Obviously the pilots flew the aircraft, and it was normal that the crew Captain was the First Pilot.  First among Equals.  If I have made any errors on this page hopefully an ex-pilot will put me right.

Pilots instrumentation Comparison with the Valiant

Pilots were also human beings that needed food and drink. This was a transit flight either to or from Goose Bay and Tony has come down from his seat to eat his in-flight on the 6th seat. The rest of the crew ‘nutty’ boxes are stacked behind his right shoulder. The copilot would still have been in his seat and another crew member may have gone up to Tony’s seat for a look around.

Unfortunately Tony died early in 2006. This photo of mine was on the cover of his order of service.

The photo shows the viewing panels for the pilot, and then bottom right the small window over the AEO seat, with a similar one over my Nav Radar position. The ‘blister between the canopy and the AEO window is where the periscopic sextant extends through the pressure hull. There is one each side.

A quick glance at the photo below shows that the pilot work area comes from an earlier age; there is no ‘glass cockpit’ such as would be found in a modern military jet.  Instruments are of the old dial variety, mixed in with mechanical tumbler switches. The central panel between the pilots contains the main engine instrumentation; r.p.m., jet pipe temperature, pressures etc, together with the throttle levers.  In front of each pilot are the basic flying instruments such as artificial horizon, turn and slip etc, and the ‘fighter’ style control stick rather than the ‘handlebar’ style control of most large aircraft.  The need for this type of control was dictated by the limited amount of room in the Vulcan cockpit, this style of stick was not used in the Victor or the Valiant. On top of the stick you can see the ‘coolie’ hat for trim control.

This photo was one of a set that I bought from Chris Knox.

On the top centre of the instrument panel are yellow and black warning controls for engine fire warning and extinguishers and also for deploying the Ram Air Turbine (RAT).  The Vulcan is pretty much dead when it loses electrics, luckily an extremely rare event.  The flying controls are all electrically driven, so there has to be emergency backup to the engine alternators in case of the loss of all four, this backup is provided by a combination of the RAT at higher levels and an Auxilliary Power Unit (APU) at lower levels.  The emergency drill for loss of electrics forms one of the BTR training requirements that each crew must complete. When the pilot ‘pulls the RAT’ the turbine drops down under the port wing and is driven by the airstream, generating the required emergency power.

Out of the picture on the Captain’s left is the panel and warning lights for the Powered Flying Controls (PFCs), while on the copilot’s side are most of the fuel gauges. Near the top of the centre section of the panel, under a row of warning lights,  is a diagrammatic view of the aircraft from the tail; on this there are moving indicators to show the position of the main flying controls. One role for the copilot is to keep and maintain the fuel log, and to move fuel between fuel tanks to control the aircraft centre of gravity, the controls and gauges for doing this are on his side of the cockpit.

For myself I always felt that the viewing panels in front of the pilots were rather small, some people have described it as ‘flying while looking through a letterbox’, but the pilots always seemed to see them as adequate.  Attached to each of the panels are small blinds which could be drawn across when carrying out a nuclear attack, they are ‘flash’ blinds designed to reduce the impact of the flash from a nuclear detonation.  Obviously the flash could cause awful damage to a pilot’s eyesight, especially at night, and this would be a great hazard when flying at low level.

The Valiant instrumentation.

This photo was taken off the web.  I will try to find the site again and credit the source.

The layout is a little ‘cleaner’ than the Vulcan, though obviously of the same era.  One point worth noting though is that there is more space in this layout than on the Vulcan.  The following is an extract of a recent email I received;

The Valiant cockpit portrayed on your site is of XD818. I do not know where it was taken, probably Hendon or Cosford. I know that it is 818 as I restored it at RAF Marham to its current state after having been greatly shocked by its interior state. I had to go through hell and high water to gain its custody. It was being 'looked after' by Admin Wing. Being an engineer at that time (Weapons) I was of course under Eng Wing. OC Eng didn't take lightly to acquiring an 'aged and useless piece of aluminium, and what happens when you get posted? I will have to find someone else to look after it!' Well, I got it and started to bail out the flooded bomb aimers position. After two days of bailing I gave up and drilled a hole at the lowest point and achieved my first objective. Two years later it was restored to its former glory. All of the NBS system had been reinstalled (courtesy of Waddington and the Vulcan demise, which incidentally I had to fight tooth and nail over to retain when the Falklands War tuned up) whilst before only photographs had been in situ. This also applied to many more items in the Radio Crate as we called it.

Well, how do I know that it is 818? One day, having logged several restoration hours, I sat in the co-pilots seat and started playing hangar pilots. I depressed the toe brakes (obviously they were not operational, just a bit of premature flight sim) and to my dismay the stbd pedal collapsed. Upon investigation, the alloy tube had failed which held it in its correct position. If you look at the photograph carefully, you can see that the co's stbd pedal is out of kilter with the pilots and at a distinctly wrong angle. After all of the restoration that I had completed at this time I was mortified. I was unable to get or manufacture a replacement.
 

This photo is a selective enlargement from the photo above.  It shows the arrangement of the control column on the Valiant. While it is of the ‘handlebar’ type it actually comes from the side and not out of the instrument panel, or on a column from the floor.  In this configuration the whole unit can be pushed forward to allow the pilot better access to his seat, it is then slid back towards him for the in-flight configuration.

The photo below is a selective enlargement from the top photo showing the Vulcan control column in a little more detail. This is on the copilot side.

The picture above is courtesy of Andy Leitch

Compare the cockpit instrumentation with that of a modern 4 engine bomber, the American B2 Stealth Bomber.  here everything is presented on a ‘glass’ cockpit with multi functional flat screens giving differnt information as required by the pilots depending on the phase of the operation they are flying.

This photo was taken off the web.