Valiant Tankers
 

Valiant Tanker info required please
Am currently browsing a Valiant tanker pilot's (deceased) log book to write up his flying career. Have reached 1958 entries and he is on Tanker trials duties in which he notes during separate sorties: Trial 306: XD816: '2 below'; XD869: '3 below'; XD812: '2 above & 8 below'; XD816: '7 below'. For the month in question: June 1958 he totals: 'Hook-ups: 32 (12 above). I believe all these relate to 'dummy' tanker/receiver flights but it is not clear (to me) what is going on. Is there anyone out there who could interpret this for me please?
http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...ser_online.gif http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...ons/report.gif http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...ttons/edit.gif

I would hazard a guess that these relate to receiver (below) and tanker (above). Just a guess and I am sure someone will be able to clarify.

Easier to explain is Trial 306. Bomber Command Development Unit used to run trials. Some would be effectively in-house where a piece of equipment could be tested and operational procedures developed. Others were much greater in scope and requirements. One many of us took part in was Trial 505. This was flight carriage of the WE177 Instrumented round. Nothing dramatic for the crews involved we just had to fly it on typical sorties though there were occasional glitches but not no significance to the weapon itself.

Contacting the Air Historical Branch for BCDU documentation on Trial 306 might be worth while.

Take a look here:

http://http://www.214squadron.org.uk/History_the_valiant_years.htm

I agree with PN - the "above"s may mean contacts (hook-up) as the tanker and the "below"s could mean contacts as receiver.

Thanks for your help, that makes sense of the notes. Have now obtained further info on 306 & 306A but any further thoughts will be most welcome.

AP, you would need a timeline for IFR as it was known in the 50s and 60s. If the Valiants were not yet operating as tankers then the Trial was probably so determine flight handling characteristics, flow transfer.

The 'A' may have related to a follow-on trial either with different or modified baskets etc.

I know that in 1964 when I did the receiver course that they were still developing night refuelling. One 'fix' was to strap bicycle dynamos driven by propellers to illuminate the basket.

*Ping!

Above and below might have referred to the position of the aircraft but not actually hooking up as giver or receiver.

The terminology used by 214 Sq had pretty well settled down when I joined as a co in 1961. There were still aircraft lined up for a first go. In my time there was a Scimitar that tried and failed, because the probe nozzle was too close to the aircraft nose to fit inside the drogue, A very awkward Argosy trial owing to the speed differential.Then there was a Sea Vixen that not only took fuel from the Valiant but passed some back from its own Mk20 pod. We also had Trial 448 which is possibly still classified but was a very busy time for us.

Art, if that trial is sufficiently interesting why not write an article from your memory and submit to the MOD?

I saw on here (www) a couple of years back an large article on 51 sqn Comets and their flights in the Black Sea and possibly Caspian (IIRC) that I was really surprised about.

Tanking Vixens & vice versa
 

Now there's interesting, I was an engine fitter on 214 late 59 - early 62, HUD trained at Tarrant Rushton no less !, any way regarding the Vixen trials some of us were detached to Ford NAS to work with the FAA ? (or were they Navy ?) during this trial as they were using the Mk20 pod & we had to be fully conversant with FR equipment, little did I know that later would be working on Victor tankers that had not only Mk16 HDU's but Mk20 pods, I also earlier had been detached to Boscombe to assist with the Argosy trials, seem to remember during that trial changing over from the flat nosed probe (Mk6 ??) & relevant basket to the Mk9 "bullet" shaped probe & matching basket, also went through the mod programme fitting the little reflective buttons in the baskets think they were filled with Strontium 90, really glowed in the dark, for night time probing, will dig out some photo's & post of the trials with the Vixen from the air, rgds Paul H.

The Vixen trials
 

Hope this helps, the Valant was XD858 the Vixen **489 was from HMS Victorious (sorry for earlier they are RN) that were on base at Ford for the trials, the 2 pictures are from a sequence of the Vixen to Valiant, will dig out the vice versa pictures & post later, notes say the a/c Captain was Sqd Ldr John Garston
rgds, Paul H.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y94/zetec2/img002.jpg

Just noted the trials were in October 1961 for the Vixen, PH.

Getting on top of a Vixen to be a receiver conjures up an alternative image.:eek:

SGC

Zetec
You might be one of, or definitely know Dave 'Curly' Garnham, Jock Riley and Roy Monk.

If you could carry an EDG under each arm, I know which one. :D

I was a Radar fitter on 214 for your entire tour, plus a bit at each end. I arrived Feb 59 and left Oct 62.

Trial 448
 

There are entries in log book of the pilot of Valiant WZ390 during July 1962 for 'Trials 448' with no further description. Please can you tell me (to my private box, if you wish) what Trial 448 was all about?

AP, all bomber Command trials were given a number. Usually they were conducted by the Bomber Command Development Unit - BCDU - which had a small unit with, I think, parts at each main base. It may have had one or two aircraft where equipment to be trialled might be fitted but for larger trials, such as 505, they needed to use the main force aircraft.

448 as clearly a flight refuelling trial. The times when the trial took place might be significant or the details of the receivers. Unless a Ppruner comes up with the detail you could ask the AHB giving as much detail as possible.

These were uploaded to me a few years ago whilst trying to figure out my Mum's cousins RAF career.

Argosy...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...el/ARGOSY3.jpg

and a Javelin...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...nigel/Jav2.jpg

With thanks to who ever it was from this forum.:ok:

And it is quite likely that Trial 448 would have been one of the sort of trial shown above.

The Argosy was surely a classic case of Air Ministry cash wasted. If AAR was needed to get them from Aden to Gan and thence Singapore, fair enough, but did they ever deploy east of Aden?

The Javelin was a good case as one Valiant could take one Javelin all the way to Tengah with staging through El Adem, Aden and Gan; very efficient.

When it came to the Vulcan and Victor, we could double stage to the Far East at the same time as the Valiants would have taken to activate the route, and perhaps quicker.

In the 60s AAR was the thing regardless that we never had the proportion of tankers that the USAF enjoyed.

Valiant Tankers
 

The Valiants straight wing was not suited to high speed low level flight which became the favvooured attack scheme in the early 60s

The wings developed considerable fatigue problems which were being addressed but still led to several nasty crashes and the aircraft was eventually withdrawn from service rather suddenly after one such

Your man must have been flying them while these events were developing

One such I think was the Stringer crew at Market Raisen

Tinribs. the wing design and low level fatigue actually were not the root cause of the problem. The problem was one of metallurgy. The alloy was found to form crystalline structure when formed and spars in store were found to be similarly fatigued. From Wiki "premature fatiguing and inter-crystalline corrosion traced to the use of an inappropriate type of aluminium alloy".

There had been one or two Valiants at Pershore with only double digit hours and they had hoped to give them a limited clearance. They checked a few rivets and found no problems. They were about to give them clearance when they checked one more rivet for luck . . .

As for the wing shape I believe the Mark 2 had the same shape. "the "Black Bomber". Its performance at low level was superior to that of the B.1 (or any other V-bomber), with the aircraft being cleared to 580 mph (930 km/h) at low level (with speeds of up to 640 mph (1,030 km/h) being reached in testing). " I don't know about the metal used on the Mk 2.

Absolutley correct. WP217's rear wing fracture in flight initiated the Valiants demise. Up to that point there had been no concerns about the Valiant's airworthiness or fit for purpose.

Was the spar material DTD 683. The stress office where I worked had a chunk that had not been anywhere near an aircraft, but had turned into a crumbling cheese like mess all by itself purely on age.

ExNomad, that is exactly what I heard. In that respect the Valiant was just too early and too unlucky.

PN: It's neither here nor there after all these years but, since you ask, there was an Argosy squadron (No 215 Sqn) based for some years at Changi, so deployment of UK or Aden based aircraft was hardly needed. As to why there was a refuelling trial with the aircraft, I've no idea, and AAR was no part of the force repertoire. "Because it was there," perhaps?

The Valiant should have been scrapped in 1956
 

The trouble with British Aircraft pre 1956 (including the Valiant) was the double whammy of building aircraft with a design method that could not guarantee safety in a catastrophic failure [Safe Life] with materials [like DTD683] that could fail catastrophically. This fact was coupled with the fact that not all the metallurgical data was known when these aircraft entered service, for example it wasn't known until 1968 (4 years after the Valiant was scrapped) that for DTD 683, water or water vapour increased crack growth rates by a factor of 10. This was due to the Oxygen in the water rapidly oxidising the "fresh" aluminium releasing Hydrogen at high pressure which was enough to cause the crack to grow exposing more un-oxidised aluminium so producing more high pressure hydrogen and so on, in an auto-catalytic process.

Due to a lack of money cost cutting methods like using samples that had already been used in a stress test to measure fatigue strength led to an over estimation of the fatigue strength of a material by a factor of up to 100. This was due to the fact that pre-stressing these materials increased their fatigue strength. (See Section 4 para 2 of this ARC Paper). In fact this method (pre stressing) was used in a failed attempt to improve fatigue resistance.

This was aggravated by the lack of consideration for fatigue failure which was rare in the older materials.

DTD683 was known to be a troublesome material at least as early as 1951. Here is Mr Gardner of Vickers explaining the problems

structural problems | flight structural | structural efficiency | 1951 | 2503 | Flight Archive


And Mr Black of Vickers Supermarine in 1953

light alloys | cold bending | permanent distortion | 1953 | 0935 | Flight Archive

So the problems were well known, but instead of giving up with the materials they soldiered on thinking the problems were 'solved' after all the Ministry of Supply told them they had to use this material and the UK Aircraft Industry was pretty arrogant about its ability to solve problems having produced war winners like the Spit' and Lanc'

But the Industry had not solved all the problems and it began to dawn in 1955 that their approach was flawed. This is well evidenced in the technical papers of the time available in the Aerade catalog. The research switches from attempts to improve fatigue resistance to research into understanding the process of crack formation, growth rates and ways to stop the failures from being catastrophic.

Airframe Fatigue 1955

(75 S-T is the American designation for DTD683)

The problem of working out a Safe Life was virtually impossible given the large scatter in the fatigue data

cycles | endurance limit | salt spray | 1955 | 0363 | Flight Archive
Things came to a head in 1956 with this lecture given by a Lockheed structures engineer to the RAeS
In it he delivers the "coup de grace" to Safe Life and states that DTD683 was the worst choice for fault tolerant structures

1956 | 0396 | Flight Archive

Given the scatter in the data above, the nominator [Laboratory (or predicted or recorded) life] in the above equation was also largely guess work. Effectively the equation above becomes.
.. . . . . . . . . . ?
Safe Life = ----------
.. . . . . . . . . . ?

You don't need to be a mathematical genius to see the problem using an equation like that to design 'safe' aeroplanes.

All of this was made even more problematic with the publication also in 1956, of this paper in the Journal of the Institute of Metals by a Birmingham metallurgist team, which condemns DTD683 as it was too unstable (hence the wide scatter in the data).

Journal of the Institute of Metals

Mr Gardner of Vickers had noted the unstable nature of the alloy in his 1951 lecture.

DTD683 was removed from use 3 years later; 1959, 5 years before the Valiant was. Its use post 1956 was limited to components in compression, such as under-carriage components.

In 1956 several things happened many Safe Life designs built with the new alloys were either scrapped or re-designed like the Argosy or Shackleton, but not the Valiant. Also in 1956 Vickers began flying a Valiant deliberately into turbulence they measured the strains and the experiments produced the disturbing result that the Valiant fleet had a remaining Safe Life of 70 hours, later revised to 300 hours (presumably under some pressure from MoD and Whitehall Mandarins). The problem with low flying was the increased frequency of gusts that would exceed the limits on the airframe. Exceeding the limits was potentially the initiating event for a later fatigue failure, as described in the Birmingham paper and as implied by Mr Black of Vickers Supermarine in his 1953 talk.

Also in 1956 Macmillan said the following in a memo to PM Eden about defence expenditure.
1956 was the year in which the Government launched a review of the Aircraft Industry, which later resulted in the industry's restructuring. The last 6 Valiants were cancelled in 1956.

According to Flight magazine (corroborated in Eric Morgan's book) only 50 of the 104 (108) Valiants were still in service when the scrapping order came in 1965. Using the (incomplete) data available the average life of a Valiant was 7.6 years with an average of just over 300 flying hours per year each.

In todays money (price of a Valiant in 1956 = ~£500,000) and using a back of the envelope calculation, the cost to the Tax payer was ~£154,000 per hour of Valiant flight time, that number excludes the actual running costs such as wages, fuel etc and just uses the rough purchase cost.

That was Macmillan's "scandal". The "tragedy" was the number of fatalities in non-combat accidents, which reached a peak of nearly 1 a day in 1954.

RIH, a masterly treatise, thank you.

ICM, thank you too. I just think that the Air Box didn't really get its policy head around the concept of AAR. The USAF had it so we had to have it too. Of course modifying a few bomber types rather than building dedicated tankers like the KC97/KC135 was not the way we could afford as the V-force was sucking up most of the procurement money.

Equipping the Argosy and the VC10 was probably in case of rapid long range deployment but never enough tankers to do that.

Not understanding the metallurgy bit, but if it was a matter of age and not related to flying hours or cycles, I must ask, how was XD816 kept flying so long after the rest of the Valiant's were scrapped?

My understanding, until this forum came up, was that XD816 had been a hanger queen while it was at Boscome Down, and used as the model for the fitting of HDU's. And as such it had way below the number of flying hours of the rest of the Valiant fleet.

It definitely spent at least 6 years on 214 Sqdn from Feb 59 until Feb 65.

Ian, Feb 65 was pretty close to the end date. As I said, a couple of aircraft, I thought at Pershore but it may have included Boscombe, were sub-100 hours and it was hoped that they could fly on. When they did that last, for luck, safety check they discovered that they too were fatigued.

Despite the evidence laid out by RI Howard, there had been no whispers that there were problems.

Remember these were different times. It was the height of the cold war. Virtually anything to do with the super detergent was secret and the suggestion that a third of the force was unsafe would have been top secret, or at least treated as such.

Crews knew their chances were slim but hoped that their equipment would give them the best chance. There is no way that it would be admitted down at sqn level that the aircraft were death traps.

On the hangar queen aspects, that is to be expected for aircraft being used for experimental work. If the kit is not ready the aircraft would not fly.

Just for the record, the crew that were flying the Valiant on that fateful day were not aware of how close they had come to death as they clambered out of the aircraft. On levelling off rather sharply when practising a " failure to pressurise in the climb " drill they heard a loud bang and decided to return gently to Gaydon. Those of us that were waiting at the dispersal could see that the aircraft was making like a naval version with one wing ready to fold up. One very lucky crew and the end of my Valiant captains course'

Art, was that the sortie where the spar fracture had caused the wing to 'half-fold' so much that the flap motor spline drive disconnected on that side? I heard that the crew tried to lower flap and got an immediate uncommanded roll as it deployed assymetrically, but the pilot not flying was monitoring the flap gauges and called it immediately, resulting in 'flaps up' and a safe flapless landing.

RIH, thank you for the treatise on fatigue, I shall bookmark it for ever. I remember how the work of the late Harold Parish (at Huntings before Warton, where I knew him) and Alfred Payne in Australia, testing many wings to destruction, enabled WAP Fisher and Roland Heywood at RAE to establish successfully the safety factor(s) that had to be applied to the results of major fatigue tests to define the safe service life of an aircraft - and have given us structural confidence ever since. But I had assumed that all alloys were reasonably well-behaved and produced a comforting Gaussian distribution of fatigue cycles to failure. I am surprised the Valiant lasted as long as it did, and rather pleased that my attempt to get a trip in one at Marham (as an ATC cadet, not a chance!) came to nought.

Mind you, I have seen (long time ago now) a trailing spar of a Boeing 720B in a similar "crumbling cheese like mess", quite a sobering event given I had arrived at the maintenance base on that particular aircraft only the previous day. Granted the aircraft had quite some hours accrued, even so, sobering ! I took small package of the crumbs back with me to home base; more than a few of the people there first thought I was having them on !

XD816
 

Re the continued flying of XD816, it was allowed to continue flying without underwing tanks & being monitored very closely, the attached picture is from Abingdon (looking at it it might just be Filton ?????) & from memory after leaving the Jubilee "get together" did one last flight around the V bomber bases (saw it overfly Marham) before ending up at Filton, I think the info is correct but always glad to be corrected PH.
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y94...ps38b74211.jpg

I am surprised they took the underwing tanks off. When we operated them there was always a proportional quantity of fuel kept in the underwings so as to relieve the wing root stresses. That practice was nothing to do with the Valiant's problem; it was normal large aircraft husbandry.

Not all Valiants were fitted with tanks. I do however have (in a book) a picture of 816 both with and without tanks. In the with tanks fit she also had a probe.

XD816, a B(K)1 was the last Valiant flying as it was undergoing a Ministry of Technology test programme.

According to the book, 816 flew on 28 Apr 1968 in a flypast to mark the disbandment of Bomber Command.

XD816
 

XD816 went from 214 Sqd Marham (underwing tanks removed prior to transit flight at Marham) to Wisley 18 August 1964 for trial installation of rear spar repair scheme under KD/P/198/CB.5(c). Loaned to BAC Wisley 21 September 1964, At Wisley from 1 April 1965 - 26 November 1965 for re-spar & flight trials at that time had completed 2,012.05 flying hours & 829 landings. On 29 June 1967 passed to control of BAC (Operating) Ltd for fatigue flight trials, MOD loaned aircraft for display at Abingdon 23 April 1968, finally SOC 26 August 1970. Hope fills in the gaps, PH

The underwing tanks could take a nominal 12,500 lbs of fuel each. Somewhere in my memory cells is a project by Vickers to mount two bomb carriers underneath the wings each containing 10/1,000 lb bombs.

It would have flown a reasonable distance; that would have left it with about 45,000 lbs; about 5 hrs flying with 30 mins reserve: 1,200 nm ROA.

It would have jumped a bit letting 41,000 lbs go.

Fareastdriver,
the Herc used to 'jump a bit' when dropping a triple ULLA (ultra low level airdrop ). That was 3x 14000lbs per platform ten feet above the DZ !

Fitting refuelling equipment at 214 Sqdn
 

Found this pic in Profile Publications Number 66 "The Vickers Valiant" published in 1966

http://zkt.blackfish.org.uk/XD864/im...refuelling.jpg

original copyright - Profile Publications Ltd (now dissolved) 1966

Zetec,

Nice pic.
You can just see the Rebecca X aerials on the black paint in front of the windscreen. XD816 was one of 4 a/c to be fitted with Rebecca X. If I can
lay my hands on my notebook, I will confirm if it was one of the 2 fitted with Eureka X. I think it was but I cannot trust my memory these days :uhoh:

RIHoward,

That is a well used pic that I've seen many times. I recognise the faces and I've racked my brain for names, all to no avail.

PN,

Yep the end date of the Valiant and the end date of my service were very close together :p

Being an ex-Boy Entrant, my demob date was my birthday, which is in March. With demob and accumulated leave, I left the gates of Marham for the last time the 1st Friday in February 1965.

As Rebecca was the aircraft equipment and Eureka was the corresponding ground responder, are you saying that two of the aircraft were fitted with Eureka so as to act as formation leaders?

I was on one of Trial 541 sorties in Jan 1967 on the Vulcan when we tried out the A-A Tacan for low level blind formation flying trying out a conventional bombing trial. It involved 3 Vulcans at 15 second interval on one of the Libyan low level routes. The trial seemed to go well until it was analysed.

As lead we could intermittently see the range of either of the two followers. No 2 always seemed horribly close, often as close as half a mile. OTOH Nos 2 and 3 thought we were much further ahead of them.

While the tactic was never practised the scheme for a 4 aircraft laydown cross over attack at 30 second intervals was a published tactic. Now that would have made the eyes water.

PN said:Rebecca X/Eureka X was a unique system that we trialed for AAR.

Yes, Eureka was normally the ground transponder, but the MK X was a special from Marconi. It worked around 1000 Mc/s as opposed the 200 Mc/s of the 'normal' Rebecca/Eureka/DME. Whenever we had a fault, we took the kit to the Electronic Centre and did trouble shooting to the component level, and a report went to Marconi.

If you look closely at the pic of XD816 you can see the 3 'shark fin' aerials on the black painted part of the 'bonnet'. We also spread the story that when AAR receiving, they were 'sights' for hitting the drogue. :D

If the a/c was fitted with the Eureka X transponder, it had a similar single sharks fin aerial on the underside of the fuselage, immediatly forward of the Orange Putter tail warning Tx/Rx. As I said earlier, I do belive that XD816 was fitted with Eureka X and I think that the aerial is just visible on the picture posted. In the picture, no Orange Putter is fitted, just a white tail cone.

I left 214 in Oct 62 for 2 years in Akrotiri and I dunno how the trials ended. I rejoined the Sqdn in Oct 64, by then the Valiant's were flying in very restricted mode or grounded and I was more interested in getting started in civilian life. The good news was that with so little work to do, I had no trouble getting time off for job interviews.

Before going to Akrotiri, I had a jolly to Vickers at Hurn, where they had fitted the rack mounts and cables. I took a Eureka X set and test equipment to Hurn and fitted it, tested it and found it worked, so as a Cpl/Tech I signed a a document that meant that the RAF paid Vickers for their work! Oh the power :eek:

As a thank you they gave me a lunch and a tour of a rather special a/c that they were servicing, a Viscount that was owned by King Hussein of Jordan. It was fitted out just a little nicer than the Valiant's. :ok:

Happy Daze.