First of the V’s - The Vickers Valiant 

Flaps aren't really necessary for landing but it's tough on the brakes and tires! Seriously though; flaps usually are to enable a steeper approach with a higher power setting than to actually lower speed or increase lift.

Except aircraft developers actual don't say those things. Every aircraft is a compromise, with its attributes chosen for what looks to be the best compromise for the needs expected when it goes into service. Nobody says always or forever about such choices, they are making their best guess about the near future.

Your mistaking publication for application again.

There is an ever changing meta to combat due to evolving tactics and new technologies.

There's only so much funding to go around, and if you get, well you had better justify it I guess.

Same things that’s being said about tank :P

Jesus how old are you

Hi,I was at Gaydon at the same time,on 138 Squadron 0:50

Very true, it could have been the original 'V' Bomber 👍

There's a pic on here somewhere of all four in a static park, presumably Farnborough in the 1950s. The Sperrin with its stacked engines and lack of significant sweep looks like a piston job, in which the piston engines have been replaced by jets. It wolud have been interesting to see how much it could be developed and upgraded if it had ever reached service. .

Having so many aircraft in production in what were small numbers in international terms with each costing as much as a single national type to research and develop is why there is no longer a UK aero industry,it simply wasn't cost effective

​@@davidmcintyre8145Totally Correct. I often wonder what the outcome would have been had the main manufacturers pooled their resources to save costs during the fifties. We may have ended up with fewer but better, more cost effective designs.

@@user-lt9py2pu6u That was partially what the forced amalgamation of the various firms was about but unfortunately it was not pushed through with sufficient vigour or explanation so was fought by the companies and happened a few years too late

It looks like something out of a '50s sci fi movie.

@@minuteman4199 The fore section of the Victor certainly looks like a 1930s - 40s sci-fi rocket.

To me looks like a b47 mixed with a convair tradewind , as far as range and payload goes i always thought this british triumvirat was rather iffy, considering money was tight after the war they were adequate

@@cnfuzz The Victor could cruise at transsonic speeds at 55,000 ft in 1958 and you think thats iffy ? Oh boy ! As for range...where do you think they were likely to be going in the Cold War ? Range was fine for the task.

Vulcans made regular appearances at the Canadian National Exhibition airshow in Toronto when I was a kid in the late '70s and early 80s.

Not really, as balistic missiles turned the bomber fleet obsolete.

@Aqua Fyre True -- but you can kill a giant shark by shooting a scuba tank in its open mouth -- think about it. Because Jaws.

@@minuteman4199 Vulcans made regular visits to Goose Bay in Canada for training flights.

Ah! Yes, sorry! The eyebrows always grab my attention.

@@EdNashsMilitaryMatters Animal off the Muppet show was the love child of Dennis Healey & a floor mop... 🙃

@@GARDENER42 🤣👌👍

There were actually four bomber prototypes built, the 2 advanced ones (Vulcan and Victor) and 2 less advanced ones (Valiant and Shorts Sperrin). The two advanced ones had small scale research aircraft built to test the design (Avro 707 and HP88), while the Valiant and Sperrin were built full size off the bat. The Sperrin looked like a big Canberra with two engines in each wing nacelle, two prototypes were built, but it went no further and the aircraft were used as engine test beds before being retired in the late 1950's

@@richardvernon317 Thanks for that info- I must admit I had completely forgotten about the Sperrin. I guess four bomber types was one too many even then...

Yes, unimaginable nowadays. However, at the time, as Ed mentioned, there was an urgent need to get squadrons with next generation bombers into service very quickly. Also, a lot of aircraft design and production capability still available post WW2 within various British aircraft companies. Hedging your bets with one company might have resulted in an inferior design with delays and increased cost. Not to mention a lot of pressure from the other companies not selected. So, it probably made strategic, tactical and political sense at the time?

@@richardvernon317 Thanks for mentioning the Sperrin. I'd forgotten about it.

Just like during WWII really. The gov' - at least for a time - decided a triad of Jet Bombers would be most likely to produce a winner, while also providing the visible strategic deterrent of a nuclear hammer blow against the USSR.

NOT! Compared to the Victor and Vulcan that thing looks like Madeline Albright.

The metal fatigue was caused by a disastrous experimental alloy - not bad deployment.

Hope I answered some of your questions :)

@@EdNashsMilitaryMatters You did Nedash, bloody top content as usual! So now that Blighty has stopped nuking Australia and its territories, I feel like it's high time you started making reparations and did a video on the Avon Sabre. It really seems like the right thing to do... ;-)

@@tigerpjm LOL one day.

G'day, The first British attempt to nuke Australia did NOT "fizzle", it exploded over Montebello Island, off Western Australia. In about 1953. The LAST British effort at nuking us in Oz was a Warhead Fratricide Test, conducted by buggaring up the sequence of the detonation of the wedges of Conventional Explosives surrounding the Plutonium Core - to simulate EMP effects of a nearby Warhead from a different missile or Re-Entry Vehicle going off and scrambling a Bomb's Firing Circuits.... The Plutonium Fizzle Yield Test occurred at Maralinga, South Oz, in 1963 ; upwind of moi at the time, and thus I haven't tasted propper Fallout on my breakfast Porridge since I was a 2 year-old. The RAFie-Chappies put their Warhead atop a Tower, and succeeded in blowing almost fissioned Plutonium Dust all over the place, for tens or hundreds of miles, some of which lightly dusted the East Coast. The "Cleanup" was then duly half-arsed, bungled, whitewashed with paperwork, covered up, lied about by all Governments concerned, investigated, re-done, botched again, re-whitewashed..., and there are still Aborigines slowly dying an blinded by the botched British Imperial Plutonium Fizzle-Yield Test nearly 60 years ago. Just(ifiably ?) sayin'. Such is life, Have a good one... Stay safe. ;-p Ciao !

@Aqua Fyre Thanks. The prevailing Winds blow from West to East, and Maralinga is West-Southwest of Glen Innes. We ALL got dusted. And when (Lilli)Putin nukes Pine Gap we'll be in the Fallout Cigar, again. Such is life. Have a good one... Stay safe. ;-p Ciao !

@Aqua Fyre Good Oh ! Or as they used to say, " Rue, Britannia, Marmalade and Jam. Five Chinee Crackers Upyore Arsehole ; Bang bang BangBang BANG !" (ie, Prosperity, For Britons in Britain...; relies on Gunpowder invented in China. So, OBEY..., or die from the Overkill...) I wasn't trying to deny that Adelaide was under the larger Cloud..., I was stating that the smaller Cloud which tracked between Sydney and Brisbane went straight over Glen Innes. And then, for 20 years, until they went and attempted to scrape up the contaminated Soil..., then every time a Bubble of Hot Air lifted off from Maralinga to transition from a Willy-Willy into a Thermal, growing to top-out as a Cloud, drifting East to be forced up by the Western Slopes of the Great Divide ; the Radioactive Plutonium Dust was sprinkled onto wherever the Clouds passed over - particularly if those Clouds rained. And I've been living here since 1882, when my father's grandfather brought the family DNA to the district. So, the taste of Plutonium on my Porridge in 1963 is merely a part of the Family's Oral History. About like the time a Japanese Floatplane, launched from a Submarine, flew over the town in 1943, twice, on it's Reconaissance flight covering Yamba, Grafton, Glen Innes, Inverell, Moree, Inverell, Glen Innes, Lismore, and back to the Submarine. Absolutely uncontested, as there was no Radar, no Anti-Aircraft Guns, and the only modern Fighter Aircraft in the RAAF was one unarmed Mk-1 Hawker Hurricane based in Melbourne - used for Aerobatic Displays over Recruiting Rallies, and the USAAC had some P-40s but they were in Darwin. So, the actual response to the 1943 Floatplane Overflight..., was that the Lions Club dug Slit Trenches at the Primary School, and my father also dug one in the back yard. And, in 1972 when Nixon was thunkin' about nuking the Ho Chi-Minh Trail (in his frustration arising from Ho Chi-Minh's work at ethnically-cleansing the Moon of all AmeriKans...!) ; there was a Civil Defence meeting at the Town Hall where we were told how nothing in Glen Innes was worth the cost of Atom Bombing us, and that because of the Iodised Table Salt sold here by Health Department Regulations (Iodine defficient Soil...) all our Thyroids were already full of "clean" Iodine so when any Fallout from Counter-Force bombing of Pine Gap, or Counter-Value bombing of Brisbane or Sydney got here, then we would not need any Iodine Tablets... The only time I actually bugged-out to avoid getting Nuked was in 1983, when a US Warship was in Sydney while KAL-007 was shot down for perving on Kamchatka...; and my girlfriend and I got out of the Sydney Basin (went to Bowral for 4 days) to avoid being under any Fireball over the Harbour. The joker in the pack right now though, is that whereas NATO and ANZUS never ever built any large Public Blast/Fallout Shelters for Civilians - the USSR built big Public Shelters in all their Cities. And 5 years ago Russia began cleaning out, repainting, repairing, restocking, and preparing their Soviet-Era Shelters for occupation, and use, at 10 minutes notice. So, my gut feeling is that EVERYTHING which Russia is doing in Eukraineistan lately is intended to provoke NATO into firing as much as a single Gunshot at any Russian. Because, I think, guesstimate, and suspect..., that (Lilli)Putin has calculated that his population will emerge from their Shelters in better condition to be grateful to him, after whatever NATO might manage by way of a Retaliatory Response - than NATO's (and ANZUS's) populations might find ourselves following a sudden massive ("Defensive") Pre-Emptive Counter-Force First Strike, by "surPRISE !". And, anytime that anybody wants to compete with Unkle Spam at Cloudy Mushroom Skyscape-installations, then Pine Gap will attract at least 3 Waaauugh(!)heads, to be sure, t' be sure, and t' be certain..., of blinding CINCPAC and the Pentagon from Capetown to Vladivostok, arcing up over the Muddled East, Absurdistan and Chynna... So, how's YOUR Fallout Shelter looking, in these benighted dayze ? I live on an Endangered Species Sanctuary, but I haven't engineered anything to preserve myself from Fallout.... Such is life, Have a good one... Stay safe. ;-p Ciao !

This was part of the reason they were so strapped for cash, vast fortunes spent on armaments programs while the defeated axis powers were focusing on modernising their industry.

The aircraft you’re referring to were the three Lincoln’s modified with two Armstrong Siddeley Python turboprops in place of the outboard Merlin engines, these aircraft were originally only designed to be used as engine test beds and not for service use.

@@mrjockt There were six of them (three were built in Australia)…

@@allangibson2408 RF403, RE339, SX972, RF530, SX973 and RA643 are listed as the 6 known Lincoln engine test beds used in the development of the Python, Bristol Proteus, Bristol Theseus, Napier Naiad, Rolls Royce Tyne turboprops and the Rolls Royce Avon turbojet, the first three were the ones involved in the casing drop-tests for the Blue Danube nuclear weapon program, all were built for the RAF by Avro in the U.K.

The maximum release height for the ballistic casing tests from the Python powered Lincolns was 34,783 ft as per the files at the National Archives. Only two of the four Merlins were replaced with Python turboprops. No way a Lincoln is carrying its max bomb load (14,000lb) up to 45,000 ft.

Nice use of gdp - Cancel 1 v bomber or half the trains

It's these defence ministers which need serious beatings.

At RAF Marham in Norfolk the last Victor tanker base. Yup, nobody wanted it. The cost of moving it and finding a location to keep it was prohibitive.

The V-bombers were ordered late 1940s, the Washingtons came into service in the 1950s.

Watch the vid again. The fatigue problems were caused by a high-altitude airframe being used for low-altitude work. Vickers had actually foreseen this, with the Mk2 being re-designed with a much stronger airframe specifically for this purpose. (Unless I'm reading your question wrong, in which case feel free to tell me to watch it again, as I'll be happy to do so.)

@@unclenogbad1509 There were also problems with the alloys used that made it worse than it should have been on the Valiant B1. The Valiant B2, whatever its merits, was too late when you had Vulcan and Victor in advanced production stage. Don't forget, the RAF were busy crashing nearly 900 Gloster Meteors in this period. It was costly in every way imaginable.

@@timhancock6626 I never claim to be an expert, but still think the modified B2 would have fared much better - although that remains a complete 'what if', and you're right about it coming in too late. Not sure what your point is about the meteors, but again, you're right with the figures, 450 of which had fatalities.

It will get it's own video.

There was a competitor to the Valiant called the Sperrin. It did look like a Big Canberra and was built by Shorts!!!

You need to read the 1957 Defence White Paper. They intended doing away with all manned aircraft and cancelled about nine aircraft projects. The English Electric Lightning just scraped through as it was already just in production. That was The Conservatives who seem to be very good at chopping up and cancelling aircraft. Labour or Conservative, most cancellations have proved with hindsight to be reasonable decisions, however painful they seemed at the time, and they did seem painful.

At least half of the nukes deployed with the V-force between 1958 and 1964 were American and almost all of the operational H-bombs were based on US Designs (Yellow Sun Mk 2 was basically a B-28 physics package in a British casing with a lot of Ballast). The Valiants could carry the Blue Danube (20KT), after which in 1961, they carried 2 x B-28 weapons supplied by the US, which were replaced by the B-43 in 1963. They got the B-43 because it could be deployed in the Low Level laydown attack profile.

Yep a Royal Aircraft establishment fetish, along with T-tails and HTP Rocket Motors!!!

The Soviet Tupolev TU 16 "Badger" also had wing root engines

Her hum..like the Meteor and Canberra...oh hang on....

​@@timhancock6626 Meteor was designed like a normal twin engine aircraft of the time (1942). Canberra started out in 1944 as a single engine aircraft with a big engine in the fuselage. The next design of it had twin engines in the wing roots, however seeing it wasn't known which engine design was actually going into the thing, Petter decided it would be easier to put the engines in the wing nacelles instead of the wing root.

Thatll get it's own video.

@@EdNashsMilitaryMatters A bizarre fact of the Short Sperrin is that, technically, there were no prototypes, just two production aircraft. What an utter waste of production jigs. I look forward, as always, to your videos! They're great. BTW, are you part American? You said schedule as 'skedule', the American way

Haha my wife is american, I've picked up bad habits. :)

@@EdNashsMilitaryMatters as an interesting change, why not do a video about Israeli adaptations of US aircraft, like rearview mirrors on Phantoms. Apparently within a fortnight of receiving them the mirrors had been added. I believe that the Americans then designed and installed them too

@@peterkaye8162 Interesting idea! Thanks!

Video.

Had the RAF opted for just the one bomber at the time the chances are it would have been the Victor, although the Victor B.1 was about 15mph slower than the Vulcan B.1 it could fly higher, had almost double the range and could carry a much larger bomb load.

Victor was aerodynamically more sophisticated.

@@mrjockt Unfortunately, the Victor was just too optimized for the high-altitude role, and was quickly converted to tanker service because the plane was not well-suited for low-level flying like the Vulcan was, in my opinion.

@@Sacto1654 When the decision about which aircraft design to put into service was made high altitude bombing was the preferred method of attack, so, at the time, if the RAF had decided to stick to just one aircraft design the Victor would have made more sense than the Vulcan, it wasn’t until a few years after all three aircraft had entered service that the switch to low altitude was made.

@@mrjockt Bollock, the Victor was faster. A B mk 1 prototype actually went Supersonic in a dive. No Vulcan eve broke Mach 1.

Stirling wasn't as good as Lanc and Halifax. They stopped using it as a bomber in December 1943 and mostly used it as a glider tug after that, so obsolete by the time the war ended.

after towing gliders for D-Day operations, 160 were converted to transports for the remainder of the war, the rest were scrapped.

Thank you. I know, I would just like there to be a video about it.

V-bombers.

Actually it was the Vodka, the Vodka and the Vodka!

@@bob_the_bomb4508 😂 Njet! That was the special fuel! And incidentaly one of the reasons the programm was canceled. It was considered alcohol abuse by many.