Vulcan co-pilots

[t7a]

Are there any ex Vulcan co-pilots out there who can remember the restrictions placed on them flying the aircraft? I seem to remember that the captain had to have 1000 hrs on the Vulcan before he was allowed to let the co-pilot take the controls. This was back in the mid '60s. Was this a 1 Gp, Bomber Command or an Air Staff requirement?

[Fareastdriver]

Certainly not in 3Gp. I had a captain who was straight out of the OCU plus others.

[t7a]

Yes, but was he an ex Victor co-pilot who might well have had over 1000 hrs or was he new to the aircraft?

[Haraka]

I seem to remember that the captain had to have 1000 hrs on the Vulcan before he was allowed to let the co-pilot take the controls
And some of those co-pilots then went to CFS and became Basic Flying Instructors...........

[t7a]

Some people would do anything to get away from the V Force!

[Courtney Mil]

Interesting idea, having a pilot tat isn't allow to fly his aircraft. They must have got experienced really quickly.

[Fareastdriver]

Yes, but was he an ex Victor co-pilot

No, long time Canberra pilot.

[Duncan D'Sorderlee]

And some of those ex-Vulcan co-pilots are still instructing (or only recently stopped)!

Duncs

[BEagle]

The 'Phase' system was such a load of bolleaux that many crews often ignored it.

Even IFS remarked that the unofficial on-sqn practices were safer than the constipating HQ 1 Gp rules....because the co-pilots gained more skills.

[Pontius Navigator]

IIRC, in the early 60s the copilots had to have had a previous tour typically on Canberras. In 1964 we started to get abo copilots but they were with typically 3rd tour captains.
About mid-tour and abt 450 hrs o type the co would do an intermediate copilots course and then picked up for a captaincy at the end of the tour.

Add in an OCU and he would have had to be a st mover to have much under 1000hrs. Once on the sqn conversion would leave him pretty close but it would have been sensible to consolidate his own training. I know copilots were separately checd out by sqn QFI/IRE with at least one fatal and one near miss so a 1000hr rule would have seemed sensible.

[Pontius Navigator]

PS the fatal was with a low hours sqn cdr and the near miss with the sqn QFI/IRE, my skipper, who had around 1500 on type.

[t7a]

PN - Thanks for that. I think that I was an unlucky unusual case in that I ended up being crewed with a captain who had been a Valiant co-pilot and therefore had even less hours on the Vulcan than I had! I can't remember whether it was a GASO or what though.

[Fareastdriver]

a low hours sqn cdr

He was my flight commander on Valiants. A fantastic person and somebody I tried to model myself on in later years. When I had only been on the squadron for six months he took me up for flight refuelling training.

'Just in case your captain has a bad day'.

In 1962 virtually all our course at AFS went to the V force. I was lucky going to Valiant Tankers as I flew all over the Commonwealth and beyond. My colleagues who were on Main Force led a miserable life. IIRC all our co-pilots on my squadron were first tourist except those that came to us from disbanded squadrons, ie 7 and 18.

I can still remember rolling over in my bed when the hooters went off for a Mick or Mickey Fynn and listening to everybody else thundering down the corridors.

[SOSL]

COPES

I seem to remember a push, in about 1980 or so, branded co-pilot enrichment scheme (COPES) which involved V-Force Co's being sent back to BFTS to undergo a short course on the JP 5 and then being sent on to Valley to be re-treaded for FJ.

One of the guys, doing the course at Church Fenton, speared in somewhere near Spadeadam; apparently he found himself low level in appalling vis, he tried a bad weather pull up and apparently over cooked it. RIP.

Rgds SOS