I’m being shown how to conduct a low-altitude bombing run after clambering into a pilot’s seat on the runaway Avro Vulcan bomber at Wellesbourne Airfield.
The warbird has fuel in the tanks and it’s not inconceivable we could get skyborne, although the four Olympus engines would likely give up far short of any Soviet-range targets.
I’d also need to learn how to eject at high altitude, dodge Sukhoi jets and perform extreme long-range mid-air refuelling at night before even approaching a Cold War pilot’s skillset.
Fortunately, the heritage aircraft is stationary and pointed at the sedate airfield just outside Stratford-upon-Avon as I receive precise instructions from two skilled aviators.
The former nuclear bomber now only moves on the ground, although it does so impressively and usually at speeds of up to 90mph, which is one reason why it ended up with its nose cone pointed over a hedge after a ‘runway excursion’ on its last outing.
The mishap, during a test run for a display event, feels like little more than a blip on the aircraft’s mapping radar as the band of volunteers below us busy themselves with tasks that make it feel like a jet delivered to the RAF in 1964 is about to fly again.
Descending from dawn onwards on Saturdays, they include former RAF pilots and ground crew.
Mike Pollitt, chairman of the XM655 Maintenance & Preservation Society, is one of the hands on deck and jokes about being the tea boy as he makes a round of brews in one of the huts.
He flew Avro Vulcans in the 70s and early 80s and looks suitably at east in the left-hand pilot’s seat after we climb up a narrow step ladder into the cockpit.
‘This is a very manoeuvrable aircraft, it has a huge wing and large flying controls,’ Mike tells me.
‘An aircraft this size you normally associate with a yoke, but because she is so manoeuvrable she has a fighter-like stick. I’d say this airplane is easily as manoeuvrable as the Hawker Hunter of her period, which was a very successful fighter which I’ve flown.
‘She could outmanoeuvre any Soviet fighter of her era. I wouldn’t like to come up against the Sukhoi they have now but during her time the Vulcan could outperform any manoeuvre that they could fly.
‘She is a delight to fly, there would be a crew of five who got to know one another particularly well and when you took a flight to the States or Canada to do some training it was like taking a five-seat executive jet.
‘It’s a very interesting and very exciting aircraft to fly and be with.’
Len Hewitt, another of the 25 volunteers, was a member of the 50 Squadron ground crew at RAF Waddington who knows the finer details of how to hoist a nuclear missile into a bomb bay. Len shows me how to engage the autopilot and check the altitude as the V-winged bomber hones in on a target.
The volunteers have vast experience to draw on for this Vulcan-flying-for-dummies lesson.
‘Having spent 10 years working on Vulcans I then took 30 years without going near any military aircraft and then I saw this taxiing with the 50 Squadron symbol on the tail,’ Len says.
‘I thought good heavens, this 50 Squadron Vulcan can still move under its own steam.
‘At which point I had to come down, and I’m still here 13 years later.’
XM655’s last flight was on February 11, 1984, when she was flown into Wellesbourne Mountford Airfield from the Waddington base in Lincolnshire.
One of three Vulcans still in ground-running condition, the aircraft survived vandalism and a court case over parking fees during a decade of neglect before the Delta Engineering Association and then the preservation society began the restoration work.
The unscheduled stop on September 17 took place a day before the ‘civilianised’ jet was due to display at the airfield to mark the 40th anniversary of the RAF’s Black Buck raids during the Falklands conflict.
The offending piece of kit was a faulty air speed indicator, which doesn’t give readings until 50knots.
By the time the ex-Concorde pilot alongside Mike realised it wasn’t working the aircraft is thought to have been travelling at 95knots for around two seconds.
That translates into 109mph and an almighty braking effort to bring the one-time nuclear bomber to a halt just shy of a country lane with its refuelling probe peering over the undergrowth.
Aside from a few furrowed tracts in the earth in a corner of the airfield, however, there’s no sign of the mishap and a feeling that we are cleared for take-off.
When I ask if I can see the bomb bay, crew member Kevin Sanders turns the power on and materialises a step ladder so I can take a look at a bank of dummy 1,000lb high explosives bathed in red light.
There’s a heightened sense of realism inside a jet that was once part of the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent, when crews were ready to get the V-bomber airborne within four minutes.
Kevin wears a Ukraine patch and my visit yesterday came as Vladimir Putin threatened the use of weapons of mass destruction, the founding reason for the fleet’s creation in the late 1940s.
After the Royal Navy’s Polaris submarines became the primary nuclear force, the fleet was nearing the end of its operational life when it received a call to arms during the Falklands War.
The delta-winged jets took part in the Black Buck raids on the strategically important Port Stanley Airfield, which remain the RAF’s longest-ever non-stop bombing runs.
A few minutes in the co-pilot’s seat gives only a fleeting glimpse into the levels of concentration and body stress that the 6,600-mile round trips would have involved.
Underpinning the missions was a jet regarded as one of the finest feats of British aviation engineering.
‘The Vulcan bomber is an icon of British aviation history,’ Mike says.
‘It was one of the principal nuclear deterrents that we had operational during the Cold War, certainly up to 1969 when the Royal Navy’s Polaris submarines took over.
‘Until then, what are you looking at now was part of Britain’s principal nuclear deterrent
‘This is one of only 15 in the country and one of only three in the world that can move under her own power.
‘This is the only one, we believe, with the larger 301 engines, so this, we believe, is firmly worth keeping.’
As visitors explore the jet and tap the volunteers for information, it’s clear that it will take more than a faulty indicator for this venerable warbird to finally put its wheels up.
For more information and visit times click here
Do you have a story you would like to share? Contact josh.layton@metro.co.uk
For more stories like this, check our news page.
