Guided tour through an Avro Vulcan + engine run!

Video from the channel Paul Stewart about Avro Vulcan, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 19:52. Language: English. Video type: Onboard.

A guided tour of the Avro Vulcan XH558, the first B.2 delivered to the RAF and the last Vulcan to fly, in October 2015. The tour runs from nose to tail on the outside, then enters the crew's lower station and climbs up to the pilots' cockpit. In between, footage of an engine test run is intercut, showing the bomb bay doors opening and the air brakes deploying.

Outside, the in-flight refuelling probe, the ventral sighting blister, the nose landing gear and the intakes with their boundary-layer splitter plate — the source of the aircraft's characteristic howl at full power — can all be seen. Also shown are the four Bristol Siddeley Olympus turbojets, the tail electronic countermeasures pod, the K.2 tanker equipment, the eight delta-wing elevons, the tie-down points, the main landing gear, the APU, the ram air turbine and the bomb bay, capable of carrying 21 1,000-pound bombs or one nuclear bomb. Inside, the three rear crew stations without ejection seats (radar navigator, plotter navigator and air electronics officer), the quick-start buttons, the nuclear flash curtains and the pilots' controls are all visible.

After Gary Powers' U-2 was shot down, the Vulcan switched from high-altitude penetration to low-level flight. It took part in the Falklands War, where XM598 had to turn back because a window would not close, and left active service in March 1984.