THE ORIGINAL COLD WAR WARRIORS

As the Government reveals the UK will once again have an airborne nuclear deterrent, a new book recalls the glory days of the V-Force, Britain's first-line of defence against Soviet Russia... and how close we were to Armageddon

- By Jonathan Glancey

HE NEW delta-wing Avro Vulcan was a revelation. Movietone newsreel footage of the 1955 Farnborough Airshow reveals test pilot Roland “Roly” Falk blasting into the damp September sky at the controls of XA890, the second production aircraft, and, wonder-of-wonders, barrel-rolling the 69-ton machine as it climbs above a crowd of senior politicians — including the prime minister Anthony Eden, military top brass and a thrilled, raincoated public.

Impeccably dressed as always in bespoke suit, tie, cufflinks, pocket handkerchief and sunglasses, Falk made flying a nuclear bomber no more difficult than, and as stylish as, rolling up at Claridge’s for a cocktail. There is a delightful photograph, taken on August 30, 1952, of Falk posed on the cockpit ladder of the prototype Avro 698 — the Vulcan name came later — at Avro’s Woodford Aerodrome, south of Manchester.

John Falk, Roly’s son, relived this moment 70 years later when he posed on the cockpit ladder of Vulcan XL426, preserved at Southend Airport. He wore a suit and tie, but also a lanyard and a high-vis jacket, a sign of our times that his father would have snorted at. Safety matters, of course, yet the Vulcan was a one of a trio of new V-Force British bomber types — the others were the Vickers Valiant and the Handley Page Victor.

They were all designed to fly high, gunless and fast, as close to Soviet targets as possible where they would unleash H-bombs a thousand times more powerful than those dropped by USAAF Boeing B-29 Superfortresses on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80 years ago this month. How safe was that?

The mainstay of Britain’s nuclear deterrence from the mid-1950s to 1969 — when Royal Navy Polaris submarines superseded them — the RAF’s V-bombers were, thankfully, never to launch nuclear weapons in anger, although they did appear to come very close to doing so at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.