With the changes in Russian defence systems, and the power of individual nuclear weapons, all aircraft were not expected to make the round trip, but maybe they didn’t need to.

Don’t need all of them to get through Expected duration of the war Expected attrition rate Exercise ABADDON

Anyone familiar with the documentaries on the Second World War will have seen newsreels on the bomber offensives, and the losses that a bomber stream would experience on the way out and back.  The threats to the V Force were similar to those of the WW2 bombers; fighters, anti-aircraft defences and radar, but as well as these the V bomber had no defensive armament and would be operating alone rather than in a stream. Low level operations was considered the only real defence available to the V bomber, allied to its Electronic Counter Measures (ECM), which was basically a range of radar jammers and ‘window’. While these would assist to ‘blind’ and confuse the Russian defences, the use of them would also alert defenders to the aircraft approaching, so they would need to be used sparingly and appropriately. The section on preparing for war missions goes a little more into this.

In the PRO files there are some interesting notes regarding low level training flights in the UK and abroad and how much information should be passed to the public regarding these flights. The ‘leaking’ of this information was also seen as a useful way of confusing the Russians as to our operational intentions.

Not all expected to make it.

In the 1970’s when I was flying we would convince ourselves that if it came down to it, we might have some chance of returning from a trip, but we do not put the odds as being very high.  We had little to base it on other than the information regarding our particular target and the feeling that an undefended large aircraft would not stand much chance. In the 1950’s the Air Staffs were applying a bit more science to their views on the problem. “It was in any event not necessary to hit every target accurately and success would be achieved even if only a relatively small proportion of the ‘V’ Bomber Force was able to attack its target with thermo nuclear weapons.” From this extract they were not expecting too many to return.

Duration of the war.

In the same file, on ‘The Duration of the War’ the Air Staff assessment does not seem to fit well with the statement above; it was assumed that “the Medium Bomber Force would make a minimum of three attacks in the first week of the war.” Given that V Force bases could be expected to be on the Russian First Strike target list one would expect most of the force to fly off in the UK/NATO response to any inbound Russian attack. To leave them on the ground would probably mean their destruction.  To expect this force to then make “a minimum of three attacks in the first week” must assume that either a large part stays on the ground and survives the Russian strikes, or more return from each sortie than is suggested by the paragraph above.

Three aircraft out of a ‘four ship’ scramble.  The separation between aircraft probably does not meet airtraffic requirements!

Attrition Rate.

The high expected attrition is confirmed in a Top Secret note in the PRO, dated June 1956; “The theoretical assessment gives them a loss rate of 5% per 100 nautical miles by night. A penetration to Moscow therefore would cost something in the region of 55% of the attacking force.” A 1:2 attrition rate as well as the expected damage to V Force bases and aircraft on the ground from Russian first strikes would not leave very much for a second wave. It is easy to see why Polaris missiles carried in ‘unseen’ nuclear submarines would take over as a more credible nuclear deterrent.

Exercise Abaddon.

I’m sure many others will remember doing sorties to the south-west on Abaddon. I saw a reference in my logbook and could remember that this was to fly low-level patterns against a radar unit in Devon.  We believed at the time that the radar was a Russian unit, possibly associated with the ZSU 23-4 anti-aircraft guns, we understood it had been captured by the Israeli’s.  I can’t vouch for that, but I had a look at one of the files in the National Archives (DEFE 56/45).  I remember that the plotter had strict patterns to fly, tracks, height speed etc, and the idea was for the radar boffins to see what the capabilities of the radar were, and whether or not we could get through against this radar.  The file I looked at was one raised by CTTO and their conclusion was not very encouraging, it reinforces the view in the paragraph above, we were pretty vulnerable.

Conclusion: Subject to detailed data analysis, the initial trial observations indicate that the current Vulcan ECM fit is inadequate to provide protection against ‘Firecan’ type ADA [Air Defence Artillery] control radars.

Vulcan aircraft produces a large response on the S-Band Type 3 Mk 7 Radar and can easily be tracked at heights of 1000, 500 and 300 ft. AGL.