Guy Martin: The Last Flight of the Vulcan Bomber

[in 1992, the RAF sold off the last airworthy Vulcan, XH558, and it was bought for ?25,000 by a private owner]

Guy Martin:
Twenty-five thousand pounds! You do think, initially "God. Pay ?25,000 and get a Vulcan bomber. Great." But then you've got to think "How am I gonna explain that to the missus".

Andy Marson - Vulcan Navigator:
We knew that if we were ever scrambled, it only meant one thing: "missiles incoming to the UK". We also knew that by the time we got east of Norway, there probably wouldn't be much left of the UK, so it was a case of "we're gonna do to them what they have just done to us".

Jon Tye - Vulcan Pilot:
The descriptions of the targets were always army camps, airfields, railway sidings. It never mentioned, ever, anything about the public who might be there. It was only when I met a Russian girl later, when I'd left the RAF, and I found she came from my primary target, that the true enormity of it actually struck home to me. I was so shaken that I couldn't continue to talk to her, and I had to walk away. And it really, really upset me.

[he blinks away tears]

Jon Tye - Vulcan Pilot:
I think in some ways I'm almost ashamed of it. The realisation of the massive responsibility that we had, and I don't want to think of it any more.

Shaun Dooley - Narrator:
Instructions for what to do *after* dropping a bomb varied.

Guy Martin:
We've got a quotation from an Andrew Brook - he was a Vulcan pilot. And he was told "Keep flying east and hope to settle down with a nice warm Mongolian woman". Nothing to come back to.

[talking about the Cuban missile crisis of 1962]

Shaun Dooley - Narrator:
Britan did nothing to keep Quick Reaction Alert's readiness to take off a secret from Soviet intelligence...

Peter West - Vulcan Electronics Officer:
We left the window open, so to speak, so they could see us and hear us. We *wanted* the Soviet Union to know what we were doing, and they would know then that we were serious. That's how the deterrent works.

[as planned, Mike Pollitt deliberately aborts a takeoff in a Vulcan which is not airworthy to take off; this involves lifting the nose-wheel off the ground, letting the wing act as a brake, and then lowering the wheel to the ground again]

Guy Martin:
I think that was a little bit more than a wheelie!

[the Vulcan has just landed after its final flight]

Guy Martin:
I hope you filled your boots because that's it. That's it! She's never going again.