Vulcan’s farewell

THE Avro Vulcan: built in Chadderton, due to fly for the last time.

THE last airworthy Chadderton-built Vulcan bomber will make its final flight next month.


Airframe XH558 was built at the former Avro factory in 1960 as part of the RAF’s Cold War strategic command.

The aircraft, restored by the Vulcan to the Sky Trust, costs around £2million a year to maintain and operate and the decision was made earlier this year to ground it once and for all.

The Trust said: “Though we are all confident that XH558 is currently as safe as any aircraft flying, her structure and systems are already more than 10 per cent beyond the flying hours of any other Vulcan -, so knowing where to look for possible failure is becoming more difficult. Maintaining her superb safety record requires expertise that is increasingly difficult to find.”

Avro’s chief designer, Roy Chadwick, first sketched the design for the Vulcan in 1946, five years after the first flight of his famous Lancaster Bomber. He died in a plane crash a year later and never saw his masterpiece fly.

In its heyday the Vulcan was on 24-hour standby to drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union - though no British bomber ever flew with live nuclear weapons.

Their most recent use in ager was during the Falklands war in the early Eighties, when five Vulcans took part in record-breaking, 8,000-mile flights from Ascension Island to bomb the runway at Port Stanley.

Though most Vulcans were retired by the mid-1980s, this one appeared at airshows where its full-power climbs regularly impressed tens of thousands of fans.

The Vulcan Trust has set several dates for enthusiasts to see the iconic plane for the final time.