How the Cold War Vulcan bomber flew again

Several thousand people are assembled at the Heritage Motor Centre in Warwickshire, here to see one of the last flying displays of a Cold War bomber brought back to unlikely life. Even at a fair distance away – aircraft like the Vulcan aren’t allowed to fly directly over crowds at public displays for safety reasons – its size is staggering.

Avro Vulcan XH558, to give this aircraft its proper title, is the very last of the 136 Vulcans built still able to take to the air; most of its compatriots ended up going to the scrapyard. Vulcans entered service as nuclear-armed bombers in the 1950s, an atomic deterrent on duty every hour of every day. They were retired in the 1980s after performing their only ‘wartime’ mission on epic flights into the South Atlantic during the Falklands conflict.

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Vulcan XH558, operated by the Vulcan to the Sky Trust, is only flying at all thanks to a decade-long quest by a team of volunteers and RAF-trained engineers. Returning one of these four-engined bombers to the skies was one of the most complex aircraft preservation projects undertaken anywhere in the world. As the team prepares to watch the aircraft’s last flight later this month, BBC Future spoke to those involved and discovered an untold story of remarkable engineering, dogged effort, and exhilarating flight.

The plan to return the 37-tonne aircraft once again into the air began soon after it stopped flying in 1992, says Andrew Edmondson, the trust’s engineering director. He had only just retired from the RAF when XH558 ended its days flying in an official RAF display team in 1993.

He first heard about XH558 when it was brought by the Walton family in 1994, who intended it to be the centrepiece of a British historic aircraft collection; a woman in a charity he worked for suggested he go and see it. The aircraft was kept at Bruntingthorpe Airfield in Leicestershire, and kept in good enough condition for taxiing along the runaway under its own power. "They were trying to keep it in as close to flying condition as possible,” Edmondson says. The Waltons’ intent, in fact, was to preserve it well enough that it might be able to fly again.

Edmondson began working on the aircraft in his spare time as a project manager in the nuclear industry. In the RAF he had worked fighter aircraft – first the Vietnam War-era Phantoms, then Tornados – and had never seen a Vulcan in the air. But he was excited at the prospect of getting up close to this huge aircraft. In 1997 he was offered a job by Robert Pleming, with the aim of getting Vulcan XH558 back into British skies. It is Pleming who headed the project to return one of these giant bombers into flying service, and followed that dream through years of fundraising, logistical nightmares and many thousands of man hours of meticulous work.

Pleming was not an RAF veteran, but he’d seen Vulcans fly during air displays in the 1980s. The sight had a lasting effect on him. He’d even seen XH558 when it was flying with an RAF team in the early 1990s. "Then one of my daughter’s friends’ dads turned out to be a Vulcan pilot, and he told me what a joy it was to fly.” On one holiday, Pleming, a nuclear physicist turned computing project manager, took with him a book on the history of the plane. "Understanding the technology of the time, the design, it really was a huge achievement.”

"I knew a bit about the Cold War days and I thought it was vital we kept at least one of those aircraft flying, just like we had with the Lancasters from World War Two.”

(BBC)