Vulcan

[TheGreenGoblin]

After incantations, deliberations and much meditation a thought, a memory, buried deep in my mind slowly began to rise like a tiny bubble created at the floor of the deepest ocean. I moved to the secret door and using my new found knowledge forced it open against its rusty hinges. Once through the door I entered the long dark passageway draped with cobwebs which led to the holy of holys. The door of this sanctum pushed aside easily and I was soon facing a collection of the most holy and venerated scriptures. Somehow my hand knew where to reach and I soon had the third most holy manuscript of this treasury in my hands. Dusty it was and faded but thanks to the many years of darkness the words were almost as clear as when they were first written in it's archaic text. In my hands were several hundred pages of the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of the great thinkers and men who had gone before, men to whom I would never be able to hold a candle or thank sufficiently for their gifts. I studied the cover before I dared open the tome. The proud symbol on the cover boasted of the provenance of the work.

My fingers searched eagerly through the pages as I experienced the eery feeling that I had held this document before and that I knew much of its content. I finally found the words that I was searching for, my premonition had been correct, here was the mystic formula I sought couched in the most simple of terms for those that would understand.

Unfortunately much of the rest of this volume was written in a strange language that only the initiated would comprehend. I offer an example in the hope that some student of the Way finding this tale may be able to interpret its wisdom.


Tamam

It is good to see that the ancient runes of the Brobdingnagian giants of the RAF match those of the far less exulted, but much admired, by me, instructor, who wrote up the notes handed down to my unworthy hand all those years ago.

Amazingly Wiki makes a good fist of making the subject almost enjoyable as well...

Zero-lift drag coefficient...

[boing]

Seriously GG, you can see that the pages of that manual were hand typed and then copied and printed on a Roneo type machine. When you consider that the manual was several hundred pages long and that individual copies had to be made for each course member, and there were at least a dozen trainees on each course, it was an enormous amount of work to produce manuals for a course. The Chief Instructor was a marvellously intelligent Squadron Leader pilot whose name in cannot unfortunately remember. His assistant was Flt. Lt. Eric Drinkwater and Eric's initials appear on the footer of many of the mathematical treatises. Two great instructors.

.

[Boac]

The Chief Instructor was a marvellously intelligent Squadron Leader pilot

- Blake, aka the 'Screaming Skull'?

[Pontius Navigator]

Boing, there was a recent release of pre-war information about a sqn ldr and his teenage daughter who calculated that you needed an 8-gun fighter to down an enemy aircraft from 200 yards with a 2 - seconds burst and 4,000 rpm.

Definitely ballistics.

Did you address fighting as opposed to flying? Was ballistics much more the province of QWIs or the WEC? I ask as an Intelligence Officer whose job was to convince Biggles that the effective range of a Bear or Backfire cannon was 'only' 500 metres and well short of AIM9 range.

[Boac]

Nothing to do with 'ballistics', simply the amount of shells in a given piece of air.

the effective range of a Bear or Backfire cannon

What on earth has that to do with an Aim9? I seem to recall min AIM9 range (for arming) was over 2km? Anyone trying to engage with an Aim9 and worrying about the target's guns................. We had QWIs indeed - who or what was a 'WEC' on a fighter squadron?

[boing]

PN

This manual was purely concerned with the aerodynamics knowledge required to be an effective flight instructor. I suppose the on-the-job knowledge was left to the OCU. The manual subjects were divided into two parts, a white pages section which was fairly simple and suitable for presenting to Bloggs if he had a question followed by an in depth section with technical information and the mathematics. The graph and brief explanation I supplied was from the non-technical white page section, the formulae were from the "yellow pages".

There were a pile of other manuals on the actual art of instructing etc.

One interesting point about the CFS course is that nearly everyone had at least one operational tour before being assigned and potential instructors came from many backgrounds, helicopter pilots, fighters, bombers, the Navy and even "Commonwealth" air forces, so there was a tremendous wealth of real life experience and stories. A large practical part of the course was flying together with the other potential instructors as simulated instructors and students, you learned an awful lot doing this. For example, if part of your presentation was not too good the other guy was supposed to screw you up by doing exactly what you told him to do not what he knew you wanted him to do, very educational.

I know that I, coming from V-Force, was relatively weak on operational formation flying so this was a learning experience for me as a humble and genuine student but after a Hunter pilot had scared the heck out of you a couple of times you got the hang of it.

.

[Pontius Navigator]

Nothing to do with 'ballistics', simply the amount of shells in a given piece of air.

the effective range of a Bear or Backfire cannon

What on earth has that to do with an Aim9? I seem to recall min AIM9 range (for arming) was over 2km? Anyone trying to engage with an Aim9 and worrying about the target's guns................. We had QWIs indeed - who or what was a 'WEC' on a fighter squadron?

WEC, Whitbread Enjoyment Course - covered weapons effects and mission rates. One aspect was weapons/target matching - for instance the number of AAM you needed to get airborne to counter the expected raid size, this then determined the number of ship sets that you had to procure.

As far as the 500m range, the F4 guys thought it was much greater than 500m.

[Pontius Navigator]

Boing, don't forget there were also creamies that became QFIs.

As QNIs we hardly did any theory such as QFIs did but I take your point about listening in to other instructors with interesting effects. For a start we started to use the same phrases for similar events, informal standardisation if you like.

I was once accused of copying another instructor's report. I hadn't but I had used his words. The rule for this error was two strikes and chop. In the investigation it was discovered my report was the third : he was chopped.

[boing]

PN

The creamies were usually very good, you did not get selected for that career move unless you were so. They did take some friendly flak from the operational guys.

The advanced theory section of the manual was not "required" for the course but most people dipped their toes into it. The hands-on parts were the important items and sometimes they were so simple in concept but so valuable in practice. For example, one of the first things we were taught was to talk to ourselves aloud as we drove our car breaking down every detail of our actions. You would do things like describing to yourself why you were braking gently under one situation and more firmly for another.

"OK Bloggs, I see that the lorry ahead is indicating for a turn, we would normally have plenty of distance to slow and we may not even need to use the brakes simply reduce the power but I can see that he has head on traffic in the other lane so I expect he will come to a stop which means we may need to stop also so I am slowing gently with light braking."

This taught you to split your mind in two, half for the student and half for the aircraft. I used that idea for my whole aviation career and it still pops up even now.

.

[Pontius Navigator]

A good point, same as the advanced motoring instruction. As you are actively looking for things to talk about so you translate image to words. My new car is a bit like that. Every journey is recorded and can be reviewed online afterwards. It notes things like good anticipation approaching that roundabout or acceleration or braking could be smoother here. I don't agree with some of the advice. You can hardly slow down for half a mile on a motorway or slowly accelerate in a short slip entrance. Empty road and it certainly has you thinking.

[boing]

Neat car, what sort is it?

The obvious joke is that I have a wife for that sort of thing. I get real time critique plus multiple automatic play backs.

.

[Pontius Navigator]

Toyota Corolla, bit I like best is formation driving. With Adaptive cruise control and lane keeping you have to hold the steering wheel but the car does the rest. Like an auto pilot but tied on to the aircraft in front.

Getting it to park is sonething else but you have to keep your hands off the steering wheel. I think manual parking might be quicker but automatic will do it more accurately.

[Woody]

Anyone watching Thunderball?

[TheGreenGoblin]

Seriously GG, you can see that the pages of that manual were hand typed and then copied and printed on a Roneo type machine. When you consider that the manual was several hundred pages long and that individual copies had to be made for each course member, and there were at least a dozen trainees on each course, it was an enormous amount of work to produce manuals for a course. The Chief Instructor was a marvellously intelligent Squadron Leader pilot whose name in cannot unfortunately remember. His assistant was Flt. Lt. Eric Drinkwater and Eric's initials appear on the footer of many of the mathematical treatises. Two great instructors.

.

I do appreciate the effort that went into creating the manuals like that. I suspect that such a manual would be worth a lot, aside from its personal sentimental value, for historical reasons, let alone the content which is still current and valuable in terms of Newtonian physics and subsonic and supersonic aerodynamics.

[tango15]

Anyone watching Thunderball?

Yes me, and enjoying the Vulcan shots. I know some of it is models, but it's good stuff for 1965.

[G-CPTN]

Is that the one with internal access to the bomb-bay?

[boing]

We were at an American base getting ready for departure. Everyone was busy so when 3 quite senior Americans officers came up and asked if they could look in the cockpit we just said "Yes, help yourselves". They then proceeded to the steps at the rear of the bomb bay that were in position so that we could load the bomb bay pannier and started to climb.

Obviously they had got their training from watching Thunderball.

[TheGreenGoblin]

For the film Thunderball a full size replica of the Avro Vulcan was constructed by the production crew on location in the Bahamas. In addition miniature models were also employed to achieve the effect of the Vulcan ditching in the Golden Grotto. Challenging sequences to film, the first to be shot underwater was at a depth of 50 feet where SPECTRE divers remove the atomic bombs from the sunken bomber. Following filming, in a bid to prevent others using their creation, production crews blew-up the full-sized replica with dynamite (its barely-recognisable remains are now a popular dive spot near Nassau). Two real Vulcans were also utilised during filming; aircraft XA913 was used in ground sequences and XH506 for flying sequences. Both were early B.1A models that were withdrawn from service and scrapped by 1968 – three years after Thunderball was released. Notably, Peter Lamont had previously visited a Royal Air Force bomber station carrying a concealed camera which he used to get close-up shots of secret missiles (those appearing in the film were not actually present). Most of the underwater scenes had to be done at lower tides due to the sharks in the Bahamian sea.

Thunderball_Vulcan_replica_%281%29.jpg (10.39 KiB) Viewed 724 times

Vulcan Thunderball

[TheGreenGoblin]

We were at an American base getting ready for departure. Everyone was busy so when 3 quite senior Americans officers came up and asked if they could look in the cockpit we just said "Yes, help yourselves". They then proceeded to the steps at the rear of the bomb bay that were in position so that we could load the bomb bay pannier and started to climb.

Obviously they had got their training from watching Thunderball.

They certainly got the shape of the Red Beard right (if grossly underestimating its size and weight). As you say, Bond managed to enter the cockpit through the imaginary door at the front of the bomb-bay.

From previous post -

Notably, Peter Lamont had previously visited a Royal Air Force bomber station carrying a concealed camera which he used to get close-up shots of secret missiles (those appearing in the film were not actually present).

I imagine that this is a myth as any such breach of security would have been a huge issue.

[Pontius Navigator]

There was of course such a hatch in the Vulcan but it led forward into the radome. Going aft would have been a bit trick going through the nosewheel bay and a fuel tank.

I didn't realise that under water shot was a full size model, ie as accurate as shown in that pic. The intercostal arch construction gives a good idea of the real aircraft.