Whilst most of the above is true there was more to the Black Buck raid than mere 'let's use the Vulcan for something really useful before it goes out of service'. Certainly, if the effect could have been achieved by any other aircraft I don't think we would have spent money upgrading the Vulcan for AAR, conventional weaponry (it had all been ripped out when the Vulcan went solely Strike), Smart weapons etc etc and all in just a few days too!
Black Buck was a well-considered strategic operation (Air Ops for Strategic Effect - Air Power doctrine, remember?) rather than a tactical mission. The purpose of it was purely to tell the enemy that we had their capital city covered. The fact that only one bomb hit the runway is irrelevent and was anticipated because of the limited millisecond stick spacing available on the Vulcan bomb distributor. An attack down the runway would likely have resulted in no strikes at all (crosswind/aiming issues) so, as is common with retard conventional weapons delivered in a laydown attack against a runway target, a desired cutting angle is calculated dependent upon the length of the runway (how many cuts can we achieve with how many aircraft?) and the width of the runway to determine the stick spacing and therefore the number of bombs that will hit the runway and prevent subsequent take-off (one stick rarely does the trick). QWIs usually calculate to put the middle bomb of a stick on the runway and, try as one might, it is virtually impossible to get more than one bomb (perhaps half a bomb crater on each side but that would not provide a Prevent Take Off kill) on any runway unless it is almost as wide as it is long. That's why we bought JP233 to provide a greater number of craters than was possible with a conventional retarded stick; just a shame that the peaceniks decided that the HB876 bomblets might harm somebody when that's exactly what they were designed to do!
So, it was a Vulcan because it was a strategic mission, it had the capability to do it and required fewer tankers than a couple of Buccs who might have made 2 cuts but would have been a logistical nightmare in getting them down there (without a mother carrier) under wartime conditions.
Turning now to the Bucc. Yes it did have limited gear box oil availability but at least 2 did actually deploy to the Falklands after Corporate was over to let the Argentinians know that we could deploy a strike force to protect the islands if that indeed became necessary. I was on Buccs at Laarbruch at the time and I believe that although the Bucc was considered for Black Buck it was eventually decided not to use it as we, in Germany, were still assigned to SACEUR and those at Lossie were assigned to SACLANT with all that that entailed on the Strike options.
Perhaps of interest is the fact that the Bucc has, oops that should be had, actually got very good legs unrefuelled and better than the Tornado for sure. The Laarbruch wing crossed the Atlantic without AAR en route to Red Flag by routing St Mawgan; Lajes; Gander. I was also involved in the flight planning of a round the world trip with 2 Buccaneers that did not use AAR and took in some rather exotic locations over 30 days, accompanied by a freighter VC10 with spare crews and engines on board, as we planned to bid farewell to the World when the Buccs were withdrawn from Germany! It was the Laarbruch Staish's idea and it was achievable with 23,000lb of gas on board (that includes the bomb bay ferry tank); however RAFG put the kybosh on it because it would have begged the question of whether the aircraft replacing it could do likewise.
Remember the day that the Bucc refuelled the Tornado on a mission from UK to Cyprus? The Bucc tanked the Tornado all the way down over Italy and returned to the UK whilst the Tornado just made it on to Cyprus!
Memory fades but I think most if not all of the above is kosher.
Weapons Effort Planning lecture over
!
Foldie
(Last flew the Bucc on 14 Nov 08 at Thunder City! Brilliant!)