Flew over my house a couple of weeks ago.
Massive. Massive.
Filled the sky, it did.
Made the earth move.
Yeah, piece of kit.
It's the Vulcan.
This is the inside story about
one of Britain's best-loved aeroplanes
and its final flying days.
The Avro Vulcan was the plane that protected the nation -
a Cold War icon designed
to launch a massive nuclear retaliation at the Soviet Union.
Today only one airworthy Vulcan survives,
but now, too expensive to maintain,
this technological masterpiece is about to be grounded forever.
It's 30 years past retirement.
So we can't say, with 100% confidence,
that it's going to run swimmingly.
We're in unknown territory.
Towards me, Guy.
Guy Martin has been granted privileged access to help
prepare the aircraft for its most ambitious mission ever -
a 1,000-mile farewell tour of Britain.
Oh, my gosh! Wow! Brilliant!
Guy will also learn about the impossible decisions
the Vulcans' elite pilots faced.
One of the things you had to come to terms with
is that it may well be that you result in the death
of hundreds of thousands of people on the ground.
He'll experience the rare honour of flying in a Vulcan formation.
I reckon I could have jumped onto the Vulcan.
Just... That's how close it was.
And he'll become one of the few civilians
to ever take control of a military aircraft.
You have control. Thank you.
GUY CHUCKLES
I think that was a little bit more than a wheelie!
Standby for broadcast. Standby for broadcast.
Air raid warning red. I say again - air raid warning red.
Vulcan nuclear bombers were scrambled from places like this.
Robin Hood Airport near Doncaster is a former RAF base.
Of the 136 Vulcans built, only one is left flying.
This is where she lives, in her original 1950s Cold War hangar.
Oh, we love a new project. We love a new job.
Designation: XH558.
Oh-ho!
Name: The Spirit of Great Britain.
That's a lot of plane.
This is the first time Guy's seen a Vulcan up close.
Look at that!
Just massive!
It's the size of the sky!
45 tonne, as it sits here.
93 tonne when it's full of fuel. 14 fuel tanks in that - 14 fuel tanks.
Not quite, but nearly, the speed of sound.
700-odd mph, that's a lot of plane.
The Vulcan was a remarkable leap forward.
The concept was dreamt up in 1947 by Roy Chadwick,
whose other celebrated bomber, the Lancaster,
entered service just five years earlier.
Going from a Lancaster bomber
to this?!
In the space of five years?!
It's like nothing... It's nothing...nothing like!
You could say, you might say that it's a quantum leap.
I wouldn't use that word.
I haven't thought of the word yet that I'd use.
But this is just...ah!
You know one of those moments. It's one of those moments.
Look at it!
Eh? Handled like a fighter,
but then could drop massive nuclear bombs.
There are four busy months of air displays to go before
558's final flight, and Guy starts work by reporting to his new boss.
We've hear a lot about Taff.
He's Welsh, isn't he?
Welsh. LAUGHTER
I should have known that.
Kevin "Taff" Stone is 558's Chief Engineer.
How are you doing? All right, Taff? Pleased to meet you, I'm Guy.
This is the man responsible
for keeping the Vulcan flying way past her sell-by date.
So if a wing dropped off this, it's your fault? Yes.
In the court of law, I could be culpable for it.
Oh, heck. And go to prison.
It's on his head, that he'd go down for five years.
And so before Guy is let anywhere near 558...
So we are actually on a live, active airfield.
..Taff insists on some essential training.
Health and safety induction.
I am a first-aider, so if there's any problems,
I can deal with all of that.
And obviously, we don't get drunk. No, I'm already good at that.
But that doesn't matter. If it means
to get the chance to work on a Vulcan, then I'm all for it.
Taff is a highly experienced former RAF engineer.
He worked on Vulcans for 30 years,
and flew with the Red Arrows as the back-seat technician.
They are live ejection seats. Right.
558 is his pride and joy.
She's temperamental,
high-maintenance,
but there again, I do love her.
It's a proper engineering aircraft.
There's no little black boxes to tell you what's wrong.
You get to know and feel the aircraft.
That's our inductions.
With the induction over, work can begin.
Take the weight. Up you go.
The first job is a big one - testing 558's engines.
Taff enlists Guy's help
for the first crucial stage of the operation.
One handle, six doors. GUY LAUGHS
Away we go. Right, I'll get cracking.
Come on!
That's it.
Ooh...
Six tonne of door? Yep.
It's filled with ballast - bomb blasts. Is that right? Yep.
That'll do you, Guy.
This servicing procedure is performed every 20 flying hours,
and has been carried out since the Vulcan entered service 59 years ago.
Today is the final time it will ever be done while she's flying.
The companies that sign off 558's annual safety checks
have run out of the necessary 1950s expertise,
so at the end of the year, the permit to fly will not be renewed.
I'm not particularly looking forward to it.
You always want to be the best
and you want to keep it going right to the end.
And then you're thinking,
"But I don't want it to be the end."
You just want to keep going,
keep it going for as long as physically possible.
It feels like you're falling in a chasm.
It's built to fly.
And yet they're getting rid of the best British bomber ever built?
Something wrong somewhere there.
OK.
That's it.
This is a jet engine.
The start of a jet engine.
We're clear behind, Sam.
Ignition is on.
OK. Air is on.
Battens in.
Once started, each engine is checked at full power.
Sucking in 100kg of air a second creates the Vulcan's legendary howl.
Shutting down. Zero fuel.
Take some beating, that, boys. Take some beating.
Thanks, everyone, all complete. Everything went well.
All right, the ground's shaking,
it's like me innards are moving inside me. Ugh!
Pff! One of them...
I've never felt anything like that.
But, yes, test passed.
We're one step nearer to our final flight.
It's going to be emotional.
This breathtaking aircraft
was designed and built entirely in Great Britain.
It was the first British machine of the atomic age...
..and yet it started as a humble doodle on a newspaper.
When World War II ended, the Cold War began.
In the face of an increasingly belligerent Soviet Union,
Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee commissioned
an atomic bomb programme to act as Britain's nuclear deterrent.
This left his Ministry of Supply
with the problem of how to deliver that deterrent.
They tendered for an aircraft capable of carrying
a five-tonne nuclear payload to Moscow in less than three hours,
flying twice as high as anything that had gone before
in order to avoid Russian defences.
AV Roe of Manchester rose to the challenge.
Technical director Roy Chadwick realised conventional
straight wings wouldn't be up to the job.
Instead he suggested a radical triangular delta wing.
Obviously, it's great for lift,
cos we've got a massive amount of wing area.
It makes the whole fuselage very stiff,
cos it's all joined together in one lump,
and we've got loads of area for storing petrol.
Or fuel. We'll call it fuel.
Chadwick's original doodles
became designs for a plane built around a bomb.
The five-man crew were almost an afterthought.
You need to have a look in it.
Is there any light? Will this camera be able to see that?
She's cosy.
She's cosy, mate.
Right.
What we've got here is...
That's the pilot.
That's the co-pilot.
This is me on the stairs.
And there is no space.
You could not swing cats round in here.
Here, we have AEO - Air Electronics Officer.
He looks after all the plane's electrical gubbins,
and there is a lot of electrics on this.
Now, plotter - he looks after where the plane's going.
And here we have Nav Radar.
He looks after dropping the bombs.
See this in the corner.
See that?
Manual bomb dropper.
Eh?
So you're thinking, right - one, two, three, four, five...
Oh, and that's your soup-warmer, that took 90 minutes to warm.
It recirculates the air in the engine bay to warm that up.
90 minutes!
You've broken me!
You've BROKEN me!
Oh, she IS busy.
I press a button...
The preparations for Vulcan 558's final flying days are under way,
but the next task Guy will face
could put the entire plane's airworthiness at risk.
XH558 is the last airworthy example of the iconic Vulcan bomber
but now this 55-year-old aircraft has reached retirement age.
At the end of a busy flying season,
she will embark on an ambitious 1,000-mile farewell tour
before being permanently grounded.
Guy Martin has been allowed to join the select engineering team
who maintain the aircraft.
Down a little bit. Not too much.
That's it, that's it. She's in. No messing. No messing.
This little puppy dog here, he's off, isn't he?
If he ain't got his hand in grease, he's not happy. Same as all of us.
We love it.
Guy is working on the most blessed of all the Vulcans.
558 is lucky to be the last one flying.
In the early 1980s,
the Vulcan fleet had reached the end of its serviceable life
and was sliced up for scrap.
But 558 was given a stay of execution
when she was bought by a private enthusiast.
In the House of Commons this afternoon,
Mr Jonathan Aitken will announce the sale
of the Vulcan XH558 to Mr David Walton.
APPLAUSE
Do you know how much he paid?
I've got the original mag.
And the original advert.
Anyway, in '92, he paid ?25,000.
You know, you do think, initially, "God, ?25,000,
"get a Vulcan bomber for ?25,000, - great."
But then you've got to think -
how are you going to explain that to the missus?
558 was now a museum piece but five years later, in 1997,
a Vulcan superfan had other ideas.
I said to myself, I am dammed if this aircraft will never fly again.
It sends a shiver down my spine even now.
Robert Pleming,
keen air cadet, nuclear physicist taught by Stephen Hawking
and pioneer of computer networking at the start of the World Wide Web,
gave up his executive salary
to try and restore 558 to flight.
It was an immense personal risk.
Some of my old friends of the time thought I was mad.
Which, to be honest, was one possible explanation.
I regard this as the Everest of aircraft restorations. It must be.
And I have to admit, at times,
I was wondering whether or not I was going to be Mallory or Hillary.
I do think there's an engineer's gut feel that I certainly feel.
From the very earliest days,
I was convinced that we could return the aircraft to fly,
based on instinct rather than actual firm knowledge.
We thought we'd need about one and a half million to restore the aircraft.
That proved to be a huge underestimate.
The project was on the brink of financial ruin
and as a last resort, Pleming
spent three solid months preparing a submission
to the Heritage Lottery Fund. And this is it.
This is two volumes' worth, 110,000 words
of what is needed to make a successful lottery fund grant application.
A pretty reasonable novel.
They were awarded ?2.7 million.
Public donations more than doubled that figure and in 2007,
after 100,000 man-hours,
the world's most complex restoration was rolled out of a hangar.
558 was towed past her adoring public, taxied to the runway...
made the familiar howl...
LOUD ROARING
reached 116mph...
and flew for the first time in 14 years.
LOUD ROARING
The plane has been a star of airshows ever since.
There has been a cost.
I guess I could've earned very much more money than I have earned.
I'm not sure whether or not
the stress has caused medical problems or whatever
but there have been a few milestone medical issues along the way.
Undoubtedly worth it. No question.
We've given so much pleasure to so many people.
It is a dear job to run. How much has it cost?
I don't want... you don't
really ask but I thought I should ask.
The figure that we...
have had to raise year-on-year is about ?2.25 million.
Two and a quarter million?
Well, we can take the aircraft to the people.
We are seen by somewhere between two
and three million people a year
and in my head, that is a pound a smile.
The Vulcan is funded largely by public money
and displays for around 40 hours a year.
The maintenance alone to keep the plane safe runs up an annual
bill of one million pounds.
None of the servicing jobs on the Vulcan are straightforward.
Checking for airframe fatigue
requires the plane to be jacked up off the ground.
But lowering it back down again is one of the riskiest procedures
the team carry out.
Guy will have to pay attention
to everything crew chief Taff tells him.
Right, then. Let's get to work, then.
It sounds a bit dramatic that we say if you let one jack down too fast,
you write the whole plane off but that is the case.
Once the wing supports have been removed,
the aircraft is left sitting on hydraulic jacks.
45 tonnes of priceless aeroplane
is balanced on just four small jacking points.
If you come down incorrectly and this slips off, then it could
completely ruin the aircraft or you could twist the airframe. Oh, heck.
There are no spare airframes,
so a twist here would leave the aircraft permanently grounded.
Safely jacking a Vulcan has always relied on close teamwork.
558's airworthiness is on the line.
So Guy will work alongside former RAF technician Ray Watts.
We keep our eye on Mark so that those two come down together. Yes.
And the guys come down together and basically, if in any doubt,
if you're not happy, you shout "Stop!" Yes. All four of us stop.
I cut my teeth on these when I was 18 to 22.
It's a bond that stays with you.
It's going to be a sad day when the last flight goes.
You'll see a lot of people upset.
And I don't really want to talk about that day.
OK? Altogether, down one.
Guy slowly releases the valve and the painstaking procedure begins.
That's a bit... That's fine.
So we just keep our eye on that one as well. Yes.
Taff was sat in the cockpit watching a plumb bob so Taff knows
if it's back end too low or front end too low or cross cornered.
That's when it's going to stress the airframe
so everyone lets the jacks down evenly.
OK, front only down one. Front only, down one.
CREAKING
Stop.
You can hear it creaking.
You can hear the airframe creaking.
BANG!
What's that?
Nobody panics.
And Taff guides the fractional correction that's necessary.
Front right only down one.
The plumb bob returns to centre.
Stop.
These boys have done this before. We're in good hands.
35 minutes after starting the process,
the Vulcan has descended 18 inches and is safely back on solid ground.
Weight off.
That's it. We're done. We've taken the Vulcan off jacks.
Spot-on, mate.
I'm impressed that they trusted me with the knob on the jack.
But it was all right. We got it done.
Thank you. Cheers.
The Vulcan's radical design
relied on a number of complex electrical systems to help it fly.
Although commonplace today,
when the first prototype was built in the 1950s,
they were completely untested.
We've got no fancy computer programmes back then to tell us
if it's going to fly or if it's going to do this or do that.
We need to build one and then get a pilot daft enough to fly it.
That man with the debonair Wing Commander Roly Falk.
Roly, of course, was always dressed immaculately
in his grey pinstripe suit.
He said an aircraft should be as clean as a car.
It shouldn't be necessary to put on protective clothing.
In August 1952, Falk stepped forward
to see if a full-size Vulcan would fly.
It had taken five years to reach this point.
Avro designer Stuart Davies had developed the Delta concept
and witnessed the maiden voyage with his daughter.
I was 12 years old and down we go
to stand with the other bystanders.
Great anticipation.
Clear to taxi, runway 2-6.
He teased us a bit because he took it on one or two little test runs
down the runway before he actually did anything.
698 Woodford Tower cleared for takeoff.
And then this beautiful bird took off into the sky
and we all thought, "Wow!"
It stopped the whole of Cheshire.
The traffic, everything ground to a standstill
because they had never seen anything like this at all.
They thought it was something from outer space.
It came over the new assembly here at Woodford
and he rolled it like a fighter.
We couldn't believe it that such a massive aircraft could be rolled
and he smashed all the glass in the roof of the new assembly
and it was like that for a long time until the roof was redone.
I've never forgotten that. All the workforce thought it was terrific.
He did put the aircraft through a lot of manoeuvres.
They weren't always manoeuvres that he had been asked to put it through.
And I can remember my father saying,
"He shouldn't have done that!"
But it's just shows how good the aircraft was.
Roly, of course, was a superb pilot
but being a superb pilot doesn't really ensure that the aircraft is ideal.
It's absolutely vital that the aircraft can be handled
by the worst pilot in the squadron, if you like, and not only the best.
So before the plane was handed over to the RAF,
brave pilots like Tony Blackman had to test it to the limit.
The Vulcan was always particularly exciting
because you would lose control at the maximum speed -
the aircraft would try and dive for home!
Avro spent four years refining the design,
using as much cutting-edge technology as possible,
from analysing shock waves in wind tunnels to early computers.
'Calculations which would have taken a month can now be
'condensed into a matter of minutes.'
That's what was so amazing about the Vulcan.
In spite of its very unfortunate handling,
we managed to make it into a very effective bomber.
The Vulcan entered service in 1956,
but its smooth shape influenced the design of stealth bombers
some 30 years later
and its Rolls-Royce Olympus engines became the heart of Concorde.
My father was extremely proud of it.
And every time I've seen it fly since, tears come to my eyes.
I thinks of my father.
Few machines inspire emotions like the Vulcan,
as Guy is about to find out for himself
with a rare chance to fly alongside it in formation.
We have visual.
Guy Martin is about to see one of the final displays
of the last airworthy Vulcan,
the legendary nuclear bomber.
ENGINES WHINE
Can you see the sound, see the sound!
It makes that noise between 85 and 97% throttle.
They didn't design it to do that, it just happened,
it's the air rushing through the engines, down the tunnels.
It's like a resonance, like blowing over the top of a milk bottle.
I don't know if you can hear that.
He just opened her up there.
ENGINES ROAR AND WHINE
The howl, you feel the howl off that.
The only thing better than experiencing a Vulcan display
from the ground is to watch it from the sky.
The Blades aerobatic team have flown alongside 558 on numerous occasions
and are marking this, their final display together,
by inviting a Spitfire to join the formation.
And Guy.
All right, mate.
He'll be flown by Myles Garland,
one of the Red Arrows' youngest ever squadron leaders.
Don't be shy, my mother wasn't.
So what's the craziest thing you've done? What's the craziest thing I've done?
Yeah. Um...
Just seconds after takeoff, Guy is within a wingspan of the Vulcan.
It's a bold statement, but I don't think there's anyone that's got
any nearer to a flying Vulcan than me and Myles.
I reckon I could have jumped onto the Vulcan, like a...
I could... That's how close it was.
It was going that slow, it looked like it'd fall out of the sky,
but it wasn't, it was doing 180mph.
Bloody hell!
You can see the size of it in relation to the Spitfire.
The Spitfire is 20 years older than the Vulcan,
yet it's still nowhere near retirement.
Which begs an obvious question.
There's a load of Spitfires flying.
Why can't the Vulcan carry on flying?
She's not as simple as our mates.
Because the Spitfire, its cables, rods, linkages,
you could build it in your shed.
But the Vulcan could not be further from that.
It has 14 miles of cabling, more than 100,000 parts,
and with no manual overrides, if there's a system failure,
it can't be glided to the ground.
With the engineering firms who guarantee her safety
now running out of the old-fashioned skills needed to support her,
558 has to be retired.
Perfect.
Look at him go.
That's the flying with the Vulcan complete. Mega. Perfect.
Thank you very much.
I'm probably the last person that's going to get as near as that
to a flying Vulcan.
I'm just saying, I'm just saying.
Ha-ha, no messing!
You've done that before.
That's never going to happen again, is it? I just all went to mush.
I've just been sat the whole time just gazing at the thing.
Just gazing at it.
I'm still shaking my head.
Give me a minute, give me a minute, have a cup of tea.
She may be a crowd-pleasing display aircraft these days,
but the Vulcan was designed to be a killing machine.
At the height of the Cold War,
it was a linchpin of Bomber Command's QRA.
Scramble, scramble.
QRA stood for Quick Reaction Alert.
A special group poised to rapidly deliver a massive nuclear retaliation
in the event of a Soviet attack.
It included nine Vulcan squadrons.
At any one time, there were 45 men on standby,
sleeping close to their aircraft.
Every Vulcan squadron had to have a plane loaded with a nuclear weapon
ready to go at a moment's notice, 24 hours a day.
QRA existed between 1961 and '69.
The type of callout you'd get would be,
"Attention, attention, this is the bomber controller."
'Attention, attention. This is the bomber controller.
'Authentication whisky nine Juliet.'
Whenever that callout occurred, it certainly sent the heart racing.
We tended to sleep in our flying suits.
The essence of the thing
was to be able to move quickly and to get your aircraft quickly.
We knew if we were ever scrambled,
it only meant one thing,
and that was missiles incoming to the UK.
We also knew by the time that we probably got east to Norway,
there wouldn't be much left of the UK, so it was a case of,
we're going to do to them what they have just done to us.
One bomb can destroy utterly one city.
No other servicemen were entrusted with as much responsibility
as the crews of the QRA. I've got a quote here.
From Nigel Baldwin, who was a Vulcan captain. A Vulcan captain.
Let me read on. "I tremble at the responsibility I had.
"I signed for my first nuclear weapon when I was 23 years old.
"It staggers me now." It staggers HIM now!
Respect.
One of the things you had to come to terms with is the fact that
it may well be that you would result in the death of
hundreds of thousands of people on the ground. Not a nice thought.
And it's somewhere I wouldn't liked to have gone.
But if I had to have done it, I would have done it.
Most of our spare time on the squadron, when you weren't flying,
you were in the vault, as it was called, studying your target.
Only that crew knew what that target was and you knew it inside out.
The latest intelligence would reflect where the latest
missiles and guns were going to be placed,
so you'd try to avoid them before you even got airborne.
You would plan a route.
The descriptions of the targets were always army camps, airfields,
railway sidings.
It never mentioned, ever, anything about the public who might be there.
15 miles to our target. Bomb switch on.
And it was only when I met a Russian girl later,
when I left the RAF, and I found she came from my primary target,
that the true enormity of it actually struck home to me.
I was so shaken that I couldn't continue to talk to her
and I had to walk away.
And it really, really upset me.
I think in some ways I'm almost ashamed of it. Um...
The realisation of the massive responsibility that we had,
and...I don't want to think of it any more.
The crews tasked with dropping a nuclear weapon
had unique training.
Pilots were told to fly with an eye patch so that if they were
blinded by a nuclear flash, they still had one eye that would work.
Instructions for what to do after dropping a bomb varied.
We've got quotation from Andrew Brookes, he was a Vulcan pilot.
And he was told, and I just think... HE EXHALES SHARPLY
He was told, "Keep flying east
"and hope to settle down with a nice warm Mongolian woman."
Nothing to come back to.
The closest the world ever came to nuclear war
was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
We delay the start of tonight's Late Show
to bring you a CBS News special report.
There is not a great deal of reason for optimism tonight.
The Soviet Union secretly installed 36 nuclear missiles
in Communist-led Cuba, easily within striking distance of the USA.
American asked Britain to ready its jets on 26th October, Black Saturday.
We had been watching it on black-and-white television
so we weren't surprised when the front doorbell went
and there was an RAF policeman there,
and he said, "Sir, you are required immediately."
And I said to my wife, "Look, I'm dashing off,
"it's obviously got to do with this wretched Cuban business.
"If you hear us take off, I want you to get the kids in the car
"and then drive up to your brother in the Isle of Skye.
"You should be OK there."
And then I had to dash off.
Um...
I only said that, really, to reassure myself, I suppose.
When we drove out to the aircraft, we saw that the bomb was loaded.
It's a nasty thing.
And then we just sat there.
Only a few yards from the aircraft.
We were waiting for the scramble message to come in
which would have meant we'd have to deliver the bomb.
Britain did nothing to keep QRA's readiness to take off a secret
from Soviet intelligence.
We left the window open, so to speak,
so they could see us and hear us.
We wanted the Soviet Union to know what we were doing.
And they would know, then, that we were serious.
That's how the deterrent works.
11th hour negotiations brought the crisis to a peaceful end.
The nuclear deterrent had been tested to the limit.
Funnily enough, doesn't seem all that long ago.
Back at 558's hangar, the maintenance work continues.
Guy has been entrusted with a turbine inspection
deep inside the air intakes.
It can be filthy work.
Guy's following in the knee-steps of the old engineers
who were nicknamed sooties.
I thought I was going to have to get dosed up in duck oil
and get naked to get in.
But actually, it's all right, there is plenty of room.
You don't know what's going to crack next, what's going to drop to bits.
You've got to have a keen eye.
Any nicks in the blades, that's what we're checking for.
Can you see what I'm looking at? With the torch?
If there's been any rivets go through or birds go through,
or small children go through, it'd mark the blades.
You hear that noise? BLADES RATTLE
Because the blades are loose from the root.
When the thing gets to temperature and at speed,
that centrifugal force holds them tied. That's how it should be.
If they're not rattling, we've got a problem.
Thursday morning, sat in an air intake in a Vulcan, eh?
The best mechanic's job.
The best mechanic's job, eh?
I don't want to scratch her or anything.
Spot on. Spot on. Everything in order as far as I can see.
We'll get cracking.
Down here, one of the tasks...
No task is complete until crew chief Taff records it
on the Civil Aviation Authority's certificate of work.
If you'd like to sign for a physical task on this aircraft.
Spot on. Grand, thank you very much.
That's it, that's you on the official paperwork.
So I know who to blame.
It's all in hand, don't worry.
558 is fit to fly for now.
But there's one safety aspect that has beleaguered the Vulcan
through its entire life.
Whilst the pilot and co-pilot up front had ejector seats,
the design couldn't accommodate them for the crew in the back.
Although there were no crashes during active service,
there were several training accidents.
It's so difficult to get out of the Vulcan if you had to in a hurry.
There were some nasty accidents which involved pilots getting out
and rear crew not getting out.
I lost quite a few friends that way.
If it had ejection seats, they would have survived.
One of the first things we did was to say to our pilots,
"Please, guys, no mock heroics.
"If you've lost control of the aircraft, go.
"There's nothing you can do to help us. Go."
They didn't fit ejector seats to the rear crew,
but what they did do for us is, the seats would swivel
and we had what is known as a seat assistant cushion.
I get into that position there. I pull this lever on the side.
Which inflates that cushion there, like a whoopee cushion.
And you cannot fight it.
If it goes off, it ejects you towards the entrance hole.
Of course, there is a disadvantage that
if you've got the undercarriage down,
then just aft of the escape hatch is the nose wheel.
Um...
That front wheel's staring at me.
It's not going to do your dentures too much good.
I've got to somehow get down there, jump that way, while avoiding that,
while trying to pull my parachute. You what?
The way you had to go down then is you went down with your legs
spread apart so your feet slide down the outside of the hatch
onto the hydraulic jacks.
And then you reach over and catch the starboard jack.
Starboard, what side is starboard?
And you swing yourself out the side of the door.
Hang on, I've got my shoe caught on there.
Hopefully to go down the side of the nose wheel.
And now, pull my parachute and try and miss that.
Even if the nose wheel wasn't down,
an emergency exit was perilously dangerous.
Not terribly satisfactory and not a lot of people have actually got out.
15 Vulcan crashes all in all, and in ten of those crashes,
all of the boys coming out that way died. Ten of the crashes.
Odds aren't very good. I can see why.
One rear crew member who had to contemplate those odds
was Peter West.
I had this bang. It was a bird strike.
The two starboard engines burst into flame and for the first
and only time in my RAF career of nearly 35 years,
I pressed the key and sent a mayday message.
The plane was 558,
the Vulcan Guy is working on it.
People have said to me, "Oh, God, 558 nearly killed you?"
On the country, 558 kept us alive.
That aircraft, with a big hole in the starboard wing, stayed airborne.
Vulcan crews have always been considered amongst the elite.
And next, Guy will discover if he's made of the same stuff
As he's put in the cockpit and handed the controls.
There are two months left
before Vulcan 558's 1,000-mile farewell tour of Britain,
with the team confident the airframe is holding up well.
But she's 55 years old.
And, with no other Vulcan having flown for so long,
the team never know when a problem might arise.
And, on the 5th of September, one did.
At the controls that day was Virgin Atlantic airline pilot Bill Perrins.
We performed a couple of air displays
and we were preparing to land at Prestwick Airport up in Scotland.
And we selected the undercarriage down, and it didn't fully come down.
A plane spotter's footage captured the faulty nosewheel.
A safe landing looked impossible.
And, with fuel running out,
the airport initiated its emergency protocols.
Phil Davies was in the back of the Vulcan,
working as the air electronics officer.
We believe that some air had got in the system,
so the nosewheel came down to about 70 degrees.
We called if there was any British military aircraft around.
The RAF scrambled a Spitfire over to us.
The Spitfire came up, flew alongside
and confirmed that the nosewheel was, in fact, not fully down.
With more than 14,000 flying hours to his name,
Bill Perrins could draw on vast experience.
We have a bunch of procedures that we go through.
Used a little bit of old-fashioned airmanship,
where we thought outside the box, wobbled the aeroplane around to see
if we could persuade the undercarriage to lower under gravity.
The last resort is to fire high-pressure nitrogen
into the hydraulic system.
It creates such force that it has to be done
well clear of any people or buildings.
We just kind of settled to go out to sea to blow the gear down
and, suddenly, I think the old girl decided
that she didn't want us to do that
and, with a big clunk, the nosewheel went down and locked.
SIREN WAILS
The nosewheel was down,
but nobody could be sure it would take the strain of the landing.
Perrins kept the nose in the air until the last possible second,
to try and make touchdown as gentle as possible.
She'd made it.
And, for the pilot at least, it's definitely time to retire 558.
Personally, I think it's exactly the right time
to knock it on the head and park it up.
Certainly, when I reach the same sort of comparable age,
I don't want somebody to make me do lots of things I don't want to do.
I just intend to sit in an armchair, become grumpy and drink a few beers.
There are only five pilots sufficiently qualified
to fly a Vulcan today,
and aviation regulations prohibit carrying any passengers.
So there's only one way Guy can experience a working Vulcan.
This is XM655.
Although not in flying condition,
it's preserved well enough to be able to taxi.
Fast.
Guy will be allowed to experience this from the cockpit,
sitting alongside Wing Commander Mike Pollitt.
Right. Morning, all.
Welcome to our new student pilot, Guy Martin.
LAUGHTER Yeah, that's me, boy. That's me.
Normally, there's 4? months of solid ground school,
and then four or five trips before a co-pilot
is let off on his first ever real go with his own crew.
So this is going to be considerably compressed for your training today.
Happy? Yeah! LAUGHTER
Do you want to take off? Do I? Yeah. She does. Yeah.
GUY LAUGHS
I'd lose every license possible, you know, and I'd be in court.
The Civil Aviation Authority would take me to the cleaners.
Would it be worth it? Well, it would be with you on board, basically.
You know... These boys would like it. And you know I would love it!
The intention is to lose speed just before takeoff
by using the wing as a giant airbrake.
Which means Guy having to follow a very precise set of instructions.
You're going to sit in the right-hand seat... Yes.
..which is the co-pilot's seat. OK.
We will show you a few of the switches
that need to be made on the right-hand side. Mm-hm.
And I'm specifically going to point out the airspeed indicator. Yes.
So that's going to hit 75 or 80 knots. Right. OK?
At that point, we'll close the throttles, pop the air brakes out,
raise the nose, and that presents the wing to the airstream.
To slow it down? Yeah, that produces form drag, that's known as. OK.
And that slows it down.
It's not just a case of jumping in and driving off.
Ejector seats!
In the back of the aircraft, there's a run-through of the same checklist
that has been used to start the Vulcan
ever since it entered service in 1956.
Happy? 100%.
Right, when you put that up, you can switch the mike on.
OVER RADIO: Can you hear me? I can, yeah.
Barry. Yeah?
I think we're ready to do the internal checks, please.
Okey-doke. Here we go, then.
They treat it as seriously as a real flight.
"Abandon aircraft" switches. On.
Off.
Because things could go seriously wrong.
If...there's an engine fire... Yes?
..you close the appropriate engine air switch. OK, yeah.
And then we'll hastily get out of the aircraft. OK.
"Hastily"? Yeah, I like that.
There are 45 minutes of checks.
Clear the systems checks, Eric?
Clear for systems.
Right, my friend. You can do this. Yes.
Guy checks the controls for full and free movement.
Just take it to the extremes in each direction.
No resistance? No. All the way around, no problem. Fantastic.
ENGINE STARTS
With systems checks complete, they can start the engine.
Have you started a jet engine before?
No, definitely not. Good. I'm thinking no.
Good God, this is going to be an honour,
to teach you how to start an engine! THEY LAUGH
No, never. Never.
Eric, clear start four. Clear four.
Lighting up now. There she goes.
Clear three. Clear three.
That's got it. Open her up. Yep. ENGINE RAMPS UP
Fabulous.
Shut three, open two.
Well done. Clear two. Clear two.
So then, you can move her forward into the gate.
OK? Yeah, you're doing it by feel. Fantastic.
Well done. You've started your first jet engine.
GUY LAUGHS
You're clear to remove the chocks, and everybody clear, please.
Finally, nearly an hour after climbing on board,
655 is ready to taxi.
Just going to get clearance on the radio. Right. Okey-dokey.
We are clear to leave.
Just asking if I'm clear to enter the main runway.
We're clear. Ta.
655 lines up at the end of the runway.
Put your hand on the stick.
That's a good boy.
Guy is cleared to run.
Guy Martin is at the helm of the most powerful machine he's ever sat in,
a Vulcan bomber.
It has 80,000 pounds of thrust, twice that of a typical airliner.
Only briefly taxiing at full power is permitted,
but it will take all of Guy's concentration to help
Wing Commander Mike Pollitt keep the Vulcan on the ground.
Is everybody happy?
And we've been cleared to go.
The engines are brought up to power.
ENGINES ROAR
Five seconds.
Go.
LAUGHING: She's got some lift!
50, 55,
60, 65,
70,
75...
At 90mph, they pull back on the stick hard to try and slow down.
The nose soars.
Just before takeoff, they slam the nose down.
I think that was a little bit more than a wheel!
The air brakes are deployed.
They stamp on the wheel brakes...
..and bring the 70-tonne bomber to a halt.
You can relax, lad.
GUY LAUGHS Not a lot of room for error!
I could hardly even read the speed off fast enough.
That's some acceleration, that!
Guy's experience doesn't end there.
You have control. Thank you.
Britain's newest co-pilot is entrusted
with taxiing this priceless aircraft back to base.
You've got the runways
and the nosing and steering, and the throttles.
Is the handbrake still on? Yeah, brake is off.
Yeah, you can depart.
Always check to the side.
That gives you a feeling of the speed,
as well as checking that your wing tip is clearing any obstacles.
We're about 20mph.
More like 30 now. GUY LAUGHS
It is the same, just the same.
So keep a little bit to the right, Guy. OK.
Just a little bit tense. Is it?
GUY LAUGHS
Doesn't do anything for my blood pressure!
Nothing to do, sitting there with your arms crossed!
Thank you very much!
Just bring her round gradually when I say.
To the right, now.
Well done. A bit nervous!
But that was very good. A 70-tonne vehicle!
OK, stop. OK, brakes applied. Fantastic.
Engine now bracing, off. Can you close one and four, please, Guy?
That's the outers.
That's those shut now? Yes. Close two and three, please, Guy.
Fantastic. Well done.
GUY CHUCKLES
That was slick! Thank you very much indeed, everybody.
So, what's the captain's opinion
on the newest recruit to a Vulcan squadron?
He's good, he's really good.
I'd say, you know, if we did that three or four times more,
I'd let him do the next one himself.
Really that. Very, very good.
I'm sure that wasn't... I need to watch that back on camera.
That must've been nearly a takeoff.
Certainly, it was abrupt enough
to get the first set of main bogies off.
We were pushing the limit.
Actually, I think you are wasted as a motorcyclist.
GUY LAUGHS You should have been one of us!
Vulcan pilots were always rigorously trained,
but it looked like they or their aircraft
were never going to see combat action.
With nuclear deterrent responsibilities having passed
to stealthy Polaris submarines,
by 1982, the Vulcan's time was nearly up.
Then, just three months before retirement,
the tired old bomber was finally called into action.
THATCHER: For the first time for many years,
British sovereign territory has been invaded by a foreign power.
Argentina had invaded the Falkland Islands.
Their tanks were in the streets and their aircraft had captured
the key strategic location of Port Stanley Airfield.
The House meets this Saturday
to respond to a situation of great gravity.
Britain wanted to take out the runway
so it couldn't be used by Argentina's fast jets.
But the challenge was using conventional bombs
to hit a target just 40 metres wide that was 8,000 miles from home.
Even launching the attack from the halfway point,
at a base on Ascension Island, still meant this would be
the longest bombing raid in British military history.
We just did not see how we could possibly achieve it,
thought it was a one-way ticket.
Nevertheless, at 11pm on 30 April 1982,
Operation Black Buck took off from Ascension.
The first difficulty was navigation and actually trying to find
the small cluster of Falkland Islands in the vast, featureless Atlantic.
We're away from any coastline, so we can't use our radar,
so we went for a long period where we really didn't know where we were
apart from we knew, of course, we were heading south.
While the stars in the night sky offered some guidance...
..trying to find the target was going to depend on something else.
We just had to rely on that great thing which is luck.
There was another vital piece of equipment
the 16-hour round-trip would depend on.
If you're in the air for 16 hours,
you are going to the loo, aren't you?
I think number twos are out of the question.
But you're going to need a number one, aren't you?
You're going to need a wee-wee. And that's what they had.
You put the little fellow into there...
See, look? Can you see?
HE SNIFFS
That was a bit fruity.
That's how they'd wee-wee. Then you fill the bag.
Bit of a bladder. That's it, that's as simple as that.
That's what you have to do, get on with the job.
The Vulcan would need more than 30,000 gallons of fuel
to complete the mission,
but its tanks could only carry 9,000 gallons.
The only way to get fuel that far from home
was with a relay of 11 airborne tankers
and a bafflingly complicated in-flight refuelling plan.
I'd never seen anything like it before in my life.
I didn't really understand it, couldn't follow it,
but luckily I had Dick Russell on my right shoulder
and I turned to him and said, "Do you understand that, Dick?"
And he said, "Yes." I said, "Thank goodness for that!"
Refuelling is very, very tricky. The object is to,
with small throttle movements, you gradually edge up
to put your probe in the basket of the hose.
Easier said than done!
The pilot's explanation for in-flight refuelling was
it's like trying to put a piece of wet spaghetti up a cat's backside.
You sweat. Not half sometimes.
Sometimes you'll run into turbulence,
which will make it even more difficult. It is stressful.
I know there's so much that could go wrong.
If you speared that into the back of the plane in front,
he'll probably come down, that will break off,
that will go in your engine, you're probably going to come down.
Yeah, it could get messy, but we know we like a bit of risk!
And they didn't just have to refuel once.
They had to refuel seven times.
But after the final top-up, the crew realised they had been left short.
The original calculations hadn't taken into account
the increased fuel consumption
of constant changes in speed and altitude during each refuel.
They were now beyond the range of any other tanker.
If they continued the mission, they'd be unlikely to make it home.
Martin thought about it, I can hear him now, he said,
"I haven't come all this way to go back."
I was absolutely determined that we just had to go on with this attack.
Running into the target at 400mph,
the bombing computer was switched on,
a 1940s clockwork calculator that worked out
the bombs should be released from two miles away.
It is genuinely mechanical.
The forward throw should carry the bombs to target.
It's mind-blowing! The mission's success now fell to Bob Wright.
It's a matter of pressing the button so the bombs start
falling off the aircraft.
The equipment is showing you how many have gone.
You can hear them coming off.
Finally, the counter gets to 21...
I said, "Bombs gone."
"We've gone and done the job, let's get out,
"let's get away, let's be on it.
"Give her the berries, on the throttle,
"turn right, we are going back home."
Of out of a load of 20-odd 1,000 pound bombs,
only one hit the runway, but that was enough to put the runway
out of commission for fast jets, so the job was done.
The Argentinians did not know what had hit them.
They were not expecting a Vulcan to come all the way from England.
Now the crew had to get home.
The original idea had been to escape at low level to avoid enemy radar.
By abandoning that little bit of the plan
and just climbing up to high-level, we knew we could save some fuel.
It worked.
With less drag in thinner air,
they saved just enough to make it to the final Victor tanker.
The Victor rolled up right in front of us, half a mile in front of us.
Lovely sight! Lovely sight.
It was a remarkable feat.
Six more Black Buck missions were attempted,
but only the original was considered a success.
And today, 33 years after its finest hour,
The last flying Vulcan is about to say goodbye for the final time.
It's time for the last flying Vulcan's farewell tour of Britain.
But after months of planning,
the whole event may have to be cancelled due to thick fog.
Can you see out there?
No, you can't, that's the problem. You can't.
Hoping for the best,
the team decide to prepare their beloved aircraft for flight anyway.
It's four months since Guy first joined the ground crew
to help them work on this iconic machine.
What will get me is what it means to these boys
and when it starts to hit them.
It's going to be emotional.
Yeah, it's like a friend.
I feel sick.
All the memories and everything.
What's this going to mean to you when it packs up?
There is a bit of all of us on that and that's the thing.
We'll be upset when it dies. A tad emotional.
I will say that much.
Only crew chief Taff seems to be keeping a cool head.
No.
Just good at hiding it.
There are three hours of pre-flight servicing to carry out.
The pneumatic systems are replenished.
Anyone would've thought he'd done this before. Crack on.
The tyre pressures are checked and 558 is filled up with fuel.
Excuse me! Sorry, mate, where do you want this? Turn it clockwise.
It takes 40 minutes and costs ?24,000.
An hour before the scheduled takeoff, the fog begins to clear.
558 can be handed over to her pilots.
What does the plane mean to you?
It's about the 63rd time I've flown it in the last five years,
so it's got a place in my heart
and it's just... I know you like machinery, and the technology in it,
the more you learn about it, just the more fantastic the design was.
So, yes, we'll miss it.
Captain Bill Perrins runs Guy through the mission.
We're going to whoosh across to just west of Harrogate and then, up
towards Newcastle airport and then, all the way up the north-east
coast, to the east of Edinburgh,
and down through the Lake District, which is going to look lovely today.
Shouldn't be too bumpy. How low will you go over here? 500 foot?
501 feet.
I like the precision! And then, we're going to fly over Woodford.
The aeroplane was born at Woodford.
Nottingham, Derby, then back here, and land, and that's that.
Last time ever. Very sad.
So we need to get in the aeroplane and go flying.
You go for your life.
It's happening.
I'll be happy when she takes off,
because then I know we've all done our job properly.
558 is about to start her most ambitious tour ever,
where she'll cover a total of more than 1,000 miles.
ENGINE ROARS
I got a bit of a shiver on then. I got a bit of a shiver on then!
It brings a funny emotion, actually.
So many people around the country now will be seeing
this for the last time, so it's... it's a funny old moment.
Rear crewmember Phil Davies makes sure the epic tour is flown
with military precision.
The first landmark is the Cold War radar station at Menwith Hill.
Fans with camera phones are at every turn.
PEOPLE GASP
Flying above the Yorkshire Dales at 250 mph, the Vulcan soon reaches
the River Tyne and is cleared to fly over the centre of Newcastle.
One hour after takeoff, they reach the Firth of Forth
and Edinburgh's famous hill, King Arthur's Seat.
With more than 50 locations to visit,
the last flying Vulcan was getting the send-off she deserved.
The Vulcan was something special.
There's nothing like it left.
There's not going to be a dry eye in the house,
I can guarantee that, and certainly not in my head.
To see 558 finish flying is going to be a sad loss to me.
I will always remember it with huge affection.
It was, to me, the best aircraft in the world. I loved it.
It's flying beautifully, this is what is so sad.
It is going to be mourned.
The tour was a magnificent success, with 300,000 spectators
turning out.
The Lake District saw huge crowds on the shores of Windermere.
Oh, yes, I can see it now!
She flew past Manchester and its police helicopter,
and on to Woodford near Stockport, once home to the factory
where are all the Vulcans were designed, built and first flew.
ENGINE ROARS, APPLAUSE
She went on to complete a tour of the south as well,
taking in the Severn Bridge,
the White Cliffs of Dover and the Thames Estuary,
before finally returning to Doncaster, where XH558,
the Spirit Of Great Britain, will live on the ground for evermore.
I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you learned something.
I've learned a lot.
It's mega, isn't it? She was designed over here,
built over here, then, eventually, it was restored over here.
What an achievement.
I was pretty nervous when I was lollipopping it back.
It's a lot of plane coming towards you.
There was only going to be one winner.
It's been a massive experience.
I've met a lot of interesting people,
a lot of people with a lot of passion about this plane
and that has made it great.
I hope you've filled your boots, because that's it.
That's it.
She's never going again.
Subtitles by Ericsson