement so soon after a world war a few years before fought almost exclusively with aircraft of propellers and piston engines and thinking what a shame it is that it took fear of a nuclear holocaust to bring out our best in terms of creative engineering and innovation. I sincerely hope as a species we will progress very rapidly to finding an equal fervour to create and innovate for PEACE and prosperity and no longer be motivated only by fear.
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can you cover the SAAB 18 swedish reconnaissance aircraft
From the 1st flight of the Lancaster to the 1st flight of the vulcan was 11 years!!
It still looks like a spaceship 70 years later!
And my god that howl
When u hear the howl of the Vulcan and it's not your Vulcan, u gonna have a bad time.
I remember being at Farnborough watching a Vulcan with a Conway (testing for the future Concorde) strapped underneath. On the Conway's power only, it just went straight up. I can still recall the vibrations I felt throughout my frame.
@@johnjephcote7636 concorde used olynpus not Conway. I think the vulcan used to test the tsr2 olynpus exploded as well.
The vulcan had olynpus which got developed further for tsr2 with reheat. Then that got more development and ended up in concorde
@@Scoobydcs You are correct. It was 1964 when I witnessed XA903 fitted with an Olympus 593 underneath it (to test the Concorde intakes, I believe). It could still fly on full power with this extra engine alone and that is what I was treated to..
@@johnjephcote7636 yeh the tsr2 version had 30k lb of thrust. The concorde version had 38k!! Iirc the early vulcan had 40k lb thrust total from all 4 engines lol
One day in the summer of 1967, I was standing in the front yard of my aunt's house in Virginia. A white Vulcan flew over at low altitude. A Star Trek moment.
I could only dream of seeing a Vulcan fly with my own eyes. While we've got modern stuff, like the F-15 and F-16, I kind of prefer seeing the elder jets fly. I mean, they're major parts of history.
@@anzacwashington7050 that's seriously cool, man! Thanks for sharing, and have yourself a great day! Take good care!
One day in the autumn of 1986 I had a similar experience as a boy in a school playground in Yorkshire only it was Concorde.
More of a Star Wars moment for me..
When I was young, the RAF sent a Vulcan to an airshow at the Glenview Naval Air Station in the suburbs outside of Chicago. I was with my dad and brothers, and we were looking over the Vulcan on the tarmac - it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. Those lines! It was like a spaceship. When the crew took her up, I was amazed - and the Vulcan became even more beautiful - a true creature of the air. I never knew anything so big could fly so well and so gracefully - doing things our bombers couldn't even dream of. So impressed by the British pilot. And so powerful - I can still feel the vibrations of the engine noise in my chest 53 years later. Never saw another like her, and will never forget her. Thanks for taking us inside - a real treat.
I remember going to the RAF Waddington open day in the late 1970s. There was a simulated scramble with four Vulcans taking off simultaneously. It was one of the noisiest things I have ever heard, 16 Olympus turbojets on full power!
^^^^^^This guy is jealous.
^^^^^^^^^^^^Ditto.
I was stationed at RAF Waddington from '74 to '79 - could never have too much of that noise, especially when the 'Rapids' popped off, such a unique noise.
I was just about to post my own recollection of Battle of Britain day at RAF Finningley about 10 years earlier. My Dad took my brother and I. The most impressive thing was a Vulcan Squadron Scramble - and I remember it as the loudest sound I ever heard. (There was a chance to sit in a Lightning too).
@@clovislyme6195 When I flew to RAF Goosebay in Canada the skipper let me fly it from Iceland to Greenland with the dire warning "Don't get us lost!" lol
Steak & chips for tea, and Bismarck & Mark Felton uploading film about the Vulcan on the same day. Life is good.
Steak and chips?!
You lucky bastard
This is the most British thing I've read in a while
Damn I miss England haha
sounds like life has never been more British
Oooh I'm having that today and I'm having chocolate fondue for pud
The Vulcan is the coolest plane ever. I live in Chicago and each year we have the Air and Water Show. Planes would fly north from downtown to turn around to head south towards the show. They happened to make the turn around over the park where I played basketball and baseball. One day a Vulcan flew overhead making its turn and it was the loudest low pitch sound I had ever heard. It was flying so low I swear the pilot had brown eyes :-)
I lived "on the base" in Glenview and saw what you saw -- just closer.
There's bigger, better, faster, smarter and noisier aircraft but nothing, repeat nothing, sounds as good or as unforgettable as a vulcan on song
The well-known laxative effect of a low-flying large a/c.
Lol cool such a noise back then you didn't know if it was landing or taking off
During my assignment at Andrews AFB, '67/'68 a Vulcan visited. As a departing show, the crew took off on the left runway, immediately did a 180 and landed on the right runway. Quite impressive!
Awesome (coincidental) timing with Mark Felton just releasing a video on the Vulcan use in the Falkland war! Very neat airplane.
Mark also has a great channel
The Operations Room channel also did a very detailed show on the Falklands operation where he shows the individual aircraft, their formations, and which aircraft refueled the others. This included the call signs. All three are excellent by themselves, and together they are even better!
@@PanzerDave Saw that the other day, it was the clearest explanation I've seen.
SAM: *exists*
Vulcan: Improvise, Adapt, Overcome
This victors arse, has all the nutrients we need, to make it to the falklands.
@@carbon1255 This comment is somewhat inspirational and disturbing at the same time.
One thing I would suggest which is lacking in most videos like this, is a panning shot around each cockpit area so you can see how the parts all fit together. It isn't always obvious when all you see is a lot of small detail shots , it is hard to tell what relationship they have to each other. It is hard to see for example, the way the cockpit is raised up above the rear cockpit with a ladder, and how the bomb aiming space is under it.
Agree, the cockpit shots are a bit disappointing to be honest, hard to form an impression of the overall space.
As a young teenager I saw one of these at an airshow in the 70s. It looked like a mantta ray as it floated over at a low altitude. So cool, wont forget it!
I also have fond memories of seeing the Vulcan in the 1970s. It would appear at the Abbotsford Airshow on the west coast of Canada. We were told that came from the UK and returned in a single hop, no refueling.
The Vulcan banking at low altitude is the most awesome aviation sight i have ever seen. It was something beyond this world, like a massive dragon or alien spacecraft moving over the land. For the Soviets, as the intended recipients, it must have been a terrifying image.
Stuart Grant I think, for the Argentinians, it would have been a thunderous and terrifying image also.
Talking off of the Vulcan banking at lower altitude, and it's gracefulness, one of its main advantages at high altitude was it's size. At nearly 60,000 feet, it could out turn any fighter jet due to to the enormous wingspan. And then, with self protection measures like flash and flare, it might, just might, stand a chance of getting away.
As for Abbotsford in one hop, it would have refuelled somewhere on the East Coast because even without a bomb load, the Vulcan had a range of only 3,200 miles.
@@RB747domme Regarding the flight to Abbotsford, I must have misremembered what I was told. Perhaps they air refueled (i.e. I was told non stop, but interpreted as unrefueled) or maybe my memory was completely wrong. Regardless, a very spe
Same here. A Manta Ray is also what I thought of years ago when one flew over me in lonely central Wales.
As a youngster, seeing the ASO desk at some air show formed in perspex so that everything behind the panel, wiring etc could be seen I was gobsmacked. Who could understand where all that lot went? It inspired me to get an apprenticeship in electronics and a few years later, I was building radars for Tornado aircraft. I've had a lifetime of fun working in manufacturing. I would not change a thing. Thank you to everyone who built the Vulcan, and who lead me into a wonderful career!
Well, once you started the series, you just keep going
That's awesome
5:50 In 1956, that Vulcan flew over my school in New Zealand, one of the most memorable moments of my childhood. I immediately made a model out of cardboard. News of its subsequent crash before waiting VIPs at Heathrow was quite a shock. Thank you for a very well done video. I'm impressed by how lousy the view from inside was, though from the outside the cockpit was iconic.
I also saw it in Auckland.
Good to see a slightly more technical look. Loved working on them at both Waddington and Scampton back in the 70's and early 80's. Everything was accessible and large, compared to most other aircraft of that era. Although Health & Safety didn't exist much then. I can remember carrying ejection seats on my back up external steps to fit them.
8 of these bombers broke through American airspace in a wargames and some of them successfully reached their target destination. The Yanks were so annoyed about it they invited the RAF back the following year where they did it again. Incredibly underrated aircraft.
Operation Sky Shield 1+2. The Americans actually kept it classified in case the Russians saw how it was done
At 60,000 feet and Mach 2, it doesn't surprise me 🎉🎉🎉
@@TrueBlade-1889 it is not supersonic
All of them got to their target destination they redid the exercise and they all got to the destination again
I was at school in North Wales in the mid 60s. Two Vulcans were based at RAF Valley as part of the dispersal programme (rather than have them all based at one or two stations where they could be taken out in one strike, they were sent in pairs all over the country). One beautiful sunny day when I should have been doing geography or something my attention was gripped by flashing lights in the sky, which was the sun reflecting off the wings of the two Vulcans. Which were dogfighting. They did this for about 15 minutes. Presumably this was training on evading enemy fighters which at the time would have had either cannon or rudimentary missiles.
I read another account of an exercise in Australia where the Vulcans were going to penetrate Australian airspace. They did and interceptors were sent up to shoot them down. But they couldn't get missile lock for long enough to engage because the Vulcans were so manouevrable and eventually they got lost in cloud. One of the of the pilots reported to his ground controller that he had lost the Vulcan and didn't know where it was when an RAF voice came over the radio and said 'your six.' The point was that a Vulcan had plenty of fuel to spare and the interceptors didn't!
The point about the rear three not having ejector seats is not as simple as people make out. Highly skilled and trained crews are NOT disposable. The problem was that although the pilot and copilot seats were a standard fighter configuration (blow off the canopy and out you go) nobody had ever had to invent a process for getting crew out. The development was done under incredible pressure and cost limitations and since the concept of nuclear war was a one way journey it didn't come at the top of the requirements list. The 'official' way out was via the crew door, but this had to be opened against the slipstream. It is a large door and opening it would have considerable impact on the plane's flight pattern. The pilots would have to stay in the aircraft to control it's attitude (if that was even possible) until the crew had jumped. The next problem was speed. Even held down to 100kt or so (if that was possible in a damaged aeroplane) how do you jump out of an aircraft travelling at 100kt? Answer, you can't. The likelihood is that as soon as you jump the aircraft will hit you before you are clear. The drill was to climb down the crew ladder which was folded against the hatch and push off from the bottom. Maybe. And repeat this for the other two crew while the aircraft is on fire and possibly out of control. If the nose gear was down it was completely impossible because the wheels were well below the bottom of the hatch.
There was a proposal to fit a hatch above the middle crew's head which would blow off and the the middle man would be ejected, with his seat. The two other crew seats would then each in turn be fired sideways on a track to the centre position below the hatch, and then shot vertically through it. Someone did some calculations, and the force required to do that would probably break your neck. So what with one thing and another, it never happened. Bear in mind in the 50s and 60s the RAF were losing aircraft and pilots at the rate of two or three a WEEK and the problem of getting people out of an aircraft that very rarely fell out of the sky wasn't really a problem anymore. Getting killed in an accident came with the territory.
Chicago Air and Water Show in the late '70's early 80's were blessed with three Royal Air Force Vulcan Bombers. I saw XL-390's last flight in 1978; in 1980, It was XL-443; and in 1981 XM-575 rounded it out. Was fortunate enough to get an inside-outside tour of '575, and the RAF Nimrod that accompanied them. Why they came to Chicago -- I have no idea, but they put on one hell of a show.
Great video. I was an aircraft electrician in the USAF, and while TDY in Goose Bay Labrador, Canada, I got to see the Vulcan fly and go inside. I remember feeling how cramped it was for such a large aircraft. The mechanic who showed me the plane did a great job explaining how it worked. It stands as one of the highlights of my career. The Vulcan bomber was an amazing plane to see fly.
"Had it not been for the Falklands then the Vulcans would probably not be remembered half as much....." Sean Connery and Tom Jones would beg to differ.
007 Thunderball
Not to mention _Leonard Nimoy._
😊😊😊
I saw a documentary of the Vulcan missions during the Falklands war, and apparently, one of the important and difficult to find pieces of the aircraft that was needed for the missions was found in an officer's club, where it was being used as an ashtray.
One of the most beautiful airplanes ever to fly.
One of the easiest airplanes to fly as well, it was incredibly stable at altitude, once a crew member stood a pencil on it's end in flight.
One refueling part was being used as an ash tray in the squadrons ready room
Really! What SQN if you know?
@@MilitaryAviationHistory I don't know if the 3 squadrons had separate crew ready rooms but it was a ready room at RAF Waddington
Read Vulcan 607 book. Anecdote of this story is there
@@scrubsrc4084 A chap I worked with was stationed with them up at RAF Kinloss , he said when they got a scramble order and they took off together using the Express start, the Noise was just deafening.
The bomb rotation rack, to release all the bombs, was still sat in the scrap yard where they were sold, when the Vulcan was decommissioned.
The owner of the yard was sold a Lot of Vulcan equipment, for scrap.
Turns out he just couldn't destroy most of it.
He still had them in his sheds when the RAF phoned him, looking to get the Vulcans flight ready for the Falklands Conflict
"Somewhat Italian of them......" classic!
First flight of the Avro Lancaster was 9 January 1941. First flight of the Avro Vulcan was 30 August 1952. Just over 11 years between the two aircraft!
The early jet era is quite amazing in that regard. So much changed drasticaly in the post war decade
Back in the 80s, when I was a B-52 pilot, one of the last operational Vulcans came through our base (Mather AFB). The pilots came over to our squadron (441 BMS) and asked if anyone wanted to go out to the ramp and check it out so me a couple of other pilots got to go inside. What struck me was just how dated the Vulcan was. B-52s are just about the same vintage, built in the 1950s to very early 60s, and though the B-52s of the 1980s were well worn and not exactly cutting edge, but compared to the Vulcan our B-52s look downright modern and in good repair. We had FLIR, low light TV and terrain avoidance radar, displayed on a CRT in front of each pilot, the Vulcan had nothing but steam gauges that looked like they were designed during WW-2. Our Nav and Radar Nav had the all glass OAS nav system, but the Vulcan still had an optical bombsight. and while our entire crew of 6 had ejection seats (0 and 90 knots for the upstairs crew and 200ft and 90 knots for the navs) while the Vulcan had ejection seats only for the pilots. (Must have made the decision to eject a guilt ridden exercise for the aircraft commander).
The cockpit on the Vulcan was tiny, the pilots sat shoulder to shoulder. I seem to recall the pilot telling us that the plane was originally designed for a single pilot but adapted later for two, which would explain the cramped pilots station. The rest of the crew had chairs and some sort of bailout slide rather than ejection seats, but that cannot have been used successfully very often. As uncomfortable as the B-52 was on our typical 10-14 hour missions, the Vulcan was even worse, smaller, more cramped. While we practised air refueling everytime we flew the Vulcan guys a only rarely, if ever, practised, and had to use a probe and drogue system, while we used the flying boom from either a KC-135 or KC-10. I simply cannot imagine what it must have been like to fly those Falkland missions in that plane.
All in all the Vulcan was a bit like an old car you keep in the corner of your garage. Not very well kept but something you might want to take out on a Sunday afternoon if you could can get it started and the roads are clear. And don't get me wrong, it looked great, from a distance, and from the outside, I just don't think the UK took it seriously anymore by the 70s and 80s, and weren't spending a penny more than necessary to keep them flying.
A side note. The Vulcan was packed with junk that the crew had purchased as they flew the plane on it's goodby tour. I remember a Sears garage door opener, not even a particularly good example of electric garage door openers of the time, being a prominent box in the pile of stuff they had collected.
Strato man. I think you summed up the situation perfectly. Once Polaris took over the nuclear role the MOD were not going to spend a dime on the Vulcans. There wasnt that much point in truth. We scrapped it's replacement the TSR 2, which will always be controversial, but on balance we were right to spend what money we did have on Tornado which gave us 40 years of excellent front line service. Vulcans performance in the air was always remarkable given its vintage and size. Test pilots did double rolls off the deck in these things. Service pilots were strictly banned from such aerobatics.
@@timhancock6626 TSR2 was not a replacement for the Vulcan!!!! When the RAF started the Jet bomber game the first design to enter service was the Canberra. What entered service in the B2 version was not what the aircraft was originally slated to be, The prototype Canberra's had solid noses as it was going to be radar bombing only, with a H2S Mk 9 radar in the nose, an advanced electro mechanical / Electronic navigation and bombing system (NBS) and employ a guided bomb code named Blue Boar that would use either radar or TV guidance to hit the target. Needless to say the RAF soon found out that there was no way that all of that kit could be shoehorned into a Canberra, So it became a visual bomber only. Victor and Vulcan development kicked off first, but it was soon discovered that these aircraft would take some time to get into service, thus two interim types were developed to get the RAF into the long range jet bomber game. The one that did enter service was the Valiant. Which saw combat in 1956 during Suez and was the only one of the Three V-Bombers to actually drop live nuclear weapons during the British tests between 1956 and 1958. Blue Boar was canned in 1954, but H2S Mk 9 and NBS went into the V-bombers. Vulcan entered Service next, followed by the Victor. Why by the two? Vulcan was good at All Altitudes, Victor wasn't as they found out when the wings stated to crack up after the aircraft moved to the low level role. plus the Vulcan was easier to load. But the Victor could carry 66% more bombs (35x1000lb v the 21x1000lb on the Vulcan) a lot further (5000NM v 2100NM max internal fuel range). Valiant moved into other roles as the two more advanced aircraft took over the Deterrent role (NATO tactical Strike using US Project E nuclear weapons, In-fight re-fuelling tanker and long range photo reconnaissance). The Canberra's also got US supplied Nukes, while the British worked on their own tactical nuclear bomb to put on the Canberra and Buccaneer (which had the S designation as it was designed to lob a Red beard Nuclear bomb at Soviet Cruisers). 1957 saw Sandy's move to IRBM's as the RAF's primary nuclear strike option, but Blue Streak was going to take some time to get working, thus Blue Steel was developed to give the Vulcan's and Victor's some stand off capability. 100 Miles with the Rocket powered version and up to 1000 miles with the planned Ramjet powered Mk2. 1960 saw TSR2 enter the picture,but its job was to replace the Valiant and the Canberra, not the Vulcan and the Victor. Blue Streak and Blue Steel Mk 2 were canned and the Vulcan was going to get Skybolt ALBM. A few Vulcan's were built to carry the weapon which resulted in upgraded engines and wing hardpoints (which turned out to be very useful as these were the aircraft used in the Falklands war). Kennedy canned Skybolt in late 1962 which resulted in the British going for the Polaris SLBM. TSR2 was going to be a total pig, loaded with a shedload of design flaws across the board (When the RAF Engineers got their first look at it they had a fit!!!) which were not fixable in the time scale the RAF required, plus in 1964 the Valiant force started to fall to bits. Early Victors replaced the Valiant as Tankers and Photo Recce aircraft and soon as Polaris became operational, the bulk of the Vulcan's took over the UK's NATO nuclear strike role with WE-177 bombs (plus replace the Canberra Strike wing on Cyprus). Some Vulcan's did take on the Maritime radar recce role while the Victors became tankers. Phantoms and F-111K planned to do the Germany / UK based Nuclear Strike role, plus F-111K was planned to do East of Suez missions in Far East Air Force. Six Day War and the Closing of the Suez Canal did as much to cause the pull out of the British from the Far East as the shit state of the UK economy at the time (most of the UK's reinforcement plans were based around having access to the Canal for Sea-lift). Seeing most of the F-111K requirement was based around Far East operations, the F-111K was binned and the Buccaneer procured to replace the Canberra in Germany (the Short field requirement was to do with the NATO dispersal policy which was part of the Tripwire policy (any Soviet Aggression against NATO mean instant all out Can of Instant Sunshine chuck fest from the git go). The 1968 change to a Flexible Response (conventional war phase first if the Soviets only used conventional weapons at the start required aircraft to operated from main operating bases) . Anglo French VG aircraft development started to replace Buccaneer, with the Jaguar as a trainer. AFVG canned when the French pulled out. Must Replace Canberra Again project started. Jaguar morphed from a trainer into a nuclear strike aircraft which replaced the Phantom's to be rolled into Air Defence Fighters. MRCA became Tornado and as soon as the first UK Tornado GR1 squadrons became operational,the Vulcan force was on the way out. Of course thanks to the tanker requirements need to support the Falklands air bridge, 6 Vulcans were modified to Tankers and operated until the VC-10 Tanker force became operational. As for Service pilots doing not doing Aeros in Vulcan's, don't you believe it. While the Vulcans were stationed on Cyprus, an RAF Armourer I once worked with saw a Vulcan land on the Island after a transit flight from the UK. He saw a very shocked rear crew and Crew Chief get out of the aircraft.When he asked them what was wrong, the Crew Chief in tears stated, "bloody idiots in the front tried to Loop it!!!" Turned out that they screwed the loop up and the aircraft very nearly ended put falling out of the sky inverted.
Quite a commentary from someone who has the credentials . Thanks for the insight!
Its rather typical of UK defence approach (then and now). We invest a lot to design and build the things and then underinvest in modernising them until they become obsolete. Unlike the B52 we never worked out an ongoing role post nuclear deterrent so never bothered to spend anything for the subsequent 20 or so years. I guess the RAF would love to have a modernised ones with guided munitions flying over the middle east in the same sort of role as the B52.
Nice info.
I was lucky enough as a kid to sit in the Vulcan and yes it was similar in size to a old mini. 👍
When I was 14 in the early 80s I won a school essay prize about 617 Squadron and my mum wrote to the squadron to tell them and they invited me down to RAF Scampton for the day during which time I got to sit in the cockpit of a Vulcan and even for an average sized young teen I was surprised at how cramped the cockpit was!
Another note on the fuel probes, one was actually found being used in the officers mesh as an ash tray
If you ever saw ( and felt) a Vulcan fly like I did many times you’d know why she was so iconic . Nothing like it in the world .
I think you miss the point that it was a deterrent. It worked. Not using the Vulcan was somehow the entire point of the V Force.
The sound of it was something else. That Vulcan wail was awesome.
The same Olympus engines used in Concorde
@@richieb7692 The Concorde engines had afterburners.
@@timhancock6626
So did the Vulcan.
Superb plane cut off in its prime and relagated to being a tanker for the end of its life.
Seen them fly multiple times (including the last flight not long ago) and they are extremely impressive. Had the chance to taxi in one too, was awesome!
New Bismarck video! On one of my favorite bombers, and on my birthday too. It’s like a dream come true.
Mark felton just uploaded a vulcan vid as well
Happy Birthday!
@@MilitaryAviationHistory Thank you, I greatly appreciate your channel!
War kicks off, and the British response hold my tea..... Seems we have a plane for that no were the bloody hell did we put the parts.
My mother was a mission planner for Vulcans on QRA in the mid sixties, trying to dodge the SA-2 sites. Probably your best video yet.
Well done, Bismarck!! I'm really enjoying your channel. The HP Victor is one I've always been a fan of, and I feel it has been largely ignored by historians. I'm sure many people would enjoy your detailed and insightful take on it, if you were ever inclined...
Thanks for what you do!!
In the old airdisplays the Vulcan would pitch nose up and come almost to a vertical halt. The engines would then be turned up to full, pummeling the audience into the ground as it launched vertically into the sky. Thats how I remember it
Vulcan doesn't have enough thrust to accelerate vertically. Only the most powerful fighters can do that. If it was lightly loaded they can pull into a steep climb using the speed they already have and maintain it above stall speed for a while on engine thrust, but it will be slowing down gradually the entire way. So if it looked like they "stopped" and then climbed it was an illusion. Even the famous "vertical climb out" of the Lightning was done by building up speed over the runway and then trading it for altitude with the afterburners sustaining the climb for a while until speed dropped. A Vulcan has significantly lower power/weight ratio.
Nicely presented and informative thanks
I used to volunteer at an aircraft museum in North East England, they too had a Vulcan although outside and subject to the elements, it didn't look in great shape last time I paid a visit. When I worked there however I got to sit inside the Vulcan many times, it still had most of the instruments in the back section of the cockpit because it had been flown in when the museum was a functioning airfield.
If you go into the bomb aimer position ahead of the perspex visual aiming window there is a door allowing access to the nose and radar of the aircraft. These planes carried an extremely powerful radar and electronic counter measure suite. The Vulcan I used to work on was being decommissioned in its new home by the RAF when the ECM jammer was accidentally turned on blacking out the local commercial airport some 9 or 10 miles away resulting in some frantic and rather angry phone calls.
In case of emergency the Vulcan was not especially liked by its crew, in particular the three guys in the back who were not fortunate enough to have ejector seats. They would have to slide down the hatch and bail out, all well and good assuming the plane was the right way up. Also the nose wheel is directly behind the crew hatch so if bailing out with the gear down it would be almost impossible to avoid smacking into the landing gear on the way out causing nasty injury if not death.
BIll Smith (of Bluebird K-7 Recovery and Restoration fame) have actually got the one of the engines on that aircraft working.
Great work Bismarck ! Your "hands on" vids where we see the actual cockpits and interiors offer a great companion to all the info and history and your delivery and presentation are great too. Keep up the vids. Top job !
Good job with the video as usual. At 10:25 when he starts talking about the in-flight refueling probe being obtained from a museum in the US; that is likely a reference to S/N XM573 at the Strategic Air Command and Aerospace Museum in Ashland Nebraska. (Suppose they may have borrowed from other museums, too). About a month ago, they finally replaced it with a mock probe. If you’re in the area, stop in and check it out.
If you wanna see the area that is missing in Doncaster Air museum (UK) has a front end of a Vulcan with the nav section restored they are slowly working on a full restore of the cockpit.
Went there a while back , and visited the cockpit. Banged my bloody head. How they got in there in full kit and managed not to knock themselves out I do not know!
I remember them from my youth, I lived under the approach routes for Ringway, and woodford being so close, they used the same rout, deveiating at a very late stage. They were like an earthquake with wings. To quote Henry V, Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming, in thunder and in earthquake, like a jove.
I saw a Vulcan flying at a 1978 air show at Anderson AFB, Guam. Beautiful aircraft!
listening to bismarck talk abt aviation and stuff while studying is like the "lofi music/beats to relax/study" for me :D...love your vids man
I have visited the RAF museum on my way to Fairford Airshow (2018?) Next to the Lancaster (of course) the Vulkan was one of the most impressive airplanes to see there
The Vulcan is remembered by me for another reason: The appearance in the James Bond film 'Thunderball'! We had never seen such a cool looking bomber. It certainly was a real plane, that was sure. I always wondered what it really looked like inside. Now I know, thanks to you.
Saw it on its farewell tour at southport all I can say is breathtaking and when he opened up the engines in a climb just awe inspiring got to be one of the best planes I've seen in the flesh and I've seen most of them the v force fleet really were cutting edge at the time and you can see why British innovation at its absolute best
I was in air cadets at RAF Scampton when they scrambled four practicing. Hot summer day heat haze wow all very quite until they got close, we where not far of runway edge. The noise was unbelievable made my body shake. Wow
I remember when I was a kid I was at the Sunderland airshow when it flew over for its last time it was great, massive and the sound was like nothing i’d ever heard. I do wish that it had the funding and crew to see it fly and maintained again.
Where was this channel a few years ago when I needed it? I kept thinking we really needed a channel like this.
I love the Vulcan but I am always more inclined to the more neglected workhorses, so I feel like the other V bombers are neglected next to the Vulcan. The Victor in particular was almost more interesting looking than the Vulcan, and actually had better stats in almost every category than the Vulcan .
I think my memory of the Vulcan was this! I was traveling down a road in England and my mum was driving, as I was not old enough! We then heard a huge roar! I opened the sunroof, to see a Vulcan flying over head! It was very low and it did make the dayling partially vanish! It was just amazing to see this huge plane that low! I will never forget this one moment.
15:23 An interesting quick start switch. Dont ser that sort of thing in most aircraft.
Another stellar video on a iconic if sort of superfluous aircraft Bis.
And a hazard. A friend of mine was maintaining the engine when some idiot in the cockpit decided to test this. Hearing the telltale sound of the engine starting, he jumped out of the plane and hit the ground 15 feet below, breaking his back.
@@Carusus1 Now that is a court martial offense right there. Terrible thing to have happened.
if anybody fancies a look around a Vulcan cockpit there's a Vulcan at the Newark air museum you can go in for a donation, and you get a full tour from a former crewman, it has all its instruments including the nuclear trigger release.
Any chance that you could convince the Imperial War Museum Duxford to let you climb into their SR-71?
I'd love to see that! The blackbird is my all-time favorite.
The Seattle Air and Space Museum has an excellent mockup cockpit of the SR-71 that any visitor can climb into. It's just to the right of the M-21 variant of the SR.
Go to Port Stanley Airport, Falkland Islands, on Google Earth and you can still see some craters from one stick of bombs just to the south of the runway. The rest appear to have been filled in.
Another fantastic presentation...cheers...
Superb video. I must say that I learned more about the Vulcan bomber in this 25 minute presentation than I had ever known before . Well done!
Very much enjoyed your presentation. I remember the Vulcan not only from The Falklands War but also the James Bond film "Thunderball".
A great video. As a child I saw Vulcans at the air show at RAF Valley and always thought they were very graceful if a bit noisy. I later saw the restored one on the ground and in the air at Farnborough in the early party of this century. Such a shame they couldn't keep it flying.
Great stuff as always. P.S. Granma Mitzi enjoyed this trip down memory lane .. Thank you.
Cheers Leonhamm, hope you are well!
@@MilitaryAviationHistory ;o)
The ressemblance between the Vulcan and the Concorde is striking, at least to me, with 15 to 20 years between them. The RR engines are apparently also of the same family. The crew stations, especially the cockpit, show their age though. Thank you for this great experience and professional explanations.
Thanks for the coverage of this magnificent aircraft!
Every time I visit the RAF Museum I have to stand in the corner at the front of the Vulcan and try to take in just how big it is. Duxford's B52 might be bigger, but it doesn't have the same presence that the Vulcan has.
Nice video, as always.
At 13:52 that looked like the hanging "strap" from an old Underground tube train!
I like this one because you actually get to go inside the cockpit unlike the Mig-15 episode!!
Many thanks for the work you've put into this production, great to hear about the origins of this iconic bird 👍🍻
I remember this awesome plane from air shows at Wolverhampton and Telford in the 1960s. So huge, it hardly seemed to move. At Wolverhampton one flew about 100 feet above the crowd. It went very dark, and deafening. That was followed by an EE Lightning doing a sheer vertical climb at top speed.
Saw it circling over my parents house a few years ago when waiting for it's Duxford fly by. Just amazing. Though, a little loud when it's under 1000 ft!!!
The plane that just doesn't fit into one picture. Really, couldn't get a good shot of the one in the RAF museum, but it is very inconveniently placed for photos there.
It's the same in alot of museums unfortunately lot of planes and a limited display area. Best off visiting one which is outdoors, newark air museum is a good example as they open the cockpit quite often.
Very good look at the Cockpit, have not seen such detail before... well done.
Brilliant video - i think iv found my new favourite channel. Your presentation skills are so good.
Thing I love about the v bomber force is that it's such a modern, sleek design, powered by impressive jets. Just a decade prior, it was Lancaster/Lincolns.
As flawed as the v force came to be, one can't deny they showed that time were'a changin'.
tisFrancesfault what made them flawed?
The last great triumph for Britain and its industry
And the Bombing Radar in the V-bombers was H2S...Almost straight out of the Lancaster and Lincoln
The Northrop B-2 Spirit (Stealth Bomber) and the Avro Vulcan are my favourite airplane shapes.
Another interesting video... :)
I think the b-2 looks too goofy.
A very futuristic looking aircraft. Beautiful lines and overall design.
Another beautiful feat of British engineering! Thanks
Thank you for this extensive video of the Avro Vulcan's almost Shakespearean career.
Retired member of 101 Sqdn, RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, Almost perfect however it was capable of 7 seats not 6. I was that 7th seat from Waddington to Goose Bay, Newfoundland, Canada. The rear crew do not exactly 'Eject' they slide down the door (steps out of the way) and hopefully get away from the aircraft if it is crashing, if it is too low, no chance. e.g. The IX Squadron crash in Malta in 1975. Sadly IX Sqdn lost some good men that day. Those of us that were in Malta (Luqa RAF base) felt the sorrow that still existed.
Thanks so much for your excellent work!
Rich.
Outstanding video, you really are a top presenter!
My comment would be that the Vulcan was so much more than the Falklands. I grew up as a kid in 60-70’s UK and Aden as an Airforce brat and these aircraft were really special! Airheads loved them (and still do) because in their time they were just so good. Wargames in USA and Europe proved the quality of the crews and the airframe.
Just. Comment, in no way a criticism of your outstanding episodes.
during a airshow in basle (in the sixties)the Avro Vulcan flew only a some 100 meters over my house with fully extended undercarriage a very impressing view!
XL318 flew the last 2 Vulcan flights for 617 Sqn. back in 1981 and as such, featured heavily in a fly-on-the-wall documentary called "617: The Last Days of the Vulcan Squadron", which can be found on TH-cam.
Great documentaries, Bismarck!
Black buck 6 “Monty Python couldn’t have done it any better" (Squadron leader, John Reeves.)
He was actually talking about his abort on Black Buck 1 because of a damaged seal on the DV panel.
Munching some Scho-Ka-Kola at the end? ;)
:)
A good and very interesting video and at last I can see the interior, that I never saw, although it is quite cramped. To think that the crew achieved one of the longest flight ever over the Falklands from England. Heroes...
Black Buck Missions launched from and landed at Ascension Island , Over 4000 miles from the UK!!!!
That folding chair looks huge!
I sat in a Vulcan as a kid. A memorable moment in my life. I so wish my kids got to see it fly 😔
Supposedly bombed America a few times during drills, but they didn't want that getting out at the time. Beautiful plane and stunning to see in the Sky.
Good video well done. I never understood why they did not put the quick start button on the outside, like on the B1 lancer . That way the engines would be starting "while" the crew were getting board. Could have saved 20-30 seconds on MITO start.
As a kid I was lucky enough to see Vulcans flying low and fast down our valley in the Yorkshire Dales on a regular basis, they were ridiculously agile - flying the same routes as the Tornados, Harriers, Hawks and Jaguars - just as quickly and just as low. While I agree that the Vulcan didn't exactly set the world on fire (haha) because there were so few opportunities for it to actually do it's job, I think it would have been perfectly suited to fly alongside the Tornados, Jaguars and Buccaneers in the Gulf War (in a parallel universe where the airframes still had enough life in them).
She might be an old girl but to this day She still remains one of the Greatest aircraft ever, Brilliant British Engineering
The first time I saw one was on the film James Bond Thunderball and it really caught my imagination at the age of 9.
Vulcan was also featured in the James Bond movie Thunderball in 1965.
I was surprised the plane used joysticks instead of the traditional yoke. Also, instead of "Tin Triangle", the "Bat" in my opinion would have been more appropriate due to its shape. There's a outdoor static Vulcan at the Castle AFB in California which I visited. That thing makes the B-52 exhibit at the same location look small!
nice choice BIS THAT MY MOST FAVORITE BRIT BOMBER ALWAYS LOVE THE HOWL OF ENGS
excellent objective review. I used to watch this plane at airshows as a kid (my ears are still ringing from the noise!!). It has a "Wow" factor from the look & sound of it that few other planes have - & has a "Mythology" here in UK second only to the Spitfire - it's only by watching your video that we can get an objective considered view of its actual worth - and that it was pretty much obselete in its intended role almost as soon as it was introduced - keep on making these excellent videos!
i can't wait for the names to be unveiled for xh558, hopefully it won't take too long to find mine :) great video bismarck
I've loved the Vulcan B2 from the first time I saw one. The other V-bombers are also very cool. Both, I think, are still in service, repurposed to other roles.
I was lucky to be able to sit in the cockpit of this magnificent aircraft - I sat in the pilots seat and as large as the whole aircraft is once inside it is very snug fitting for the 5 crew that man it. once in your seat though everything feels cosy! This Vulcan was in a air display museum near Manchester (I forgot the exact name) but they had retained everything that the operational crew had at their disposal. For example there was an eyepatch for the pilot to wear should the aircraft ever be used for it's ultimate purpose. The eyepatch was to be worn to help protect the eye from the flash of a released nuclear weapon , on top of that there were smoked glass screens that could be used to cover the small windows in the cockpit once again to help protect the crew from the resulting flash of released nuclear weapon(s). It was both an awesome and chilling experience to sit there and think of those whose who flew them never knowing one day from the next if they would be required to make their inevitable one way journey to enact what was then a vital part of our nuclear deterrent. Despite this I was in awe of the engineering achievement so soon after a world war a few years before fought almost exclusively with aircraft of propellers and piston engines and thinking what a shame it is that it took fear of a nuclear holocaust to bring out our best in terms of creative engineering and innovation. I sincerely hope as a species we will progress very rapidly to finding an equal fervour to create and innovate for PEACE and prosperity and no longer be motivated only by fear.