29 May 2015
The last flying Avro Vulcan V-bomber is about to start its last season as an airworthy aircraft. It will perform for the first time this year at the Throckmorton Air Show on 6 June.
The decision to ground the Vulcan, known as XH558, at the end of this season has been taken because the three companies which are the offical ‘technical authorities’ are to stop their support later this year.
At the heart of their decision are two factors, said the Vulcan To The Sky Trust which operates and maintains the aircraft. First, although XH558 is currently as safe as any aircraft flying today, her structure and systems are already more than ten percent beyond the flying hours of any other Vulcan, so knowing where to look for any possible failure will become more difficult. Second, maintaining her superb safety record requires expertise that is increasingly difficult to find.
To celebrate this remarkable aircraft in her final flying year, the aircrew, led by Martin Withers (who captained Vulcan XM607 on the famous Black Buck mission during the Falklands Conflict) is about to launch a dramatic new display routine. National tours are planned to celebrate related British engineering achievements and to salute the heroes of Britain’s legendary V-Force in which she played a vital role during the knife-edge tension of the Cold War.
The V-Force Tour is currently scheduled to overfly the remaining ground-based V-Force aircraft in southern England on 27 June and in northern England on 28 June.
