True Navigation! Part 1

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Pontius Navigator
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Re: True Navigation! Part 1

#21 Post by Pontius Navigator » Thu Nov 18, 2021 1:49 pm

The tracks were about ENE to avoid the East German 240 mile early warning radar before descending before the 240 mile arc from Finland.

They were parallel to reduce air misses. For main force penetration they were funneled through notional gaps in SAM over that were no more than 3 miles wide.

Timing was based only on time on target low level transit was planned at 325kts - 85kts higher than peacetime cruise for the Vulcan and 105kts on the Victor. The maximum continuous speed was 375kts and TOT was +/- 3 minutes.

Personally I believe many crews planned an initial speed of no more than 300kts before going feet wet and trying minimise time in range of the picket ships. Once through the coastal SAM they would probably have slowed down again to allow for fighter evasion.

Vne was 415kts for a maximum of 10 minutes. I think more than a few crews would have treated that as a minimum. As an aside, in 1965 before we had a lay down weapon we once went through a French target at about 410kts. It was quite bumpy. There was also a rumour that Ron Dick, when called in to Farnborough, misread the ASI by 100kts and might have done 475kts.

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