They did - but if I recall correctly, the abandonment by the rear crew wasn't exactly textbook..... The AEO got stuck and one of the brave navigators didn't stop to free him - or so I was told. But he then managed to free himself and escape.
I was told that this was a routine RAT/AAPP drill. When deployed, the RAT volts and freqs were well out of limits, but for some inexplicable reason the AEO connected it to to the synch bus bar regardless. Perhaps unsurprisingly, an electrical fire in the wing susbsequently developed and the a/c had to be abandoned.
Once the RAT was connected to the synch bus bar, it couldn't be subsequently disconnected in those days. But as a result of the accident, a RAT field isolation switch was fitted which would 'kill' the RAT output if it subsequently became erratic.
Around 22 years later I was on a VC10K2 ELRAT air test when the RAT volts and frequency became unstable on the approach and the voltage went off-scale high. Again, there was no way of isolating the blasted thing. A smell of smoke became apparent even though the smoke detector didn't operate; I threw the a/c on the ground, gave it full reverse and max braking and we subsequently buggered off sharpish. The reason for the failure was that the a/c had been in so-called 'storage' out in the open at St Athan and the ELRAT voltage regulator inside the a/c had become badly corroded. After that 'they' introduced much more stringent ELRAT checks throughout the fleet.
The same 'stored' aircraft had also caused us severe problems on the original air test 2 days earlier during a routine in flight shutdown when multiple bus tie breakers tripped - again due to corroded components. This gave us the doomsday no.1 & no.3 AC bus failure - no attitude instruments at all and a climbing cabin altitude amongst other annoyances. Fortunately only temporarily as we restarted the engine and recovered the system.
Such a good idea, storing a/c outside in the pi$$ing Welsh winter rain.... The no.1 voltage regulator had become corroded as had the ELRAT regulator - and the smoke detector was also found to be unserviceable...
But what a pity that the lessons learned from the Spilsby Vulcan accident weren't applied to other aircraft.
Last edited by BEagle; 14th Nov 2005 at 21:38.