A record-breaking flight by a Vulcan turned into tragedy when a landing went wrong. Andrew Brookes recounts the events of that fateful day
Harry Broadhurst was a Hendon display pilot before 1939. In Fighter Command ‘Broady’ was awarded a DSO and a DFC and a bar with both. He became the youngest Air Vice-Marshal when given command of that most individualistic of all flying organisations, the Desert Air Force.
With the introduction of shiny four-engined jet bombers into the RAF, a new broom was needed to sweep away some of the ‘mental cobwebs’ in Bomber Command. As a former fighter man Sir Harry Broadhurst was seen as ideally suited to the job. In January 1956 he was appointed Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) Bomber Command, at the age of just 50.
Ten days after its first flight, Vulcan B.1 XA897 became the first ‘flat iron’ to be delivered to the RAF at Waddington on July 30, 1956. It was nominally accepted by the resident 230 Operational Conversion Unit (OCU) and soon afterwards was sent to complete service acceptance trials at the Aeroplane & Armament Experimental Establishment, Boscombe Down.
The delta returned to its birthplace at Woodford, near Manchester, to be prepared for a ‘flag-waving’ trip to the other side of the globe. The codename for the venture was Tasman Flight and the official brief was “to undertake a route proving and survey flight with a Vulcan to Australia and New Zealand”.
Broadhurst was to act as co-pilot and seated on his left was the captain, Sqn Ldr Donald Ridgewell Howard. ‘Podge’ Howard DFC* joined the RAF in the ranks and was awarded a commission in 1942 after training in America. He flew Mosquitos in night intruder and low-level attack roles 1944-1945.
After commanding 10 Squadron with its Canberras, Howard was seconded to Avro in 1955 as a Vulcan project pilot to “grow up with the aircraft”. Howard, aged 33, was being groomed for big things in the Vulcan force.
Behind Howard and the C-in-C, down a short ladder and behind the crew access door in the cockpit floor, sat three aircrew, facing aft. In the middle was the nav plotter, Sqn Ldr Edward Eames AFC, a 32-year-old who had been in the RAF for 14 years.
To his left was the nav radar/bomb aimer position where the dials and cathode ray tube screen of the navigation and bombing radar should have been. Development of the Vulcan’s avionics was behind that of the aircraft and no airborne radar was as yet fitted to XA897. The nav radar seat was occupied by Flt Lt (acting Sqn Ldr) James Stroud (29) a Vulcan pilot who held a Master Green instrument rating – the highest such category in the RAF, in November 1955 – just like the captain. Stroud’s presence in the crew had been specifically requested by Howard in case another fully qualified pilot was needed.
The rear trio was completed by the air electronics officer/signaller, Sqn Ldr Albert Gamble, a 35-year-old Londoner. By the entrance door there was space for a sixth crew member, and that was occupied by the Avro technical service representative, Frederick Bassett (38).
Tasman Flight was supported by three Shackletons and a Canberra PR.7. The Shackletons carried ground crew and equipment, one staying at Aden in the Middle East and the other two going on to Paya Lebar in Malaya. If XA897 became unserviceable, Broadhurst would have leapt into the Canberra to carry on to the next official engagement, leaving Howard and Stroud to bring on the Vulcan later.
Heathrow welcome
As it turned out, there was little need for Bassett’s expertise and even less call for the reserve Canberra. Despite the novelty of everything that lay within it, XA897 behaved perfectly. Leaving the UK on September 9, 1956, it set several speed records on the way out to Melbourne to take pride of place in Air Force Commemoration Week. Then it was on to New Zealand before heading back to Britain.
The return leg was planned to stage through Brisbane, Darwin, Singapore, Ceylon, Bahrain and Cyprus, and by the time it got home, XA897 would have covered more than 26,000 miles (41,841km). In the end the Shackletons could not stand the pace. By the time the Vulcan was back in Singapore on September 24, it had proved necessary to amend the itinerary and re-route to Aden (where a Shackleton sat forlornly) rather than to Bahrain. From there Broadhurst proposed to fly directly to Boscombe Down on October 1, missing out Cyprus.
Before he left Britain three weeks earlier, the C-in-C had been advised that his Vulcan might be brought back into London Airport, Heathrow, to gain maximum publicity. As the jewel of British airports, it must have seemed the obvious place to complete such an epic flight.
This proposal received greater support once Tasman Flight proved to be a success, but from Singapore Broadhurst argued against coming into Heathrow, because fuel, starter crews and a spare braking parachute would all have to be brought in from Boscombe Down. However, back came a message saying: “Despite your protest, Air Ministry direct you land London Airport and have signalled you accordingly”. All facilities for a turn-around and departure for Boscombe would be laid on at Heathrow.
The Vulcan and its crew were to be officially greeted by a high-powered welcoming committee led by the Deputy Chief of Air Staff, AM Sir Geoffrey Tuttle. Among the party were to be senior Avro personnel, Lady Broadhurst and Mrs Howard.
Keep rolling
Awaiting XA897’s arrival in Aden was a signal outlining the arrival arrangements at London Heathrow: “You have been cleared to land at London Airport 10:08Z [11:08 local time on October 1] for reception at the central terminal. You are to join above Amber 1 airway reporting at Seaford, Dunsfold and Epsom. You will be given GCA [ground controlled approach] surveillance and talkdown therefore height must be below 15,000ft by Epsom.
“In the event of diversion, alternative arrangements will be made. Diversion airfields will if necessary be notified through Southern Air Traffic Control Centre. Agree Boscombe Down or Gaydon if possible, with Waddington, Marham, St Mawgan or Kinloss as area alternatives. Keep rolling and best of luck.”
On October 1, Vulcan XA897 callsign Mike Papa Quebec Kilo 11, left Khormaksar, Aden, at 02:50. The flight across the Mediterranean and then up through France was uneventful, with Howard and Broadhurst taking turn and turnabout at the controls.
Somewhere near Malta, Howard formated with the only other Vulcan then in RAF service, XA895, which was completing intensive trials from Boscombe. Howard asked about the Boscombe weather and learned it was not very good but was expected to clear by 11:00 local.
Over France, Howard was told by HQ Bomber Command that visibility at London Airport was 3,000 yards (2,743m) in light rain plus 6 or 7/8ths cloud with a base of 700ft. Descending from 42,000ft, the Vulcan entered cloud on joining Amber 1 at 19,000ft and so Howard went on to instruments.
As XA897 crossed Epsom at 8,000ft, the forecast landing weather was passed as 2/8ths cloud at 300ft, 7/8ths cloud at 700ft, main cloud base at 5,000ft, visibility 1,100 yards, heavy rain and little wind. It was all caused by a front along the south coast but the weather at Waddington was beautiful.
HQ Bomber Command said the decision to come into London: “…is up to you and the VIP on board but normal air traffic is having no difficulty. There is high intensity lighting at London.”
Although the weather forecast was a bit ‘iffy’, in the secure knowledge that he had ample diversion fuel on board, Howard did what any other pilot would have done in similar circumstances. He decided to try one approach at London and if he did not get in, he would divert to Waddington.
Decision height
After passing Epsom at 10:58 local, Howard was handed over to London Radar which passed on the landing altimeter pressure setting of 1,017mb and both pilot and co-pilot set this on their instruments. The windscreen wipers were trying to cope with the heavy rain but Howard took comfort from the reports of high intensity lighting.
He was informed he would be landing on Runway 10 Left, and then told to make a right-hand turn and descend to 1,500ft. Given a touchdown height of 80ft, plus allowances for obstacles in the overshoot area, altimeter error and inertia while the aircraft attitude changed from going down to going up, Howard calculated the ‘break-off height’ for his approach was 300ft.
This meant that no lower than 300ft indicated on his altimeter, if Howard did not have sufficient visual cues to land when he lifted his eyes from the instruments, he was to break off his approach, apply power and climb the Vulcan away.
Glidepath talkdown
At 1,500ft, XA897 was handed over to London Director. As his aircraft approached 5 miles from touchdown at 11:04, Howard put the undercarriage down and reduced to a circuit speed of 150kt. London Talkdown took over and as he approached the glidepath, Howard was told to commence descent at 500ft/min. After 15 seconds the radar controller passed: “You are 80ft above the glidepath”.
Howard overdid the power reduction, such that he went 100ft low, but at about 1,200ft he increased power and regained the glidepath. Having settled down, Howard then believed that he remained sensibly on the glidepath thereafter, while having to make just two right course corrections.
The rain was lashing down and despite the windscreen wipers, forward visibility was practically nil. The pilots had agreed that Broadhurst would look out for the approach lights while Howard remained completely on instruments. As the talkdown controller said, “One mile on the glidepath”, the C-in-C reported, “450 feet”.
Howard remembered being cleared to land as he reached his break-off height of 300ft. Being still on instruments he said, “Give me the lights”. Broadhurst replied, “Lights fine starboard”. Howard looked up for the first time and saw lights slightly to the right. Then the C-in-C said: “You are too low, pull her up”, so Howard complied while opening the throttles. At that moment the Vulcan touched the ground.
Get out, get out!
The Vulcan had struck a field of Brussels sprouts at Longford 1,030 yards from the touchdown point. It seemed to be no more than a glancing blow and at worst both pilots felt that they might have burst a tyre. Neither man suspected that shortly after touching down, the main wheels ran across a ditch tearing the whole oleo leg off one side and the main wheel bogie from the other.
On climbing away in a steep attitude, Howard found that the Vulcan kept trying to roll to the right even though he had the control column hard over to the left. Although the power flying controls were still working, they did not seem to be taking effect.
As the accelerating Olympus engines started to roll XA897 on to its back, Howard shouted: “Get out, get out! It’s had it”. For a few more moments he continued to struggle and then ejected.
Broadhurst took the controls instinctively, but as soon as he pushed the stick forward and applied port aileron, he realised the controls were not responding. Seeing the bank increasing to about 75°, he repeated the order to abandon aircraft and then ejected too. Simultaneously the radar controller said: “…400 yards from the runway, talkdown complete”.
From the roof of the central terminal building, the welcoming party and newsmen could only watch in horror as the delta reared upwards out of the murk: “like a giant ray leaping from the ocean”. Two staccato cracks signalled the pilots ejecting about 1,000 yards down the runway, and then XA897 followed the course of Runway 10 Left, banking ever more steeply starboard.
When it was nearly halfway along, its nose dropped and then the great aeroplane keeled over with mind-numbing slowness to crash on the right-hand side of the far end of the runway. It bounced for a further 100 yards, a booming explosion rent the air, and the Vulcan came to rest in a billowing mass of flames and smoke. Sqn Ldrs Stroud, Eames, Gamble and Mr Bassett were killed instantly.
Howard landed safely on the grass alongside the runway without injury. Broadhurst was less fortunate: landing on concrete between the GCA caravan and where the Vulcan was burning with terrible finality, he fractured bones in his feet and back. Both men were reunited with their wives and then driven away from inquisitive newsmen to the RAF hospital at Uxbridge.
Court of Inquiry
In addition to investigating the causes of such a tragedy, RAF accident inquiries always consider whether anyone failed in the performance of their duty. Inquiry presidents, therefore, were never junior in rank or seniority to any officer whose conduct, character or professional reputation may be called into question.
Consequently, because AM Broadhurst was on the flightdeck, the Court of Inquiry into the loss of XA897 was convened with ACM Sir Donald Hardman as president, assisted by C-in-C Fighter Command, and the Commandant of the RAF College at Manby.
The inquiry found the weather forecast passed to Howard over Epsom accurately described the subsequent weather experienced, and that the captain was justified in deciding to make an attempt to land at London Airport in the prevailing conditions.
Nothing was found to be wrong with XA897. It managed to leave wheel marks over a distance of 80ft in a field. There was no evidence to suggest that any part of the aircraft other than the main landing gears had been in contact with the ground, but when both main bogies had been torn off they collided with the inboard elevators on the trailing edge of the wing.
The starboard inboard elevator severed from its control rod, and the port probably followed suit. Under the circumstances, the inquiry believed that this damage: “would have resulted in the pilot being unable to control the aircraft thereafter”.
Precious seconds
So what went so tragically wrong between the captain making the right decision to make an approach in the prevailing circumstances and XA897 bursting into flames with four men still on board? Howard was graded an exceptional pilot and he had renewed his Master Green instrument rating.
Although he had flown hundreds of GCAs on Canberras, he was an inexperienced Vulcan instrument pilot. While he had had some practice using the GCA at Manchester Airport adjacent to Woodford, Howard had never previously flown a full GCA in a Vulcan.
Perhaps Howard’s rustiness showed in setting himself a break-off height of 300ft. As demonstrated at the subsequent inquiry, the obstacle clearance limit for Runway 10 Left was 150ft and the touchdown elevation was 80ft. To the latter combined figures of 230ft should have been added an aircraft altimeter pressure error of 60ft and an instrument error of 30ft, making a correct break-off height of 320ft. The inquiry found the captain had made an error of judgement in setting himself a break-off height 20ft too low, and also in going below that height.
However, the captain was under GCA control. Apart from right at the beginning of the radar approach, the talkdown controller at no time warned that the aircraft was below the glidepath. On the contrary, about 7 seconds before the Vulcan first hit the ground and just when the weather was at its worst, the GCA controller informed the pilot he was 80ft above the glidepath.
The controller did not subsequently advise Howard that he was below it and even after XA897 struck the ground, the talkdown continued as if the approach had been normal. The inquiry concluded that: “The failure to warn the captain that he was going below the glidepath in the concluding stages of the approach was the principal cause of the accident”.
Counter inquiry
The attention of the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, Alan Lennox-Boyd was drawn to this conclusion: “for such action as he may wish to take”. Finding such a fastball coming in his direction, the minister immediately arranged for an inquiry into the operation of the Heathrow GCA system to be undertaken by Dr A G Touch, Director of Electronic Research and Development at the Ministry of Supply.
In his report submitted in the middle of December, Dr Touch concluded there was no evidence of technical failure or malfunctioning of the GCA equipment. His investigations confirmed that the pilot was not warned by the GCA controller of the Vulcan’s proximity to the ground, but despite exhaustive examination of the various possibilities, Dr Touch was unable to establish the reasons with certainty.
The controller, who was relatively inexperienced, may have concentrated too much on azimuth at the expense of elevation information, but in his defence the Vulcan was some 15-20kts faster on the approach than most passenger aircraft of the period. Dr Touch also believed that even if a warning had been given in the final 5 or 6 seconds of the 10 seconds which, in his opinion, elapsed after the pilot was told he was 80ft above the glidepath, it would have been too late.
The Touch Report concluded that: “It is very difficult to pass judgement on this matter, but in view of all the circumstances, I do not think the controller should be blamed.”
Some argued that Dr Touch did too much special pleading on behalf of the ministry responsible for the GCA system. He postulated that it was a coincidence the Vulcan had made a sudden, extremely steep descent almost exactly at the moment the pilot was told he was 80ft high. That the Vulcan then quickly levelled out and brought itself into the characteristic tail-down landing attitude is stretching things a bit far, especially as Dr Touch admitted lack of supporting evidence on this point.
Both the Secretary of State for Air, Nigel Birch and the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation endorsed Touch when they announced to the House of Commons that they felt unable to define the degree of responsibility precisely.
Extra pilot
The loss of four lives on board XA897 really rankled within the RAF. Because the Vulcan was designed as a high-altitude bomber, it was felt there would always be sufficient time in an emergency for the rear crew to make a free-fall exit from the floor hatch: only the pilots had ejection seats.
All this theory presupposed the pilots retained control for long enough to enable the rear crew to reach the door. In XA897’s case, the gravitational forces imposed as the crippled bomber climbed and rolled would have held all rear crew members in their seats, including Fred Bassett who was seated just by the door and only needed to roll forward.
The morality of giving ejection seats to only two V-bomber crew members was very much open to debate, but the Secretary of State for Air stated: “It would be unjust to the pilot and co-pilot were I not to make it clear that it was their duty to escape from the aircraft when they did.”
The question of the pilot (Stroud) in the back of XA897 would not go away and here someone was very much to blame for provoking speculation that might never have arisen had there not been a clumsy attempt to forestall it. Broadhurst was no passenger; he was a first-class pilot who had completed a full Vulcan conversion course and he did not fail his captain in any way.
Moreover, he put no pressure on Howard to go into Heathrow. The C-in-C had originally advised against using the airport and when the weather forecast was received over Epsom, Broadhurst emphasised to Howard that if he was dissatisfied with the prevailing weather conditions he was to divert.
Someone must have been afraid of adverse public criticism if it was ever revealed that there was another fully qualified Vulcan pilot with a Master Green rating aboard, so the press release stated that Stroud was the second navigator. Even his death certificate described him as a navigator, a falsification which caused much unnecessary bitterness among his family and suspicion among his colleagues.
Error margin
As it turned out, a whole bevy of Master Greens on XA897’s flightdeck would have added little extra safety margin. Although the GCA at Heathrow was a first-generation system that was much cruder than modern landing aids, the full vindication of Howard and Broadhurst had to await the inquest on January 30, 1957.
Despite Howard’s lack of instrument experience on the Vulcan, the RAF could not credit that he would have gone so far below his break-off height without realising it or that both he and Broadhurst would have misread their altimeters so wildly.
A scientific study of Vulcan altimeter errors was undertaken at Boscombe, which revealed the large delta wing area created its own atmospheric pressure error of between 70-130ft when close to the ground. Friction within the altimeter could add a further 70ft, making a total possible error of 200ft. Add this to Runway 10 Left’s elevation of 80ft above sea level and it becomes clear that with 300ft indicated on his altimeter, Howard was already among the weeds.
There need have been no sudden and unaccountable descent as postulated by Dr Touch. The Vulcan’s gentle 3° descent on the GCA glidepath would soon have swallowed up the tiny safety margin remaining to the pilots of XA897. On all future Vulcan instrument approaches, pilots would be briefed to add an extra pressure error correction factor, but it was a pity it took the tragedy at London Airport to bring the lesson to everyone’s attention in the first place.
The loss of XA897 highlighted the importance of being up to speed on instrument flying skills before the foul weather comes. It also proved that it does not pay to put your latest, largely untried aircraft into your latest, barely opened international airport for vainglorious reasons.