It is probably a truism to say that flying is dangerous and none more so than military flying, but accidents can and do happen. The sad thing is that often when the accident is analysed afterwards, it may found to have been avoidable.  This is particularly sad if lives are lost as a result.

Over the coming weeks I will add details of two Vulcan incidents to the site, in both of them the rear crew were killed, but the two pilots escaped.  This is not a plea for rear crew escape systems, but a look at incidents which, when looked back on, were avoidable.  The first will be the crash of XA897 in October 1956 at London Airport (Heathrow) which involved Air Marshall Sir Harry Broadhurst, the second will be XM645 in October 1975 at Luqa in Malta.

The pilot of XM645 was Flight Lieutenant Alcock who, in 1971, was Captain of XM610 which experienced an engine blow up and consequent fire at low level.  Alcock was able to climb to a higher level and in this case the rear crew were able to make a safe exit and no-one was killed.  Bob Alcock was awarded the Air Force Cross for his handling of this emergency.  I can remember being at Scampton and hearing that they had a problem, there was a lot of relief when we heard that the rear crew had all got out safely. It must have been very distressing for him to have to eject a second time, and on this occasion, lose the rear crew.

For both incidents, XA897 and XM645, I have used the relevant files in the National Archives as the source.  For those not familiar with the cockpit layout, or the situation for the rear crew, it would be worth taking a look at those relevant pages together with the accident reports.

Since opening this section of the site I have added a Valiant crash at Wittering and the complete electrical failure of the Vulcan over Detroit.  In the coming months more crashes will be added, not out of any morbid curiosity but because there are some myths out there regarding many of them and maybe the best way to dispel them is to use the official Board of Inquiry files. Conspiracy theorists may still have an argument with this reasoning, but I will leave them to start their own web sites, I will assume the files are correct.