🚀 go-pugleaf

From Geoff.Miller@Corp.Sun.COM (Geoff Miller)



griffith@acuson.com (Paul Griffiths) writes:

>Indeed the only time the lightblue crabs showed up was in a Vulcan 
>(there were three vulcan flights, each flight had to be refueled 10
>times to make the long flight) [...]


They had to refuel *10 times per flight?*  And the Vulcan was a *strategic
bomber?*  

I realize that it's a long way from Ascension Island to the Falklands, and 
that as far as the airplane's design range is concerned the UK is a lot 
closer to the former USSR than the US is, so the Vulcan didn't need the same
range capability as, say, the B-52.  But even so, five refuelings each way 
sounds like a hell of a lot for what I've always seen described as a long-
range bomber. 

What would the Vulcans have done in the event of nuclear war, stopped to 
refuel in Dresden, Warsaw, Minsk and Kiev on the way to bomb Moscow???

Seriously, though, this raises an interesting question with regard to the
Vulcan's role during the Cold War days.  If the USAF presumably had Moscow
and other major Soviet cities, ICBM sites, etc., covered, what would the 
RAF's nuclear force have been tasked with in the event of the unthinkable?



Geoff


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Geoff Miller			+ + + + + + + +        Sun Microsystems
geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM	+ + + + + + + +     Menlo Park, California
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