Avro Vulcan

Avro · United Kingdom · first flew 1952 · bomber

Britain's Cold War delta-winged V-bomber, a vast triangular shape that dominates any airshow.

Recognition (WEFT)

W — WingsMid-mounted, delta
E — Engines4 × turbojet, embedded-mounted
F — Fuselage30.5 m fuselage
T — TailNo tailplane

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An enormous, near-symmetric delta with four embedded engines and no tailplane. The shape and the howl of its engines are unmistakable.

Specifications

Figures are for the representative variant described above; marks differ. See how AircraftIQ sources figures.

History

First flown in 1952, the Vulcan was one of the three V-bombers carrying Britain's airborne nuclear deterrent. Its broad delta wing gave it remarkable high-altitude performance; it famously flew the long-range 'Black Buck' raids during the 1982 Falklands War.

Variants

The early B.1 had a pure delta; the B.2 introduced a larger, kinked wing and more powerful engines. Some served as tankers and in maritime reconnaissance.

Where you'll see it

Retired from the RAF in 1984; the civilian-operated XH558 thrilled crowds until 2015. Preserved Vulcans can be seen at several UK museums and occasionally taxi for the public.

In depth

The Vulcan's great delta wing was not chosen for drama but for arithmetic. In the late 1940s Avro's chief designer Roy Chadwick and his successors needed a wing that could carry a heavy nuclear bomb to high altitude at near-sonic speed, and the delta offered enormous internal volume for fuel and weapons, a high critical Mach number, and gentle stalling behaviour, all without a separate tailplane. Because the shape was so novel and so much rested on it, Avro built a series of one-third-scale research aircraft, the little Avro 707s, to prove the delta would fly and handle safely before committing the full-size bomber; those tiny deltas, several of which survive in museums, are a delightful footnote for the spotter who wants to see where the Vulcan's aerodynamics were born. The B.2's later wing gained its distinctive kinked, cranked leading edge to cure buffeting and improve high-altitude handling as the aircraft grew heavier and flew higher, which is the surest way to tell a B.2 from the pure-triangle B.1 in a photograph.

The aircraft's most famous hour came late in its career and far from the plains of central Europe it was built to defend. During the 1982 Falklands conflict the RAF mounted the Black Buck raids, sending single Vulcans from Ascension Island to attack Port Stanley airfield, missions so long that they required a fantastically complicated relay of Victor tankers refuelling each other and the bomber in turn, and which stood at the time among the longest-range bombing raids ever flown. One raid famously ended with the Vulcan diverting to Brazil after a refuelling probe failed, a diplomatic drama in its own right. That these ageing bombers, already being withdrawn, were pressed into such an epic effort gave the Vulcan a heroic final chapter and cemented its place in British affection.

Behind the Falklands fame lies the aircraft's real purpose as one leg of the V-force, the trio of Valiant, Victor and Vulcan that carried Britain's independent nuclear deterrent before the job passed to the Royal Navy's Polaris submarines. The Vulcan was designed to penetrate Soviet airspace at high altitude, then, as surface-to-air missiles made height a liability, was switched to low-level penetration, a role its strong delta wing tolerated remarkably well. Some carried the Blue Steel stand-off missile, and in its twilight a handful were converted to aerial-tanker and maritime-radar-reconnaissance duties to plug gaps in the RAF's fleet.

For the enthusiast today the Vulcan is a static pleasure with one recent, painful loss. The civilian-operated XH558, restored to flight by a charitable trust and flown at airshows across the country until 2015, was the last airworthy example, and its grounding after that season ended the era of hearing the delta howl in the sky; the distinctive shriek came from air passing through the engine intakes at certain power settings, a sound many British spotters remember viscerally. Preserved Vulcans can still be seen and in some cases seen moving under their own power on the ground: XH558 itself remains at Doncaster, XL426 is kept live for taxi runs at Southend by the Vulcan Restoration Trust, and XM655 does likewise at Wellesbourne Mountford. Static examples sit at the RAF Museum sites at Cosford and Hendon, at Duxford, at the Newark Air Museum and elsewhere across the country. A hard-won recognition note: the four Olympus engines are buried in pairs in the wing roots rather than slung in pods, so from head-on the Vulcan shows only slim intake slots either side of the fuselage, and its underside is a vast, almost featureless triangle that on a flypast seems to blot out the sky before you ever hear it.

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