Thanks TEEEJ,

Interesting that the first one accelerates quite smartly, whereas the second one at the end seems to take ages to overtake the Vulcan - it looks like slomo, and the angle may not help.

I wonder how many firings they did, and how many scares they had with the rocket fuel.

JFZ, I wasn't BS but I know of a couple of instances. At Scampton they had and HTP off-load pit. A fireman accidently fell in to it and as quickly came out again as it blew him out - he was shaken but not stirred. I believe they also had drench showers available.

On another occasion, a Vulcan with a hot missile landed at Waddo and used the emergency HTP offload area - no pit, just the grass on the side of the taxiway. I saw the correspondence between OC Ops with ours asking for a supply of grass seed.

Thanks PN, there is a bit about it on the web.

Seems that despite the risks it was actually one of the safer rocket fuels (at least of the non-solid variety).

Interesting also to read that the Blue Steel inertial guidance was so much better (newer) than the vulcan/victor, the host ac would use the missile guidance for nav during a mission.

JFZ, true, as long as the stable table remained stable. The mark 1 bombers had the standard G4B system. The Mk 2, which included the BS variants, had the Smiths Military Flight System. This had better flux valves, gyros and interface but when asked how it would fare during an evasive bomb run Smiths said the gyros would precess by no more than 180 degrees.

After the cancellation of TSR2 the Vulcan benefitted from some upgrades to its nav kit. This included a twin-gyro installation - Master Reference Gyros - as part of the Heading Reference System. It was the same MRG that the Lightning used for pitch reference and in the BS Inertial. Its free-gyro drift rate of 0.25 deg/hour coupled with the Decca 72M Doppler then gave performance comparable with contemporary IN platforms. The MFS was relegated to a backup system.

That was a fascinating programme. The spirit and attitude does live on, I think. The Skylon project seems like an example of it to me and it appeals to me to bemoan the losses of the past only for a little while and spend more time hoping for the future.

Of course it's difficult for the BBC to strike the right balance in such a programme, when most of today's audiences are besotted with rubbish such as Big Brother, get me out of the jungle or that utter cr@p Strictly come dancing, involving fat celebs squeezed into sequined frocks being pawed by snake-hipped dagos in order to impress a panel of fawning camp luvvies.....:ugh:

I thought it* was pretty good - except for all that wretched music!


*I mean Cold War, Hot Jets, of course!

And that's the blokes.

Celebs? I have to keep asking the other half who is who and it is usually from some obscure job somewhere.

I am told that on occassion the first that a V base would know of a dispersal exercise was when a Beverley would appear on short finals ready to pick up whatever was needed to disperse. I remember the consternation that was caused when we lobbed into Scampton/Waddington one day on a practice diversion!

BEagle,

Spot on !

Danny.

What happened to the carrier borne tactical nuclear weapon capability?

nimbev, very true. The AT had to be pre-booked with Transport Command for the no-notice Bomber Command exercise :)

It says something of the size of the RAF just how much the different Commands were totally separate entities. AFAIK we never knew when the Micky Finn was to be called. There were lots of 'blocked' dates such as the GCE dates, bank holiday dates, major exercises like Kingpin and Coop.

I recall one MF when Command got it wrong and scheduled the exercise during the second week of A-level exams. There were a few disgruntled people but no exceptions were made either by the station or the examination boards.

The one-way Wasp ride?

4Greens, an example of the cutting room. It looks as if he was focussing very tightly on the UK Mainland as apart from the few brief references to the USAF there was no mention of 2TAF/RAFG either.

Judge and find fault all you like, I thoroughly enjoyed both parts. Thanks, it was great. :ok:

So were the crews taking A levels then?

Vasco indeed, IIRC one was a plotter.

Remember you didn't need A-levels to get a Supplementary List commission.

Yup. Five O-levels for a DEC-B.
Mr Kennedy and Mr Kruschev, thank you, thank you :E

How was Blue Steel guided to the intended target, I presume some kind of INS system?

Clicker, indeed.

I don't know about the pre-flight IN alignment but I do know it could be a sod getting it mated with the aircraft systems. If the system failed to mate or there was a fuel system malfunction the crew would be committed to target penetration and a pop up attack and level release at 11,000 feet. Given the streamline nature of the missile they would not have been as well placed as the free-fall crews that could release in the climb and therefore have less exposure.

Once airborne with a serviceable system the IN would be tweaked using a technique called Fix Monitored Azimuth. Precisely surveyed fix points en route would be used and corrections between the BS/IN predicted position and the actual position identified using the H2S would be compared and Kn and Ke (kinetic north/east) corrections applied to tweak the system.

The Blue Steel, as a free running IN system was nowhere near as accurate as later (or contemporary) double and triple inertial setups. Indeed the later free-fall Heading Reference System (which could also use FMA) and Doppler were more accurate over the long term.

A good Blue Steel attack would be around 400 yards, similar to contemporary free-fall attacks and better than free-fall climbing release with Yellow Sun.

It is reassuring to see some of my old friends have aged as badly as me :sad: