WI: The HP.80 Victor stays in service

First the UK doesn't fund 3 and a half strategic bombers just the Victor so more airframes get built, this hopefully moves them on to the proposed upgraded variant (B2 I think) which had strengthen frames so it should handle the low level flight operations better without wing cracks. It still ends up as the tanker as well.
If there is only 1 V bomber it will be the Valiant B1. That is almost what happened otl as the RAF initially favoured the Valiant if forced to choose, and the B2 was considered superfluous as low level bombing (pathfinder) was considered obsolete in a nuclear environment.
 
You'd have to completely re-do the V-bomber program to some how get rid of the Vulcan which was always favoured by the RAF.

The Victor lasted 10 more years in service than the supposedly superior Vulcan so it got the last word.
 
what the RAF really needs is to use the proposed VC10 , bomber, freight , long range interceptor etc that was floated about......just makes more sense
 

Archibald

Banned
We should have a TL where a Nimrod with four AIM-9L shot down that pesky Argentina Boeing 707 shadowing the Falklands fleet. It very nearly happened OTL. First airliner versus airliner A2A victory !
 
They were wrong.
Exactly thats my point.

If the RAF chooses 1 V bomber only, it will be the Valiant since that was favoured initially. It will be the Valiant B1 only, since the black bomber (low level Valiant variant) was initially considered for pathfinder/target marking? But the RAF then decided thus role and low level bombing in general is obsolete so cancelled it. (Plus they wanted B1s built quickly and thought working on a variant as well would slow things down - even more likely to be true if the B1 is the only V bomber).

So the Raf gets a load of Valiant B1s as the only V bomber... In 1964 or whenever, they are repainted from anti flash white to camo, told to switch to low level, and then with a year every air frame is knackered with stress fractures in the main spar. And in the 60s budget conditions, there is no money to fix it.
 
The Valiant wasn't favored initially. It was developed, built and entered service first. It was built with a faulty alloy which was discovered during production and never rectified. I've forgotten which, but a transport built with the same alloy underwent a program to replace it. The Valiant B.1 failed not due to stress fracture, but due to crystallization. There seems to have been a degree of cover-up in the explanation given for the ensuing aircrew casualties, in at least one notable case.
 
Exactly thats my point.

If the RAF chooses 1 V bomber only, it will be the Valiant since that was favoured initially. It will be the Valiant B1 only, since the black bomber (low level Valiant variant) was initially considered for pathfinder/target marking? But the RAF then decided thus role and low level bombing in general is obsolete so cancelled it. (Plus they wanted B1s built quickly and thought working on a variant as well would slow things down - even more likely to be true if the B1 is the only V bomber).

So the Raf gets a load of Valiant B1s as the only V bomber... In 1964 or whenever, they are repainted from anti flash white to camo, told to switch to low level, and then with a year every air frame is knackered with stress fractures in the main spar. And in the 60s budget conditions, there is no money to fix it.

If the RAF was only to buy the Vickers Valiant, there's no reason to think it wouldn't have been developed as the Vulcan and Victor were.

Vickers proposed a Valiant B.3 to follow the Marks 1 and 2 which would have featured the Mark 2's stronger airframe combined with a more swept wing so it could go faster. British engine development was moving fast at the time so it could have been powered by Olympus or Conways giving it the same push as its successors.

You'd then turn the Mark 1s into tankers and settle back for a long career.
 
What would keep the Handly Page Victor in service like the B52?
A commitment to remain East of Suez and the consequent realisation that a long range bomber is a useful piece of equipment when airfields may be thousands of miles from potential targets.
 
I agree on probably needing an East of Suez or Imperial role to justify it. Once the era of an nuclear V-Force ceases in the late 1960s, then another raison d'etre is required, as their original purpose is filled by Polaris and they don't really fit in a NATO and North Atlantic role.

Britain getting involved in Vietnam could provide something of a PoD and the key time to tithe things over is between 1968 and 1982.
 
The Valiant wasn't favored initially.
Page 92 of Fading Eagle by Ian Watson says otherwise.

I don't see a reference for where he got that info or why he made the claim, but I've read it elsewhere before. This was in the earliest days of the V-force when they were aiming for 240 aircraft.

The next stage was the Treasury wanted to cancel the Vulcan & Victor, or at least one of them, since the Valiant was already in service, but the RAF was somehow able to successfully argue that they needed both the Vulcan & Victor, and only when they were flying could they evaluate which of Vulcan/Victor was better, and would be cheaper in the long-run.
 
If the RAF was only to buy the Vickers Valiant, there's no reason to think it wouldn't have been developed as the Vulcan and Victor were.

Vickers proposed a Valiant B.3 to follow the Marks 1 and 2 which would have featured the Mark 2's stronger airframe combined with a more swept wing so it could go faster. British engine development was moving fast at the time so it could have been powered by Olympus or Conways giving it the same push as its successors.

You'd then turn the Mark 1s into tankers and settle back for a long career.

One of the reasons that the B2 was cancelled was the RAF didn't want the firms' engineers distracted when they needed the aircraft in service and bugs ironed out quickly. Yes one B2 flew, but it was cancelled before entering production. And all sorts of variants of the Valiant were on the drawing board - including supersonic version, etc. Just as there were for the Vulcan & Victor. Even though Vulcan and Victor did get updates, most of the planned variants were never built, and those that were for the most part years later.

When the Valiant retired, there were 5 operational squadrons. 3 bomber, 1 tanker, 1 recon. They were all retired at the same time. Making Mark 1s into tankers doesn't save them - it didn't save them in OTL.

BTW It does occur to me there is a way to have a long-serving bomber in RAF service. It would be the F-111. Dennis Healey considered a plan to slash tons of defence programmes in the 60s to get a load of F-111s based at 6 bases spread across the med & the Far East. F-111s served for a longer time for Australia, so why not for the UK?
 
Page 92 of Fading Eagle by Ian Watson says otherwise.

I don't see a reference for where he got that info or why he made the claim, but I've read it elsewhere before. This was in the earliest days of the V-force when they were aiming for 240 aircraft.

The next stage was the Treasury wanted to cancel the Vulcan & Victor, or at least one of them, since the Valiant was already in service, but the RAF was somehow able to successfully argue that they needed both the Vulcan & Victor, and only when they were flying could they evaluate which of Vulcan/Victor was better, and would be cheaper in the long-run.
Actually the initial plan was for 320 aircraft by March 1958 in 40 squadrons of 8 consisting of 304 in 38 medium bomber squadrons and 16 in 2 long range photographic reconnaissance squadrons. But the planned number was constantly reduced.
 
What would keep the Handly Page Victor in service like the B52?
You'd need a set of circumstances which would see more than 86 built.

Not sure how that would happen as the Victor was the least favoured of the V-Bombers but it was the highest flying and carried the heaviest bomb load.

You'd then need a series of wars in which it could demonstrate that load carrying ability.

I guess that could involve Britain not giving up its Empire and/or getting involved in other people's fights.

I can imagine keeping bomber Victors in service as long as the tanker ones lasted, until 1993, but stretching that to 2016 and beyond is too much.
 
They were wrong.
I'm not at all sure about that. There was a huge amount of work done about that time on low-level bombing and it was absolutely clear from this that it simply wasn't possible to fly long distances at low level given the technology of the time. The favoured design was a canard-delta one by Avro which was basically a flying fuel tank with a tiny wing for acceptable gust response, and even that was beyond state of the art at the time (which is why the programme was dropped). A Valiant with a strengthened wing would never have been remotely as capable at low level (which means "low" level would probably be about 5,000 feet - going lower gets you into a world of hurt), and that would leave you without really any of the big benefits from going in down low.
The reality is that it took TSR-2 level technology to make the low level bombing specification remotely plausible, by which time better engines and airframes are available. Even then it's arguable how much use it is in a conventional war - blowing holes in the Soviet air defence system for high altitude bombers to go in through makes a lot of sense, but relying on low level flight as your only means of penetration is questionable at best.
 
The victors were all pretty much knackered by 1993. In fact, they all had flight clocks logging fatigue hours, and a lot of them were within sight of the end by the end of the falklands war.

A rebuild in the 80s is going to be very expensive and difficult (think mra4 programme) because the victors are all slightly different from each other.
 
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