10 Incredible features of the Avro Vulcan bomber

Of these, the Vulcan is the best known. Despite the grim primary reason for the Avro Vulcan bomber – nuclear warfare – the charismatic aircraft was, and is, much loved.  Famous for its thunderous roar, massive delta wing and spritely performance, it developed a cult of devoted fans likely to last for hundreds of years.

The aircraft was a remarkable achievement, even more so considering work began as early as the 1940s.  Here are ten incredible features of the Vulcan bomber:

10: Timing

It is often noted that there were a mere ten years between the introduction of the angular Avro Lancaster bomber to the RAF in 1942, and the space-age Vulcan’s first flight on 30 August 1952. There is a reason this is often repeated, as this was an incredible achievement; in this short period, Avro had leapt from 282 mph bombers to ones capable of 646 mph!

Sir Sydney Camm, designer of the Hawker Hurricane, said of the cancelled TSR-2 bomber: “All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height, and politics. TSR-2 simply got the first three right.” Camm missed out another important dimension: time. As well as getting the four dimensions Camm mentioned right, the Avro Vulcan also enjoyed excellent timing.

Another aspect of the Vulcan’s immaculate timing was that it was available as a part of the British independent nuclear deterrent force in the late 1950s, two years ahead of the Handley Page Victor. The Vulcan appeared at a critical moment in the Cold War.

The Vulcan was also lucky in arriving early enough to miss the controversial 1957 Defence White Paper, which (prematurely) decreed manned military aircraft obsolete. This paper effectively ended work on the later (Mach 3-capable) Avro 730 bomber/ reconnaissance aircraft.

9: Blue Steel

Despite the Vulcan’s impressive performance, the RAF knew the bomber would still be vulnerable to a new generation of Soviet surface-to-air missiles and air defence fighters. Flying directly over a well-defended target was particularly dangerous; what was needed was a ‘stand-off’ weapon launched a safer distance away from the target.

Avro, the manufacturer of the Vulcan, responded to this requirement by creating the Blue Steel missile. Blue Steel was part of the Rainbow Code series of names for British military projects, which included the rather brilliantly named Indigo Corkscrew.

Blue Steel was a rocket-propelled nuclear-armed missile launched from beneath the Vulcan. It was a massive weapon, 10.7 m (35 ft) long and weighing over three tons. Its warhead was the terrifying Red Snow thermonuclear weapon with a destructive effect akin to over one million tons of TNT.

The missile could reach colossal speeds of up to Mach 3. Blue Steel was only in service for seven years, in which it proved unreliable and cumbersome to prepare. It was retired on 31 December 1970, when the United Kingdom’s strategic nuclear capacity passed to the Royal Navy’s Polaris submarine fleet.

8: Performance

The Vulcan remains much loved, and much of this affection comes from what an impressive airshow performer it was, thanks to its dramatic cloaked appearance, thunderous car-alarm-inducing howl and sparkling performance. Whereas most bombers are rather sluggish, the Vulcan handled more like a giant fighter.

The low wing loading (the amount of wing area compared to overall weight) and relatively high-thrust-to-weight ratio imbued the Vulcan with astonishing manoeuvrability for an aircraft of its size and weight, especially at high altitudes. At higher altitudes, the Vulcan proved a frustratingly manoeuvrable target for fighter aircraft practicing intercepts.

Its high-altitude performance was truly remarkable, with reports of aircraft reaching as high 60,000 feet (18,288 metres). The Vulcan was faster than the US Boeing B-52 Stratofortress and had the range to hit targets in the Soviet Union from bases in Britain.

Other benefits of the Vulcan’s big wing and great power included an impressively short runway performance. The combination of powerful engines with an especially lightly loaded aircraft ensured a spectacular airshow performance. Unusually for a large aircraft of the time, and telling of its handling, it was controlled by a fighter-style stick rather than a large control yoke (see photo).

7: The sound!

Ask anyone who was lucky enough to see the Vulcan in flight (or even witnessed the testing the engines on the ground, for that matter), and they will be enthused about its thunderous noise. The Vulcan’s raucous howl was a beguiling thing – but what caused the Vulcan’s wonderful noise, and distinctive howl?

We spoke to Michael Carley, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Bath, whose main research interests are aeroacoustics and numerical modelling of vortex-dominated flows and acoustics. Meaning he is the perfect person to answer this question.

According to Carley, “The Vulcan engine is loud because it is small. Jet engines generate thrust from the product of mass flow rate and exhaust velocity. If your engine is small, the exhaust velocity needs to be large for a given thrust, and noise increases very rapidly with jet exhaust speed (that is one reason why modern aircraft use two large engines rather than four smaller ones, if they can).”

“The howl comes from acoustic resonance in the air intakes. This gets compared to the sound you hear when you blow over the top of a bottle, but a better comparison might be to the sound from the wind when it blows over cavities and round buildings, to the exhaust or intake noise from a high-performance car or bike, or at a push, to some musical instruments.”

6: QRA

The Royal Air Force had a large number of Vulcans in the 1960s, offering a formidable deterrent force. Nine frontline squadrons and one training unit were equipped with the type. From 1962, The V-Force reached a heightened state of operational readiness with the Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) status.

This meant one bomber from each squadron was always theoretically at ‘cockpit readiness’ (this was later increased to two). If news of an attack on the UK or the start of nuclear hostilities, the QRA aircraft would be in the air to counterattack in minutes.

The Vulcan was arguably the best of the V-Force bombers for Quick Reaction Alert. It could start all four of its engines, with flight instruments and flying controls brought online, in twenty seconds at the touch of a single button.

When we spoke to former RAF Vulcan navigator Mike Looseley he noted of the quick start, “It originally could be initiated by the crew chief from the power set outside the aircraft, but after an unfortunate event involving lost aircraft door keys, we didn’t do that much.”

5: Operation Black Buck

When RAF Vulcans carried out the Operation Black Buck attacks on targets in the Falklands Islands in 1982, they were the longest-distance bombing raids ever conducted. The target was Port Stanley airfield and its defences, a staggering 7600 miles (12,200 km) and 16-hour round-trip.

If this wasn’t already hard enough, the RAF Vulcans were close to retirement and ill-equipped for modern warfare. Many of the parts needed were not fitted, and parts were scrounged from any available source, including a museum! Black Buck was launched from RAF Ascension Island, a volcanic island in the South Atlantic Ocean. The mission required an incredibly complex air refuelling plan.

There was no guarantee of success, and the Vulcan had not yet been tested in combat. It would face formidable air defences. Armed with unguided bombs and Shrike anti-radar missiles, the Black Buck missions overcame almost catastrophic bad luck to succeed in what was and may remain, the most complex air attack mission plan.

Despite the odds, five of the seven Black Buck missions succeeded in making attacks. The Black Buck missions are somewhat controversial, with some believing the massive effort was pointless and others that the raids had a powerful deterrent effect on Argentinian military actions.

4: Testbed

The Vulcan’s high ground clearance, relatively high top speed and excellent high-altitude performance made it a handy platform for the testing of high-performance jet engines. In this way, the Vulcan has made massive contributions to three extremely significant aircraft projects, two military and one civil.

One of the most technologically daunting tasks of creating the Concorde supersonic airliner was designing its remarkable engines. In 1966, the Vulcan air-tested Concorde’s Olympus 593. The 593 was an evolution of the engine developed for Britain’s cancelled bomber, the supersonic TSR-2, which also benefitted from engine testbed work performed by the Vulcan.

The Vulcan greatly contributed to the development programme of the Panavia Tornado fighter-bomber. The Tornado’s Turbo Union RB199 turbofan engine (pictured) was flight-tested using an Avro Vulcan with the engine installed in a nacelle representative of that of the Tornado aircraft. The Vulcan first flew with the RB199 nacelle fitted in 1972.

Another Tornado technology tested on the Avro Vulcan was the Mauser 27mm automatic cannon used on the Panavia Tornado (and later Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jet, Saab Gripen and Eurofighter Typhoon). The gun was fitted along with the RB199 nacelle to test gun gas ingestion.

3: Avro 707

At the time of the Vulcan’s development, little was known about the qualities of delta (triangular) wings. While the delta wing offered potential advantages both structurally and aerodynamically at higher speeds, some very serious questions relating to safety and handling at lower speeds remained.

As well as being a delta, the proposed bomber was tailless. A tailless aircraft has no other horizontal aerodynamic surface besides its main wing. Tailless aircraft offered a decrease in drag and were very fashionable at the time, with many being impressed by the speeds achieved by the tailless Messerschmitt Me 163 of World War II.

Tailless aircraft had been flown in the early 20th century by the aviation innovator (and philosopher) J. W. Dunne, but high-speed jets were a new breed. To research the flying qualities of the tailless delta for the Vulcan project, Avro built the 707 experimental aircraft series.

The 707 was 1/3 the size of the Vulcan. The first 707 flew on 4 September 1949. However, 26 days later, during a test flight, the first prototype crashed near Blackbushe. Squadron Leader Samuel Eric Esler, DFC, AE was killed. Five 707s were built in total, and they explored various aspects of tailless delta flight.

2: Wing

The Vulcan was one of the first delta-winged aircraft to enter operational service. It entered service in September 1956, following the service entry of two delta fighters: the British Gloster Javelin in February and the US Convair F-102 in April.  Delta wings offer great strength and a large internal volume which can contain fuel or engines (both in the case of the Vulcan). The Vulcan’s iconic triangular or ‘delta’ wing is its most distinctive feature; this vast structure has an area of 3554 sq ft (330.2 m2).

The delta wing is a highly unusual feature for an aircraft that travels slower than the speed of sound, like the Vulcan. One of the reasons the delta was adopted was that it allowed the required stiffness using the trusted manufacturing techniques then known; the rival Victor’s crescent wing required the development of spot-welded honeycomb structures.

Early Vulcans had a straight leading edge (the front of the wing that first contacts the air). This had aerodynamic issues, so was replaced with a kinked leading edge for the B.1 and B.1A variants. The B.2 took this approach further and increased the overall wing area.

1: Sky Shield

In the early 1960s, NORAD (North American Air Defense) Command and CONAD (Continental Air Defense) wanted to determine how well North America could defend itself from large-scale attacks from the air. Exercise Sky Shield was held to answer this important question, a vast training exercise involving hundreds of aircraft simulating intruding Soviet bombers.

RAF Avro Vulcan B.2s participated in Sky Shield II in 1961, simulating Soviet heavy bombers operating at extremely high altitudes – 56,000 ft (17,000 m), while B-52 simultaneously attacked at 35,000–42,000 ft (11,000–13,000 m) along with lower-level B-47 Stratojets.

The Vulcans combined the high altitude with extremely effective electronic jamming to evade successful detection. A 27 Sqn Vulcan, flying from Bermuda, evaded the defending USAF F-102 Delta Dagger interceptors, and effortlessly landed at Plattsburgh Air Force Base, New York. A northern force of four Vulcans also did well, with all their aircraft landing in Newfoundland.

Not a single Vulcan was ‘lost’ to defending forces, and there was very little in the way of successfully detecting the Vulcans. Sky Shield II was a massive feather in the cap for the Vulcan force, and a huge wake-up call for NORAD. It wasn’t until 1997 that most of the Sky Shield II results were declassified: no more than one-fourth of bombers in Sky Shield II would have been intercepted, and none of the Vulcans.

The Vulcan was retired from RAF service in 1984; one (XH558) went on being operated for display purposes until 1993. It was restored by a civilian team, which operated it at air displays between 2008 and 2015. It now resides at Doncaster Sheffield Airport.