It's a long time since I flew a Victor 1, 49 years in fact, but I wonder how far a Victor 1 could carry 35 1000 pounders at a max tow of 185,000 pounds? Marham to Leuchars?
A bit further than that. Max fuel uplift on the Victor K1/1a tanker was 86K pounds. Substitute that max bomb load for fuel and that gives you say 50K fuel. We used to reckon 10k fuel used for start up, taxi and climb to TOC. Assuming in an operational situation you might be planning on landing with as little as 10k, that gives you about 3 hours flying using an average 10k an hour. So a radius of action of perhaps 750 miles assuming you were planning to return to your home base.
In the case of the Tengah/Butterworth detachment the main problem with the Victor 1 with its reliable but hardly overpowered Sapphires was that you were never going to get airborne at anything like the max tow because of the high temperatures, so once you have reduced your fuel load we are probably nearly back to your Marham to Leuchars example in terms of usable range with that full load of bombs.
My last sortie in a Victor K1a just over 40 years ago. Where did that go?
