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This was going to be another Blue Steel "carry over" trial to test missile systems – they had almost become routine. But flying in V-bombers always got the adrenalin flowing just a little. I was a civilian working with Elliott Brothers – an English firm now part of GEC I believe.
We were concluding the first development phase of one of the world’s first Inertial navigation systems which was used to guide the BlueSteel stand-off bomb.
Our Handley Page Victor B.2 aircraft was parked in the loading bay on Edinburgh air field near Adelaide South Australia.
The 6 ton 36ft long missile was secured under the bomb bay – fully fuelled with Kerosene and High Test Peroxide – a rather nasty mixture, and so the loading bay was fairly well flooded with water – just in case.
Nevertheless the 10,000 ft climb points were passing rapidly until we got to around 46,000 ft I believe and then all heck broke loose.
Lots of rapid discussion and attempts to pull up from the front deck, the start of a real roller coaster ride (pitch ups, pull overs, etc.) with engine noise doing wonderful things.
Then what seemed (from the back) to be a wingover followed by increasingly violent positive and negative G forces.
John Baker activated the "Abandon Aircraft" signs which also dumped cabin pressure,
and Frank (who was nominally first out of the rear door) unstrapped and hit the roof quite violently and took no further escape action.
In the nominal escape plan I was next to get out, and I managed to half stand and hang onto the camera bracket in front of the nav equipment. But I could get no further towards the side door as we were rotating fast and in what seemed to be a very steep dive.
Then after what seemed like a long time (actually about 20 seconds),
there was a loud bang from the rear of the aircraft and the rotation changed to a near vertical dive and rapid pull out,
accompanied by much creaking and groaning and dust ,
pencils, pads, etc. flying in all directions.
But we were back in semi level flight at around 16,000 ft!
Very luckily for us, John Baker had done many test flights in prototype aircraft, where it had become routine to fit breaking parachutes to lift the tail of the aircraft into a more stable dive position, which could be recovered relatively easily.
Now this had never been attempted in an 80 ton crescent wing Victor – but nothing much else was working.
So John pulled the tail chute which lasted a few seconds before breaking away,
but long enough to do the job and allow some heavy stick pulling to level out before doing a submarine imitation.
Here is what I believe happened.
Others who know better than I can correct me if I’m wrong.
When we got to 45,000 ft or so the right hand air speed indicating system had a failure causing it to indicate around Mach 1.03.
This sent a "transonic" flight signal to the auto stabilisers which initiated a pitch up manoeuvre as the Victors were not designed to go supersonic.
The pilots however compared right and left side air speed indications and as the pitch up had started were inclined to believe the faulty right hand system.
So they too tried to further reduce speed and ended up in a violent pitch up to an almost inverted position
followed by a rapid spin which was impossible to control.
So how does one feel at a time like that?
Not too great, but certainly I felt reasonably calm and I remember I had time to think about flight insurance and dependants!
As usual when the adrenalin is pumping, everything seemed to go into slow motion.
But it was really nice to get roughly straight and level again.
It was good that we had all the records from the inertial navigator recorders and were able to analyse them later.
The aircraft experienced maximums of about minus 3 and plus 5 G’s (more than airframe design limits),
and the whole incident lasted about 60 secs with the descent from 46,000 to 16,000 in about 20 secs – vertically supersonic!
It was decided to jettison the missile as it was full of highly explosive fuel (whose temperature was rising)
and even had some TNT on board for range safety break up if it strayed outside the Woomera range limits.
Also because there was no tail parachute, if there had been undercarriage or brake problems, a wheels up landing with a fully fuelled BlueSteel underneath would have been very spectacular!
XL161 werd later een "Desert Storm tanker veteraan" totdat ze in Augustus 1995 te RAF Lyneham ten prooi viel aan de sloophamer...Despite the large excursions outside it’s design limits, the aircraft turned out to be in pretty good shape and after some minor repairs went on to launch more BlueSteels for the trials – at the Woomera range of course!
Later XL161 returned to U.K., and after a refit at the Handley Page plant, went on to RAF squadron reconnaissance duties.
http://www.jsaxon.org/bluesteel/books/victorin.htm