La historia del Avro Vulcan: cómo nació una leyenda… y cómo terminó

Video from the channel Dwayne's Aviation en Español about Avro Vulcan, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 14:54. Language: Spanish. Video type: Documentary.

Documentary about the Avro Vulcan, the delta-wing bomber built so Britain could carry its nuclear weapons into Soviet airspace. It covers its origins, capabilities, adaptation to new threats, variants and operational history up to retirement.

After the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in 1949, and following the 1946 McMahon Act, which cut off nuclear information-sharing with the United States, Clement Attlee's government approved its own atomic programme in January 1947, led by William Penney. What was missing was a way to deliver the bomb: the Avro Lincoln was outdated and the Canberra could not carry the Blue Danube, which weighed over 10,000 pounds. The Air Ministry's 1946 specification B.35/46 gave rise to the three V bombers: Valiant, Victor and Vulcan. The shooting down of Gary Powers' U-2 by a Soviet missile on 1 May 1960 led the RAF to abandon high-altitude penetration and train its bombers for low-level flight instead.

Four Rolls-Royce Olympus turbojets, a ceiling above 55,000 feet, cruise at Mach 0.85 and a bay for 21 1,000-pound bombs or one Blue Danube; it later carried the Blue Steel missile. Five crew flew aboard, with the pilots in Martin-Baker ejection seats. The B1 entered service in 1956; the B2 increased the wingspan to 111 feet and added air-to-air refuelling and low-level camouflage. There were B2 MRR maritime reconnaissance versions and the K2 tanker, readied in 51 days in 1982, the year of Operation Black Buck from Ascension Island to the Falklands.