Victor Airborne
May I as the owner of the 'Other Victor'; XL231 at Elvington put some things in writing before things become 'tit for tat' against the type in general and any future demonstration runs.
Firstly we operate our aircraft within a safety envelope and any high-speed operations are carried out by a former K2 multi-thousand hour Captain, who is also a civilian flight safety consultant. The other crew members are usually ALL ex-Victor men. A tail braking parachute is always used (Not the case with the other A/C in question).
XL231 is maintained to FULL serviceability at great expense and regular pitot/static tests are carried out. The flight instrumentation is also regularly tested and a full radio fit is installed. All crew wear full RAF flying kit and the groundcrew mostly are ex-RAF tradesmen.
It is of concern to us that this 'flight' took place at Bruntingthorpe and I can only gawp in wonderment that they were not killed, A Mk2 Victor rolled over once at RAF Wyton with the expected outcome...
I firmly believe that a K2 with full fwd stick pressure and fwd trim will stay on the deck if you want it to particularly if the C of G is correct. Quite what happened at Bruntingthorpe isn't totally clear as yet. In addition to the above the rear mounted airbrakes were not used (according to the photographs) which is concerning, there are no limits on their usage.
All in all I think a disasater was narrowly avoided and the 'pilot' very fortunate to pull it off. I'm not in the habit of naming names but he was a K2 captain & a former 55 Sqn commander.