The rear crew area was small, and the space on the work table was quite restricted, but once you were organised you found that it was sufficient to get the job done.  Probably the hardest worker on the crew was the Plotter, there wasn’t much of a chance for him to sit back until you were back in the circuit.

Nav Radar Nav Plotter AEO Prone position in the nose

The photo below shows the small viewing window above the AEO’s head, there was a similar one on the other side.  You can see that the crew area was small, and without a great deal of light.

Nav Radar

The nav Radar, he has the blind down over the side window, so I would assume he is working on the radar, not sure how happy he was to have the camera flash go off. He has his hand on the function switch of the CU585 (control unit 585).  This has the internal offsets and height functions for the radar. He does not seem to have any airspeed indication on the large dial top right, so maybe he is only doing take-off checks.  The small round screen above and to the right of his helmet is the radio altimeter.

This and the two photos below are all courtesy of Andy Leitch. Since building the page I have been contacted by Jerry Gegg. He flew with Andy, he says he is the one in the white helmet and in the photos below, Maurice Patterson is the Plotter and Peter Langan is the AEO.  The Captain was Ben Irving. Thanks Jerry.

Nav Plotter

The nav Plotter in the middle seat. As most of us did in the back, we mostly flew with helmets off, on the back of our seat.  Some did wear them at low level, I preferred not to. The oxygen mask with microphone is hanging by small chains from the inner helmet. The map is for the area of Canada around Goose Bay, and yes, we did use pencils and protractors. No GPS in those days.  The large red sign on the left of the photo is the ABANDON AIRCRAFT sign. Only saw it go on once, the pilot slected it instead of the TFR ‘on’ switch as we were letting down to low level.  Makes your heart race.  If I remember correctly it also causes a klaxon to sound and causes emergency decompression of the cabin to allow the emergency door to be opened. There was a sheepish ‘Sorry!’ from the front.

The AEO

The AEO in his empire, the panels to his right controling electrical systems and the APU. On the back of his seat is the handle to allow him to move his seat before getting in.  The seats for the AEO and the Radar can swivel through about 150⁰ this is primarily to make it easy to leave in an emergency, especially if there is any ‘G’ on at the time.  The seat can be swiveled and then the back of the seat pushes forward under spring pressure, hinged at the bottom, this is to force you out of your seat.

Going to war didn’t mean that you couldn’t catch up on the sports news.  This is the AEO on my 27 Sqn. crew, Dave (forget his surname), catching up on his newspaper on a transit trip to Goose Bay.  I used to do some of my Open University reading on the transit legs.  The only one working was the poor old Plotter.

Photo J Dillon

The nose section of the rear crew area.

As well as the rear crew station for the two Navigators and the AEO and the front crew cockpit for the two pilots, there is a little more space in the cabin of the Vulcan. When the crew enter the cockpit, having climbed the ladder, they are on the floor of the cabin, standing behind the seats of the rear crew.  If they face the front of the aircraft they have the short ladder to the pilots seats in front of them, this ladder is removable. On either side of the ladder are the rather uncomfortable 6^th and 7^th ‘seats’ which are normally occupied only when on a ‘Ranger’ and a Crew Chief goes with the crew to supervise servicing at the remote airfield.  The other time it would be occupied woul be if one of the rear crew was having a ‘check ride’ in which case the assessor would occupy one of these extra ‘seats’  To call it a seat is a bit of a mis-nomer, it is not much more than a flat panel with a cushion to sit on.  Very uncomfortable for any length of time, I have only done it a few times myself, thank heavens. These two ‘seats’ are also the position that the Radar stands when he is taking astro shots, so if you have a passenger, he has to get out of the way.

If the ladder to the pilots seats is stowed it allows access to the ‘prone’ bomb aimer’s position. This position has a padded ‘bed’ allowing a crew member to lie there on his belly and see through the clear view panel in the nose, the position has the normal oxygen and radio facilities that are found at all other crew stations. I assume that at the design stage of the aircraft there had been a requirement for some sort of visual bomb sight, possibly as backup to a failure of the NBS system. I have never seen a bomb sight at that position. However, the existence of the clear view panel, allowing a view of the ground over which the aircraft was tracking was seen to be useful at low level.  An F95 camera is positioned there to take vertical photos of the run in to low level targets, and bombing accuracy can be assessed by reviewing the film at a later date. During a sortie, if the crew intend attacking more than a couple of low level targets then the film will run out.  The Radar draws a couple of film magazines before the flight and will then go down in the nose and change magazines in between bomb runs.

The ‘prone’ position was used on one of our trips to transport an Admiral to Goose bay for ‘Churchill River Conference’; a euphemism for a salmon fishing trip in Canada.  The more useful facility the position provided was also associated with crew trips to Goose Bay and Offutt, beer. While they were a bit of a struggle to manhandle up the crew access ladder, two full steel kegs of beer could fairly easily be stowed in the prone position.  These would guarantee you a good reception from the ground crew at these bases as they didn’t get cheap English beer so often. To arrive without the beer was ‘bad form’.