Black Buck 1 "not cricket"

[Junta Leader]

Vulcan 607

The Vulcan 607 book made me quite unpopular at Christmas! I read the whole book cover to cover within 2 days and was completely incommunicado to the rest of the family . I blame Mrs JL for buying it for me. Anyone remember the amount of AFCs from that mission??

JL

[cheese bobcat]

DFCs

The Captain of the Vulcan, MW, got a DFC and I think the Captain of the final Victor tanker, one BT got one or it may have been an AFC. Both continued flying after the Air Force in civvy street.

[XL391]

There are some people (not here) who will dismiss this feat as a pointless exercise, that it could have been done by anyone and anything and I know a few of them would have said Lancasters should have been used, such is their hatred for the Vulcan. Even before reading Vulcan 607, if you could only understand what all these guys went through to achieve their goal, which they did.
There are lots of people who dismiss the Vulcan, this Mission and, indeed its aircrew and, more than anything, those Victors and all their crews without which it would not have been possible. Like bombing the dams and the attacks on every German city in WW2, the stakes were exactly the same at the target, and once again we had outwitted our enemy using cunning and planning with equipment that was out of date, even in the late 60's. The longest bombing mission of it's time as well, which, again, no small feat. It should rank up there with the greatest...

[oldbilbo]

'Black Buck' - elsewhere

Just for argument's sake - and from a completely unrelated forum.....

"A fascinating story. Much enjoyed! So let's stir the pot with a little controversy.....

a) The bit about no-one realising that flying in close formation, with the necessary constant throttle adjustments, would result in fuel burn much increased over the info in the Operating Data Manual, is simply not credible.

This simply does not ring true. All aircrew know that constant throttle adjustment results in increased fuel use - and we all know this from driving cars! Besides, the Vulcan crews were 'operational' at low-level penetration - had been for years - and constant throttle adjustment to maintain crucial 'Time Over Target' was the norm. Monitoring fuel burn, and its variations, was and is a critical aspect of flight ops everywhere. This smacks of an order from on high to 'never mind the facts, my mind is made up'....

b) The crew's concerns about the 'Roland' SAM installation are valid. Faulty staff work indicated, firstly, that it was impossible for such a system to be transported to The Falklands. Some 'source' ( probably reconnaissance units on the ground ) spotted it and reported back. Consternation! Reading between the lines further on, suddenly the Vulcan crews weren't much worried after all. Could it possibly be that the SAM installation was 'taken out' by the same Special Forces team that had reported it? If so, they probably didn't last long afterwards....

c) The idea of an aircraft commander simply deciding for himself - without reference to the many layers of 'AirShips' directing every aspect of the operation - that he'd just pop up another couple of thousand feet to do the final Bomb Run, and that it wouldn't matter at all - is ludicrous. Every Target Planner in the English-speaking world would have sweated the midnight hours in determining what altitude was best - and why - and all that would have been fully agreed in advance. This bit smacks of another 'intel' cockup over the effective range of the installed AAA - a common issue that pervades the Service even today.

c) It is telling that the use of a handful of Vulcans to breach the runway at Stanley demonstrated something very significant to the Argie command structure, as did the effective use of submarine capability..... That Britain had retained the capability to mount offensive air operations many ( undetermined ) thousands of miles from a safe base, by means of that great 'force multiplier', in-flight refuelling.

This had been demonstrated frequently....

Quote:
___________________________________________________________

In 1975 ......the Guatemalans began concentrating their troops along the border once again. The British reaction was swift ......six Harrier GR.Mk1A "jump jets“ .....were deployed in a trans-Atlantic flight, supported by Handley Page Victor K.Mk.1A tankers,

___________________________________________________________

It was also known that, just a few years earlier, RAF Buccaneers with in-flight refuelling support had made a demonstration mock attack on a Soviet 'Kiev'-class carrier/cruiser in the Barents Sea near Novya Zemlya, thousands of miles beyond what the Soviets thought were the limits of that aircraft's effective Radius of Action. That exercise gave a sobering 'heads up' to military analysts and planners worldwide.

Perhaps the critical point about Operation Black Buck was the clear demonstration that British Air Power could be extended over the Argentinian mainland assets - using Vulcans and/or Buccaneers - should that be deemed necessary.

d) Comment is made in the book that sufficient navigational accuracy could not be guaranteed, and that this had implications for the conduct of operations. Bluntly, this is not so, and is likely to have been inserted to mask something else. All operational V-bomber crews were trained to navigate by astro to a very high degree of accuracy and reliability ( no GPS then ) - as were the corresponding B-52 SAC crews. Results of NATO Bombing Competitions over many years show clearly the standards reached - and the BLACK BUCK crews were the best available. Even student RAF navigators, regardless of their future postings, were all trained in precision astro-navigation techniques, without which demonstrated abilities they simply failed the Advanced Navigation Course. Then there was the Vulcan OCU......"


Food for thought - and argument?

[wiggy]

oldbildo

OK, I'll nibble at acouple of points (and I don't buy the SF theory over Roland BTW)
The idea of the aircraft commander altering his "pop up"...well frankly the airship weren't there and unlike the Soviet Air Force, RAF aircraft Commanders were not tied to what the "airships" said...
Re Nav accuracy - this has come up before - AFAIK Astro won't work to the required degree of accuracy if the aircraft is subject to frequent heading/speed changes..le.g in/following a formation. Inertial Nav will, hence the fitting of INS to the aircraft, no need for GPS. What's the mystery?

[West Coast]

Beagle, et al

Read the linked material about the Black Buck missions, a few questions.

What type of profile did the tankers follow outside of Indian territory?

What type of missile did the Brazilians pull off the Vulcan?

I was surprised to read the Vulcan climbed at 40 miles out. Certainly not expecting a pop up ala a single seat fast mover, but the distance caught me off guard. Was that the norm given the AD that was expected?

Guess the Vulcan was/is the biggest weasel out there given some of the trolling they did over the islands. I'm sure ORAC will correct me if I'm incorrect.

[trap one]

What type of profile did the tankers follow outside of Indian territory?

Believe all were high level.

What type of missile did the Brazilians pull off the Vulcan?

Shrike

I was surprised to read the Vulcan climbed at 40 miles out. Certainly not expecting a pop up ala a single seat fast mover, but the distance caught me off guard. Was that the norm given the AD that was expected?

Guess the Vulcan was/is the biggest weasel out there given some of the trolling they did over the islands. I'm sure ORAC will correct me if I'm incorrect

Larger Ferret A/C but biggest actual shooter Weasel.

[BEagle]

PN will be able to supply more of the weaponeering information, but as far as I'm aware, the bombs used were basic dumb bombs rather than retarded bombs.

Hence the optimum delivery altitude for effect would require a pop-up manoeuvre.

The pervading thought in those days seemed to be that any radar guided AAA could be successfully jammed by the Westinghouse pod. But the airships had little knowledge of the capabilities of radar-directed AA guns, having withdrawn any such weapons from the UK's aerodrome defences years earlier.

Another reason for the pop-up was the time needed for all those old black dustbins to settle down and compute the release point accurately. You have to remember that nothing other than low level lay down nuclear delivery had been practised for over a decade by the Vulcan force.

Unfortunately, unlike SAC, the V-force in those days did not have a real strategic non-nuclear role - so everything had to be sorted out from half-remembered procedures of years earlier, plus a fair bit of 'TLAR'....

As for fuel burn, very little was known of the additional burn when in formation for such long periods - AAR had disappeared from the V-force nearly 20 years earlier. But one hears that 'Caligula', a staff officer of not much known ability, used the low-weight peacetime training fuel burn figures as he was too stupid to know how to use the performance ODM. Hence on at least one occasion, 21 x 1000 lb ended up in the ocean when the actual fuel burn was discovered to be much higher than his figures.....

I understand he then was then on the receiving end of a 'conversation' with the AOC of epic proportions. No-one had any sympathy for him though.

[Art Field]

Further to the fuel burn problem, not only was the Vulcan maintaining formation for most of the deployment but every time it refuelled it went back to max weight and therefore to the top of the burn rate. This was so different to the set piece percentage fuel loads they were used to that they found it difficult to adjust to the need for very precise fuel planning. In mitigation everything was happening at such a fast pace,

Being really picky, the Belize deployment was flown by the first of the Victor K2's, mainly crewed by 232OCU staff.

[50+Ray]

Fuel Burn
It is my understanding that whenever refuelling happened the receiver was topped right up. So for a considerable time the Vulcan was actually above Max AUW, where it was noticeably thirstier. The other factor was that crews were normally operating at between FL410 and FL450. Since AAR was being done in the high twenties/low thirties the engines burnt more and the groundspeed was less. The relevant pages of the ODM were not looked at in my 7 year stretch on Vulcans, as we just did not operate like that.
I am surprised that enough real information was not gleaned from the transit down to Ascension to increase the amount of fuel put in the air on the night of Black Buck 1, but lessons would seem to have been applied on the later missions.

[RS30]

Oh dear...Beagle, Beagle, Beagle. Using phrases like dumb or retarded may cause offence...surely the PC term is free fall.

[Pontius Navigator]

Having looked at the ODM recently for a different purpose, not to hand atthe moment, but I suspect that most of the flight might have been conducted outside the ODM envelope.

The upper weight entry point on the ODM was, IIRC, 220,000lb so if there were pages for the speed and height used the fuel burn would have been tabulated.

As for throttle adjustment. The V-force practised tracking and timing every trip high or low level. A measure of this could be that some crews with smooth throttle handling could squeeze another 5k or 30 minutes out of the beast. Harvey Moore (mentioned before) once squeezed 7 hr 15 min by the expedient on minimal throttle variation, cruise climb and flying near endurance rather than range speed.

What had surprised the crews, lessons not previously learnt, was that they could get as good a speed as the Victors and a lower fuel burn by flying near the Trop whereas the standard Vulcan mantra had been to fly in the low 40s but this required more fuel to climb and a less efficient burn. Only near the equator with a higher trop was higher better.

As for the popup at 40 miles.

The maximum high definition radar range was 45 miles but you would have needed an aiming point about the size of that 617 Sqn's dogs appendages and good accuracy.

By delaying switch on to less than 45 miles you had a better chance of painting a recognisable bit of land.

Now given a release range of 3 miles and an absolute minimum level and stable run of one minute the aircraft would have had to level off at about 9 miles. A climb to 20000 feet would take about 2 minutes or another 12 miles so the latest popup point would have been 21 miles give or take.

Now the aircraft had been running on IN/DR for perhaps 7-8 hours at an accuracy of possibly 2-3 miles per hour. The IN might have been out be as much as 14-24 miles. Clearly if the IN had been that inaccurate but you poped up at '21' miles you might have been only 7 miles from the target. Prudence, in a low threat environment, would suggest an earlier popup.

We can contrast that with a nuclear popup to 10000 feet from just 9 miles. In that case it was a high threat environment but the nav kit would have been updated and accurate to no more than 2 miles and probably even a matter of yards.

[moggiee]

I never got to fly the Vulcan, sadly, but I was deeply impressed by Black Buck and found Vulcan 607 a riveting read.

On the question of fuel burn, was it necessary to fuel to such a high level each time? Would it not have been better to try to keep the weight a little lower and fuel burn lower too?

I know that the old wisdom is that you can never have too much fuel - but maybe in this case you could!

[Pontius Navigator]

moggiee

I don't have any figures however remember all the fuel was airborne.

As, say, 50k was offloaded from the tanker its burn would go down as the receiver's burn would go up. As it is a simple question of chemical energy conversion it depends who was burning the fuel more efficiently.

By filling the receiver to full you could also despatch an empty tanker back to Asi much earlier. For instance if the Vulcan had been filled to 50k and not 70k the tanker could have continued south for another hour (10k) and offloaded 30k to the Vulcan and would now need an extra 10k to get home. His buddy, either way, would continue with the Vulcan. On this sum the extra fuel required would have been 20k.

Also, if the tanker was sucking for 20 minutes, bucking etc, this would have 'wasted' 20 minutes bucking fuel and the time to prod.

If instead they had gone for lower uploads you might have 2 x 10 minutes of bucking fuel and 2 x prod manoeuvre too.

Lots of very deep questions which, with a year or two of trials Boscombe could probably come up with the definitive answer.

[moggiee]

Thanks PN. As an shiny 10 chap, I didn't consider the tanker fuel burn.

On the subject of it being "not cricket" - surely the answer answer is that "they started it so should not have been surprised when we hit back!"

[Pontius Navigator]

moggiee, no facts as I never tanked, did do the course though. Just supposition. Interesting to see if the likes of D*** B******l see this. He was in the ARC for ever.

[Art Field]

As a general rule, fill to full is the best use of a tanker offload. Certainly a large receivers burn will increase significantly during the whole of the period which includes pre-positioning. The on-load rate, however, will drop as tanks fill so the last few lbs may well be unproductive with the receiver burning fuel as fast as he gets it. Choice of level,speed etc is ideally picked to obtain best overall fuel consumption for the whole formation, not necessarily the best for the receiver and not always best weather-wise.
The Black Buck missions involved so many refuels, both Victor/ Vulcan and Victor/Victor, all essential for success and fraught with equipment problems, South Atlantic high level haze and turbulence and sheer pressure on the crews. In those circumstances it was vital to get the maximum value out of every successful contact.

[Wader2]

A question about the alleged Bearded BSs RT call.

Where was the task force at the Black Buck closest point of approach?

Did the SHAR actually fly at night which would have been necessary if it was on CAP?

Where was the CAP station and at what height?

Was it in LOS with FI?

If the SHAR CAP was below the RT horizon and the TF was to well to the seaward side of the islands then it is unlikely that the Argentines would have picked up the call unless they had an Elint aircraft up.

Now if by chance the Argentines had had a defensive CAP airborne that night, unlikely I know, then the BBS RT call might have been quite welcome by BB.

So, could the RT call have been made?
Might the bomber be relieved, or at least interested, to know that escort/sweep was available?

Or is that too tactically advanced for that time?

[BEagle]

Only an utter tw.t would break RT silence under such circumstances!

Which he did......

[Wader2]

BEagle, only playing devils advocate as I don't for one moment think that he might have considered the points I was asking.

However was it feasible that they could have arranged a standoff CAP with the potential for escort/sweep?