Final Flight XA939

Tony Cunnane - author and pilot

Final Flights - XA939

I decided that I would have to ‘throw’ the aircraft onto the ground by making it fall out of the sky as the wheels passed over the trees

One of the less pleasant things any pilot has to do is take an aircraft on its final flight. I had to do this several times during my last few months on Victor Tankers at Marham as the Mk 1 and Mk 1a aircraft reached the end of their service life. However, the most interesting delivery flight was on 29 March 1976 when I took XA939 (belonging to No 55 Squadron) to RAF Catterick in North Yorkshire where it was to be used for fire practices by the RAF Fire Training School.

Catterick was no longer an active airfield but it had a disused runway only 3,300 feet long. There was an avenue of tall trees at the easterly end and the main A1 dual carriageway at the westerly end. The A1 southbound carriageway was only about 20 yards from the start/end of the runway with just a low wooden fence and a narrow taxi-track separating the two. The Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for Victors laid down a minimum runway length of 7,500 feet for landings so Catterick presented something of a challenge.

At the time I was the CO of the Victor Standardisation Unit based at RAF Marham. Together with my two navigators and air electronics officer, the unit was responsible for the operating standards of all Victor Mk 1 aircrew so it was, I suppose, inevitable that I should be tasked with delivering the aircraft onto this very short runway. Although the aircraft was going to be used for fire-fighting practices, it was no consolation for me and my crew to know that it would not really matter if we crashed on landing!

It was left to me to work out my own landing technique but, naturally, I took advice from other senior Victor captains. Our Group HQ laid down only three rules: the landing was to be made from east to west because an approach over the A1 would have caused major trouble had I undershot and landed on the road; there had to be a minimum of 15 knots headwind component along the runway; and there had to be a maximum crew of four: captain, co-pilot, navigator and AEO.

The Station Commander, Group Captain David Parry-Evans, later Air Chief Marshal Sir David, decided that he wanted to come along for the ride as my co-pilot. My navigator was Dave Ellis and my AEO was Bob Northwood. We had to wait about 10 days before a suitable westerly wind and good visibility presented themselves. I spoke to the Operations Controller at Catterick to brief him that I would approach visually from RAF Leeming, a few miles to the south of Catterick, and that I would then make several low approaches and overshoots to burn off fuel until I was down to the lowest possible landing weight. I would give him 10 minutes warning of my final circuit so that he could arrange for the traffic on the A1 to be halted, just in case I ran off the end and across the road.

The arrival overhead was uneventful and I carried out my first visual approach using the standard technique. It was then that I noticed the avenue of trees at the touch down end was likely to impede my final approach if I wanted to touch down on the very first few feet of the runway – and I did! I decided that I would have to ‘throw’ the aircraft onto the ground by making it fall out of the sky as the wheels passed over the trees. On the overshoot from that first approach, I noticed that all traffic on the A1 had already been halted and considerable queues were forming north and southbound. I told the ground controller that I would not be landing for about 15 minutes but he replied that a senior traffic policeman had decided to halt the traffic because many vehicles, having somehow heard about the forthcoming landing, were starting to park illegally along the carriageways while other vehicles were slowing down to see what was going on. The senior policeman insisted that if he did not halt all traffic there was likely to be an accident.

I did two more circuits with full flap extended all the way around to burn off the excess fuel as quickly as I could and then made the final, final approach. I set myself up for a normal approach path until I was lined up with the runway. When I committed myself to the landing I lowered full flap and put the aircraft into an exaggerated nose up attitude, thereby creating maximum drag, much higher than for a standard approach. This technique required a high power setting – about 83% on all four engines instead of the 70% that would have been used for a more orthodox approach. The disadvantage of this technique was that had I been forced to go around and had the flaps failed to retract, there would have been little spare engine thrust to take us back into the air. It was a make or break technique.

Just short of the avenue of trees at a very low speed of about 115kts, 25 kts lower than recommended for that weight, I ordered the co-pilot to slam all four throttles closed and fully extend the airbrake while I simultaneously streamed the tail-brake parachute. The aircraft did in fact fall out of the sky, as I had planned, from a height of about 10 feet. I pushed the control column fully forward and applied maximum braking. We came to a halt about 300 feet from the end. My faithful crew and I were considerably relieved but I have a suspicion that all the drivers standing outside their vehicles on the A1 were left disappointed and wondering what all the fuss had been about.

We then had to turn about and back-track the runway. After turning to the right off the end, I was instructed to taxi towards the burning pan that had been set aside as the final resting place for XA939. Unfortunately, what the Catterick people had omitted to tell me was that there was a very pronounced short rise on that taxi track. I stopped short of the rise while Group Captain Parry-Evans and I pondered the problem. So sudden was the initial upslope that there was a very real danger that the Victor would rock backwards on its main undercarriage as we started up it. That would have lifted the nose-wheel off the ground and then I would then have been unable to steer the aircraft. There was also a possibility that the aircraft might rear up so far that the tail fuselage would strike the ground and not recover, leaving the aircraft pointing skywards. We could not leave the aircraft where it was because Catterick had no means of moving it once the engines were shut down.

I decided to pump what little fuel we had remaining as far forward of the C of G as possible even though there was a risk that the fuel pumps might be uncovered when we started up the slope. There was only one thing to do: take a run at it! I applied full brakes, increased power to about 90% and then, when the engines had stabilised, released the brakes. The faithful Victor surged forward like a sprinter off the starting blocks. As we moved forward up the slope the nose of the aircraft reared up and all sight of the ground disappeared from my windscreen. For a second I thought the nose-wheel had left the ground. Then we breasted the top of the rise. I put all throttles to idle and allowed the aircraft to coast gracefully into the dispersal. XA939 had arrived.