Free Download V-Force: Britain's Nuclear Bombers and the Cold War by Jonathan Glancey
English | August 7, 2025 | ISBN: 1838957952 | 352 pages | EPUB | 7.82 Mb
As World War II came to an end and America''s nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki shocked the world, it became clear that the nascent Cold War would be as different a conflagration from WWII as that war was from WWI. Believing that the UK was extremely vulnerable to nuclear attack, it was quickly determined that only ''the threat of large-scale damage from similar weapons'' could prevent a Soviet attack. And, thus, V-Force was born.
Entered into service between 1955 and 1957, the three models of V class bombers that made up Britain''s strategic nuclear strike force - the Vickers Valiant, Avro Vulcan and Handley Page Victor - were modern marvels of machinery. Capable of both high- and low-level attack with their slick delta wing designs, and supremely quick despite the massive bomb loads they carried, these aircraft were central tenets of Britain''s nuclear weapons development.
Despite a fall as precipitous as their rise when the Royal Navy took over Britain''s nuclear deterrent role in 1968, like a phoenix from the ashes, the V bombers enjoyed a second life as conventional bombers: the Valiant gaining fame in the Suez Crisis; the Victors in the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation, and the Vulcans undertook the longest bombing raid in history for Operation Black Buck in the Falklands Campaign of 1982.
V-Force is both an ode to these most resilient, beautiful and underrated of British aircraft, and a lens through which to view Britain''s Cold War experience.
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