Its amazing when a British aircraft resembles my old ladies favorite sex toy! Lol

Well said 👏

It looks like something Gerry Anderson would come up with for his puppet show "Thunderbirds".

The Victor touched on being supersonic, but the pilots were discouraged from trying.

The Russians didn't flinch - They where wiser than the Americans and stepped down.

The Soviets with their policy of Communist expansionism, caused the entire problem by placing missiles on Cuba. Without that there would have been no problems whatever!

@@stewartw.9151 I think the Russians viewed it as problem, that the Yanks stationed nukes in Turkey long before Cuba.

@eddie money Well here you are again 'laughing' at the UK? Yank twat. Well go read the biography of one Nikita Kruschev and in that book you will see it was the RAF Vulcans that made him think twice. Just remember he knew how the RAF and the UK had helped Russia two weeks after his country was invaded, he remembered how we gave them 3,000 Hurricane fighters and 3,400 tanks starting 2 weeks after Barbarossa and he knew how good the RAF were having seen what they did to Germany. He was never impressed by the USAF. He was very disinclined to engage in hostilities with the UK and he knew the RAF would get through no matter what.

@@HauntedXXXPancake Kennedy's Bay of Pigs fiasco was the trigger. The USA's foreign policymakers always seem to be somewhat inept.

Chris B I've been in the downstream wake of a Vulcan and Concord and the Vulcan shook me the most by far.

I remember when we used to have the air shows at Filton, and the Vulcan did a touch and go, the noise and pressure waves were like nothing else.

I'll second that. I have actually seen (and heard) all three V Bombers (Vulcan, Victor, Valiant) in Vee formation with the Vulcan in the lead, way back in the late fifties, when they flew at very low level over Southsea (UK) beach - right over the top of me and continued on over the Isle of Wight. It was AWESOME! I will never forget that sight and sound.

Amen to that. The vulcan howl was something that would shake the fillings out of your teeth...

@@peterendall7935 I used to sell hot dogs at the air shows in the Summers, hearing and seeing the Vulcan run with fake bombing was unbelievable I used to shout out "last chance to eat a hot dog before you get wiped out" and I used to swap hot dogs for small plane rides with pilots - later lucky enough to fly as a private pilot... Marvellous British engineering I have a terrain following radar unit (pod) and some HS2 and an autopilot from early Vulcans in my collection

Actually there is Vulcan featured in a Bond movie : Thunderball

@Dmitri Kozlowsky : So how an aircraft LOOKS is all that's important ?

@@pasoundman form follows function and in aviation if it looks right is usually is right .

@@pauldavidson6321 : Not much hope for the F-35 then !

@@pauldavidson6321 TBH that's very simplistic statement.

Lucky fellow!

Good job Krushchev and a Russian submariner also kept their cool.

Because he didnt listen to the CIA

great again....yeah...

Patrick Tuohy . Saved. That is a comment from a wannabe who knows very little about the military relationship between the US and Oz. The pacific campaign would have been hugely different without our commitment. The yanks finally got into the fight (both World Wars) late and still need help to this day. Korea, Vietnam, The Gulf, South China Sea.

I suspect that there are many other (former) small boys who remember these tales from the Waddington area. In the early 70's I lived in nearby RAF Digby and would listen to the Vulcans scrambling into the sky and roaring away for what seemed like ages. I'm an old-ish man now and the roar of an aircraft in the distance still sends me back to my boyhood and my thoughts of where those aeroplanes and men were going.

Elihu, tell us about the performance of the BAC Lightning compared to it's allied contemporaries. That'll probably wind the Americans up too, I imagine ;O)

Elihu haha waw man brits are the reason the yanks got their firs jet turbine engine

@Patrick Tuohy hey friend like the young aussie software engineer who worked at weapons research in OZ helped reprogram the combat, software on the f18s we bought from US (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F/A-18_Hornet_in_Australian_service) a resultthe US has v etoed any medlling with the f35 sotware asthe Oz versikon was better than yours Also our Jindalee OTHR www.baesystems.com/en-aus/feature/seeing-over-the-horizon Yanks told us they had tried it and it would not work! Tom Suttie the English Prof. was active in UK WW 11 aircraft detection of uboats on the surfacewas in Alice Springs at the Mt Everard receivers, a mile of antennas, you can get a bird eye view on Google earth about 12 miles along the Tanami highway off the Stuart Hwy nth of Alice Springs I believe it can detect the waves in the South China sea and show wich wayh the wind is blowing.

Careful monitoring of airframe hours and sensible upgrades could've kept the B2 force viable. The proposed B3 would've been better though.

jeffrey skoritowski, as with any aircraft careful use and monitoring of airframe hours and conditions could, theoretically keep an aircraft in service, the B-52 is a prime example of superb engineering, upgrades and modifications and a lot of TLC, unfortunately a lot of aircraft just become redundant when they are outperformed by newer more “snazzy “ types, a real shame that it happens, but inevitable.

I loved the sight of the test pilot for the first flight of the Vulcan heading out to the aircraft in his office suit.

Yes, the idiots in charge of budgets in the UK refused to retrofit the ejection seat design for the v bombers.

Or Star Wars

@11:24

When I was on Victors we visited Offutt regularly - I managed to get on three trips there - great days

Only over the last decade has it been released or revealed by this doci and other print and TV studies that the RAF, V bombers were part of the SIOP an integrated RAF/USAF strategic targeting plan which would have included various USAF aircraft B47 and RAF Thor ICBM installed in the UK ( UK , PM MacMillan offered the removal of the 6O Thor ICBMs as a bargaining offer, JFK could trade with the Soviets). The RAF V bombers were somewhat less ready than planned, the Blue Steel so called standoff HP powered rocket missile was not operational on the Victors and Vulcans until the following year and we're still armed with British free fall Nuclear and Hydrogen bombs in 1962 and the Valiants possibly at the highest state of readiness for a probing RAF first warning strike ( the UK was much closer than the US to most sig Soviet targets) were probably ready to go and dispersed with USAF released standard 10 kiliton nuclear bombs quite possibly to attempt to take a wide range of oil and small city targets around the Baku and Caspian Sea in an attempt to eliminate much of the Soviet oil reserves as a UK warning shot. The British public were largely or entirely unaware of the UK involvement in the US/ NATO build up.Evacuation of the population was considered pointless in the nuclear age and with only 3 Lightning fighter squadrons for point defence the UK would have relied on USAF fighters at USAF based in the UK The only two implemented or planned moves during the Cuban missile crisis month were to move the paintings on the Tate to Wales and the London Zoo Tigers to Wales too.

When I was a young lad I went with my parents to an airshow at RAF Finingley near Doncaster. As part of it's air demonstration it used to come over the airfield low and slow and as it got halfway done the runway it would get full power on and go into a vertical climb and the noise and power used to make the ground and my chest vibrate and at that time it blew all the windows out of the houses and after that the RAF weren't allowed to it again!!!!!

The Victor still looks ultra modern and futuristic I think, poor Valiant though she gets forgotten a lot. Yeah, she had problems and was just a stop gap made in a rush and thus had a short life but it was only about 10 years from going from Lancasters to the Valiant, a high altitude and high speed jet bomber flying. So she deserves respect and admiration I think.

@@Tuberuser187 The valiant was a nice looking plane though more conventional it was still ultra modern plane at the time, it was used to test the first British H bomb, and it was used in the suzie's crises and proved its worth

Many years ago, when we had a local RAF airfield and they used to put on air shows in September, they used to feature Vulcans in a four aircraft scramble. Four Vulcans into the air in two minutes. The noise was incredible, everything was shaking, probably the most impressive thing I've ever seen.

@@rogueriderhood1862 Wow! That would have been amazing to see and hear.

@John Cliff Yes, an amazing spectacle and one we'll never see again. The RAF is just a tactical air force these days.

The Wright Brothers were true geniuses of the kind that comes only one or two times a century, if humanity is lucky. They are always celebrated national hero's of whichever country they happened to be born in just as inventors like Westinghouse Bell, the Wright brothers. For some reason there was an explosion of these geniuses around this time. Don't forget the Wright's not only invented the aircraft but also Acer nautical engineering at the same time, with their invention of the wind tunnel and scientific approach to airplanes and flight. Actually I think that was their true genius and breakthrough, the wing and aircraft and aircraft stability and control then followed as a natural evolution. Seems like it to me anyway, that the wind tunnel was the tool and key that revealed all the secrets of flight hidden from view, and understanding, since that moment. Now that is some kind of productive play.

@@jamesm.taylor6928 - Have I written something that contradicts what you write ?. The first time I became interested in the two brothers was when I got my first loan card for the school library, in August 1970. So I think I have read most of what is known about the good boys.

Gonna call BS as the success rate for the simulated Soviets in those exercises was at least 75%. The Vulcans with their advanced electronic jammers fared better at 88% although only eight participated. So it is doubtful that anyone involved on the defense side would boast "it couldn't happen again". And the Soviets could absolutely see and likely destroy Vulcans considering they shot down a U-2 in 1960 flying at over 70,000 feet - well above the service ceiling of the Vulcan. If Khrushchev was particularly worried about the Vulcan, it just shows how dumb he was considering the UK had less than 50 nuclear weapons in 1960 while the US had over 18,000 with thousands of bombers along with ICBMs which are far more difficult to intercept.

@@AhpgZfoc4s So let me get this right? You say the success was better than I suggested and therefore its bullshit? Not sure I follow the logic. As for the USAF saying it couldn't happen again well they did and to prove it ran the exercise again a year later when Vulcans delivered a similar result. Point made. And then you challenge Kruschev's own words as recorded by his own son in his biography? Not a lot I can say about that arrogance. The problem for Russia back then was the speed at which the Vulcans could get airborne and approach Russian territory. Or rather Warsaw Pact territory which started in East Germany! They could also fly high at speed or low at speed. Or both. And I suspect shooting down a slow lumbering powered glider with no defences is far easier than a tooled up fast bomber with advanced electronic defence arrays. And finally it doesn't matter if the USA had 2 Mn nukes in the USA it had no way of delivering them against Russia in any meaningful way to deter Kruschev in Cuba. He was on the USA's doorstep. Now I am sorry if this offends your patriotism but he historical fact remains the real meaningful threat, and therefore the deterrent, was squadrons of Vulcan bombers fuelled, tooled and crewed ready to go in under 2 minutes. The average time in practice runs was 1 minute 40 seconds.

@@1chish No, the overall idea that somehow the RAF was special in defeating the defenders at the SkyShield exercise is BS as is the idea that a defense system that failed to intercept most of the bombers, Vulcans and hundreds of regular ones alike, would have defenders suggesting it couldn't happen again. Do you have a source for the "couldn't happen again" claim? If Russia was scared of the speed at which Vulcans could get airborne and approach the USSR, imagine how much more worried (and confident considering they had their own) they were about ICBMs. ICBMs, already in service in the US and USSR in 1960 take about 30 minutes to reach across the globe. Before ICBMs, bombers and particularly the V bombers were very useful for delivering nuclear weapons but even the a fast bomber at 650mph takes far longer and is much easier to intercept than an ICBM travelling over 6,500mph. Don't forget the US had nukes stationed closer to Russia as well. The V-bombers were nevertheless a potent deterrent for the UK just so you don't misunderstand but their role in averting nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis is overstated in this documentary.

Thank God we were allies.

@@1chish do you have sources for this please? Thanks.

Loudest aircraft ever. Did she howl any?

@@yourdrummer2034 The Vulcans didn't howl -Tornados howl, Typhoons scream, Eagles roar, Vulcans *_BELLOWED._*

4

Kabul81

Cheers

Exactly, no bullshit just massive amounts of factual information in a great format.

@Tim Webb oh. so they planted the missiles in Cuba. your nothing more than a communist sympathiser

@@JonsTunes Britain would have been annihilated before they thought of attacking USSR and this was the fact not fiction or imagination that you saw in that so called documentary. Go and do your homework there are hundreds of literatures out there, USSR never backed down but the other way round. It was just a movie you saw probably made by help of liar BBC. And by the way your Volcan and Victor what ever actually stands for Vagina nothing more than that you American vessals

@@rafatlatif544 I'm going to go ahead and guess that you actually think that Iraq won the first Gulf War, that the Holocaust never happened, and that the Earth is flat, huh? The fact is that the UK had nuclear weapons AND the means to deliver them ... the USSR managed to get only ONE of those two things that was reliable, which was why they placed their unreliable, inaccurate crappy missiles so close the U.S soil .... Blue Steel, and later Polaris (both deployed by UK) were highly accurate, many orders of magnitude more reliable than Soviet missiles would be for more than a decade, and actually stood a chance of working, which is more than could be said for the R-12 (SS-4)

@@IanMadBrit I assume and guess that you are very proud of killing thousands of innocent Iraqi people for no reason. Lucky that at that time USSR broke and Russia was a vessal USA. Just remember you were nothing in comparison to USSR and you are no close to the might of todays Russia. Please do your homework

Craig Pennington all gone I’m afraid.

@@docw1819 That's a shame, a real shame.

B-2 Vulcan bomber?

The Vulcan B.2 is the designation for the second mark of the design, more powerful engines, bigger wing, etc.

B52 = sluggish.... Vulcan = Maneuvers like a fighter :0l

A few times I experienced a very low airfield pass & full power climb out by a Vulcan. It is not just the sound thundering the eardrums but a physical assault from the pressure waves.

@@russcattell955i I was lucky enough to get to see one of her last Airshow appearances, the sound is just primal, like the sky is breaking. She set off every car Alarm for a good few hundred meters around the Air Field too!

iron sights ... The Vulcan & Victor still look remarkably modern and not like something designed in the late 40s and early 50s

When I saw them in 1980 at first I thought they were bombers.

Agreed..that thing is out of this world even Russian weird aircraft designs couldn't match

There is something very Flash Gordon about the Victor.

Tony DD most of us knew about it but didn’t think about it too much because it was ‘out of our hands’ and our parents and grandparents had fought two world wars.

I also remember 'the Cuba crisis' like it was yesterday. My dad was in the RAF reserve after just retiring from over 40 years career bomber command (navigator, and later Group Captain), so he was called back up over that period, I remember my Mum being in tears, we honestly thought that the bomb was going to drop any minute.... a terrifying few days.

Better to grow up in the 50s with the fear of dying than in the 40s when thousands actually died. No civilian died in the UK as a result of enemy action in the 50s - compare that with the blitz in the 40s

WHAT!? no snowflake safe spaces because some "war"???

Yes when the Cuban Missile Crisis of ‘62 could have started WW3.

And a world-beating National Health Service. Before Maggie Thatcher screwed the place.

@@robertfindlay2325 Maggie screwed the unions, someone had to. They were run from Moscow. Not all but most.

Great engineering, terrible teeth!!

@@robertfindlay2325 Labour in the 1970s failed to deal with communist unions, shoved up taxes and crashed the economy. Thatcher cut tax rates, sorted out the unions, allowing the economy to recover. She doubled the money taken in tax. The NHS is paid from tax so gets away with its poor efficiency but always does better when the economy is doing well.

Still do.

flip inheck you're wrong the Victor did break the sound barrier.

flip inheck. Hello mate, at 17:28 it clearly states that the Victor was the largest aeroplane in the world to break the sound barrier, ☺

Now you're just being an insulting jerk. He linked to the part of the clip where the narrator clearly states " the Vulcan was the largest aircraft in the world to break the sound barrier".

flip inheck on 1/6/1956 production Victor XA917 on a pre-delivery test flight was recorded as doing Mach 1.1. The pilot Johnny Allam let the nose drop with the engine producing high thrust. The sonic boom was noted between Watford and Banbury. A post-war photo-reccon Spitfire manage 0.97 Mach in a diving, making it the fastest ever flight by a piston-engined aircraft.

flip inheck no it didn't it came out of the dive and returned to Kai Tak, Hong Kong. The Spitfire PR.19 was on a met flight when it when in to its dive, it didn't come out of the dive until below 5000' (the altimeter gave a much higher altitude for the recovery due to instrument lag). Flt Lt Edward Powles was flying PS852 on 5/2/52 in order to take air pressure readings over the sea near Hong Kong. At just over 51,000 ft he went into a dive and got to a speed of 0.96 Mach. No piston engined proppeller aircraft has ever been recorded as going faster.

Chatting with Mark Stise me too

@@paulswain1799 I even have the Vulcan plastered on my KZfaq banner. I've done a couple of videos on the Vulcan and Thunderball. She was an awesome bomber!

Doug Borrett I think he was famous for always doing that.

I suppose he had his smoking pipe in his top pocket too !

Roly Beamont was always impeccably dressed.

he served himself tea during the flight

Oy mate, you think me suit is funny ey! Imma be wearing it for your foc**n tests.

If i remember rightly there was only ever one Vulcan crash where the crew survived

to this day it would fly circles around any fighter in the world at 40k feet+, you either nail it bvr (not easy with the very powerful ecm) or you boom and zoom it which again wouldnt be easy. the vulcan wouldve been a real handfull for an interceptor

Are you out of your mind?

@@eatthisvr6 definitely an exceptional aircraft. People like say a lot of ridiculous things, and don't know anything about the subject....

Was watching that and thought, wow that looks a lot like Norwich, after reading your comment I went back and it is, good spot. Somebody also mentioned that you can see the Royal Arcade at the very start of the film.

Phil Stinton they were scary times my friend, but hearing a story like that really puts the Cold War fears into perspective....

He was probably hoping it was an exercise and you all had life insurance :-)

i lived about a 1/2 mile from detriot metro airport back then. one side of the airport had an air national guard base. during the crisis SAC sent about a squadron of b47s on dispersal alert to the base. i remember riding home on the school bus watching them land,one after another with the long drogue chutes behind them. i was a big a/c fan even then and knew all SAC and its mission. but being 8 years old, i really didnt get the serious of it until i heard my mom and dad talking about it. my dad said it was a dispersal alert to prevent the bombers from being caught on the ground,like at pearl harbor and clark field. i asked if the russians would drop a bombs on detroit. he said yes, probably more than one. after that,i was plenty scared.

Phil Stinton Think it might have been a Victor.

Thanks for sharing. It brings home what was going on, and not just a history lesson.

Thank you for the kind words

You meant to say Disney+Boeing and NewsCorp ?

I'm from Newark upon Trent. saw loads of the Vulcan . and yes couldn't really see them when they were coming straight at you we called them the invisible visible mirage but when they turned sideways. oh lordy...

Is that so huh Did you ever seen one actually

@@jonathanstrong4812 up close? No. Not yet.

It was the longest bombing run at the time. USAF B-2 Spirits now hold that record with their bombing missions over Afghanistan during 2001. They were operating from Whiteman Air Force base in Missouri. www.uso.org/stories/253-inside-the-longest-bombing-run-ever

@@Tomteeejay Well yes but the Black Bucks are still the longest raid using accompanied tankers from the same base. The B-2s were refuelled 'en route' by forward based tankers. The air logistics and navigation accuracy required was world leading at the time.

Nice little marches, both the Barry Gray theme and this one.

Certainly was.

grew up in Newark upon Trent.. 30ish miles from Foldingworth. 15 from Waddington. 20 from Scampton. so dust basically

how do you run out of lox?? not like its helium or something, just make more..

B52 carry 70 000 pounds..., this Toy barely 35 000, not impressive at all.

You have obviously never seen a Vulcan.

I have seen a B52, that is STILL in USE, and FEARED.

I have seen both and I find both very impressive. I always found it sad that the RAF retied the Vulcan. The Vulcan is a very unique aircraft. The B-52 is unique because it is still flying. I appreciate both designs.

The last two on my bucket list are the B-58 and the TU-95. I doubt I will ever see a TU-95 in the flesh though.

He was smart enough to survive Stalin when those around him were being executed and was in charge of the Stalingrad defense. Simple man? No.

Anton Deque what bomber uk have now

It was a victory for the USSR. He got what he wanted. For the USA to remove there intermediate range Nuke Missiles on the USSR border in Turkey and those in Italy.

If by "simple man" he meant that Chruschev was a trained locksmith, and until very late in his career would always carry his tools with him, for the event that he was recalled from his duty as a party official, and had to work on his job again, yes he was a simple man, and I admire him for that. If you mean that it isn't simple to understand him and his political reasonings, then you are right, of course @@readhistory2023

Russia into Cuba is like Nato into Ukraine? Ahh! Now I get it!

We have invaded Russia three times in the past so u can imagine their thoghts.

Richard E. Miranda only do that if they pay

Russian air force veteran said that they always suspected the Vulcan could do a lot more than the British were letting on. After the iron curtain, he found out it couldn't, but was still impressed by the psychological warfare effect of unusual designed planes. (A bit like the Americans worry over the huge but relatively useless Ekranoplan.)

I saw on another documentmentary a ex Russian officer in their airforce at that time said they didn't exactly know what the victor could do aswell as a ceiling height... as someone said in another comment, the RAF didn't let anyone know what the vulcan or the victor could do.....at a push in raf style ;-)

Ah yes. The Victor pilot in his colorful flight suit/smoking jacket.