The Tragic Story Of Vulcan XM604
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ธ.ค. 2020
- The Avro Vulcan has gone down in History as one of the most iconic British aircraft ever built. During the Cold War, it formed part of the V-Bomber aircraft which could have dropped the nuclear bomb should it have been needed. The Vulcan was considered the most technologically advanced plane of the V-Bombers, and it was instantly recognisable due to it's wing shape and size.
However on the 30th January 1968 one Vulcan B2, XM604 in Rutland, England would have it's final flight with tragic consequences. It was conducting a training mission, and during this tragedy would strike with a turbine disc flying off an engine and slashing through the Vulcan's bomb bay. This signalled the warnings onboard and it indicated that there could have been a fire inside the bomb bay. The disc had slashed through part of the controls, and the Vulcan quickly became unresponsive to the pilot and co-pilots controls.
Miraculously the pilot and co-pilot would survive, with the pilot somehow ejecting to safety way below he should have. It was a miracle he survived, however the other 4 people in the rear of the Vulcan would not be so lucky. 4 of the crew were killed onboard XM604. The Vulcan crashed heavily next to a farm near to RAF Cottesmore. Join us today as we look at the tragic story of Vulcan XM604.
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Thanks for such an interesting and informative article. My brother, Flt. Lt. S. R. Sumpter, a navigator, was one of the 4 crew who perished in this accident. Today would have been his 80th birthday, instead he died, aged 27, leaving a wife and 2 children (one only 4 days old). On the 50th anniversary of the crash, family, the pilot and retired police who attended the scene, met at the pub in Cottesmore and later at the local cemetery, for a short service. Some of us then visited the crash site. Thanks again for your tribute to the Vulcan and those who lost their lives protecting us.
Salute and respect from NZ... we had a Vulcan plane do a crash landing here in NZ..✈️🇳🇿
Hi Andy ,I'm Ex RAF Airframes Tech . , so sorry for your loss . The Vulcan's escape system really gets to me . The 3 aircrew and the Crew Chief down the back have little chance of getting out . The sequence of the downstairs seats turning in and airpowered cushions to push 2 of them to the cabin floor , crew hatch etc. etc. too long to describe but it's nearly impossible, if the nose leg is down they have to jump from the hatch to the leg then off the leg . Rubbish . It ain't Thunderbirds or Die Hard 2 . We did an exercise when I was a cadet at RAF Scampton 1968 ish on Summer camp jumping on to gym mats on the hangar floor with out a disabling Parachute on or contending with a bucking and weaving plane. No chance really . RIP
Hi Russ, thanks for your post, very interesting and informative. I too was in the ATC in the 60s, heading for a career in the RAF following both my brothers, however this crash diverted me onto another course completely. All the best!
In 1971 I was a pupil at East Rainton school just outside of Durham city. As kids we’d seen Vulcan bombers fly over before, recognisable by their delta wings. On this day during playtime we noticed a Vulcan flying overhead, a red glow coming from one of its engines. I recall saying to my pal it was normal. A minute or so later that glow increased and smoke billowing from behind the plane it lost height and headed westward and after a time there was a huge plume of smoke appeared on the horizon. We were told at the time that the crew had ejected and survived. I’d have been 8 or 9 years old at the time.
That was XM610. The crew did survive in this instance and, luckily, the plane crashed in a field close to the village of Wingate, narrowly missing houses. The plane was originally heading to the North Sea to be ditched, but after the crew abandoned the aircraft it decided it had other plans and didn't want a watery grave.
5:54 "miraculously his parachute got caught on some high tension electricity cables". That's probably the only time I've heard of a parachute getting caught on high voltage cables being a good outcome
The Vulcan had only two ejector seats, and the other crew members never had a chance and the same happened in other Vulcan crashes including that in Malta at Zabbar with Pilot Alcock.
Thank you for a fantastic video and concise narration. RIP.
I love your videos, very informative and interesting! Keep em coming! Thanks ! JR Michigan, US!
Brilliant video
Thanks for this video,I am from Zabbar where it crashed,I was at home,it was sad Our Lady of Grace's saved us by miracle.
Nice video m8
Thanks another great and factual précis of this event. I am old enough to remember it in the news. I am probably three times your age, but I recognise that you are very professional wth your presentation. Cllr Richard D.
quality video! I would love to see a video on the crash of XL390 in Chicago, it was the last Vulcan to go down.
"The Vulcan was considered the most technologically advanced plane of the V-Bombers"
Not really - the Victor had a higher ceiling, a 50% bigger bomb load and had more than twice the range of the Vulcan. It also had a better ECM suite. It's crescent shaped wing was quite unique and gave a very smooth ride particularly at low level - the plane was almost self landing. However, the Vulcan was more manoeuvrable at low altitude which became crucial later in the cold war when Soviet missile defences forced aircraft to fly nap-of-the-earth.
I agree. I think what happened is that the Vulcan made a better low level strike bomber and the Victor made a better air-to-air refueller tanker and that is what defined their roles in the RAF.
Probably means the fly by wire system....... i know the Americans like to say the F16 was the first FULL fly by wire but the Vulcan was on the cutting edge considering it's first flight was in 1952.
I believe the Procedure at the time was for the Co-Pilot to eject in advance so there was someone left to tell the RAF what had gone wrong.
It seems from this, and other Vulcan crashes, it was difficult for the crew in the rear to bail out of it safely.
Next to imposible to get out of the back of a Vulcan, the two up front had ejector seats but the guys in the back technically had to jump out of the hatch under their feet...... problem was if the aircraft lost hydraulic pressure the bomb bay doors would be open. So i believe the guys in the back were instructed to wrap their arm round the stainless hatch ram as they dropped out to roll them away from the bomb bay doors......... problem was that would almost always break or badly dislocate the arm. Moral of the story is don't sit in the back of a Vulcan!! especially when you have some nutter like Roly Falk doing barrel rolls.
@@K2edg Back in the mid 1980's while a J/T i did an overnight Duty Airman stint in the guardroom at RAF West Raynham, The Orderly Corporal was an Armorer who had done some time on Vulcans while they were based on Cyprus in the early 1970's. He told a couple of stories of his time out there including one where a Vulcan landed and all of the back crew, including the Crew Chief got out of the aircraft in a very bad state of shock. When the Corporal asked the Crew Chief what the problem was, the Chief Tech replied, "Stupid nutters in the front had tried to do a loop and had almost ended up putting the aircraft into the sea in the pull up after totally cocking the manoeuvre up!!"
I was a kid living at oheka in nz when xa498 crashed it was repaired and few back to the uk when it was being repaired my cub group went in side the cockpit
Seem like very dangerous aircraft
Does it do the mind meld I wonder? It was crazy looking vird!
Vulcan is a Roman god
I remember when a valcun crashed on my city zabbar malta at 1975
Avro should have put Spock ears on it.
👍👍
Pretty
Very good. But no thumbs-up (but of course no thumbs-down either) because of the annoying pop-ups advising to click on other TH-cam Videos. One of them even prompted me to click on "The Tragic Story Of Vulcan XM604", the very video I was watching.
I worked with a guy who's daughter was killed in huntingdon by a canberra aircraft crashed into their house
We should have kept the technical drawings for the avro arrow 🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
New a guy who was a navigator on Vulcans,he said he allways kissed his wife goodbye when going on a flight because there was no way to eject
You mention that the crash was caused by the turbine disc failure, but not what caused the overheating in the bomb bay that caused the crew to declare PAN PAN PAN in the first place. Was it a false alarm?
Yes, did the crash investigation report throw any light on the Pan Pan Pan call?
I get the fear, i was involved in Falklands at Bae,
just one thing, you said 604 was on 9 Sqn, I thought she was on 35 at the time
Great shame 😑
Of course, it was too costly to spring for six parachutes. Like wtf!?!?
How does ECM equipment ‘jam’ Soviet computers?
The fact that all three V-bombers rear-crew positions were not fitted with ejection seats was disgusting.
Work was done on ejection from the tear seats, in fact some brave man ejected facing backwards from a Victor rear seat and successfully cleared the tail. A three seat system, although worked on, was never completed. No idea why but probably money.
@@oml81mm think logic was that pilots should be able to control plane long enough to allow rest of crew to get out , huge weight penalty for all extra equipment
@@garypeatling7927 About 200 lbs. for an ejection seat. plus the weight of a hatch of some sort, minus the weight of whatever the crewman would normally sit on. ~250 lbs. each. 750 lbs. is not much to worry about out of the 170,000 lbs. max takeoff weight of a Vulcan. It was class discrimination, plain and simple. The lower classes weren't deemed to be worthy of an ejection seat. Save the officers, let the enlisted types die in a fiery crash.
They did try to fit some form of ejection in the rear, the problem was the space in the cockpit was limited so the guys in the back had to sit side by side (there could be upto 7 people in a Vulcan which is shocking if you have ever sat in one)....... So where the two up front could blow out the canopy, to do the same with the guys in the back would result in some serious loss of strength in the aircraft when the top half of the fuselage was blow out....... it just wasn't viable to make such a large hole and keep the integrity of the plane. I know there was a plan to blow off the nose section of the aircraft and parashoot it down with crew still inside!! it's nuts but that how difficult the task was. My problem with it is you either fit ejector seats or you dont!! Pilots will go that extra mile to land the plane if it's that or dropping out of a small hole in the floor.
@@K2edg Have you got a link to any source about trying to design the Vulcan for ejection seats? I'd love to read it.
What caused the initial "PAN-PAN?"
But Blue Steel didn't work. So we did a deal with America for Skybolt. That didn't work either and got cancelled.
Why didn’t the crew in the back of the plane jump out?
I'm no expert, but its not uncommon for bomber crews to fail to escape an aircraft. Disorientation and/or severe G-forces can make it physically impossible to reach an exit in the few seconds that they would have had.
I'm also no expert, but I believe that the escape system for the crew in the rear of the aircraft, was that their seats were designed to swivel towards an escape hatch in the floor of the aircraft. Obviously this could only be used at a height suitable for parachuting. On this occasion the Vulcan was far too low for this system to be used.
Height is my guess but Vulcans have a nasty trick they pull........... so the guys in the back have to go through the hatch in the floor which sounds easy enough, but if there is an issue with hydraulic pressure the bomb bay doors open. So you have this senario where you jump out of the aircraft and hit the rear bulkhead of the bomb bay or the end of the doors. To get round this the rear crew were told to wrap their arm around the stainless hatch ram as they drop out rolling them away from the bomb bay in most cases dislocating or breaking said arm in the process.
so.this is not g.n.a.s?.
Vulcan: *oooOOOOooOOooOOO*
Axis: *N U C L E A R D E A T H*