Rule Britannia!

[JasonJ]

I can't be the only one who doesn't know what that is.

[rmgill]

Handley Page Victor.

That's a B.1. This is a B.2 model.

Edited June 2, 2015 by rmgill

[JasonJ]

Handley Page Victor.

That's a B.1. This is a B.2 model.

 

Interesting looking bird. The front reminded me of the Bell X-1.

[rmgill]

The V bombers have a very British look about them.

[rmgill]

Lets see if that embeds properly...

Edited June 2, 2015 by rmgill

[rmgill]

[mnm]

Prostrate when you invoke the TSR-2!

 

Those of you who ever voted Labour, may you die of pubic lice infestation!

[Mr King]

[DougRichards]

I can't be the only one who doesn't know what that is.

 

Well Operation Corporate was the same year that you were born....

[Cinaruco]

 

I can't be the only one who doesn't know what that is.

 

Well Operation Corporate was the same year that you were born....

 

I thought the Black Buck raid was done by Vulkans alone. First time I've heard of these, and the role they played fueling the attacks. Always assumed they had used a KC-707/135s.

 

It was an strategic bomber refueled by another strategic bombers. Seems both sides had problems with mid air refueling, at their proportional force levels.

Edited June 3, 2015 by Andres Vera

[JasonJ]

 

I can't be the only one who doesn't know what that is.

 

Well Operation Corporate was the same year that you were born....

 

 

 

I can't be the only one who doesn't know what that is.

 

Well Operation Corporate was the same year that you were born....

 

I thought the Black Buck raid was done by Vulkans alone. First time I've heard of these, and the role they played fueling the attacks. Always assumed they had used a KC-707/135s.

 

 

At any rate, there is still much military stuff remaining to fill me in

[swerve]

 

I can't be the only one who doesn't know what that is.

 

Always assumed they had used a KC-707/135s.

 

 

The RAF's never used 'em. After the extraordinary decision to build all three contenders for the UK's nuclear bomber in the 1950s (the V-bombers - Valiant, Vulcan & Victor), Valiants, the lowest-performance type (I think ordered as a fall-back, in case the more advanced Victor & Vulcan failed, & was also first in service) soon started to be converted to the tanker role.

 

Some time later, the Valiants were found to be wearing out fast, apparently because of a problem with a new alloy used in wing spars, & perhaps because of flight profiles it wasn't designed for. Rather than rebuild to remove the weak points in the airframes, they were retired. The RAF gave up trying to do high altitude all the way nuclear bombing of the USSR, which meant the remaining V-bombers had to fly low - for which the Vulcan was best-suited. So Victor became the tanker, as well as the strategic recce role Stuart mentioned. Victor was good at that, being the fastest & highest-flying of the V-bombers, as well as the best-looking.

 

We later got ex-commercial VC-10 & Tristar airliners converted to tankers (in the UK), & now we have nice new A330-MRTTs.

Edited June 3, 2015 by swerve

[swerve]

Aaah, Handley Page! Best-looking bomber ever built.

[shep854]

"Victor was good at that, being the fastest & highest-flying of the V-bombers, as well as the best-looking."--swerve

Still, that's one of the saddest thing about the demise of the British aviation industry--their aircraft were certainly interesting, visually...

[Cinaruco]

"Victor was good at that, being the fastest & highest-flying of the V-bombers, as well as the best-looking."--swerve

Still, that's one of the saddest thing about the demise of the British aviation industry--their aircraft were certainly interesting, visually...

+1

 

And thanks for the info everyone.

[shep854]

"Filton airfield, which still dominates a large section of Bristol (including part of it which was demolished to stretch it for the Brabazon airliner) and its due to be completely dug up and replaced by, of all things, a housing estate."--Stuart Galbraith

All that flat, open land is prime real estate. Here in the US, there is an ongoing battle between airport operators and rapacious real-estate developers for the airport property. All too often, the developers win.

 

"Ming the Merciless's spacecraft..." S.G. Good one!

[swerve]

I think VC10 has been a massively underated aircraft outside the UK. Even the USN were using them in 2003 despite having alternatives, presumably because they liked the service. Perhaps they were handing out bumper stickers.

VC10 was great in some ways, but was crippled as an airliner by high operating costs, imposed on it by BOAC's requirement that it could serve all the short, rough, hot & high colonial & recently ex-colonial runways BOAC flew to - a requirement which was no longer needed by the time it got the aircraft, because of all the runway building in between, leading BOAC to try to reject it & hardly any others being sold.

 

The landing & take-off performance & robustness built in because of that requirement were useful in a tanker.

[rmgill]

 

We never used KC135. We ARE currently using RC135 to replace Nimrod in the electronic recce role till MOD gets its thumb out of its collective bottom.

Thumbs old chap. Thumbs. They inserted all of them when they disposed of aircraft before having replacements on flight line let alone on the drawing board.

[rmgill]

I always get a rather more Thunderbirds feel from the Large British aircraft. Interesting that so many seem to have engines in the wing roots as a design concept.

[shep854]

British military procurement reminds me of a taunt from my OCS days: "You must be a Communist plot sent to fuck up my Marine Corps!!"

Oft-times, your troubles seem deliberate...well, so do ours, but your lot have been at it a lot longer.

[rmgill]

British military procurement reminds me of a taunt from my OCS days: "You must be a Communist plot sent to fuck up my Marine Corps!!"

Oft-times, your troubles seem deliberate...well, so do ours, but your lot have been at it a lot longer.

Well, Labor and TSR.2 certainly seems like that.

 

"Hey lets sink millions into development then take all that work product, design experience and data and put it in a shredder!"

[BansheeOne]

In more depressing news, there was this in the Telegraph. My tinfoil hat says he is merely reflecting where the MOD is heading, even if he is talking a lot of tosh.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11642595/Break-up-the-RAF-and-stop-buying-British.html

 

This has been widely linked. Personally, "lot of tosh" doesn't begin to cover it. "We're doing worse than the French, so let's bin our defense industry, and let's buy American aircraft instead of the F-35 (which totally isn't American) and useless stuff like tanks and frigates." Because that's obviously how the French do it.

 

A look at ARRSE informed me that this guy is a former mine clearance diver lieutenant who left the RN rather than having to serve on a frigate to continue his career, and since has been peddling ideas about all naval needs being filled by helicopter-carrying vessels built to merchant ship standards, and hating on everything connected to BAe Systems for some reason. Obviously a British relative of Sparky.

[swerve]

Yeah. Page is full of shit. Stuff like "This wrecked the Navy’s plan to lease American F-18 catapult jets cheaply. F-18s are capable and inexpensive to run, so once we had some, we’d have used them for everything. The aged Tornado would have disappeared early, and nobody would have bothered using Eurofighters for anything." - all of which is totally imaginary, from the imaginary RN plan to lease F-8s to the imaginary scrapping of the (in-service, hundreds built or building before the catapult issue came up) Typhoon, to the idea that buying more C-17s (or at least, more than about two) would be possible without paying to re-start the production line, which would make A400M look cheap at double the price, & that 'leasing' newly built for us F-18E could be paid for by scrapping the existing, paid-for. with full support infrastructure, stocks of weapons integrated with them, stocks of spares, people trained to use them, etc. Tornadoes & Typhoons.

[zaarin7]

I still remember seeing the last intact TSR-2 at Duxford in 1999. A lost opportunity...

[DougRichards]

Should have been titled 'Meteor vs Tu-4 Bull'.

 

After all, that was the real threat.

 

Also makes you wonder how the Me 262 would have dealt with USAAF B-29s

Edited June 4, 2015 by DougRichards