On 14th October 1975, Vulcan B.2 XM645 of No.9 Squadron lost its left undercarriage and damaged the airframe when it undershot the runway at RAF Luqa in Malta. The aircraft broke up over the town of Żabbar while turning inbound for an emergency landing. The pilot and co-pilot escaped using their ejection seats, the other five crew members were killed. Large aircraft pieces fell on the town; one woman, Vincenza Zammit, was killed by an electric cable, some 20 others were injured. We have a number of vac-form projects in SMN, so that isn’t new – I’m keen that we should show many aspects of (mainly) plastic scale modelling and one on this scale just has to be done – hope you enjoy it!

A planned weekend appearance on 21/22 August 2015 [41] at the Shoreham Airshow was interrupted by the crash of a Hawker Hunter. The Hunter crashed on the first day, just before 13.30 (BST), with the Vulcan due to appear at 14.05. A de Havilland Sea Vixen that was already airborne for the next display instead flew a tribute, with XH558 doing the same at its allotted time, the last aircraft to fly on the day. [42] After the disbandment of No. 50 Squadron, two Vulcans continued flying with the RAF in air displays as part of the Vulcan Display Flight, based at Waddington but administered through No. 55 Squadron, based at RAF Marham. Initially displaying using XL426, in 1986 that aircraft was sold, having been replaced by XH558, which began displays in 1985. The VDF continued with XH558 until 1992, finishing operations after the Ministry of Defence determined it was too costly to run in light of budget cuts. Both aircraft subsequently entered preservation and survived, although a third, XH560, kept in reserve in the first years, was later scrapped. A decade earlier, shortly after the Waltons had acquired Bruntingthorpe, plans had been drawn up to fly the preserved XM575 from East Midlands Airport to their planned aircraft museum, although it never took place as the money ran out before the necessary servicing could be completed. [11] The Avro Vulcan (later Hawker Siddeley Vulcan [1] from July 1963) [2] is a jet-powered, tailless, delta-wing, high-altitude, strategic bomber, which was operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF) from 1956 until 1984. Aircraft manufacturer A.V. Roe and Company ( Avro) designed the Vulcan in response to Specification B.35/46. Of the three V bombers produced, the Vulcan was considered the most technically advanced, hence the riskiest option. Several reduced-scale aircraft, designated Avro 707s, were produced to test and refine the delta-wing design principles.

But originally it was designed to go in at high level to drop nuclear weapons on Russian towns and cities in the event of that becoming a necessity. They would have been painted overall bright white, anti-flash white but when they reverted to the low-level role by which point they would probably have been carrying more tactical nuclear weapons in the case of something like the blue steel standoff weapon, they gained this camouflage surface to protect them in that environment." Vulcan B.1 XA903, surplus to Blue Steel trials, was converted to a similar layout to XA894 to flight test the Olympus 593 Concorde installation. The first flight was on 1st October 1966 and testing continued through to June 1971. In April 1973, XA903 started flying with an underslung Rolls-Royce RB.199 turbofan destined for the Panavia Tornado. XA903 was the last B.1 to fly, being retired in February 1979. James Harrison: "That wing alone about two wing that itself put 2000 feet on the cruise climb ceiling even without the bigger more powerful Olympus engines were fitted to the mark II so that you know with four times 20,000 pounds of thrust and for demonstration purposes you could get the weight down to about a hundred, hundred and ten thousand pounds. The thrust weight ratio was absolutely astronomical. The highest I ever had a Vulcan was sixty two and a half thousand feet. Not much fuel left I must admit. Critical Mach number, well of course in those days one was never absolutely certain of position errors, but I dare say the fastest we ever went was a in the region of nine six or nine seven." As the aircraft operated under visual flight rules (VFR), it could not fly through clouds to higher altitudes where turbulence is lower, as this would require instrument flight rules (IFR) certification. Flying VFR in lower, often turbulent air, the airframe suffers from more fatigue which increases fatigue-index (FI) consumption. A longer-term aim was to make the authorised modifications depending on the usage of fatigue index and engine cycle, to allow the fatigue life to match expected engine life with both expiring at about the same time. Vulcan XH558 flew a final national tour on 10 and 11 October 2015. [47] [48] The tour was split into two halves with the northern route being flown on 10 October and the southern route being flown on 11 October. The tour incorporated waypoints which including several locations significant to both the life of XH558 and the V-Force as a whole. Waypoints included:

It was the last Vulcan in service, largely due to the fact that it had seen little service as a low-level bomber and had spent considerable time grounded due to an accident when taking off for a northbound maritime sortie from RAF Scampton, on 6 November 1975. On takeoff, the No. 3 engine disintegrated after ingesting a seagull, resulting in a very large hole being blown right through her starboard wing. Subsequent major repairs grounded XH558 for many years, with the result that XH558, despite being the earliest Mk.2 to enter RAF service, had actually flown considerably fewer hours than most of her stablemates. [9] On 11th May 1964, Vulcan B.2 XH535 crashed during a demonstration. The aircraft entered a spin while a very low speed and high rate of descent was being demonstrated. The landing parachute was deployed, stopping the spin briefly before it began to spin again. At around 2,500 ft (760 m) the aircraft commander instructed the crew to abandon the aircraft. The commander and co-pilot ejected successfully, but none of the rear compartment crew did so, presumably due to the g forces in the spin.XH558 was subsequently selected for display duties with the RAF's Vulcan Display Flight at Waddington. The VDF had been formed in 1984 and was already using XL426 (the aircraft donated to Southend in 1986). [8] For display duties, XH558 was returned to B2 configuration in 1985, and made its debut at Bournemouth in May 1985. It served in the VDF for seven years, making its final flight at Cranfield on 20 September 1992. [6] Vulcan B.1 XA894 flew with five Olympus engines, the standard four Mk.101s, plus a reheated Olympus 320 destined for the BAC TSR-2 in an underslung nacelle. This aircraft was destroyed in a ground fire at Filton on 3rd December 1962. In Britain following the end of the Second World War thoughts turned to future conflict and the decision was made to tender the aircraft companies of the day to produce a bomber that would be able to fly fairly long range and to drop a nuclear weapon. What's particularly interesting is that that decision was made before the decision was made to proceed with Britain's independent nuclear weapon. The Vulcan was one of a number of designs, initially six aircraft companies tended for the idea; four of which went forward to prototype stage.