The Vickers Valiant: first of the ‘V-bombers’, and the one now most forgotten, despite how it paved the way for those that followed. A former co-pilot takes us into the Valiant’s cockpit, first in training with No 232 Operational Conversion Unit and then operationally on reconnaissance missions with No 543 Squadron, and reveals a capable but sometimes challenging aeroplane
Having been a Meteor night fighter pilot on No 85 Squadron at Church Fenton for a year, we were faced with disbandment and conversion onto Javelins. However, defence minister Duncan Sandys put paid to that by reducing fighter numbers in favour of missiles. Some of us who were not selected for Javelins were offered a tour as co-pilots on Hastings transports, or one year as a co-pilot on the ‘V-force’ followed by a tour as a Canberra captain, and then the carrot of a ‘V-bomber’ captaincy. The Canberra possibility after just a year was too much of a promise to miss, so with that in mind I loaded our Morris Minor Traveller with most of our worldly goods, and — accompanied by my long-suffering, heavily pregnant wife Mary, and our young labrador — set off for RAF Gaydon, Warwickshire.
There, on No 232 Operational Conversion Unit, we had to understand the complexi…
