page_title: V bomber
section_title: Falklands War
hierarchical_section_title: V bomber / Conventional mission / Falklands War
caption_attribution_description: Avro Vulcan XM597 from Operation Black Buck at East Fortune, 2002. Taken and donated by User:Guinnog Showing mission markings from its two Black Buck missions and Brazilian internment.
context_page_description: The "V bombers" were the Royal Air Force aircraft during the 1950s and 1960s that comprised the United Kingdom's strategic nuclear strike force known officially as the V force or Bomber Command Main Force. The three models of strategic bomber, known collectively as the V class, were the Vickers Valiant, which first flew in 1951 and entered service in 1955; the Avro Vulcan, which first flew in 1952 and entered service in 1956; and the Handley Page Victor, which first flew in 1952 and entered service in 1957. The V Bomber force reached its peak in June 1964 with 50 Valiants, 70 Vulcans and 39 Victors in service.
  When it became clear that the Soviet Union's surface-to-air missiles like the S-75 Dvina could bring down high-flying aircraft, the V bomber force changed to low-level attack methods. Additionally, standoff weapons were introduced, starting with the Blue Steel missile. It was then planned to move to the much longer-ranged Skybolt air-launched ballistic missile. When the US cancelled Skybolt, the survivability of the V force was highly questionable.
context_section_description: During the 1982 Falklands War, Vulcan bombers from Nos 44, 50 and 101 Squadrons, supported by Victor tankers from Nos 55 and 57 Squadrons, carried out a series of seven extremely long-range ground attack missions against Argentine positions in the Falkland Islands. The operation was codenamed Black Buck. The objectives of the missions were to attack Port Stanley Airport and its associated defences. While the Vulcans were capable of carrying conventional munitions, this had not been done for a long time. To carry twenty-one 1,000-pound (450 kg) bombs, the Vulcan required three sets of bomb carriers, each of which held seven bombs. Their release was controlled by a panel at the navigator's station known as a 90-way that monitored the electrical connections to each bomb, and was said to provide 90 different sequences for releasing the bombs. None of the Vulcans at RAF Waddington were fitted with the bomb racks or the 90-way. A search of the supply dumps at Waddington and RAF Scampton located the 90-way panels, which were fitted and tested, but finding enough septuple bomb carriers proved harder, and at least nine were required. Someone remembered that some had been sold to a scrapyard in Newark-on-Trent, and they were retrieved from there. Locating sufficient bombs also proved difficult, and only 167 could be found, and some had cast bomb cases instead of the preferable machined ones. Training of crews in conventional bombing and in-flight refuelling was carried out from 14 to 17 April 1982.
  The raids, at almost 6,800 nautical miles (12,600 km) and 15 hours for the return journey, were the longest-ranged bombing raids in history at the time. The Black Buck raids were staged from RAF Ascension Island, close to the equator. The Vulcans lacked the range to fly to the Falklands without refuelling several times, as did the converted Victor tankers, so they too had to be refuelled in flight. Eleven tankers were required for two Vulcans, a huge logistical effort as all aircraft had to use the same runway. The aircraft carried either twenty-one 1,000-pound (450 kg) bombs internally or two or four Shrike anti-radar missiles externally. Of the five Black Buck raids flown to completion, three were against Stanley Airfield's runway and operational facilities, and the other two were anti-radar missions using Shrike missiles against a Westinghouse AN/TPS-43 long-range 3D radar in the Port Stanley area. Shrikes hit two of the less valuable and rapidly replaced secondary fire control radars, causing minor damage.
caption: Vulcan XM597, showing mission markings from its two Black Buck missions and Brazilian internment.
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