Re: - Enzo - A VC10 flew over.

Sofa - Spud wrote:
There we all were at a local 10K race, a fine clear day with the wife
and kids having done the 5K and the organisers were handing out the
prizes , suddenly there was a roaring sound and everyone looked up to
see a majestic VC10 slowly banking over us . It straightened and began
lowering undercarriage to land at Birmingham airport.

I was stunned by the vast size of the thing and those assembled stood
in silence and watched this massive plane turn above us - it looks so
different from the standard 2 engines on the wing type planes.

The Ten does look very different from most airliners. In 1988 I went on a
Maple Flag detachment to Cold Lake in Canada (near Edmonton, although "near"
is a relative term). On the final day we were seeing off our Harriers for
the long haul back across Canada and then across the Atlantic to Germany.
Our jets were accompanied by a VC-10 tanker.

There were a lot of plane spotters from other services there that day. After
all we had all sorts of different jets to see. British Harriers and
Tornados, Canadian CF-18s and CF-5s, US F-15s, F-4Gs and even a couple of
F-117s which were still Super Secret Squirrel... The VC-10 stimulated an
awful lot of interest. It looks a bit like something from a Gerry Anderson
show and is so powerful that even a heavily laden Ten will get off the deck
in a similar distance to a strike jet. There were a bunch of USAF blokes
watching the Ten in astonishment and they were even more amazed when it
leapt from the runway and climbed out at a steep angle. A couple of them
came across to me and asked about the new super-jet that us Brits had -
"We've never seen anything like that, dude!"

They were amazed when I told them that the VC-10 wasn't new but was in fact
twenty-five years old (at that time). They were even more amazed when I told
them that the VC-10 tanker would have to wait around for the Harriers. The
top speed of both aircraft when clean is similar, but a Harrier laden down
with gunpods, baggage pods and ferry tanks is a good 100 knots slower than a
Ten.

I can't see the Tens lasting much longer in RAF service. True, they're built
like a brick shithouse and so fatigue life won't be a concern for some
years, but they are very expensive to operate. The Conway engines are used
by no other aircraft in service anywhere (in fact the only other large scale
use of this engine was the Victor). Spares production ceased many years ago
and now all spares for these engines are hand-made. The problem is that the
aircraft supposed to replace the Tens in the tanker role, the Airbus A330
MRTT, has yet to fly. There is still some concern about the price of these
aircraft and the contract might yet fall through, leaving the RAF high and
dry. Even if the contract is signed, I can't see these aircraft being in
service much before 2015.

After the Falklands war, the RAF bought some Tristars to supplement the Tens
in the tanker role. Those Tristars will need to be withdrawn before the
Tens, leaving a capability gap. Various companies have offered to convert
more second-hand Tristars, but given that the aircraft will already be
around thirty years old, that is only a stop-gap solution. One company is
even offering a full solution for the RAF. They will provide converted
DC-10s (similar to the USAF KC-10) and will provide all flight crew and
engineering support themselves. If this goes through, the RAF's front line
tanker force will have been fully civilianised and will not be able to
operate in a combat environment. Ludicrous!


--
Enzo

I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.



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