Saturday, July 29, 2006






That's an Avro Vulcan on display at the airport in Goose Bay. It's a HUGE (200,000 lb gross takeoff weight, about the same weight as a Boeing 727) 4-engine bomber that was designed to drop nukes. The Brits used it in the Falkand Islands conflict. This one ended up here after a serious in-flight malfunction. It would have cost too much to repair her so instead of scrapping her, it was decided to turn the airframe into a gate guard for the RAF Support Unit based at Goose Bay. Soon after it was gifted to the local community of Happy Valley as a mark of the bond between the RAF and the local inhabitants.

To give you some idea of the size of this beast, here's a picture of an old one getting scrapped. Notice how it completely dwarfs the backhoe.


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