It’s now three decades since the RAF said farewell to its last ‘V-bomber’, and retired the Victor K2 tankers of No 55 Squadron. But they weren’t about to slip quietly away…
The ‘V-Force’ had often been required to adapt. Through major strategic shifts, repeatedly it was reinvented to meet new demands, and so it continued long after the ultimate responsibility of maintaining Britain’s nuclear deterrent passed out of RAF hands. Even so, it was incongruous to find one of the final Victors at what had, just a few years before, been a front-line Warsaw Pact air base. If ever an illustration were sought of changing times, there it was, at Hradec Králové in the newly independent Czech Republic during July 1993. It was the second year running that No 55 Squadron had sent one of its veteran tankers to appear in that country, the first having been to Bratislava, then still part of Czechoslovakia, the previous September. What a symbol of détente — and, more than that, of how the ‘V-bombers’ had been a constant, from having the Eastern Bloc firmly in their bombsights to a new world order, when the last of them helped represent the RAF in a spirit of friendship.
It is now 30 years since the ‘V-Force’ era came to an end, as No 55 Squadron …
