The SPIRIT of BRITAIN - AVRO VULCAN bomber! Explained by CAPTAIN JOE

Video from the channel Captain Joe about Avro Vulcan, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 12:45. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Footage recorded at the Avro Heritage Museum on the site of the former Woodford aerodrome in the United Kingdom, in front of a Vulcan B2. It covers the bomber's origins, its role in the Cold War, its most famous mission and its current status.

The Vulcan was a high-altitude strategic bomber with a delta wing and no horizontal tail. It was operated by the Royal Air Force from 1956 to 1984. It formed the V bomber force alongside the Vickers Valiant and the Handley Page Victor, a force that peaked in June 1964 with 50 Valiants, 70 Vulcans and 39 Victors. Roy Chadwick, who had designed the Lancaster, was its chief designer. It answered specification B.35/46: carry a 10,000-pound bomb 1,500 nautical miles at 500 knots and between 35,000 and 50,000 feet, or a 20,000-pound conventional load. The first B1 entered RAF service in 1956 and the B2 in 1960. During the Cold War, squadrons had to be airborne within four minutes, and during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis aircraft stood on the runway with engines running.

In 1982, after the Argentine invasion of the Falklands ordered by Leopoldo Galtieri, the RAF restored the Vulcan's air-to-air refuelling capability within three weeks. From Ascension Island, eleven Victors refuelled a single Vulcan, which closed to 300 feet to evade radar. It climbed to 10,000 feet before the target and dropped 21 bombs; the first one hit Stanley's runway. It was among the B2's last significant missions. Between 1984 and 2015, a handful of airframes kept flying at airshows; the last was XH558, "Spirit of Britain", kept airworthy with £2.5 million raised from the public. Its four Olympus engines produced the type's characteristic howl. Today it cannot fly: the civil aviation authority will not grant it airworthiness because its hydraulic systems lack redundancy.