The Cold War is no more, but it used to be very real, with both sides having planned what targets they would hit should war break out. For Britain this meant having plans for a NATO war as well as being prepared for the possible eventuality of going to war without NATO and the US.

One feature of the V Force prior to Polaris taking over the prime deterrent role was Quick Reaction Alert, QRA. This required aircraft to be kept armed and with a crew ready for takeoff in a matter of minutes. On the right there are 4 Vulcans on the Operational Readiness Pans, ORP, at Waddington.  All four have the crew door open. The ORP was often used during exercises with a four aircraft ‘scramble’. Impressive sight and impressive noise.

Although the intended role for the Vulcan had changed somewhat over the years since it's deployment up to my time on type, it was still intended to play a major role in any NATO or National conflict in Europe, specifically against Russia which at that time was still "the enemy". Should General War break out the Vulcan would perform in its strategic nuclear delivery role either under NATO plans in the event of a NATO conflict or under a National Plan should the situation demand that Britain fight alone against the Soviet Block.  It has to be said that this last scenario was not a very likely one, but had to be planned for. There were planning groups within the Air Ministry and MOD whose job it was to determine the targets to be attacked in the event of war, and the routes to and from those targets that would be flown by the individual crews.  Unlike actions that we have seen on TV in the recent Gulf Wars, where Tasking and Targeting are done very close to sortie time, in my period on the Vulcan the initial sorties and strikes were all set out months ahead, probably for two reasons.

One was that we lived under a general belief that nuclear war, if it came, would be sudden.  There may have been a buildup period during which there would have been a deteriorating political situation, but once a decision was taken by the 'enemy' to launch a nuclear war it would be by ICBM, it would be 'all out' and it would only take minutes from launch to strike. There would be no planning time based on the enemy strike profile, the planning would be for total retaliation.  Aircraft on the ground rather than en-route to target were likely to be taken out by the enemy first strike, so it would have been better to launch.  There may also be nowhere for them to return to as V Bomber bases were assumed to be among the first targets.

The second reason for pre-planning as opposed to the last minute targeting we see today could be down to computers. The Vulcan did not have a computer, it had a mechanical/analogue means of determining weapon forward throw to determine a release point, but no facility for flight planning, and neither did any of the bases. I first came across a computer generated flight plan on a return trip from Offutt in about 1974, it seemed to be a 'wondrous thing' and very new to us. Without computers all the flight plans and the necessary deconfliction planning had to be done by hand, this took a great deal of time.

The photo above was taken from the April 2007 edition of Aeroplane.  During an exercise at Scampton the crew run from the crew bus to board the aircraft.

Photo from Andy Leitch site.

As outlined above, the sorties to be flown with routes, targets and predicted statistical winds etc were all drawn up by a planning team, this output would then be allocated to a Station and a Squadron, and then within the Squadron a crew would be assigned their specific target. 

It was a requirement that the crew would spend a certain amount of time every 6 months in the 'Vault' poring over the information related to their target. The 'Vault' was a secure area in the Station Planning Building given over to the Intelligence Officer.  The crew was expected to learn their respective parts of the trip almost by heart.  For myself as Nav Radar with responsibility for the weapon and getting it on target this would mean complete familiarity with the target, the run in from the IP, fix points en-route that I would use to update the Nav Plotter's equipment and the way in which the target or the selected 'offsets' would appear on radar.  [More about offsets elsewhere].  The whole crew would need to be fully aware of expected anti-aircraft defenses anywhere along their route, and where Intelligence had information on them they would have been plotted and the route would have been laid out to avoid them. The AEO would need to know the expected ECM plan for the route, we would obviously not want to alert defenders to our presence by using jamming kit where it was not needed, but at the same time there would be occasions where it would be necessary for defense, even if it did cause an alert. During these training sessions the Intelligence Officer would spend time asking the pilots or the Nav Radar to describe the target and run-in without reference to the flight information, giving details of anything that the crew would need to be aware of. The crew would be expected to listen to tapes of the sound that different enemy radars would make when picked up by the Vulcan's radar detectors, these could be fed into the crew earphones.  They would need to recognize whether the radar was surveillance, or possibly an anti-aircraft battery, was it in search mode or had it locked on, what should be done to break lock or avoid what might be launched.  There was a lot to study and learn, then when you knew it, damn me if they didn't change the target and you had to start all over again.

A Vulcan launches Blue Steel, then executes escape manoeuvre.  Photo is Crown Copyright from Andy Leitch site.