"Vulcans, Victors & Cuba"
 

Showing on the Discovery History Channel this evening:

Side valve, thank you, pretty accurate and I would only pick up a couple of things.

Khrushchev had thoughtlessly coincided his Caribbean adventure with my upcoming 21st birthday. I was attending 5FTS at Oakington at the time, so on that fateful final Saturday in October 1962 I was being rendered legless by my fellow course students in Cambridge. The excellent information imparted in this video was mostly unknown to us. All we did know was that unless the lead Soviet cargo vessel turned around before entering Kennedy's declared blockade area then...well no-one seemed quite certain what, but it certainly wasn't going to be good. In the event it did so and the world soon settled into the more orderly concept of MAD. Oh, and I duly recovered as well! :E

The good old days!
 

Those were the days - proper boffins, and engineers in tweed jackets with a row of pens in the top pocket - proud to be designing and building weapons of mass destruction - marvelous! :ok:

And test pilot Roly Falk pitching up in tweed suit and tie to take one of the 707s up, would be interesting to hear the views of any of the current generation of test pilots

Roly Falk certainly flew the Vulcan wearing a business suit and sunglasses, but none of the photos I have seen show him in a "country tweed suit"! He took his wife on o e (or maybe more) flights in a Vulcan!

Were the French airforce poised to join the strike if it had gone ahead?
I only ask as most documentaries only mention the RAF and USAF as going against the Russians.

BS, the French Force de Dissuasion was not operational until 1964.

They were in the integrated command structure at that time and had staff at HQ SAC. In 1965, when De Gaulle left the ICS the French staff were still at Offutt but their status had changed to observer. We were not told exactly how this would work. I guess it meant they would not be assigned SIOP targets but were given TOT windows.

Why no mention on the Valiant's?

They were very much operational in 1962.

It's about 12 minutes into the programme that he climbs into an orange 707.

One should always be properly dressed. Unlike Igor, I wasn't permitted to wear a trilby in my Wessex,:( damn them!

Ian, out of sight . . . possibly shortage of alert footage cf the others.

PN
Thank you for a detailed answer :)

Ian, we're lucky Victors got a mention.

Just as the Battle of Britain was won by ex public schoolboy officers flying Spitfires, everyone knows the V Force consisted of Vulcans, and, er, Vulcans.

I blame XH 558 ;)

I seem to recall perching on the crew ladder of a 617 Vulcan with a pea bulb and a cardboard box of "war" crystals, tuning an ancient TR1985. It seems so long ago. Maybe I dreamed it.

HH, ah the delights of crystalization. Whenever we went overseas the AEO had to draw up a frequency plan and demand a set of crystals. He would shut down the STR18, pull out the box and recrystallize it. We also carried a spare VHF box but I can recall if we swapped that out inflight.

Then came the Collins and PTR175

The VHF set crystals were valued £10 each! Depending upon the units mission, the unit 'Crystal Bank' could be worth a lot of money.

The biggest one I had responsibility for was at Dishforth, then a Transport Command station with Beverley's and Hasting's. The 'Xtal Fit' depended upon the destination and route. So we had many options.

Back to thread:
I've always considered the Cuban Crises a suitable climax to my 1st posting on 214 Sqdn at Marham.

After 3 years and 8 months I was posted to Akrotiri at a very significant time.
http://i818.photobucket.com/albums/z...0Nicosia_1.jpg
By the time I had got my 'Blue Card' filled in, and wife & I settled in a rented house in Limmasol, it was all a case of 'What Crises'?' :cool:

Absolutely riveting stuff! I cannot begin to imagine what thoughts must have been going through your heads re the fate of families left behind etc! Thanks for the additional anecdotes gents.....I wasn't even in liquid form in '62 but I did have a very small taste of the "cold war" atmosphere in Germany in '84. Chilling stuff!
Apologies for the spotters question but toward the beginning of the video, it mentioned the Victor pilot would remove his hands from the controls and it would land itself. Is that just journalistic licence.....never heard that one before?

Sometimes sitting in the back when a new co-pilot was doing a few practice landings I wished he would just let the bloody thing land itself!

:).......so in other words TTN, it was a little journo licence? Struck me as an unlikely thing to do.....but hey, every day's a school day? It must have all been rather surreal (and unnerving!)!