The Vulcan B2 in the Cold War (Hardback)

Many who lived during the Cold War asked the question of the V-force nuclear deterrent: ‘If the balloon had gone up, would it have got through?’ This book, written by an Air Electronics Officer with some 4,500 flying hours in Avro Vulcans, sets out to answer that question.

The Vulcan B2 in the Cold War analyses the state of air power in the early years of the Cold War, examining the hot wars of Korea and Vietnam, as well as the early versions of Soviet and Chinese air defence systems and how effective they might be at countering the RAF’s nuclear bomber fleet. The UK’s deterrent had to be survivable of a Soviet pre-emptive ballistic missile strike, or had to be airborne before such a strike took place. The early warning system provided Bomber Command’s headquarters with some 3½ minutes to 4½ minutes warning to get the V-force airborne. The average time to get the Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) aircraft airborne was an astonishing 1minute 53 seconds.

The author explains the ‘combat environment’ the Vulcan would have to fly into to be able to release its weapon. Until late 1963, the Vulcan would have to be capable of flying above enemy fighter ceilings and jamming the surface-to-air missile radars, after late 1963 flying at low level to avoid detection for as long as possible from the radars of surface-to-air missiles. Such factors were considered in what was called minimising the ‘Probability of Kill’. The effectiveness of the Vulcan in evading Soviet defences was almost put to the test during the Cold War by the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Another supremely important element of the Vulcan’s role was the nature of the weapon the Vulcan carried and its method of delivery. All of this is discussed in this intriguing investigation into how the Vulcan, and more specifically the B2 variant, would have fared should the Cold War have turned ‘hot’.