Slight thread drift but the current edition of
Flypast is doing a special V Force issue. As well as an excellent article about tanking on 214 in the 70s (
) there is an interesting article on Skybolt. One thing that surprised me was that if Skybolt had got into RAF service there would have been a continuous airborne alert, of the kind operated by the USAF for many years. This was to have involved airborne patrols over Norway and in the Adriatic and Aegean. How this would have worked out in practice we'll never know, but it would have been hugely expensive compared with QRA. This will be old news to many old V Force hands, but coming along a little later I hadn't heard of it myself.