question Vulcan Retracts undercarriage on the ground!

[agripper]

When my father was at RAF Finningly in the 60's he told me of a Vulcan that on startup retracted the undercarriage whilst still on the dispersal. Anyone else there at the time. My father tells me he was in looking out the window just as all this went off. When this was kicking off he tells that one of the ground crew was sat on the nose wheel waiting to pull the GPU lead out and as the main gear went up he had time to run out from under the wheel bay before the nose wheel gave out when the nose came crashing down just missing him, at this point the pilots fired teh canopy off which landed just infront of this poor chap making him turn round and try and find a new place to run. Dad tells me that it looked very Tom and Jerry for this chap who looks as though he didn't know if he was coming or going.

 

Was anyone else either at F|inningly at the time or anyone else heard this story.

 

I know the reason for the accident, does anyone else?

 

Does anyone have any photos of this ? :nut:

[Redcap]

The reason for the retraction? Chances are it was a "uncommanded accidental activation of the undercarriage lever" or some such baloney

[Yorkie370]

There's a thread at http://www.pprune.org/aviation-history-nostalgia/111797-did-you-fly-vulcan-merged-51.html over on Pprune about Vulcan ops, from which I've culled this;

At the time of that one I was a lowly SAC working in ECMSDF (Electronic Countermeasures Servicing and Development Flight) which was part of BCDU (Bomber Command Development Unit).

 

ECMSDF was situated on the top floor of the electronics block while the HQ of BCDU was in a wooden shed at the back of 1 Hangar. Part of my duties was to walk down the Finningley 8 twice a day doing a mail run.

 

On the day in question I was about 200 yards away when the incident happened. As No 3 was cranked up (supplies all electrical power) the mains started folding up. The crew chief, attached to the mictel lead and underneath the engine (looking for leaks on start up ?) started to run towards the tail of the aircraft. When he realised that the aircraft was coming down on top of him he changed direction and headed for the front. By this time the pressure cabin and radome had broken apart as the nose leg remained in the 'down' position and the main part of the aircraft was rapidly descending to the ground. The crew chief then made a dart sideways and escaped by inches.

 

Meanwhile the canopy blew and, it seemed to me, the crew had exited by the time the canopy hit the ground. They all leapt over the windscreen and slid down the nose, off the refuelling probe and legged it for the armoury, which was directly in front of the aircraft, with nary a backward glance!

 

There was a lot of dust, a bit of silence, then a lot of shouting and action. I just stood there gobsmacked not knowing what to do so I carried on with my mail run!

 

The fault turned out to be a dodgy 28v microswitch which had stuck in the 'open' position so that as the engine ran up and power was applied the whole pack of cards came literally crashing down.

 

The aircraft ended up in 3 pieces: the radome, the pressure cabin, and the rest. When the pressure cabin came away it took a spar running down the spine of the aircraft and left it sticking up in the air.

[agripper]

Chears for that link will pass it onto my Father. Would love to see the photos if any exist. My father said for him to see this , at the exact time he desided to look out the windown must have been very small, as he was just passing by and clanced out, I would guess this was teh same time as the chap on the mail run.

I was told that the undercarriage lever had been sellected to "up" by accident and that the failure of the micro switch was the final safegaurd. When in service you can tretract teh undercarriage win on jacks. all you have to do is select the lever and make sure you turn it to overcome the ground lockout.

[Yorkie370]

HTH. If he's got any interesting stories from the groundcrew perspective get them onto the linked thread - it'll make a nice change from tales of the winged master race.

[AlienFTM]

In the 60s? Do we know if Vulcans were still carrying buckets of sunshine at this time? I know I'd have run if I thought a nuke was about to make a hard landing on the runway. We all know it wouldn't go off but I wouldn't fancy any radiation leak. Better safe than sorry.

[Yorkie370]

Finningley was used as a support base rather than an operational Bomber Command airfield, so it's unlikely to have been carrying anything that glowed.