"Avro Vulcan XM607 at Waddington UK" Waymark

Long Description:
Design work began at A. V. Roe in 1947 under Roy Chadwick. The Air Ministry specification B.35/46 required a bomber with a top speed of 500 knots (930 km/h), an operating ceiling of 50,000 ft (15,000 m), a range of 3,000 nautical miles (5500 km) and a bomb load of 10,000 lb (approx 4,550 kg). Design work also began at Vickers and Handley Page. All three designs were approved — aircraft that would become the Valiant, the Victor, and the Vulcan.

The Type 698 as first envisaged was a delta wing tailess, almost flying wing design, as Avro felt this would be able to give the required combination of large wing area, sweepback to offset the transonic effects and a thick wing root to embed the engines; these were staggered in the wing with two forward and below and two back and above. Wingtip rudders gave the control. There were two bombbays one in each wing. This design was reworked in light of Ministry comments and became more conventional adopting a centre fusalage with side by side engines and a tail.

As the delta wing was an unknown quantity Avro began scale prototype testing in 1948 with the single-seater Type 707 aircraft, and despite the crash of the first prototype on 30 September 1949 work continued. The first full-scale prototype Type 698 made its maiden flight (after its designer had died) on 31 August 1952. The Vulcan name was not chosen until 1953. The first prototype had a straight leading edge this was subsequently modified to have a kink further out towards the wingtip. The Vulcan bomber in service was not fitted with pure delta wings; but the prototypes models were the first jet bomber design to use a wing of that shape, which was modified in development to give the service machines better flying characteristics than a pure delta can supply.

Despite its large size, it had a remarkably small appearance on radar, and occasionally disappeared from radar screens entirely. It is now known that it had a fortuitously stealthy shape apart from the tail fin. Testing the brakes of the Vulcan included strapping the company photographer Paul Culerne to the front landing gear with the aircraft moving at full landing speed and photographing the brakes in operation.

Wing Commander Roly Falk demonstrated the aircraft's high performance in the second production Vulcan, XA890, by performing a barrel-roll immediately after takeoff at the 1955 Farnborough Air Show.

Wikipedia.. (visit link)

Type of Aircraft: (make/model): Avro Vulcan Tail Number: (S/N): XM607 Construction:: original aircraft Location (park, airport, museum, etc.): Perimeter of Waddington RAF base Lincolnshire inside / outside: outside Other Information:: You can see this aircraft very clearly from the road.

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