The V-force and Quick Reaction Alert

Avro’s Vulcan was one of the three V-bombers built to carry Britain’s nuclear deterrent, and the boldest: a vast delta wing with four Olympus engines buried in its roots. The prototype first flew in August 1952, and the B.2 of 1958 added a bigger, thinner wing and far more power.

The Black Buck raids of 1982 were, at the time, the longest bombing missions ever flown: nearly 8,000 miles there and back.

XH558 was delivered to the RAF in 1960 and was the last Vulcan in service, flying as the RAF’s display aircraft until 1992.

Handley Page’s Victor was the third of the V-bombers, and the strangest to look at: a crescent wing, thick at the root and thinning towards the tip so that it stayed efficient at high speed, with a T-tail and a nose like a bulbous glasshouse. The prototype first flew on Christmas Eve 1952, and the type entered service in 1958.

The first Black Buck raid needed eleven Victor tankers to get one Vulcan to the Falklands and back.

XL231 was built as a B.2 bomber and converted to a K.2 tanker.

The Lightning was built to climb. English Electric stacked two Rolls-Royce Avons one above the other in a deep, narrow fuselage, swept the wing back 60 degrees and fed the engines through a nose intake split around a radar cone. The P.1A research aircraft first flew in August 1954, and the Lightning became Britain’s only home-grown Mach 2 fighter.

A Lightning could climb from brakes-off to 36,000 ft in under three minutes.

XS903 first flew in August 1966 and joined No. 5 Squadron at Binbrook, flying as “A” in natural metal with a red nose band.

The Javelin was designed to the Air Ministry’s demand for a two-seat night and all-weather fighter, one that could find bombers in the dark and cloud by radar. Gloster gave it a large delta wing, a high tailplane on a tall fin and two Sapphire turbojets, and the prototype flew on 26 November 1951.

The Javelin was the RAF’s first twin-engined delta-wing fighter, and its tailplane sits on top of the fin so that it stays clear of the wing’s turbulence.

XH897 is a Javelin FAW.9 that is kept at IWM Duxford in Cambridgeshire.

The Shackleton was the last of the line that began with the Manchester and the Lancaster. Coastal Command needed a long-range aircraft to replace its Liberators and Lancasters, and Avro’s answer, the Type 696, married the Lincoln’s wing and undercarriage to a deeper, wider fuselage and four Rolls-Royce Griffons driving contra-rotating propellers. The prototype flew at Woodford on 9 March 1949.

Crews called the Shackleton “ten thousand rivets flying in loose formation”; the last AEW.2s left RAF service in 1991, forty years after the MR.1 arrived.

XF708 was the last of 34 Shackleton MR.3s built for the RAF and was delivered in 1959.

The Admiralty wanted a carrier aircraft that could cross the sea at wave-top height, below the radar of the day, and hit a ship with a nuclear weapon or a conventional load. Blackburn’s answer, the NA.39, first flew on 30 April 1958. It had a small, thick, strong wing, a fuselage shaped to the area rule, and a bomb bay whose door rotated to carry the weapons in the belly.

The Buccaneer’s “area ruled” waist and blown wing let it fly fast and low with a heavy load while still landing slowly on a carrier deck.

XN974 is a Buccaneer S.2 preserved at the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington, near York.

W. E. W. Petter designed the Gnat at Folland as a small, cheap lightweight fighter around the Bristol Saturn engine. When that engine was cancelled, the Gnat flew on 18 July 1955 with the smaller Bristol Orpheus. The RAF did not want it as a fighter, but India bought it, and Indian Gnats earned the nickname ‘Sabre Slayer’ against Pakistan’s F-86s.

The Gnat T.1 was small enough that the Red Arrows flew it in tight formation with a span of only 7.3 metres, and the whole team was painted red to stand out against the sky.

XR977 is a Gnat T.1 on show at the Royal Air Force Museum in London.

Westland built the Whirlwind under licence from Sikorsky’s S-55. The first British-built machine flew in November 1953, and it served the Royal Navy and the RAF in a long run of marks, powered at first by the American Pratt & Whitney Wasp radial engine in the nose.

The Whirlwind’s turbine engine sits in the nose, so its single exhaust leaves through a port on the left side only.

XP299 is a Westland-built HAR.10 delivered to the RAF in 1962 and flown on search and rescue with No. 22 Squadron in the overall yellow scheme, with “RAF RESCUE” on the nose and a red-and-white rescue badge on each cabin side.