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Vulcan Bomber Fly-past

It is just doing 1 pass along the runway at Birmingham at 250 feet & before that doing a similar thing at Coventry Airport before coming to Birmingham.
 
Could someone enlighten me as to when the Vulcan bomber entered service in the RAF, I served 1948 to 56 as a W/op on Lancasters, Sunderlands and Hastings amongst others and the only jet bomber I can remember (could be wrong its a long time ago) was the Buccaneer, and I think that was a fighter bomber. Eric
 
In 1982, I was selling "Tax Free Cars to the military", I had just been to RAF Cranwell, and was on the A15, going to RAF Scampton, when passing RAF Waddington I had to stop at the flashing red lights, (meant planes landing), and one after another 6 Vulcans came into land, truly amazing sight and never to be forgotten.
paul
 
Thanks old Mohawk, June '56 was when I left the service, that explains why I never saw them. Unfortunately the modern military a/c made wirless operators and flight engineers obsolete, hence back to 'civvy Street' for me, did not like being on the ground. Eric
 
cookie273uk said:
Could someone enlighten me as to when the Vulcan bomber entered service in the RAF, I served 1948 to 56 as a W/op on Lancasters, Sunderlands and Hastings amongst others and the only jet bomber I can remember (could be wrong its a long time ago) was the Buccaneer, and I think that was a fighter bomber. Eric
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The Vulcan saw RAF service between 1956 and 1984 - a Vulcan bombed the airfield at Port Stanley in The Falklands, on a non-stop round trip from the UK, air re-fuelled en route.

The Blackburn Buccaneer served with the RAF from 1962 to 1994. There's one in Cosford. If I remember correctly, some Buccaneers were taken out of mothballs and flew in the Gulf War. A friend of mine was in the Royal Navy, serving on an aircraft-carrier, and because he was small one of his jobs was to climb up the jet-pipes of Buccaneers to clean out the soot after landing....nice work if you can get it.

I believe the first RAF jet bomber was the English Electric Canberra, which certainly flew prior to 1950 but I don't know when it came into RAF service. Maybe this is the aircraft you remember, Eric. One of the very few British aircraft to be used by the USAF and was also built there by the Martin Company.

G
 
Thats it ! Big G, the Canberra, not the Buccaneer, it replaced the Lancasters on my old Squadron 82PR , all scrapped except one which is now part of the memorial Flight, just realisedi am way of thread (easily done) Sorry, got carried away remembering old times of 60 years ago. Eric
 
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The Vulcan's maximum bomb-load was about 21000 lbs, not a lot more than a WW2 Lancaster, but it could fly nearly three times as high and had a far greater range. It was one of three "V-bombers" developed during the 1950's, the others being the Handley-Page Victor and the Vickers Valiant. Only the Vulcan made the grade as a bomber. The Victor ended up as a flight-refuelling tanker. The Valiant was never really in the running, and had serious problems with premature metal-fatigue. But out of the three, IMHO it was the best-looking aircraft. When we lived in the USA in the late 1970's we went to an air-show near Cleveland, Ohio, and a Vulcan made a brief fly-past. The Yanks we were with could not believe that we had an aircraft like it - to them, bombers and commercial jets alike were based on the Boeing 707 and 747.

I didn't see the Vulcan over Brum today, sorry to say.

G
 
I saw one take off from Gaydon after an air show - awesome sight. And also saw one back in mid sixties banking over some low hills near Alcester.
 
Those Gaydon air-shows were fabulous! We used to go on the bus, changing at Warwick. I remember a Gaydon air-show in about 1960 when a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter was flown along the main runway at about 100 feet, probably close to Mach 1, and the noise was truly frightening!

I think Gaydon is a Jaguar works now?

G
 
Yes it was originally leased by Austin Morris then bought from the MOD by Rover/Land Rover. Restrictions were in place for many years that prevented new buildings as there was a requirement that it should be capable of being returned to active service. It used to get scary on the top floor of the new engineering block on occasions as some flight maps did not show the new buildings.
 
Once saw 9 Vulcans take off in formation at Farnborough air show but can't remember the year; awesome sound and sight! The Vulcan could carry the Avro stand-off bomb that could be dropped thousands of miles from its target!
 
The Avro stand-off bomb was known as Blue Steel and was highly unreliable - and also dangerous to ground crews because of the volatility of its fuel components. It was eventually cancelled by Harold Wilson's government (he cancelled anything at the drop of a hat, including the TSR2) and was replaced by Polaris missiles in submarines.

G
 
Bernie D'Boult said:
I saw one take off from Gaydon after an air show - awesome sight. And also saw one back in mid sixties banking over some low hills near Alcester.
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Vulcan flew over here on the 9th of this month. (It was over-flying Cholmondely castle for some reason).
Hearing its unusual noise I jumped up to see the beautiful thing for the first time since the mid-sixties, when one flew over our gun position on Salisbury Plain, chased by a Meteor. We were told later that it was testing radar.
 
We saw it over Tamworth, brilliant sight, but the camera on my phone wasn't good enough to get a picture! Was actually Owen that spotted it, we are on the outside run in to Birmingham, have a lot of circling planes, this was the best yet.
Sue
 
Interesting thread about the Vulcan Bombers. A friend of mine here in Vancouver has a relative who was on the crew of a Vulcan Bomber that came to Canada for a show and tell visit some years ago. Here's a bit about the Vulcan got it's name. From Wikipedia: After its appearance at Farnborough, there was much speculation as to what name the Avro 698 would be given by the RAF. Avro had strongly recommended the name Ottawa[SUP][N 1][/SUP] for the aircraft, in honour of the company's connection with Avro Canada.[SUP][9][/SUP][SUP][19][/SUP] Weekly magazine Flight mused over the problem and after rejecting Avenger, Apollo and Assegai, suggested Albion. Nevertheless, the Chief of the Air Staff preferred a V-class of bombers and the Air Council announced the following month that the aircraft would be called the Vulcan after the Roman god of fire and destruction
 
It's interesting to note that Roy Chadwick, the designer of the Avro Manchester and Lancaster bombers of WW2, headed up the design-team at Avro tasked with the creation of a nuclear bomber for the RAF. Unfortunately, he was killed in an aircraft crash in 1947. There was also, at least for a short time, a project to produce a civilian version of the Vulcan for the trans-Atlantic run, but this came to nothing.

In my humble opinion, the Vulcan is still outstanding because it is different. It is a delta configuration instead of the almost-universal straight or swept wing plus horizontal stabiliser configuration of aircraft since the dawn of aviation. Even though it wasn't designed with such a thing in mind, it presented a much weaker radar image than say a B-52, long before the concept of 'stealth' aircraft.

Only about 135 Vulcans of all types were manufactured, compared to approximately 760 Boeing B-52's, which entered service at about the same time. Some B-52's are still flying, including a very few from the original production-batch of 1952-3. I once read that these original bombers could still be flying in 2050, in which case they could be a century old! Weird!

G
 
Vulcan XH558, the only airworthy example of its type, costs a huge amount of money to keep it in flying condition. The group responsible for it had a massive fundraising campaign to get it back in the air and now have to keep fundraising to keep it there. Whatever it costs is worth it to see such a lovely aircraft in flight (I haven't yet had the pleasure) and to bring back memories for those that served on or remember Vulcans in service. Continued funding to keep it flying is never guaranteed so enjoy it while you can.

Simon
 
The 3 hour sortie on Saturday cost over £20,000 in fuel alone, so they are always looking for donations, the good news was that the costs were just covered by public donations.

Colin
 
6918 said:
Vulcan XH558, the only airworthy example of its type, costs a huge amount of money to keep it in flying condition. The group responsible for it had a massive fundraising campaign to get it back in the air and now have to keep fundraising to keep it there. Whatever it costs is worth it to see such a lovely aircraft in flight (I haven't yet had the pleasure) and to bring back memories for those that served on or remember Vulcans in service. Continued funding to keep it flying is never guaranteed so enjoy it while you can.

Simon
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Hi Simon,

is this the aircraft that was once based at Bruntingthorpe?

G
 
Yes it was at Bruntingthorpe & I believe while it was there was the subject of controversy when it took off when it should have only been taxiing.
 
I don't think they have a Victor in even a taxiing condition now but stand to be corrected, I still understand it was a Vulcan but will check & confirm or deny
 
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