It's a long story, but here's a shortened version! Taken from an Email which I sent to the XL426 Vulcan restoration Mailing list
Back in the late 50's & early 60's a group of
about 35 youngish Englishmen travelled to Australia to conduct flight trials (at
Woomera) of the Blue Steel stand-off bomb which was later deployed by the
RAF. Most of us worked for a while at Avro's Woodford plant before travelling
down-under.
That Vulcan production line was quite a sight. Pity it was so
secret at the time - no photos allowed of course. Our group all worked for
Elliott Brothers (London) Ltd and we were concerned with the development
and testing of the missile's Inertial navigation system (One of the first IN
systems in the world). Actually - prior to launch it was a mixed inertial and Doppler system that gradually corrected the
gyro drifts as we approached the launch point. A bit like launching an ICBM
from a moving launch pad!
We spent an average of 2-3 years in Australia on that project and although many stayed in here, at least half of us returned to U.K. and then (in my case - after working on the ill fated TSR-2 project), many of those eventually returned to Australia to settle permanently.
I was lucky enough to be part of the aircrew
on many of the trials and flew several hundred hours on all 3 V-Bomber types, I launched
8-10 Blue Steels and managed to "fall out of the sky (40,000 ft
inverted supersonic spin)" in a Victor - that's story can be found by
clicking here. So that's a little background info - there is
some more on the personal area of my home page if you happen to be interested.
Anyhow the point of this message is that I am
currently organising a reunion of the Trials team members, here in Canberra over the
long weekend of 24th-26th April 1999. We are gradually (with the help of the Internet) making contact with team members here in Australia and
U.K. But I am very interested to find out if there is any surviving
memorabilia of that period. Would anyone happen to know any contact information for
museums, RAF records, defence department records, etc? I know (for example)
that there were many miles of film taken by tracking and long range cameras
of the trials on the range. Obviously I am trying to trace that through
local sources, but I suspect it was either destroyed or sent to U.K.
for further analysis by the "customer" - the RAF. In this case it
was RAF 4JSTU (Joint Services Trials Unit).
If you have read as far as this - I know this
message is a long shot, but if you know of any leads, We'd love to hear from you.