Steve Slater's 'insider' comment on the historic aviation world

摘要

When it made its maiden flight in 1962 the VC10 was intended to "take over the baton" for British jet transport from the pioneering de Havilland Comet. The aircraft excelled in combining a high cruising speed with the ability, specified by BOAC, of being able to operate from "hot and high" African airports and from shorter runways than its transatlantic competitors. As it turned out, the Americans had by then attained commercial domination, but there was longer-term success when the VC10 entered RAF service with No 10 Sqn in December 1966. For more than four decades the aircraft from RAF Brize Norton provided both troop-carrying and in-flight refuelling services in support of operations in the Falklands, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.