For the benefit of those who did not have the luck (?) to fly the Vulcan we need to document the unusual (bizarre?) crew accomodation.
Perhaps one of our historians can answer a question for me. The pilots headroom was very restricted. In fact, we wore the old fifties edition two-piece bonedome so that we could fly with the outer hardshell removed. Otherwise you would have been flying with your head cranked to one side for the whole sortie.
I was told, and accepted, that the reason the headroom was so tight was that the aircraft was originaly designed for a single pilot who would probably have sat nearly centered in the cockpit, hence no headroom problem. This never made sense to me. If the cockpit was designed for a single pilot sitting centrally the cockpit canopy would have been far too big to see out adequately. If the design was indeed changed from one pilot to two why was the cockpit canopy shape not made bigger at that point? Any answers?