V-Force : Britain’s Nuclear Bombers and the Cold War

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.