Testing of the Blue steel, now here is one to put hairs on your chest..

:eek:


Victor Incident

Blue Steel

Thanks PN.

Don't know about putting hairs on your chest Nutty, perhaps thats where the current Capcomp picture came from! But also speaks volumes for the Victors strength.

Wow! Great story there, Nutty. Thanks for posting. :ok:

Courtney

"I saw your Boss today"
cracking story - thanks for posting.

NL, thanks for the links, I believe Flt Lt Charlie Gilbert was an instructor at BCBS and I think I knew "Glen" Glendinning too.

Nutloose- can't access either of those links. Tried several ways, including googling it and going via another site , but get the same result - any ideas?

TTN ...

Google as Title below, should be last return on the response page ...

http://i1004.photobucket.com/albums/...pse1afcc02.jpg

Best ...

Coff.

PS. The PDF "Books" have some really interesting material and pics ...

John Saxon Blue Steel 1999 PDF Book

John Saxon Blue Steel 2001 PDF Book

Great find Nutty :ok:

TTN Try

John Saxon's pages

Then the blue steel link

http://www.jsaxon. org

Remove the gap if that does not work

Cold War hot jets
 

I thought that the 2 programmes were great!

BBC can we have much more of the same please?

ref bombing comp B52s v Vulcans did we really ever win?
I seem to recall that in the late 60s we always came a good 2nd?

Bob,

With the Bomb Comp you must remember that initially the best 3 crews from one bomber wing (3 sqns) competed against the best crews from each SAC Bombing Wing.

The SAC teams comprised both B52 and B58. Usually we did well but not startlingly well. Then we upped our game.

We got the best team from all the Strike Command Vulcan sqns and formed the Giant Voice flt. A second team Big Top was also formed and the two competed against each other.

Then there were different prizes with some being for USAF only. The big prize was, IIRC, the Fairchild trophy and another for navigation.

In 1966 (I think) Bob Tomkins from Cottesmore got a navigation error of about 0.6 miles over a 1200 mile night celestial route. The best SAC crew error was 0.2 (a B58 I believe) and second was another with 0.4.

The second night there was more turbulence and we were all sweating (back at Cottesmore) on the results. Bob only got 1.2 miles that night giving an aggregate of 1.8 miles. Then the best USAF crew got 3.2 and the second about 3.6 giving the Vulcan an outstanding and convincing win.

Later, in the early 70s, the Giant Voice aircraft had additional radar offset boxes fitted, the bombing offset voltages were bay set, and other parts of the kit given special tuning. In 1973 Mike Cook (plotter) and Robin Hardisty (radar) then won the competition and were honoured by GAPAN with the award of the Johnston Memorial Trophy. The following year Candlish and Vinales were awarded the trophy (I am not sure how they got on with the Bomb Comp.)

The best 3 SAC crews were also invited back to UK for the Bombing Competition. One notable year all 3 B52s failed to achieve a result on a simulated target near Wainfleet. Two took the Holbeach track, the 3rd hit the target but from the wrong direction. The SAC General flew from the US to present the prizes, presented them and boarded his aircraft back the the US. The SAC crew spot promotions to LTC were cancelled.

Later competitions in the US included the FB111 and the Tornado GR1s. The Tornados did exceptionally well and were not invited again.

MB

If memory serves me correctly, in 1974, the Vulcan lifted most of the SAC Giant Voice bombing competition prizes causing major upset in USAF. G.V. was between USAF B52s and RAF Vulcans, the F111 competed as a guest and did better than both competitors.

TEEJ

The Blue Steel footage brought back memories. In addition to the trials launches, there were more. I remember in late '66 early '67 there were enough timex, but serviceable parts to build 4 missiles, 2 were allocated to Wittering and 2 to Scampton, after several carry over trials all 4 were finally launched at Aberporth.

I also chuckled at the footage of loading Blue Steel onto the Victor as, in reality, it was never done like that as it was far too difficult to remove the bomb bay side fairings to allow the missile to be pushed in from the side. What actually happened was that the Victor was jacked up, 37 ins. for a training round and 35 ins. for a "wet one". A Victor Blue Steel squadron had more main and tail jacks than anyone else. If a Mick or Mickey Fynn was called, the first job on arrival on the line was to jack everything up and then wait for the loading teams to come out and carry out the loads.

HTP was indeed volatile and resulted in a couple of strange precautions. Every pan had a plunge bath adjacent to the crewchief's hut, I say plungebath but in reality they were ex MQ enamel baths with castors fitted. If you got HTP on your denims or anything oily, it would spontainiously combust and the idea was that you ran to the side of the pan and jumped in the bath. Great in the summer but not quite as good in winter when they were all frozen over. If HTP leaked onto dirty concrete that would also combust, the answer ?, all pans had a sterile area under the bomb bay and these were maintained by gangs of lineys armed with yard brooms and detergent scrubbing the concrete. Why should Britain tremble ?

PN

The additional offset boxes were devised by individual units. The ones you refer to were the Cyprus wing boxes, huge aluminium things full of trim pots that were indeed set up in the NBS bay. The Scampton version was to repackage the Double Offset internals to allow two set of electronics to fit in a standard size box. The Scampton one became the standard competition fit and was the one rescued from the scrap bin for use on Black Buck.

I noted that they talked about clearing the way for B52s by taking out the Baltic states and Leningrad. No mention of Moscow. So did the Moscow criterian become established after Polaris took on the role?

I would just like to say, what a fascinating discussion.

hula, no. I know a Vulcan 1 had Moscow as a target pre-1967. The ingress and egress track to the target was 180/360 and this would have required penetration of both SA1 rings around the target.

HTP was nasty stuff. It would combust in contact with clothing, which made it bad news. Each dispersal had a galvanised steel bath, heated to a comfortable temp and covered with table tennis balls to keep in the heat.

I once saw a groundcrew lad splashed with HTP – the crewchief grabbed him and ran him to the plungebath, totally immersing him. He came up coughing and spluttering before being run to the dispersal hut.

We had designated airfields around the UK which were ‘Hot Water’ offload bases. We would land and taxy to a dispersal with an exit path. The co-pilot would get into a protective suit, the AEO would stand on the aircraft steps to act as liaison between co-pilot and nav plotter and 1st pilot. The nav plotter would pump out the HTP, the Co pointed the hose at tthe grassy area, whilst the 1st pilot would be sitting with the inboard engines running ready to dump the missile and taxy away. The fire wagons flooded the grass which neutralised the HTP.

We did it at Kinloss once, and before long the aircraft was surrounded by the important all and sundry. When we advised them of the dangers of rubber necking, you have never seen such a flood of VIP’s race away from a spot on the airfield!

We regularly flew runs against Gernish Range in NW Scotland where we would practice freefall release of the missile – which involved a climb to 15,000 ft before release, followed by a smart turn 180 deg to get the hell out of the way!...

Now on You Tube
 

For anyone living outside the UK who can't use BBC iPlayer, the 2 episodes are now on You Tube:

Episode 1


Episode 2 in 4 x 15-minute parts

covered with table tennis balls to keep in the heat.

I don't understand. TT balls INCREASE the effective area of the water, being continuously wetted over the whole of their surface area, thus increasing evaporation and also the direct transfer of heat to the air. Surely a load of balls?

Langley
I wondered about the table tennis balls and heated galvanised baths, they must have been rich kids at Scampton, no such luxuries at Wittering, ex MQ baths for the poor people near Stamford !
I was also interested in the jettison and taxi away Vulcan routine as such a thing would not have been possible with the Victor due to ground clearance. In fact I am now wondering about the wisdom of fitting Blue Steel to the Victor. In addition to the clearance problems mentioned, there were others, not least the lower vertical fin which had to be folded up when the A/C was on the ground. Originally the plan was to have the fin coupled to the wheels, wheels up fin down and vice versa, after several failures resulting in ground down fins when it failed to fold on landing, the system was immobilised and the fin kept folded up, in the event of a launch the fin was blown down using the emergency pneumatic system.

Oberon, fin-fold was necessary on the Vulcan too.

Of the V-bombers, only the Vulcan with its delta wing and tall undercarriage was best suited for bombing up. The Valiant needed to be jacked up as did the Victor BS.

The Victor 2 would have made the better high level conventional bomber however. 35 bombs and a much better forward visibility for visual bombing.

Might be memory-fade on my part (not unknown!) but as a spotty yoof on 'E' Dispersal at Scampton from late '64 to early '66, I do not recall such luxuries as 'plunge baths', heated or not. Best I can cudgel up are life-ex life rafts filled with water at ambient temp. A tad difficult to 'plunge' into in the depths of a Lincolnshire winter...