Operation Black Buck - Background

Background

Without aircraft able to cover the long distance, activities in the South Atlantic would be carried out by the Royal Navy and the British Army. Plans were set in motion within the RAF to see if it could carry out any operations near the Falklands.

The airfield nearest to the Falklands and usable for RAF operations was on Ascension Island, a British territory, with a single runway at Wideawake airfield which was leased to the US.

Long-range operations were entirely dependent upon the RAF's tanker fleet and so fourteen Handley Page Victor tankers were transferred from RAF Marham to Ascension Island. The RAF tankers themselves were capable of being refuelled in flight, which meant that it was possible to set up relays of aircraft.

The Avro Vulcan was the last of the British V bombers in operational use for bombing, but their squadrons were to be disbanded imminently. They were based in the UK and assigned to NATO for nuclear operations: neither air-to-air refuelling nor conventional bombing had been practised for several years.

At Marham, the tanker force was set to planning refuelling operations to take one or more bombers to the Falklands and back. At RAF Waddington, the retraining of crews in conventional bombing and in-flight refuelling was begun. Aircraft were selected based upon their engines; only those with the more powerful Bristol Olympus 301 engines were considered suitable. One of the most challenging tasks was re-instating the refuelling system, which had been blocked off.

One Victor was converted into an improvised photo-reconnaissance aircraft. Victors arrived at Ascension Island on 18 April.

Three 22-year-old Vulcan B2s, drawn from No. 44, 50 and No. 101 Squadron RAF, were deployed to Wideawake airfield on Ascension Island. Squadron Leader Neil McDougall, Squadron Leader John Reeve and Flight Lieutenant Martin Withers captained the Vulcans.

To give improved electronic countermeasures (ECM) against Argentine defences, which were known to include Tigercat missile and radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns, Dash 10 pods from Blackburn Buccaneer aircraft at RAF Honington were fitted to the wings on improvised pylons. To navigate across the featureless seas, inertial guidance systems were borrowed from VC-10s and two installed in each Vulcan.

The Vulcan fuel tanks could contain 9,200 gal (41,823 litres). Based upon estimates of the Vulcan's fuel need, eleven Victor tankers, including two standby aircraft, were assigned to refuel the single Vulcan before and after its attack on the Falklands. The attacking Vulcan was refuelled seven times on the outward journey and once on the return journey, using over 220,000 gallons of aviation fuel during the mission. Two identically-armed Vulcans took off for each mission, the second returning to base, without refuelling, if no problems arose with the first, or assuming its role if the first could not continue. Each aircraft carried either twenty-one 1,000-pound (450 kg) bombs or four Shrike anti-radar missiles (Dash 10 pod) with three 1,000 gallon (4,546 litres) auxiliary fuel tanks in the bomb bay. The bombs were intended to cause damage to Argentine installations, especially Port Stanley Airport; it being hoped that the attacks would cause the defenders to switch on defensive radars, which would then be targetted by the missiles. The lighter Shrike-armed Vulcans could loiter in the area longer than the bomb-armed Vulcans.