Pontius Nav
The "hairiest" Vulcan diversion I ever heard of was a Mk 1 of, I think, the "squadron with a hole in the middle". It was during an Adex that was the central feature of Exercise SUNSPOT deployments to Luqa. There was the usual queue to recover into Luqa after the grand finale raid. The Lightnings naturally had priority - they were, after all, in a fuel emergency as soon as they tucked their wheels up! Then there were a few civil movements , and finally the Vulcans. The last of the Vulcan stream was usually stretching it to make its Plan 1 to Sigonella (sp?) in Siciily. On this occasion the penultimate Vulcan blew the tyres on one bogey on touch-down and obstructed the runway. The final Vulcan on go- round announced that he had "lost" his alternate and declared an emergency. ATC and the Station Commander wanted to tow the obstructing Vulcan onto the grass which would probably have damaged the U/c. The DCF (Bootsie I think) persuaded the staish to hold off, phoned Halfar, where there was still a RN presence, and asked them to lay out some goosenecks (dusk was drawing in). I am not sure how long the runway was at Halfar, but the threshold was on the edge of the cliff - sheer to the sea about 100 ft below. I think it was considerably less than 6,000 ft because it used to give us pause for thought in a heavily laden Meatbox. The overrun, as usual, consisted of stone walls. All went well (the brake chute deployed OK this time!) and no one was scratched.
