XM655 - Wellesbourne Mountford

This morning was another fairly early start as I set off, on the bike, to cover the 45 miles to Wellesbourne Mountford airfield where Avro Vulcan B2 XM655 is kept. It's quite close to Stratford-on-Avon where another famous English icon lived, can't quite think who he was now but not as famous as the Vulcan! HAHAHAHAHAHA
I met up with some old friends from my Vulcan to the Sky volunteering days and some of the crew even remembered me!
She was doing a fast run down the runway, unfortunately she wasn't able to do the normal fast taxy, raising the front wheel and cutting out short of being airborne. Problem was that she is fitted with the more powerful Olympus 301 engines while most of the B2 V-Force Vulcans had Olympus 201, still gave 31,000lbs of thrust on each of the 4 engines though!
She did a practice engine run yesterday and the exhaust, from the rear of the engines, ripped up the concrete at the end of the runway. The airport owners weren't too happy about that, no sense of fun I guess.
The Photos are;
Top - XM655
Bottom Left - A spare Olympus 301 engine
Bottom Right - a dummy 1,000lb bomb. When the Royal Navy took over the nuclear deterrent with Nuclear submarines, equipped with Polaris missiles, the V-Force Vulcans were re-equpped with their bomb bays fitted out with 3 racks of 7 x 1,000lb 'iron' bombs, total of 21 which is what was dropped during the Black Buck missions to the Falklands, although some missions used Shrike missiles to take out radar and ordnance positions.
The Victor aircraft were initially used for nuclear deterrent but were switched to an air-air refuelling role.
Another good day.
https://youtu.be/IE2vIc_jSEs