THE THREE VERY DIFFERENT models of V class bomber comprising Britain’s strategic nuclear strike force – Vickers Valiant, Avro Vulcan and Handley Page Victor – marked a radical change in post-war bomber design. From the time they first entered service between 1955 and 1957, these charismatic, high-flying jets stole the public imagination. Theirs, though, was a terrible beauty. In 1956, over the South Australian desert, Valiant WZ366 was the first British aircraft to drop an operational atomic bomb. The V-bombers were Britain’s premier Cold War aircraft. But frictions in Anglo-American relations alongside developments in radar and surface-to-air missiles led to the Royal Navy taking over Britain’s nuclear deterrent role in 1968. Despite this, the V-bombers enjoyed a second life in conventional roles, most notably when Vulcans undertook the longest bombing raids in history in the 1982 Falklands War. V-Force sets these formidable, haunting aircraft in the story of the development of twentieth-century weapons of mass destruction, military rivalries and international politics. It is both an extraordinary ode to the V-bombers and a unique lens through which to view Britain’s Cold War experience.
