Handley Page Victor
The Handley Page Victor was a British jet strategic bomber built by Handley Page, the last of the RAF's three V-bombers to enter service. It first flew on 24 December 1952 and joined the RAF in 1958 as a carrier of Britain's nuclear deterrent. Handley Page built 86 in all — two prototypes, 50 B.1s and 34 B.2s — and after the bombers were retired in 1968 many were converted to reconnaissance aircraft and in-flight refuelling tankers. As a tanker it supported the Black Buck raids in the 1982 Falklands conflict and flew in the 1991 Gulf War, staying in service until 1993, longer than the Vulcan or the Valiant. Four aircraft survive in British museums.
Why It Mattered
The Victor was the last of the RAF's three V-bombers to enter service, built by Handley Page to carry Britain's airborne nuclear deterrent during the Cold War. Its crescent wing was the boldest aerodynamic step of the three designs: aviation author Bill Gunston called it "undoubtedly the most efficient high-subsonic wing on any drawing board in 1947". Ordered as a bomber, the Victor found its lasting work elsewhere: converted into an in-flight refuelling tanker, it carried out every refuelling task of the 1982 Falklands campaign and flew on in that role until 1993, giving it the longest service of the V-bomber generation.
Design Notes
Handley Page's answer to specification B.35/46 — a jet bomber to carry a 10,000 lb bomb-load to a target 1,500 nautical miles away at up to 50,000 ft — was the HP.80. Its crescent wing, developed by aerodynamicist Gustav Lachmann and his deputy Godfrey Lee, reduced in sweep and chord in three distinct steps from root to tip, holding a constant critical Mach number across the whole wing. Four engines were buried in the wing roots — Armstrong Siddeley Sapphires in the B.1 and Rolls-Royce Conways in the B.2 — and the tailplane sat at the tip of the fin, clear of the jet exhaust. The five crew shared a single pressurised compartment, but only the two pilots had ejection seats; for the three rear crew, successful escape in most emergencies would have been unlikely. The crescent wing was flight-tested on the HP.88, a heavily modified Supermarine Attacker, which crashed on 26 August 1951 after about thirty flights; the design had already moved beyond it, and the loss had little effect on the programme.
Operational History
The first prototype, WB771, was assembled at RAF Boscombe Down after Radlett's runway was judged too short, and there, on 24 December 1952, Handley Page's chief test pilot Hedley Hazelden flew it for 17 minutes. WB771 was lost on 14 July 1954, when its tailplane detached during a test flight and the aircraft crashed with the loss of the crew; the tailplane joint was then strengthened by adding a fourth bolt. Handley Page built 86 Victors in all: two prototypes, 50 B.1s and 34 B.2s. The B.1 entered operational service in April 1958 with No. 10 Squadron at RAF Cottesmore; the Conway-powered B.2 followed in October 1961, later carrying the Blue Steel stand-off nuclear missile. Nine B.2s were converted for strategic reconnaissance to replace Valiants withdrawn with wing fatigue; delivered from July 1965, the SR.2s served with No. 543 Squadron at RAF Wyton until May 1974. Low-level flying fatigued the airframes, and the B.2 bombers were retired into storage by the end of 1968; in 1969 the Royal Navy took over the nuclear deterrent with the Polaris missile. A second career as a tanker had begun in 1965, when B.1s were converted — first as two-point tankers, then as three-point K.1s and K.1As, 25 conversions in all — and 24 B.2s followed as K.2s, the first flying on 1 March 1972. In the 1982 Falklands conflict, Victors carried out all of the campaign's refuelling tasks, flying over 600 sorties from Ascension Island in support of Vulcans, Nimrods, Hercules and Harriers, including the Black Buck raids. In the 1991 Gulf War, eight Victors deployed to Bahrain and the fleet made 299 in-flight refuelling sorties. The fleet was retired in 1993, replaced by tankers based on the Lockheed TriStar and Vickers VC10 airliners.
Afterlife
Four Victors survive complete, all on display in the United Kingdom, and none is flightworthy. The RAF Museum's K.2 XH672, "Maid Marian", which flew on the first two Black Buck missions and, with 52, made more Gulf War refuelling sorties than any other Victor, is displayed at Cosford. XH648, the only surviving B.1, has been at Duxford since 1976 and returned to permanent display in May 2022 after a five-year restoration, one of the largest projects the museum has undertaken. At the Yorkshire Air Museum, K.2 XL231 "Lusty Lindy" is kept in ground operational condition; in November 2023 it ran its engines for the public, thirty years after it flew into the museum. The fourth survivor, K.2 XM715 at Bruntingthorpe, is kept taxiable; a fifth complete aircraft, XH673, RAF Marham's gate guardian, was scrapped in 2020 after being found structurally unsafe.