Originally Posted by
Heathrow Harry
Pontius - by "realistic" do you mean the ability to refuel a lot of the fleet at one time or the ability to ocaaionaly refuel the odd aircraft
I suspect that, in those far off days, the apparent cost of fitting a probe etc was the considered worthwhile just in case you might need it one day - no clever dick analysis and cost benefit malarkey - just planning for the worst
HH, at the time of inception, all the V-bombers, the Javelins, the VC10s and the Belfast and, apparently the Argosy, were all capable of receiving from the few Valiant tankers. Was it realistic to provide that capability for so many aircraft of so many different types?
The only one with a realistic requirement was the Javelin. While they flew Vulcans non-stop to Australia the strategic gain was minimal. Unrefuelled they could have got there in may be 60 hours against 20 odd with AAR. That gain of 40 hours would be negated by the time to activate the route. Even activated the route would have been limited to one or two aircraft every 6 hours of so.
Equipping so many aircraft to enable a couple to flight refuel did not make economic sense.