Avro Vulcan XA897 Crash

News footage of the aftermath of the crash at Heathrow Airport of one of the first Vulcan bombers, XA897.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• XA897
• avro
• vulcan
• raf
• jet
• bomber
• crash
• heathrow
• airport

[sorePenis]

I love how the two public school posh boys get thrown clear by their ejector seats but the working class crew with no ejector seats burn in flames.

[SAHBfan]

The idea was that in an emergency the rear seat crew were suppossed to bail out WW2 style, out of the crew door, whilst the pilot held the plane steady. Then he ejected when the rest of the crew were safely out.

Trouble is, if he's got time to do all that, then it isn't much of an emergency ^_^

[saabturbo16]

Also anyone see the film of the scimitar of the fleet air arm that went off the side of a carrier and people had to watch the plane sink beneath the waves with the pilot desperately trying to release the canopy so he could eject?

i wonder how many posters here were alive in that period of pushing aircraft design? remember this was the very first vulcan delivered to the RAF and broadhurst had woked his way up through the ranks and was a highly decorated bomber cmd survivor of ww2

[saabturbo16]

attaching modern day high tech thinking to that periods aicraft is misguided - Ejection seats were at an early stage of develoment in those days and in many instances didnt save crew members.

Look at the size of the crew bubble only the front part has clear panel areas and the bubble itself is very small.

how many ejection seats were fitted to the shackleton? none.

also the cockpit had to be manually removed before ejection taking up valuable time.

[telemetry9]

In an awful kind of way. The vulcan selective ejector seat design mimics British society. Perhaps the lucky ones are those that died - not so lucky for their families and children though.

It was purely money that stopped more ejector seats being fitted. I'm alright jack in the front - you boys in the back are f******d.

A tragedy of exclusiveness - a little like the United kingdom in general.

[carroj9]

@sorePenis One pilot had to do it twice and lost 8 crew, another rode it down and died with his crew, i would not have liked to have been forced to make the choice, all down to labour party caring more for money than the lives of valuable men they are not fit to lick the boots of. Yes labour failed them as much as they failed our soldiers and military personnel in the past 14 years.

[carroj9]

@stretchmark8 A Labour party decision having overturned the wishses of the designr and othr experts they went ahead with the decision to have no ejector seats so each crash 4 good men died for no reason other than money just as now the bastards never learn

[xoio]

@michaeljefferies909

This is what i was thinking too.

Apparently the VC10 'could' nip supersonic in level flight it really pushed . Mach 1.01- .02

[michaeljefferies909]

@xoio according to wikipedia it only can get to mach 0.96, and has a cruising speed of mach 0.86. so i'm presuming that it was transonic (ie some of the air flowing over parts of it is at supersonic speeds, even though the plane itself isn't), and the narrator mistook that to mean that the plane is supersonic

[guamsst]

@Sqdrn1 Right, The saying in the U.S. was that the B-47 crew chief wasn't given an ejection seat to make sure he did his job correctly....lol

It was still fairly new technology and not as much value was placed on life at the time either. As to the crash. It's obviously a structural failure and I doubt it was any fault of the crew. I am not aware of any aircraft type that has never crashed or had a mechanical failure.

[xoio]

Supersonic?

Whilst it mostly operated sub-sonically, if what the narrator is correct, i wonder how much past mach 1 the vulcan could go, given that it has no variable intakes to create shock waves to slow the  incoming air down...

[FalconKPD]

@TillyWolves What does that have to do with this video? And that makes you sound VERY classy.