Avro Vulcan

Stunning pics, beautiful aircraft

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A few poor shots that I took yesterday. At least the weather stayed fine all day Unlike today.

Got a book from the library yesterday called "vulcan boys", quite a good read. Ive just finished Hunter boys and read Victor boys a few months ago.

There were/are 7 seats on a Vulcan, anyone know why? 6 I can see a reason for IE check crew and for a technician on land aways, but 7???

Seven seats? Where do you get that from? There are five 'seats' as in two permanently installed ejection seats, and three permanent fully swiveling seats with auto escape features, these were for the full crew of five. Then there is a horrific contraption behind and below the two pilots ejection seats that consists of a fold down tray like temporary seat, used by traveling ground engineers when deploying and for journalists and the like for air experience, not quite sure where number seven could even be?

My reason for stating that there were seven seats is this; Many years ago at Marham we had a Vulcan divert in and the captain asked for seven meals for his crew, simple as that!

canberra;150483 wrote:

My reason for stating that there were seven seats is this; Many years ago at Marham we had a Vulcan divert in and the captain asked for seven meals for his crew, simple as that!

I guess someone was hungry...

I understood that the B2 variant had a seventh seat.

I remember seeing a BBC News program where the starboard wing had disintegrated during an airshow flypast and nose dived into the runway ~ they reported 4 aircrew and 3 ground crew being killed. ( Captured on file and archived somewhere )

I had vague recollections of an earlier version ( B1 ? ) crashing on the approach to Heathrow after a return flight from the pacific ~ killing the spare pilot and a company representative.

I heard this from an ex Halton apprentice who spent his RAF working life working on Vulcan Bombers.

If I've remembered correctly what he told us ~ That a number of Vulcan crashes were caused when the air frame had been subjected to air show stress loads that were outside the planes normal flying envelope.

Spectacular as they are in their air show role ~ I always remember his comments when I hear about the one they refurbished a few years back performing at airshows.

When we were visiting Chicago after the engine fell off of a domestic ( DC10 ? ) killing a large number of our engineers who had been on a training course ~ I'm sure that they also included a Vulcan crashing during an airshow story ?

Harboda77;150512 wrote:

I understood that the B2 variant had a seventh seat.

I remember seeing a BBC News program where the starboard wing had disintegrated during an airshow flypast and nose dived into the runway ~ they reported 4 aircrew and 3 ground crew being killed. ( Captured on file and archived somewhere )

I had vague recollections of an earlier version ( B1 ? ) crashing on the approach to Heathrow after a return flight from the pacific ~ killing the spare pilot and a company representative.

I heard this from an ex Halton apprentice who spent his RAF working life working on Vulcan Bombers.

If I've remembered correctly what he told us ~ That a number of Vulcan crashes were caused when the air frame had been subjected to air show stress loads that were outside the planes normal flying envelope.

Spectacular as they are in their air show role ~ I always remember his comments when I hear about the one they refurbished a few years back performing at airshows.

When we were visiting Chicago after the engine fell off of a domestic ( DC10 ? ) killing a large number of our engineers who had been on a training course ~ I'm sure that they also included a Vulcan crashing during an airshow story ?

Just a point

Why is so money spent on this Cold War Dinosaur?

Apart from Falklands episode, did it ever do anything much? At a technical meeting at RAF Waddington in the late 1970's, I was informed by a senior RAF Officer that the fleet was just about worn out and would all soon be gone.
It was only by good luck that there were actually any airworthy ones left by 1982.

Question, would you fly in a jet bomber this old?

It might be a disaster waiting to happen.
Perhaps the time has come to pension off the old Girl.

Mike wrote:

Just a point

Why is so money spent on this Cold War Dinosaur?....

Why not ask the many thousands of people that have kept digging into their pockets to pay for the VTTS project.

It seems that there are a huge number of people around who are very keen to see it kept flying as long as possible and I'm sure their reasons for that are many and varied too.

I'm not convinced it's money well spent but then again, it does at least mean that airshows down south don't just feature F16s, Tornados, spitfires and extra 300s