The Avro Vulcan bomber is a beautiful thing. It still looks like it’s from the future, and another planet, nearly 60 years after it first took to the sky. Last month, the last one – XH588 – flew for the last time, because it was too dangerous and too expensive to keep in the air. Guy Martin went along to watch it go, to meet the people who have been keeping it working, and some of the old boys who flew it back in the day. Guy Martin: Last Flight of the Vulcan Bomber (Channel 4, Sunday), it was called.
Guy Martin, you know – lorry mechanic, motorbike nut, with oil in his veins, and his sidies, and speed in his eyes. Linked with a job on new Top Gear for a long time; says he wasn’t interested. And he speaks like a parrot: squawks and often says things twice. “Massive, massive,” he says about the Vulcan. “Filled the sky it did, made the earth move. Yeah, piece of kit, it’s the Vulcan.”
When they fire up the Vulcan’s jet engines, it howls like a nuclear wind. “Takes some beating that, boys, takes some beating,” squawks Guy, moved almost beyond words. “All right, the ground was shaking, as well as the grass, it’s like my innards were moving inside me, arrggheee ... I’ve never felt anything like that.”
I approve of Guy – there’s something very grounded and genuine about him, and he’s different from everyone else on television. I like him more for not being interested in Top Gear. Guy’s wheels of choice, as well as all his motorbikes and pushbikes, is a Transit van. And he doesn’t own a television.
For a non-enthusiast, this one is maybe a tad heavy on the engineering. The real-time (well, it feels like it anyway) lowering, on jacks, of the aircraft after a test for metal fatigue is clearly crucial for health and safety, and a highly delicate and skilled operation, but I’m not sure it’s a natural fit for television. A little less lowering, greasing, testing, and a trim to an hour would have made a better, tighter doc. But the Vulcan does come with a load of good stories along with the big bombs and the engineering.
Wg Cmdr (thr nt bg n vwls n th RF) Peter West remembers getting the call in October 1962, with just enough time to issue instructions to his wife. “I’m dashing off,” he told her. “It’s obviously got to do with this wretched Cuban business. If you hear us take off, I want you to get the kids in the car and then drive up to your brother in the Isle of Skye. You should be OK there.”
Half the crew didn’t have ejector seats. And pilots flew with eye patches – so that Khrushchev would think they were pirates, coming with their nuclearrggh bombs ... Actually, so that if the pilot was blinded by a nuclear flash, he would still have a good eye to fly on with. Not that there would have been anywhere to go. “We knew if we ever got east of Norway, there wouldn’t be much left of the UK,” says former navigator Andy Marson.
Guy reads from the memoir of another pilot, whose post-strike advice was: “Keep flying east, and hope to settle down with a nice warm Mongolian woman.” What about if missus No 1 made it to Skye, though? Fortunately, Kennedy and Khrushchev came to a late agreement, averting the crisis and global bigamy in an uncertain post-nuclear world.
Oh, and I like the story about the Vulcan’s soup warmer, too. It goes like this: once upon a time, there was a soup warmer. It was rubbish, took 90 minutes to warm the soup, the end. You would think, given that this aeroplane was capable of melting entire cities and populations at the press of a button, it would take a little less than an hour and a half to heat the soup. Very British.
Where are we at in The Hunt (BBC1, Sunday), then? Deserts, grasslands, plains – so, cheetahs, and lions, chasing the herd. Seen it all before, on YouTube? Yeah, but never like this. The three lions (come on England!) v Buffalo bout is primal, gladiatorial – I actually felt guilty watching. As well as a little bit thrilled.
More terrifying still is the larva of the antlion. They’re basically nature’s IEDs. You don’t see them, they build traps in the sand, wait … then grab you from below in their massive barbed jaws before dragging you down and devouring you. If you’re an ant.
I don’t feel too sorry for the ants – they’re ants. Go on, that way, into that depression in the sand … get him!
