Any parts that were deemed to be too worn or deteriorated to be safe would have to be replaced — but finding spare parts for a giant bomber last on the production line more than 50 years ago was not exactly an easy task. The team were helped by one logistical masterstroke by the Waltons when they had originally bought the Vulcan in the early s — they had also bought the RAF's entire stock of Vulcan spare parts. More parts came from good old fashioned negotiations.
Edmondson says the task was immense. The Vulcan had to be deskinned — the magnesium alloy panels removed — so that every vital part inside could be meticulously inspected. She also required a major service, which required 6, separate jobs.
They were lucky in that BAE had another Vulcan airframe at a facility in Woodford that the team could inspect — they could poke inside the aircraft and monitor how badly parts of it were degrading.
XH was kept in much better conditions than the Woodford airframe, but inspecting it gave them a sense of where problems would be most likely to occur. The engineering crew had to check every part of the aircraft needed to keep it in the air, inside and out Credit: Vulcan to the Sky Trust. BAE had found that certain wire used in the electrical control system which helps the plane fly was compromised when exposed to UV light. Every inch of that wire had to pass muster.
Thankfully, only a very small section of one spar was found to be affected. That tiny part was carefully removed. The Vulcan might be a large aircraft, but it is surprisingly nimble Credit: Getty Images.
Avro may have built the Vulcan, but it had dealt with different suppliers, buying those myriad parts needed to construct each bomber. All of those making critical parts had to be contacted; if the company had been bought by someone else, they also had to be contacted to see if they could recreate any parts which might be needed, using precisely the same materials, the same manufacturing processes and the same designs.
Bear in mind too that the Vulcans were built in the days of Imperial measurements, which then had to be recalculated — another layer of complexity to an already bewilderingly complex operation. Amidst this, the team was trying to also keep money flowing in.
Restoring aircraft is not a cheap activity — very high skill levels are required and even the smallest change to the original specification required complex authorisation from the design authorities. I used to walk past and all I would see was a bunch of legs underneath it. The trust turned to the public. In August they asked for donations to keep the project afloat. We had to pull everyone working on the plane in to help open the postbags, which were full of cash, and cheques and postal orders.
The major overhaul of the aircraft had been expected to take 14 months, but in the end lasted 22 months. Final Vulcan flypast over East Midlands.
Last flying Vulcan to be grounded. Vulcan To The Sky. This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Image source, Charles Toop. Vulcan bomber XH arrives at Bruntingthorpe on 23 March Image source, Jamie Ewan. An Avro Vulcan B. When the aircraft was first envisioned, its 50,foot-plus ceiling was thought to be the perfect defense against Soviet interceptors. We expected to be at about 54,, and the MiG stopped well before that. We could fry target radars. RAF tacticians brought the Vulcan down from the stratosphere to the deck after that, and crew training changed accordingly.
Lots of basic things were now wrong, and there was never enough money to put them right. The Martin-Baker Company developed a system that could have been retrofitted to the Vulcan, but the RAF decided against installing it, anticipating that the delta-wing bomber would be in service only a few more years. New bomber designs on the drawing board would correct the problem, so why bother?
They never imagined that all those new projects would be canceled, leaving the Vulcan to soldier on alone. They had just got rid of the Blue Steel standoff nuclear missile and reverted to the free-fall role with both nuclear and conventional weapons.
We had a problem because we had to do about 25 hours a month to meet the NATO target for operational proficiency, but the aircraft suffered terribly from metal fatigue at low level—hardly surprising, as it had not been designed for this. As a result, we could only do about 30 minutes over land at low level, and low level for us was feet.
Even worse, being designed for high level, where the IAS [indicated airspeed] is low, the Vulcan had a low IAS limit, and we flew low level at knots. Basic training aircraft with low-hours solo students would overtake us.
This was totally valueless for the pilots, and the navigators could have gotten better practice in the simulator. Add in some 30 minutes circuit pounding and 15 minutes taxi time, and you had a typical Vulcan sortie. But we met the NATO standard.
Although the SAC crews spent a week at a time on alert, waiting for the klaxon to sound, RAF bomber crews did it a bit differently. Roy Brocklebank recalled that most of the RAF bomber squadrons had one crew on alert for each hour period. His unit, No. Or we might just be at the squadron waiting. We played hours upon hours of uckers, Risk or cards. Instead, we had constant exercise EDOM alerts [scrambling the crew to the jet without actually launching] about every 36 hours.
An underside view shows the cavernous bomb bay with doors open. MoD Crown Copyright. We maintained a minute state, which meant we were to be airborne within that time should the launch order be given. We could then be called to 05 [cockpit readiness], 02 [taxi to the runway] or start engines.
The tower would fire a flare, which told us what the alert state was. Usually the pilot drove as we hurtled down the taxiway. It had all the important qualities needed of a test aircraft. It also had an enormous bomb-bay capable of carrying…. Two weeks before the first nuclear weapon was used for warfare, dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the results of the UK general election were announced.
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