You mean this one?

http://www.thunder-and-lightnings.co...648bombing.jpg

Credit to Thunder and Lightnings web site.

That's the one! Semi-complete fake... job wasn't even done in that airframe! Understand the load was dropped as a 'stick'.

If a Victor 'lost' 35,000 pounds of AUW in such a short space of time, would it still fly straight and level?? :hmm:

Unless you worked like a one-armed paper hanger, the Victor never flew straight and level in manual whatever, bless her little crescent wings.

Effects of Releasing Heavy Stuff

Dropped the first dummy10,000 pounder from a Vulcan Mk1 for clearance purposes.

Expected more aircraft reaction. It was only a momentary small g excursion - hardly felt.

Watched that big mother go out of the weapon bay on closed circuit video as it dropped away gently rocking in pitch.

The drop of an extraction 20,000 pound load from a C130 was more of an event but still only transitory as the load rolled down the fuselage and over the ramp.

Then as a fighter jock I once dropped one of two 500 pounders from a Mustang in a 60 degree dive bomb attack on a T34 tank. The recovery from the dive came real close to doing me in. But I got the tank!

Victor K2 Trip!
 

Was very fortunate to have had a trip in a Victor K2 XH672 whilst at Marham, went up for 3 hours 10 in a immersion suit over the north sea area 5, near RAF Leuchars as you well know refuelling 4x harriers from RAFG. I how understand how you lot must have felt in these conditions hour after hour!

Glider 90

Gosh - 14 years after the previous post may not be a record, but it cant be far off.

I see that I didn't contribute to this thread the first time round, but it has been most interesting reading through it. I know it's not normal to reveal PPRuNers names as a rule, but I think I am ok to say that Art Field, who made many contributions, was the late Sqn Ldr Paul Gausden, a real gentleman and a great tanker pilot, with whom I had the pleasure of flying many times on Victor K1s on 214. I particularly liked this post of his:

Concrete gobblers they certainly were, and a later comment of Paul's that the Victor wouldn't fly in a straight line no matter what you did was particularly true of XA 930 which had been at Farnborough for a few years, where it had been subjected to such indignities as being barrel rolled. This had resulted in a "bent" airframe and on a long straight leg you would gradually become aware of the fact the aircraft was proceeding in a very slow corkscrew, something which you sensed through the seat of your pants.

I spent nearly 6 years on the Victor, and while it would be an exaggeration to say I enjoyed every minute (two hours tanker/tanker work on Towline 2 palled after a while), as would 45 minutes in the circuit at the end of a trip (Pontifex please note!). I nevertheless really enjoyed my time on 214 and would do it all over again without hesitation (assuming I was 24 again!)

Great to see this thread resurrected. Love the comments about handling, particularly about it landing itself. I still get told this folklore as a point of fact. I gather it may have done once, when it was much lighter and had a longer fin. But after it was shortened to prevent the tail-plane from dropping off, this changed. It was quite challenging to fly, especially in the landing. And once you were on the ground, the next real adventure of stopping the thing began as it had the same brakes as a Morris Minor!

Glad I flew it though. And it's a great talking point when asked what I used to fly on long boring airliner flights. None of my FOs know what it is, so I have to show them a picture. "What the F#ck!" is the usual response.

Fuel Jettison
 

I have just read "Victor Boys" by Tony Blackman, which I can heartily recommend. However, it contains several factual errors, largely concerning dates, but another is regarding fuel jettison. The book contains an assertion that the Victor had no fuel jettison capability until the introduction of the K2, which is patently untrue as the SR2 had that facility long before the K2 came into service. As my only Victor experience was on 543, I don't know if the B2 shared that facility. Would any ex-100 or 139ers care to clarify the matter?

The youngsters of today, eh Dan? They know so little about the aircraft of the Golden Era of aviation. ;)

The Victor was a grand ol' ship and we had some interesting adventures with her!

A retired ETPS graduate of my bar circle started his career on Valiants (which he said was a much underrated aeroplane), and flew a substatial number of trials in Victor and Vulcan; he is of the opinion that the Victor 2 was by far the best of the 3 Vs.

Also that the Nimrod was easily the best bomber for the Black Buck missions ....

K1s and K2s also had the additional fuel jettison facility through the pods, of course, which I used on a couple of occasions. The main jettison position was only used in an emergency as the jettisoned fuel could contaminate electrical equipment in the unpressurised aft compartment. We once had an aircraft fueled to 40k lbs for a transit from Marham to Leuchars, but it went U/S on start up and the only alternative aircraft was fueled up to the max 86k. My flight commander captain was unwilling to wait for this one to be defueled, so we took it as was, and all the way up the North Sea I dumped 40k of fuel through the pods to get us down to landing weight (25k as I recall) at Leuchars. We could also use the pods to "mark" ie jettison a small amount to create a mini contrail to make ourselves more visible and assist the RV with the receiver, Nowadays we would no doubt be accused of creating chemtrails!

I recall a Mk 1 with an engine failure on take off at Akrotiri. They started fuel jettison even before clearing the boundary fence and continued streaming thoughout the circuit. A tannoy forbade smoking on the base. The smell of avtur was everywhere. That was around 71-72

Was there some sort of interlock to stop the seat firing if the canopy hadn't departed?

A different type but the Valiant had a jettison system.

The underwing tanks, each holding 12,500 lbs of fuel were designed to be jettisoned in toto. being a hangover from a project when they were thinking of using them as bomb bays.

There were three mushroom valves in the bottom of each tank which when opened released the fuel. In an emergency one could put combat nitrogen pressure in the tanks and they would unload 25,000lbs in about two minutes.

The checklist was very convenient because it stated that at REP 3, the initial letdown point, the underwings had to be cleared of residual fuel as none was permitted on landing. Depending on the time of day, bar opening hours, rear crews' opinion of circuit bashing a competent co-pilot like me could arrange a that a considerable amount of fuel could be left in the underwings when we arrived at the start of the letdown.

There were some fairly massive contrails over the coast of East Anglia.

Sorry, I was just trying to find out if all the Mk 2s were capable of fuel jettison, or just the SR2s and K2s.

Wrong!!!
I was a member of the bombing up team that loaded the 35x1000lb aboard XH-648 belonging to XV Sqn based at RAFCottesmore. We were on detachment to RAAF Butterworth in early 1964.The bombs were dropped on the Song Song bombing range about 60 mls from Penang. It was only the second time it had ever been done, the first was on acceptance. We had to rehearse the load a couple of times to get them all in after we had removed the long range tank.

The photo was taken from an 81 Sqn Canberra from RAF Tengah flying alongside and I understand that it is a still from a PR camera.To get the bombs that close together the Jettison selection would have been made on the 12/24 way bomb system.This gave a spacing of about 0.1 sec if memory serves.

About 3 days later the Sqn Armament Officer showed us the photo and of course we all wanted one but it had been designated Secret and it was a few years before the photo was published widely.

there's a whole thread on that picture somewhere on here .......................................

https://www.pprune.org/military-avia...al-bomber.html

.

B2s were. The fuel jettison point on the K2 was in the tail cone and looked a bit like a bum hole. If the drop tanks were fitted, then they could jettison fuel as well. And on the K2, the pods too - giving that aircraft 5 points to dump from. I have a set of B2 Blue Steel pilot's notes which mentions dumping from the fuselage but I don't know where the exit point was. It was not in the tail cone as this was occupied by the rear aspect radar. The notes it was important to ensure that adjacent electrical equipment was turned off. This obviously refers to the rear radar and ECM.

Sole memories [from ATC] of the Victor from Tengah were:

Early morning departure, otherwise they couldn't get airborne from 9,000 ft.
Crash Crew on standby to untangle the upwind Barrier after 'it' had got airborne [just].
Local Controller with finger poised over the Crash alarm anyway.

As it's a Victor thread i can't resist linking to this little Pathe gem from 1964, complete with inimitable Bob Danvers-Walker commentary. Bit of a howler in the first 10 seconds though... https://www.britishpathe.com/video/tree-top-bombers-aka-new-v-bombers-have-blue-steel/query/raf+victor

Interesting film, I have never seen the official method of loading a BS onto a Victor. In reality it was quicker and easier to leave the bomb bay side fairings in place and jack the A/C up on the main and tail jacks, 37 ins. to be precise. The BS was then trolleyed in, hoisted up and checked out before the loaded A/C was lowered off jacks.

Had just two flights in a Victor, XH591 in the jump seat from Tengah to Butterworth and return, to repair a Red Steer fault in another of our aircraft, in 1965. The outward trip was in the morning and low-level all the way, very low through the mountains while the pilots were taking photos, then we were called to help out the police with a pirate ship attacking a merchant vessel in the Malacca straits, a common occurrence back then, and we flew low and slow just above the waves towards the pirates ship and saw the crew jumping overboard from a Chinese junk before we opened up and climbed away. It was reported that the junk had capsized and police launches were picking up the crew. Return was at night and my mic failed before take-off so I borrowed a spare mask from one of the crew in the back, I only remember one was S/L Milne, our CO. Should have been high level but a loud pop at about 20,000' on the climb was identified as a cracked windscreen so we depressurised and levelled off and I had to hold the mask to my face to keep the oxygen dolls-eye blinking as it was a bad fit. I recall a comment just before we landed that we were close to Indonesian (enemy) airspace at one point. I believe the B1As were limited to 55,000'.

Indonesian airspace was about 14 miles final approach for rw 36 at Tengah. This rather compressed the radar traffic patterns when things were busy! Oh, and the inevitable 'Point Bravo' 16 nm south-west (Tanjung Piai) where everyone arrived at high speed bleating about fuel priority :)

Ka-2b pilot, I think it would have been earlier than 1965 as we replaced the Victors in Sep-Oct 64.

To which "we" do you refer? Victor tankers infested Tengah in the late 60s! :)

MPN, Chamfrom. The Valiant tankers were still in the AOBAT until Jan 65 and into 66 Fighter Command had access to KC135 under Exercise Billy Boy IIRC.

Door Keys
 

The Vulcan fleet had just one car door key for the whole fleet - FA501. What did the Victor fleet have? Was it one key for all marks?

Valiant anyone?

There were 2 different keys for the Vulcan. One was indeed the FA501. IIRC the ex Blue Steel aircraft used a different number.
Most of the locks were so worn by the end that almost anything would open them, including the key for my push bike chain lock.

As far as I can remember, the Valiant keys were all different.
Each Crew Chief had his own.
But you could buy them in Halfords!

Ian, that would have been fun trying to keep tabs on them. Imagine running to your aircraft -wrong key. Maybe why they went for one on the Vulcan.

Seem to recall that a "Romac(?) FGS 50 key was a like a master key and fitted most of the older British aircraft (to my own knowledge it more often than not worked on Valiants, Domminies, Canberras and Andovers) and indeed British cars as well in the days before we got all sophisticated and fitted steering locks etc

I still have the ignition key to my 1937 Austin Seven which is a small rectangular section. My then girlfriend sometimes used to use her nail file to start the car.