#v-bombers

[usafphantom2]

18 May 1951. First flight of the Vickers-Armstrongs Limited Valiant (serial number WB210). British four engine jet bomber, developed for use as high-level strategic bomber.

@CcibChris via X

[nocternalrandomness]

First of the V-Bombers

Built by Vickers-Armstrongs at Weybridge, the Vickers Valiant was a four jet, high-altitude, strategic bomber and was the first, and most conservative in design, of the V-Bombers (the others being the Handley Page Victor and the Avro Vulcan..

[apostlesofmercy]

A crew and their Avro Vulcan at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, 1959.

[usafphantom2]

Sheer beauty.

@CcibChris via X

[usafphantom2]

11 October 1956. A Vickers-Armstrongs Valiant B.1 (WZ366) of 49 Squadron RAF deployed Britain's first air-dropped atomic bomb 'Blue Danube', over Maralinga, South Australia.🇦🇺

@ron_eisele via X

[usafphantom2]

The high level days! V-Bomber alert pad

no details available

@CcibChris via X

[apostlesofmercy]

A Handley Page Victor bomber crew on quick reaction alert (QRA) scramble their aircraft for a mock nuclear strike mission.

[apostlesofmercy]

Avro Vulcan bombers of Britain’s Cold War V-Force under guard by an RAF sentry and his German Shepherd - circa 1960. Vulcans maintained a three stage readiness during moments of political tension, the shortest seeing them airborne within 2 minutes of an alert.

Once airborne they awaited orders, which would depend on the nature of events unfolding. Had a preemptive Soviet attack been detected, or ‘rush to the Channel’ occurred, V-bombers would have been the first stage of Western retaliation. The order ‘Eight-East’ was irrevocable, sending Britain’s entire nuclear fleet of some 150+ bombers East. There they would remove the Western Baltic states of the Warsaw Pact and major targets of European Russia from the map, giving the American bombers of SAC a straight run into Moscow and Russia’s heartland.