The 1958 Syerston Avro Vulcan crash was an

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accident that occurred in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

on 20 September 1958 during an air show at

RAF Syerston Royal Air Force Station Syerston, commonly known as merely RAF Syerston , is a Royal Air Force station in the parish of Flintham, near Newark, Nottinghamshire. Opened in 1940, it was used by the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a bomber base during t ...

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The trad ...

when a prototype

Avro Vulcan The Avro Vulcan (later Hawker Siddeley Vulcan from July 1963) is a jet-powered, tailless, delta-wing, high-altitude, strategic bomber, which was operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF) from 1956 until 1984. Aircraft manufacturer A.V. Roe an ...

bomber crashed. All four crew on board and three people on the ground were killed. Citing BT 233/403

Flight

VX770 was the first prototype Vulcan. It had first flown with Avon engines, and had later been fitted with

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. More recently, it had been fitted with

Rolls-Royce Conway The Rolls-Royce RB.80 Conway was the first turbofan engine to enter service. Development started at Rolls-Royce in the 1940s, but the design was used only briefly, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, before other turbofan designs replaced it. ...

engines; on the day of the accident it was flying from the

Rolls-Royce Rolls-Royce (always hyphenated) may refer to: * Rolls-Royce Limited, a British manufacturer of cars and later aero engines, founded in 1906, now defunct Automobiles * Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the current car manufacturing company incorporated in ...

airfield at

Hucknall Hucknall, formerly Hucknall Torkard, is a market town in the Ashfield district of Nottinghamshire, England. It lies 7 miles north of Nottingham, 7 miles south-east of Kirkby-in-Ashfield, 9 miles from Mansfield and 10 miles south of Sutton-i ...

to test the Conways. The four crew on board included a flight test engineer from Avro. During the course of the test-flight VX770 diverted to RAF Syerston to participate in the

Battle of Britain The Battle of Britain, also known as the Air Battle for England (german: die Luftschlacht um England), was a military campaign of the Second World War, in which the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) of the Royal Navy defende ...

day air show.

Accident

The Vulcan flew along runway 07 then started a rolling climb to starboard. During this manoeuvre the starboard wing disintegrated, resulting in a collapse of the main

spar SPAR, originally DESPAR, styled as DE SPAR, is a Dutch multinational that provides branding, supplies and support services for independently owned and operated food retail stores. It was founded in the Netherlands in 1932, by Adriaan van Well, ...

and wing structure. The Vulcan went into a dive with the starboard wing on fire and struck the ground. Three occupants of a controllers' caravan were killed by debris, all four of the Vulcan crew were also killed. Three servicemen who were in an ambulance were also injured by debris from the crash.

Cause

The official primary cause for the accident was a gross structural failure of the aircraft's main spar, which was confirmed by amateur footage, photographs and eyewitness accounts. The reason for the failure was not determined by the Board of Inquiry (BoI), but it was suggested by an accident investigator called in by Rolls-Royce that the main cause was that the pilot, upon performing the planned aerobatic display, exceeded the prototype's briefed speed and turning rate limits. The accident investigator submitted a statement to the BoI, but did not give evidence under oath. The BoI was apparently not informed that the aircraft manufacturer considered the basis for the statement to be invalid. The Technical Officer of the Board of Inquiry identified a suspected fatigue failure of the inboard arm of the front bottom wing attachment main forging, and suggested vibration from the high airflow volumes required by the RR Conway 11 engines as a possible cause. The Royal Aircraft Establishment carried out a structural analysis of the wreckage and produced a report on 21 April 1960, but no copy has been found in the public record. Avro's then Chief Test Pilot, Tony Blackman, argued that the maintenance crew failed to properly inspect the aircraft for known issues with stress damage to the aircraft's leading edges and structural ribs, which had been observed in another prototype he had flown earlier.Blackman, p. 152-153

Notes

Bibliography

*
Vulcan Mk 1, VX770: RAF Syerston, Notts, 20 Sept. 1958
Official incident report at

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External links

Witness recalls the day a Vulcan bomber crashed at an airshow in Nottinghamshire, killing 7 people
5 July 2020
"Anniversary of Vulcan crash"

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

, 19 September 2008.
Aviation Safety Network accident report
{{DEFAULTSORT:Syerston avro vulcan crash Aviation accidents and incidents in England Accidents and incidents involving Royal Air Force aircraft Aviation accidents and incidents in 1958 1958 in England Aviation accidents and incidents involving the Avro Vulcan September 1958 events in the United Kingdom Aviation accidents and incidents caused by in-flight structural failure