Thank you gentlemen.
A privilege as always to hear from those who were at the sharp end.
I have stood underneath the Vulcan at Hendon and watched the stream take off film playing on the TV screens in the bomb bay - it is utterly chilling to see.
It's very interesting - I had always assumed dispersal was a prior-step of heightened readiness - a sort of UK Defcon 2 - rather than part of the sequence of actual launch itself.
But I can understand that given the heightened tensions - even the act of dispersing might be seen as strong evidence a pre-emptive strike was almost certain.
PN - do I understand your comment r/e streams of missiles or a detonation as meaning dispersal might only start if missiles were observed in flight incoming, or a warhead landed in the UK?
Given missile flight time from Eastern Europe/USSR to the UK - wouldn't that only have given crews a maximum three to four minutes to get to the aircraft (even if in caravans beside the runway), power up, taxi out (no air traffic control clearance needed) and stream take off - then try and get clear of the blast zone of the warheads that would surely hit their airfield?
Wouldn't it be virtually certain that the tail end of the stream would end up being taken out in an air-burst (or several airbursts if multiple warheads were assigned to targets?
Did pilots use full military power to get as far away from the airfield as possible to mitigate this possibility?
Last edited by tartare; 31st Oct 2016 at 22:12.