Reply With Quote
An amazing story and example of overcoming the odds. The part about scavenging the spares was always surprising.
Great achievement by all the pilots as well.
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
An amazing story and example of overcoming the odds. The part about scavenging the spares was always surprising.
Great achievement by all the pilots as well.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
The book Black Buck One is well worth a read.
And a bit of Vangelis Chariots of Fire on the way home 😁
now it would prob be submarine launched cruise missiles or even drones as opposed to flying an obsolete bomber all that way and back. A B2 would also have done the same job. interesting how technology has changed warfare so rapidly
I think I remember from watching a programme about it that they didn't even have a map of the southern hemisphere handy so turned a map of the northern hemisphere upside down and used another country as the target?
It's all pretty amazing stuff but the refuelling plan always boggles my mind...
Truly amazing story
Vulcan 607 by Rowland White is a good read regarding the mission and build up.
It certainly set a marker for the start of things to come and was a logistical masterpiece.
Wonderful story and logistical nightmare.
Cheers,
Neil.
Pretty sure I have read that and it was a good read.Originally Posted by magpie215
For a slightly different take on that operation read Sea Harrier Over the Falklands: A Maverick at War by Commander Sharkey Ward. A very entertaining read but he wasn't so keen on the Vulcan raid. He thought the whole thing a huge waste of fuel and money as his Harriers were already there and would have done a better job. His view was that the RAF were feeling a bit left out of the war and wanted to be seen to do something. Can't beat a bit of inter service rivalry.
It may well have been a mastery of endurance and logistics but IIRC didn't the first raid miss the airfield altogether or just clip one corner of it?
Last edited by Wimm; 10th August 2023 at 22:37.
They put 1 bomb from a 21 bomb stick right on the middle of the runway rendering it useless for fast jet operations...they continued to operate Hercules transports off it though.
I'm pretty sure it would just be impossible. I don't think there are any cruise missiles, drones or anything else with that sort of range. We've still got the refuelling capacity in our Voyager fleet, but we lack the long range bomber, or even the medium range bomber, let alone with low level capability.
For Runway destruction you need something capapable of punching through the surface and detonating underneath....not sure we have anything in our toolkit for that sort of mission these days?
On a timeline, the Falklands war is closer to WWII than to today.
Someone who lies about the little things will lie about the big things too.
Although the airstrip was the target, maybe there was a second point to the raid, to show that we could fly a nuclear capable bomber as far as Argentina.
my earlier point was it's stunning how technology has changed the game. 1 bomb out of 21? So only 5% but with the advent of precision guided munitions 21 wouldnt be needed just fewer of the right sort of cratering munition delivered precisely. Only needed 1 x tanker stop not to work and that raid was cancelled.
That was a second raid, the first raid was the one that hit the runway.
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
Technology has changed the game and that’s the way the planners and buyers look at it, but they forget one big point, war is messy and Afghan and the current Ukraine situation should send alarm bells ringing in Whitehall. Nobody foresaw that the army would be fighting with bayonets in the last 10 years, nobody thought someone would be fighting a war of attrition tank and defensive war in 2023. Our forces of today are equipped with some smart kit but we don’t have enough of anything of substance to fight a war and as there is no votes in defence spending it never will be. The UK takes the moral high ground saying we contribute our 2% defensive spending to meet our NATO commitments but that 2% includes pensions and everything they can lump into it to make up the figures.
Sorry that’s a bit of a rant, but it winds me up that we’ve become the little man mouthing it off and hiding behind America when someone says Boo. Someone forgot to tell government that we no longer have an empire to fall back on for cannon fodder.
Sent from my iPhone using TZ-UK mobile app
True that all sorts of things are lumped into Defence spending but it's the same for all across NATO. You can read both the NATO and UK definitions of what is included HERE (Page 11 onwards).
That’s why we’re in NATO, we singularly don’t need to be on our own and we don’t hide behind America either.
One thing that the Ukraine war has shown us is that in a ‘conventional’ war a collective NATO would have wiped the floor with an aggressive Russia trying to roll across Europe.
If anything, Ukraine is fighting a war in the way you describe because it’s the only way Russia knows. We should give the heads of the armed services and the collective support structure a bit more credit in preparing for military threats.
One thing Russia is expert at is gaining influence through non-military means, something you can’t counter with ‘boots on the ground’, defence is about more than tanks and troops, valuable as they are.
We should remember as well that Ukraine has nowhere near the best of what NATO has access to.
Back with the Falklands, one of my old bosses was a Navy Captain who was a helicopter pilot in the conflict, he was lifting people off burning ships but also leading offensive raids on Argentine artillery positions. A brave man, along with all the other brave men and women who were taken from normal service life and inserted into a hell hole that is war. I salute them all.
At the time of the war, was working with someone (probably late fifties, overweight pipe-smoker) who was worried he would be called up because he was a radio ‘ham’ and thought his expertise (morse etc) might be useful
What an achievement, the Vulcan is quite an evocotive aircraft, spending today here https://www.nelsam.org.uk/Exhibits/Outside/
In theory a polaris missile could have been given a conventional warhead .
But there a few difficulties , using cold war sub launched munitions for conventional warfare at that time could have lead to political troubles whether a conventional warhead was feasible and tested or not ( it probably was but the polaris payload capability is still classified I believe , regardless probably about 500kg of high explosive orbital warhead might have been useful assuming they were accurate enough … probably not I suspect) .
That's an interesting thought. But as you suspect, not accurate enough. Just googled this:
https://www.newarab.com/opinion/pola...uclear-weapons
"Polaris was accurate to around 2-3km at its maximum range of 4,600km. This meant that the British and American submarines could patrol large potential launch zones in the Arctic or open ocean while keeping many Soviet cities under threat to maintain deterrence. However, they were not accurate enough to credibly target specific military facilities as a first-strike capability, being designed instead to be able to threaten a level of devastation upon cities"
These days cruise missiles would do the job very nicely I'm sure.
Went to see the vulcan and they let you into the cockpit,sit in the seats,its a tiny space
And no ejection seats for 3 of the crewWent to see the vulcan and they let you into the cockpit,sit in the seats,its a tiny space
From what little I've read, it's reported there was quite a degree of frustration among the British forces on the ground in Afghanistan, because without US support, collaboration, leadership the British forces simply couldn't achieve any strategic goals. I would imagine this pertains pretty much globally, applies across battlefields. I shouldn't think it does morale a lot of good.
It would seem only sensible to face facts such as this, though I've no personal military experience.
Well, Afghanistan was really America leading a coalition, so not surprising it revolved around them.
America is a key NATO player, that’s just a fact, and it’s always about collaboration and working together, the various annual exercises are all about practising exactly that. There’s more goes on behind the scenes to ensure it works as a deterrent as well as being a credible force should it ever be needed than perhaps people realise.
I think THE key NATO player don't you, if we're being honest... after all Ben Wallace claims he didn't get the NATO job because the Septics wanted the incumbent Stoltenburg, to stay in role at least until 2024 and BW wouldn't fib or spin, now would he...Probably NATO, the Row, dodged a Wallace/ British shaped bullet there, again if we're being honest... if only because of our tendency to see everything through the perspective of Empire.
Where America leads the UK tends to follow without really thinking it through, IRAQ another example...it's almost as if there's a special relationship, bit like a dog owner and dog.
Last edited by Passenger; 14th August 2023 at 13:19.
Yep, don’t disagree with much of that.
I’d love to say more, but as it’s the G&D etc. :-)
The Vulcan's R88 camera clock was a manual-wind 15-jewel Smiths watch movement.
Same as Hillary took to the summit of Everest in 1953. (Not sure if I've mentioned that last bit before?)
Posting Permissions
