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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 1833.PDF
Vulcans are now steadily adding to the number of V-bombers in Royal Air Force service. This photograph was taken at Waddington BUILDING THE VULCAN —at the Avro Factories at Chadderton and Woodford LAST week Flight was afforded an opportunity of visitingthe production shops of A. V. Roe and Co., Ltd., toJ see something of the methods employed in producing the Vulcan bomber. The occasion was unique because, in recentyears at least, permission has never been granted for the Press to inspect the production of an advanced military aircraft. TheVulcan certainly comes into this category, and yet we are per- mitted to comment on all that was shown to us—with the excep-tion of obviously restricted items such as the geometry and dimensions of the bomb bay and the particular types of electronicgear carried on board. As an aeroplane the Vulcan cannot require much introductionto any of our readers. A history of its development was published in Flight of September 27. In a nutshell, the story is: Specification,late 1946; instruction-to-proceed on the prototype, January 1948; prototype contract, March 1949; production contract, June 1952;first prototype flew, August 1952; second prototype flew, September 1953; first production Vulcan B.I flew, January 1955; deliveries to83 Squadron began, September 1956. The Vulcan is, of course, a large delta-wing medium bomber of the V-class, and it is poweredby four Bristol Olympus turbojets. In spite of its unusual shape and advanced performance, theVulcan has an airframe built along remarkably traditional lines. Except for the most highly stressed parts the whole structure ismanufactured from standard grades of light alloy and there is virtually no integral stiffening or machined and tapered skinningto be seen anywhere. Even brazed or bonded metal honeycombs, upon which very extensive research has been conducted at Chad-derton, are confined to localized areas in the control surfaces and to access doors on the underside of the aircraft. Almost all therest of the airframe is built up from standard sheet and sections with a small number of machined forgings, castings and extrusions.An indication of the way in which the Vulcan is put together is afforded by the simplified cut-away drawings on page 926. Almostthe entire airframe is manufactured within the Hawker Siddeley Group, and it is, in fact, quite difficult to find any portion of thestructure which is not actually a product of A. V. Roe. The com- pany maintains four principal facilities for its airframe production:the main works at Chadderton, between Manchester and Oldham; Bracebridge Heath, near Lincoln, and Langar, Notts, where, interalia, airframe parts such as fins and rudders are manufactured; and the main assembly shops at the company's aerodrome at Woodford,Cheshire. In addition, sheet-metal parts are made at the Empire Works in Manchester and certain Vulcan components such aselevators and ailerons are manufactured by Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft in Coventry. As a small inset diagram on page 926 makesclear, the airframe is broken down into a number of major assemblies. These portions are connected at bolted transport joints and, in conformity with Ministry of Supply requirements,complete interchangeability has been achieved right from the start of production.Most of the airframe starts in the detail shops at Chadderton and the small parts are then brought together in major componentjigs, which are nearly all welded from standard girder sections. Among these portions are the complete centre section (the heartof the whole aeroplane and a singularly capacious component in the form of a rectangular box approximately 65ft x 28ft x 9ft 7in);the leading edges; the intakes and forward fuselage (aft of this portion there is scarcely any fuselage at all); the front fuselage,incorporating the pressure cabin; the nose, largely filled with radar- bombing equipment; and the inner trailing edge and tail end ofthe fuselage. At die roots the wing has a thickness/chord ratio of die orderof 12 per cent. This may seem incredible for an aircraft with almost sonic performance; but it is not a truly indicative figure, forthe interior is largely occupied by engines and ducting, so that the equivalent thickness of a conventional wing would be verymuch less. Root chord is of the order of 58ft and the depth is in excess of 6ft for a considerable axial distance.The wing has two principal spars, each conventionally built up from a plate web and strong upper and lower booms. Across thecentre section both spars are straight and truly transverse. The front spar web has the shape of an ellipse with widely spaced foci,being made in one large sheet with continuous machined boom- members along the upper and lower edges. There are circularholes for the four engines, and the central portion forms die front face of the bomb bay and is covered with electrical circuitry,bomb-door jacks and other paraphernalia. Each powerplant is enclosed in a separate fireproof box so that the complete centre-section includes six vertical plate members arranged in the axial direction in the form of ribs. The innermost pair of these corre-spond roughly with the width of the fuselage, which is a secondary structure forming a relatively unstressed circular cross-section.Major loads are transmitted by strong arches between the inner- most axial rib-like members, and these arches also support theweight of the weapons hung beneath. During assembly this por- tion is mounted horizontally on spherically located supports,numerous temporary ties being inserted to join the lower edges of the innermost ribs. The circular peripheral members around theengine holes in the spar transmit die major wing bending loads, and so are machined from high-tensile steel. At the extremitiesof the front spar are large High Duty Alloys forgings to which the corresponding member of the outer wing is attached. Thelatter is swept back and the forging accordingly has a complex (Contd. on p. 926, after double page of photographs of Vulcan production)
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