Old computers and the fabled Vulcan attack on U.S.
 

Salute!

For all you Vulcan fans ( and I am one), a news article on a science blog has a reference to an exercise in the U.S. in which a group of Vulcans and some ECM friends embarrassed U.S. and Canada air defense, you know, NORAD.

I cut and paste, but the whole article is worthwhile. As I cut my teeth and learned the trade flying VooDoo's up north on the Canadian border, it caught my attention. The technology in the early 60's was way out there for applications and not sims or games. I mean, who could afford a home computer? However, I was in on the earliest computer-driven systems and stayed with them until retiring on the flight line after flying a mission in the Viper. So from the article:

"These international exercises were intended to test the capabilities of SAGE. Large groups of bombers were assigned targets to “attack” in the United States, with the SAGE units controlling the response with fighters and ground-to-air missiles.The UK’s Royal Air Force, flying their new Vulcan bombers, got orders for the exercise, but the plucky Brits ignored some of the details. Flying their own attack profiles (essentially cheating) and using highly effective radar jammers, the Brits exposed wide gaps in SAGE capabilities. Despite a generally high success rate claimed for the fighters in “destroying” their targets, the best estimates were that only a quarter of the bombers were intercepted."
A lot of urban legend to that episode, but a fiction book describing it is :The Penetrators" by Anthony Gray. I went operational a year after it was published and a crusty senior pilot made me read it. You might recall that my flight commander at Deuce School was a Brit Lightning pilot. Was cool to get gear up, change frequency to our division and report up. Watch the gauges and confirm the datalink was working and call, "LimaLima 54( my actual callsign), Dolly sweet". Then hear a steady voice, "Roger, Majority( the SAGE division callsign) assumes control". If the datalink was bad, they used another freq and voice commands. And if that failed, we had BUIC or basic standalone sites for "close" control.

The computer description of our aircraft avionics is close, but the VooDoo did not have the ability to "couple" autopilot to the SAGE datalink like the one-0h-six. We had a crude position on the RIO's scope for the bogey position from us and my altimeter, heading indicator and airspeed/mach meter told me where to go. Nothing "digital", just the gauges jumping around. Nevertheless, the system was impressive and fairly jam resistant. More impressive to me was our radar, which had the genesis of spread spectrum technology with its hydraulically pumped magnetron that could vary our frequency over many megacyles and do so a thousand times a second. Made it really hard on the bogey EWO.

All this was done with tubes! And our intercept computer used mechanical gears like a fine wristwatch to portray my steering commands. Two years after I left NORAD the A-7D came along and used Apollo-related digital computers that were solid state, and inertial platforms were an order of magnitude more accurate than the ones in our early 60's ICBM's.

Link: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022...ever-heard-of/


Gums sends...

Gums there is a film on Youtube about it

https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/0...nses-credible/

Hey Gums, hope you are well.

My Dad was an AEO on Vulcans in the 50's and 60's, and they frequently did very well on these exercises in Canada and the USA. He never told me any details but they were apparently one of the top crews.

Many years later we had to make an unscheduled stop at Goose Bay*, and one of 'my Dad's' Vulcans is the gate guardian there.

* Ferrying an empty A330 with a gear problem.

Fascinating stuff, thanks for posting

Salute!

Always loved the looks of the Vulcan, and admired its high altitude capability according to it crews.

The book was published in 65, but was a direct result of the U.S. canceling Skybolt, which the U.K. was depending upon for penetration missions versus actually flying in all the way, Even with the Vulcan. So we Yanks went with the Hound Dog, then later, SRAM.

According to Wiki:
"The UK had decided to base its entire 1960s deterrent force on Skybolt, and its cancellation led to a major disagreement between the UK and US, known today as the "Skybolt Crisis". This was resolved by a series of meetings that led to the Royal Navy gaining the UGM-27 Polaris missile and construction of the Resolution-class submarines to launch them."

Gums sends...

The exercise was part of EX.SKY SHIELD in the early1960s. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sky_Shield

As for The Penetrators, of which I have a copy, all I can say is that it's 100% total garbage!

High level maneouvrability of the Vulcan was good - after a simulated head shot with Genie from a CF-101B during an impromptu exercise against CFB Chatham, we were soon in his six tracking very happily. Just wishing we'd had some AIM-9s or the like. Later we had a pub debrief - the taped intercom conversation between the Voodoo driver and his GIB was hilarious "How did'ya let something that big get behind us, you ****!!"

Happy times!!

While driving around McGuire Air Force Base 4-5 years ago, I spotted the massive SAGE building, which I did not know about at the time, but you could definitely tell it was something special with limited access points and no windows. Now used for other purposes, but the thing is massive.

Great read - thanks @gums for posting!

(from a bloke with an interest in ancient IT - old day job, old cold war ROC and 'post-cold war A2')

https://marconiradarhistory.pbworks....68412542/SLEWC

https://www.radarpages.co.uk/index.htm

Salute!

Back at BEagle!

Was interested when the video Nuts sent about the Vulcan "attack" noted that the two kills were by VooDoos.

Gotta tellya, sucker could not turn worth a hoot, but could climb as good or better than the Eagle or Viper, but maybe not as good as Lightning.

We only did snap ups against those high bandits and was fairly easy in the Voodoo for head shots. Our Aim-4D was great for a stable tgt, but nothing like the Limas I flew with years later - ask Mogs about Falklands. The launch process for the Aim-4's was a kludge compared to the 'winders, and the Top Gun shots are fairly accurate when I flew with them in the Viper in the 80's.

Somehow I always thot that big delta would have helped the Vulcan turn really well, but maybe it was gee and not AoA.

The part of Penetrators that is very accurate concerns flying over the missile fields. At Grand Forks we could pick out the various missile flight silos easily. Now bear in mind that the early installations had not time for the grass or wheat or sunflower plants to grow a few years. I also had problems a time or two trying to nail a buff due to his EWO. Dat is when the IR missile and system is priceless.

Gums sends...

First became aware of SAGE as a kid reading up on fighters like the F-106 but never realized it was such a huge and expensive undertaking - $Billions from 1958 - when the UK was still using WWII type map tables and backwards writing with chinograph in the 1970s !

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-A...nd_Environment





1970s RAF recruiting film:

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Defeating an AIM-7 shot from an RAF F-4 was fairly simple in the Vulcan if you detected the radar early enough - just pop up to around 52000 ft and fly a 45deg AoB turn and it would defeat the F-4 radar! Way above AIM-7 EIII snap up parameters too!

On Giant Voice '79 we had a low-level fighter box (about 300ft a.g.l) within which an attack would be made by ANG fighters. We stuck to the rules, but when one F-106 came in for a look-see I rolled to about 80 deg AoB and turned hard into him! I guess Buffs didn't do that because he went into full A/B and broke off to look for an easier target. Upset the navs though - they mumled about scanner tilt and loss of doppler or some other excuse......

The 'lima was just coming into RAF service when I left the F-4 world, but we also had Sidewinder Expanded Acquisition Mode (SEAM) which even with the earlier AIM-9s gave us a much better firing envelope.

Here you go gums

BEagle
It's not hard to understand your navs' concerns - after all, GV was primarily a bombing competition.

Thanks for posting that Gums - really interesting.
It's intriguing that cold war special weapon carrying aircraft were automated for control from the ground to the degree that they were.
Vulcan people, correct me if I am wrong, but the Vulcan's weapons system basically allowed for bombing run and weapon release to be entirely automatic at a pre-programmed point - right?
So beyond a certain point the crew were basically just along for the ride until the weapon was released?

We we’re still using the plotting table in the well at Buchan into the 1980s. It proved useful in that briefing the TPO to ensure that every Hostile/X-Ray within 150nm of the coast had a fighter block beside kept the MC off your back - regardless of what was happening in the air.

To be true full the same thing happened in the RAPDS era when the fighter plot positions entered by Saxa Vord bore little relationship to reality on many occasions , but it kept the execs at 11Gp and HQSTC happy.

I had one 2 star call up and suggest we move the QRA fighter 30 miles west to cover an expected penetration based on where Saxa had parked the label whilst they did practice intercepts on polar traffic to keep their hand in and keep the Q crew from being bored…

https://www.pprune.org/military-avia...DS#post5295248

“Where ignorance is bliss, Tis folly to be wise.”…

And on the subject of manual plotting tables for intercepts, here’s a fascinating instructional UK film from 1955. And more TLAs than you can shake a stick at!

AIR DEFENCE CONTROL AND REPORTING SYSTEMS

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....ddab150af8.jpg

Not really. The Nav Radar had to identify the target or an offset aiming point on the radar and put cross hairs on it. If the right switches were made the autopilot could then fly towards the release point. Again, if the right switches were made the bomb doors would open and release would occur at the computed point, based on the Nav radar continually improving the aim.

Just to bring it to the top again. You needed something the size of the Vulcan just to carry the kit let alone the bomb….

Tatjana van Vark ~ Navigation and Bombing System NBS

I believe that Pontius Navigator, in another thread, said that if everything was working and set up correctly, the crew could effectively bail out about 140 miles out.
As a ground avionics type, fairy, I know once the NBC, Calculator 3, had computed the forward throw it would generate 3 signals. The first was "lock out" when all changes that could effect the ballistics formula were ignored, the second was "doors", a finite time and finally "release". At height and depending on speed, the forward throw could be up to about 7 miles.