I remember lying on the grass watching the three ship scramble and flypast, which was made more interesting by the site of the two mighty bombers with their bomb doors open and the third with its entrance door open! V clean cockpit when it landed at Scampton.
I remember it well. I was watching along with the rest of my crew and when we saw the door open we expected to see the bodies start tumbling out! The next day we were sent up to Scampton to collect the jet. Recall that we asked a few questions about checks on the rear bulkhead following a high speed opening of the entrance door.
I still wonder how the Nav Rad concerned managed to confuse the black rotary bomb door selector for the yellow striped guarded emergency door opening switch. Never mind it proves the old saw that if you F*** Up you get noticed, he made Air rank in the end!
We also had a brief flirtation with young Vulcan crew officers being designated as "divisional officers" asking some hairy ar##d chief tech if he needed any personal advice!
I to recall the DO system. It was an attempt to provide the troops with a bit more direct contact than was perceived to be available under the amorphous mass of centralised servicing, a sort of halfway house to being squadron groundcrew. The Navy had operated a similar system quite successfully for many years. Unfortunately there appeared to be some inconsistency in its application. I know that my squadron CO insisted that only experienced officers be appointed, preferably married with families (how else might they understand the problems), and they should be volunteers for the post. I felt that some other squadrons however saw this a a good secondary duty to give to young officers and thus may have reduced the credibility of the scheme as a whole. I also got the impression that not all of the Eng Wing officers were sold on the DO scheme, believing that it could in some way undermine their authority. Be that as it may, the scheme eventually died a death and seemed to fade away. Was it just a 1group initiative, or was it Command wide, does anyone know, remember?
YS