Originally Posted by
tornadoken
pp00ne no.4: PN said "after 1968". No Yellow Sun Mk.2s were allocated to Wittering. The Sqdns were nominally formed 1/5/62 (100) and 1/2/62 (139) and were effective on Blue Steel early-1964 (100) and 24/10/63 (that's all as per Wynn's Official History. B.2s available to Wittering 1962-63 before those Blue Steel dates were rolled back into HP Radlett to be brought up to (then described as "Autoland mod") standard.
Tornadoken, thank you for that. I made the stupid mistake of believeing pr00ne without further checking. Had I thought for a moment I would have realised it was b0ll0cks as I recall one generation for a Mickey Finn where it took
3 days for the Wittering wing to reach its generation target so the Vulcans were stuck on their dispersals until the Thursday when 3 Gp came out to play.
Now, what about the Tornado? It entered service in Jan 82. As Archmedies pointed out, the aim was a force of force for deterrence. The very latest operational nuclear bomber being employed only 4 months after entering service would have sent an unmistakable message. To counter such a modern, high-speed, and more accurate aircraft would have needed even more aircraft held back at base. It would have been a real ball-buster of a sortie and possibly too high a risk for such an unproven aircraft.
Imagine having to do a couple of 18 hour sorties around the UK to see how many piddle packs were required.