"Vulcans, Victors & Cuba"

[PPRuNeUser0139]

Showing on the Discovery History Channel this evening:

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[Pontius Navigator]

Side valve, thank you, pretty accurate and I would only pick up a couple of things.

[Chugalug2]

Khrushchev had thoughtlessly coincided his Caribbean adventure with my upcoming 21st birthday. I was attending 5FTS at Oakington at the time, so on that fateful final Saturday in October 1962 I was being rendered legless by my fellow course students in Cambridge. The excellent information imparted in this video was mostly unknown to us. All we did know was that unless the lead Soviet cargo vessel turned around before entering Kennedy's declared blockade area then...well no-one seemed quite certain what, but it certainly wasn't going to be good. In the event it did so and the world soon settled into the more orderly concept of MAD. Oh, and I duly recovered as well! :E

[Al-bert]

Those were the days - proper boffins, and engineers in tweed jackets with a row of pens in the top pocket - proud to be designing and building weapons of mass destruction - marvelous! :ok:

[Harley Quinn]

Those were the days - proper boffins, and engineers in tweed jackets with a row of pens in the top pocket - proud to be designing and building weapons of mass destruction - marvelous! :ok:

And test pilot Roly Falk pitching up in tweed suit and tie to take one of the 707s up, would be interesting to hear the views of any of the current generation of test pilots

[terry holloway]

And test pilot Roly Falk pitching up in tweed suit and tie to take one of the 707s up, would be interesting to hear the views of any of the current generation of test pilots
Roly Falk certainly flew the Vulcan wearing a business suit and sunglasses, but none of the photos I have seen show him in a "country tweed suit"! He took his wife on o e (or maybe more) flights in a Vulcan!

[barnstormer1968]

Were the French airforce poised to join the strike if it had gone ahead?
I only ask as most documentaries only mention the RAF and USAF as going against the Russians.

[Pontius Navigator]

BS, the French Force de Dissuasion was not operational until 1964.

They were in the integrated command structure at that time and had staff at HQ SAC. In 1965, when De Gaulle left the ICS the French staff were still at Offutt but their status had changed to observer. We were not told exactly how this would work. I guess it meant they would not be assigned SIOP targets but were given TOT windows.

[ian16th]

Why no mention on the Valiant's?

They were very much operational in 1962.

[Harley Quinn]

Roly Falk certainly flew the Vulcan wearing a business suit and sunglasses, but none of the photos I have seen show him in a "country tweed suit"! He took his wife on o e (or maybe more) flights in a Vulcan!

It's about 12 minutes into the programme that he climbs into an orange 707.

[Al-bert]

One should always be properly dressed. Unlike Igor, I wasn't permitted to wear a trilby in my Wessex,:( damn them!

[Pontius Navigator]

Ian, out of sight . . . possibly shortage of alert footage cf the others.

[barnstormer1968]

PN
Thank you for a detailed answer :)

[Tankertrashnav]

Ian, we're lucky Victors got a mention.

Just as the Battle of Britain was won by ex public schoolboy officers flying Spitfires, everyone knows the V Force consisted of Vulcans, and, er, Vulcans.

I blame XH 558 ;)

[Helena Handbasket]

I seem to recall perching on the crew ladder of a 617 Vulcan with a pea bulb and a cardboard box of "war" crystals, tuning an ancient TR1985. It seems so long ago. Maybe I dreamed it.

[Pontius Navigator]

HH, ah the delights of crystalization. Whenever we went overseas the AEO had to draw up a frequency plan and demand a set of crystals. He would shut down the STR18, pull out the box and recrystallize it. We also carried a spare VHF box but I can recall if we swapped that out inflight.

Then came the Collins and PTR175

[ian16th]

The VHF set crystals were valued £10 each! Depending upon the units mission, the unit 'Crystal Bank' could be worth a lot of money.

The biggest one I had responsibility for was at Dishforth, then a Transport Command station with Beverley's and Hasting's. The 'Xtal Fit' depended upon the destination and route. So we had many options.

Back to thread:
I've always considered the Cuban Crises a suitable climax to my 1st posting on 214 Sqdn at Marham.

After 3 years and 8 months I was posted to Akrotiri at a very significant time.
http://i818.photobucket.com/albums/zz108/ian16th/Arrive%20Nicosia_1.jpg
By the time I had got my 'Blue Card' filled in, and wife & I settled in a rented house in Limmasol, it was all a case of 'What Crises'?' :cool:

[mopardave]

Absolutely riveting stuff! I cannot begin to imagine what thoughts must have been going through your heads re the fate of families left behind etc! Thanks for the additional anecdotes gents.....I wasn't even in liquid form in '62 but I did have a very small taste of the "cold war" atmosphere in Germany in '84. Chilling stuff!
Apologies for the spotters question but toward the beginning of the video, it mentioned the Victor pilot would remove his hands from the controls and it would land itself. Is that just journalistic licence.....never heard that one before?

[Tankertrashnav]

Sometimes sitting in the back when a new co-pilot was doing a few practice landings I wished he would just let the bloody thing land itself!

[mopardave]

:).......so in other words TTN, it was a little journo licence? Struck me as an unlikely thing to do.....but hey, every day's a school day? It must have all been rather surreal (and unnerving!)!

[Chugalug2]

PN:-

Then came the Collins and PTR175

I was amused to see a Collins being retuned in the video from what appeared to be the BBC World Service. That gives some inkling of the gravity of the situation. It was a mainstay of the prolonged over-the-og transits in the Hercules. On the Hastings the sigs desk had a drawer in which he kept his segmented allotted crystals for the route. They enabled him to pass you the New York weather rather than Christmas Island's to which you were inbound. :E

The variable nature of HF radio Rx is well known and could be used to some advantage of course, "Unless advised to the contrary, intend to bypass A and proceed direct B", knowing that the propagation conditions gave you a good chance of a better nightstop at B. :ok:

[Pontius Navigator]

The Vulcans did not get the Collins till 1965. What was being retuned was possibly the STR18.

[RetiredBA/BY]

Pity so many of the Victor 2 shots were of tankers, even the Victor 1 tankers were not in service then!Lot of good stuff though, brought back many memories.

[ian16th]

I seem to recall perching on the crew ladder of a 617 Vulcan with a pea bulb and a cardboard box of "war" crystals, tuning an ancient TR1985. It seems so long ago. Maybe I dreamed it. The bulb from the G4B Compass worked just fine! But you had to make sure the Instrument bod didn't see you.

[Tankertrashnav]

so in other words TTN, it was a little journo licence?

Well obviously I'm not a pilot, and we'd need one of our number who flew the Victor to confirm, but as far as I remember it was in fact pretty stable on the approach, and if properly trimmed would virtually land itself. Obviously it didn't have Autoland or anything like that - that was only found in much later aircraft.

[Fareastdriver]

If you come over the threshold at touchdown speed and chop the throttles all aeroplanes will land themselves.

[biscuit74]

Ian 16th,

The narrator says " Vulcan, Victor and Valiant V-bombers were armed" in the first set of shots of V bomber bases, around 1.30 in. So at least mentioned, and shown in some shots from 6.40 to 8.04.

[Tankertrashnav]

Why didn't somebody tell me that when I was doing my PPL, Fareastdriver? Would have saved me no end of grief (and my spine would have been grateful) :(

Or doesn't it work with Cessnas? ;)

[Al-bert]

Why didn't somebody tell me that when I was doing my PPL,

Some of our secrets were kept from the Navigators. How else would we have maintained our mystique and have them continue to worship the two winged master race? :E

[tartare]

There was a statement in there that the Victor could go supersonic.
Shurely not...?

[ian16th]

There was a statement in there that the Victor could go supersonic.
Shurely not...? I was informed by a reliable former Nav on Victors at Gaydon, that it was SOP on the delivery flight, to see if Mach 1 could be reached .

[Harley Quinn]

There was a statement in there that the Victor could go supersonic.
Shurely not...?

I know it's Wiki, but I first saw reference to this event sometime before even the ZX81 was marketed:

'On 1 June 1956, a production Victor XA917 flown by test pilot Johnny Allam inadvertently exceeded the speed of sound after Allam let the nose drop slightly at a higher power setting. Allam noticed a cockpit indication of Mach 1.1 and ground observers from Watford to Banbury reported hearing a sonic boom. The Victor maintained stability throughout the event. Aviation author Andrew Brookes has claimed that Allam broke the sound barrier knowingly to demonstrate the Victor's superiority to the earlier V-bombers. The Victor was the largest aircraft to have broken the sound barrier at that time'.

[Fareastdriver]

I was a Valiant tanker pilot on a Victor Bomber station, RAF Honington, during the Cuban Crisis. I was on leave and my entire planning was disrupted by the objects of my attentions panicking about WW III and rushing off to Trafalgar Square and demonstrating against something or other. This was despite my protestations that I, as a mighty V Force pilot, had not been recalled from leave.

From my remembered conversations with fellow co-pilots in the bar the Victor did have a tendency to be able to land itself at very light weights. However, this was frowned upon for the same reason that all pilots were banned from doing 'greasers' in the early sixties. A very light touchdown on a wet runway would lead to the wheels not rotating and the tyre treads being scalded forming lumps that would shorten the tyres life.

Inadvertent supersonic flight by the Victor, especially the Mk 2, is fairly well known.

[Tankertrashnav]

The supersonic Victor question has been discussed here quite recently. Somebody pointed out that the machmeter was known to be inaccurate, and an indicated mach 1 might not necessarily be correct. Whatever the truth, you only have to look at a Victor (particularly a B1 before they started sticking bits on it), to see that was a very "slippery" aircraft, and mach 1 in a shallow dive was quite credible.

[Fonsini]

Can we all take a moment to thank one Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov - the First Officer onboard Soviet sub B-59 who was the lone voice that prevented the launch of a nuclear weapon.

That's how close we came.

[RFCC]

From Wiki but I also have it in a book at home somewhere. From what I recall, this characteristic was lost after modifications to the size of the fin.

"One unusual flight characteristic of the early Victor was its self-landing capability; once lined up with the runway, the aircraft would naturally flare as the wing entered into ground effect while the tail continued to sink, giving a cushioned landing without any command or intervention by the pilot."