Vulcan 607

By the mid-1970s the Avro Vulcans were starting to show weariness and the entire Vulcan force was scheduled to be retired by June 1982, to be replaced in the low-level role by the Tornado GR.1. However, in April of that year, the Vulcan bomber was called into combat for the first and last time, in the eleventh hour of its career, to fight in combat.

"Vulcan 607" by Rowland White tells the story of the "Black Buck" mission to bomb the runway at Port Stanley in the Falkland Isles. At the time it was the longest bombing raid in history, and the story of how the elderly Vulcan bomber’s acheived it is a fascinating one.

The British Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic had just been occupied by forces of Argentina's military junta. Public support for military rule there had been fading, and so the leadership decided to engage in popular theatrics. Argentina had never been happy about Britain's long-standing occupation of the Falklands, or Malvinas as the islands were known in Argentina, and it seemed like an easy enough exercise. The islands were small, the main industry being sheepherding, and the British would find conducting a military campaign over such enormous distance expensive and risky. Obviously, Britain would do no more than bluster.

This was underestimating British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in a way that even her most contemptuous enemies back home wouldn't have considered, and after ultimatums were ignored, Britain's military machine went into high gear, throwing together a counter-invasion fleet in a round-the-clock effort.

The Vulcan bomber was also seen as a useful asset for the conflict. Five B.2s were selected to fly under Number 101 Squadron in the "Black Buck" campaign, as it was named, with a mad scramble to get the aircraft ready for operation. The idea was to operate the Vulcans out of Wideawake airfield on Ascension Island in the mid-Atlantic for strikes on the Falklands. Even from Ascension, it was a long journey and Victor tankers would be needed in stages to provide inflight refueling support.

Vulcans had rarely if ever performed inflight refueling since the end of QRA, the concept not being necessary under the tactical operational doctrine in effect, and not only were crews untrained in the procedure, the inflight refueling gear was in a nonfunctional and, in some cases, incomplete state. Getting it into working condition was put on the top of the priority list, with a Vulcan on static display at Castle Air Force Base in California even looted for components. Aircrews trained at inflight refuelings, including night refuelings. It wasn't possible to get everything working perfectly, with fuel spills from the creaky refueling system flooding the windscreen, but a set of flanges were improvised and fitted on the nose of each aircraft to splash away the spilled fuel. A sixth crew member was added for the Black Buck missions to help with the multiple refuelings.

All the B.2s selected for the campaign were those built with Olympus 301 engines. The engines had been thrust-limited to 90% maximum to extend operational life, but the limiters were now removed. The five B.2s also had Skybolt pylon hardware; since the existing countermeasures system didn't completely blanket Argentine defensive radars on the Falklands, a US-built AN/ALQ-101 jammer pod obtained from the Buccaneer fleet was fitted to one pylon. The aircraft were also fitted with a Carousel inertial navigation system, scavenged from surplus Vickers Super VC10 airliners, and were painted dark gray underneath for night bombing.

The initial mission in the series, Black Buck 1, was performed on 30 April:1 May 1982, with a Vulcan B.2 under the command of Flight Lieutenant Martin Withers flying from Ascension to come in towards the Falklands at low level, then pop up to drop a full string of 21 450 kilogram (1,000 pound) bombs across the runway of Port Stanley airport. The mission covered a round-trip distance of 12,070 kilometers (7,500 miles) and lasted almost 16 hours. It involved two Vulcan bombers, one as a backup, and 15 Victor tankers in all.

When my wife bought Vulcan 607 by Rowland White, I couldn’t put it down. I started reading it in the early evening, and I was still there until I finished it some seven hours later at 1am! Some reviewers have commented on the overblown prose - others have said that it’s too long. But that’s being picky. For anyone with even a passing interest this is a great book that entertains and informs like few that I have read. For the purposes of this review I re-read it, and enjoyed it just as much the second time. Even my wife, no Aviation enthusiast, is reading and enjoying it, just as an exciting story. If you don’t have it in your collection yet, I’d absolutely recommend it!