Sunday, October 11, 2015

The Vulcan Tour hits Farnborough

To a small hill overlooking Farnborough Airport, birthplace of British aviation, to see XH558, the last surviving Vulcan bomber make a farewell flypast before she is grounded.

I've been in a Vulcan, and it is a thing of noisy, deadly beauty and a living monument to the billions of pounds poured down the toilet during the Cold War. Vulcans and Lightnings - we knew what we were doing back then, which was mostly building airframes round hugely powerful engines to see what they would do.

The Lightnings went years ago (although there's one in the FAST Museum at Farnborough), and now it's farewell to the last of the Vulcans.

And it seems like everybody and their dog is there to see it, and there is some severe camera envy. That line in the background is some of the worst parking you will ever see in your life, and there was literally a cast of thousands on the heathland. (I parked really badly somewhere else, so don't go blaming me)

And here she comes.

Closely followed by...

And there she goes.

Then everybody went home, and Farnborough Airport was left to its executive jets.

Bye bye Vulcan. You were ace. And loud. But mostly ace.

6 comments:

rashbre said...

I saw that phenomenal Vulcan at Farnborough a while ago. A few pix here (interspersed with some other planes).

https://www.flickr.com//photos/rashbre/sets/72157630559955090/show/

TonyF said...

I worked on Lightnings...

Steve said...

I remember as a four year-old, living in Hertfordshire, seeing 3 or 4 of them in formation right over the top of our house. Frightened the absolute shit out of me. It's a wonder I went on to have an interest in aircraft and get a pilot's licence after that.

Ole Phat Stu said...

Give us some audio of the Vulcan whine pls :-)

Dioclese said...

Love it or hate it you have to admit it's a British icon. I remember building and Airfix of it when I was a kid. IMHO it's a thing of beauty

Mr Larrington said...

We had a Services Day at my skool when I was a small Mr Larrington. The Navy were a bit rubbish, coz it was deemed "too difficult" to get a guided missile destroyer up the canal. The Army were pretty cool, with tanks and big guns and Colonel Blashford-Snell newly returned from the Otrato Swamp. The RAF were sub-zero, with two loons doing aerobatics in Jet Provosts and a Jaguar zooming about the place and...

...a low-level pass from a Vulcan before the driver did that "stand it on its tail and blow the tiles off the rooftops for miles around" trick. After that the Red Areows were almost an anticlimax.