After reading these posts decided to have a look at the history of the Vulcan ( and the rest of the V Force ) . Never realised that the Vulcan entered service ( 1956 ) when I was still crawling around on all fours wearing a nappy .

With XH558 having been delivered in 1960 and the last Vulcan in 1965 , none of them are young in any sense of the word , though most would have had major maintenance / updates in their service life , prolonging their actual life span .

Since the " retirement " of the Harrier ( was stationed at RAF Wittering in the early 70's ) , expect the next to go will be the Tornado with the youngest from 1989 , don't think any of these will be ending up in private hands though ( in flying state ) unlike the Hunter . From what I have read the aircraft flown by the BBMF are in a better condition than the Tornado fleet anyway .

 

At least with FlightSimulator we can keep these aircraft flying albeit in the " virtual " sky .

 

John Glanville

John,

 

I suppose the reason the BBMF aircraft are still flying is because of their fairly simple construction. There is also a moral responsibility to keep those aircraft flying which perhaps the Vulcan and later military aircraft lack.