NEIL Wyatt's letter was correct, but not the whole story ('To V or not to V', August 7).
The "V" Bomber fleet comprised three different types: the Handley Page Victor, the Avro Vulcan and the Vickers Valiant. When the fleet was reduced in size as a result of both defence cuts and the deployment of submarine-based nuclear missiles, the Valiants were the first to go.
Subsequently, a few of the Victors were converted to tankers and a few of the Vulcans retained as bombers.
So the description of the Victor to which Mr Wyatt referred should have described the Victor as 'a' V-bomber, not 'the' V-bomber!
Peter J Townsend,
Acklam,
...ALL three 'V Bombers' were intended to carry the British independent nuclear deterrent Blue Steel, a stand-off bomb which was an early and shorter range version of a cruise missile.
They could also carry conventional weapons and were all subsonic, although the Victor could exceed Mach 1 in a shallow dive.
The Vulcan and the Victor had long and distinguished careers. Some Vulcans dropped crater bombs on the airfield at Port Stanley during the Falklands War in 1982 and Victors became tanker aircraft for in-flight refuelling from the early to mid-1970s onwards.
The earliest and slowest of the three, the Valiant, which had dropped the first British atomic and hydrogen bombs, was withdrawn from service and all examples scrapped in 1965 following the discovery of metal fatigue in the airframes, principally the wing spars.
Jim Woods,
Tadcaster Road,
York.
Updated: 10:18 Friday, August 10, 2001
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