BAE Systems

The Aircraft of British Aerospace and BAE SYSTEMS 1977 - 2017 19

was to replace but was repainted before
delivery in hemp. The rest of the fleet
were in hemp from the start.
On the 16th flight ZA141 piloted by
Roy Radford was carrying out diving trials
with air brakes out when he met with
difficulties. The tailplane began to oscillate
in an alarming manner and with
increasing force. The VC10 was clearly in a
dangerous situation and might lose its
tail. Radford selected airbrakes in and the
oscillation damped out but the aircraft
continued to accelerate and during
recovery from the dive the pilots had to
pull back heavily on the controls,
exceeding its diving speed. During
post-flight examination, serious damage
to the integral structure of the fin was
discovered some of which had been
caused by previous fatigue damage to
the fin. ZA141’s fin and tail were removed
and replaced with those of RAE Bedford’s
VC10, XX914.

Handover of the first VC10 K
to 101 Squadron
The third VC10 K2, ZA140 was the first to
be handed over to the RAF at a ceremony
at Filton on 25 July 1983 and flew its first
operational sortie on 1 January 1984
during the deployment of RAF Jaguars to
the USA to participate in Red Flag. The
first Super VC10 tanker to appear from the

Filton factory was ZA148 (ex-5Y-ADA) in

July 1984 and 101 Squadron received it

and the three other Super VC10 K3s in late

1984 and 1985.

More VC10 tankers

When British Airways retired their Super

VC10s from airline service in 1981 the

remaining fleet was bought by the

Ministry of Defence. Three were delivered

to Brize Norton and scrapped, with a

further eleven delivered to RAF Abingdon

and put into store. The Ministry intended

to convert them to tankers but the

decision was delayed several times. By

1987 with the MoD aware that the

remaining Victors would soon be retired,

British Aerospace was tasked with

assessing which of the VC10s inactive at

Abingdon for six years were too riddled

with corrosion and which could be kept

on. As a result five were scrapped that

year, leaving just six, all of which were also

suffering from serious corrosion.

The VC10 K4 and C1(K)

conversion programme

In 1990 BAe and Flight Refuelling (FRA)

won the contract to convert five of the

former BA Supers to three-point tankers

and the RAF’s VC10 C1s were to become

VC10 C1(K)s with underwing refuelling

pods. BAe would convert the Supers into

VC10 K4s and FRA the VC10 C1s. British

Aerospace handling the flight trials of

both the K4s and the C1(K)s. This would

provide the RAF with a very flexible fleet;

13 tanker/transport VC10 C1(K)s and a

total of 14 VC10 K2, K3 and K4 tankers.

Work began on bringing back to life

the long dormant Super VC10s which

had remained at Abingdon for nine

years. On 27 July 1990 ZD242 (ex-G-

ASGP) was ferried to Filton. The other

Super VC10s then left Abingdon for

Filton at three-monthly intervals. The

scale of the work to rebuild and modify

the Supers into K4s was demonstrated

by the three years that ZD242 spent at

Filton until its first flight as a tanker on 29

July 1993 and the last ZD235 flying on 13

December 1995. The first K4 was

delivered to No 101 Squadron in 1994

and by early 1996 it had 14 VC10 tankers

on its strength. The K4s became

three-point tankers like the others but

differed significantly from the K3 as fuel

tanks were not fitted in their fuselages.

Even so they still carried 50 tons of

disposable fuel to transfer. The fuselage

tanks were not fitted as owing to the age

of the aircraft it was felt best not to cut

open the fuselage roof to fit them as was

done on the K2. This provided greater

operational flexibility as with the large

passenger cabin still available for use, the

K4s kept their cabin trim and were fitted

with 35 seats.

In the meantime the No 10 Squadron

VC10 C1s were gradually converted to

VC10 C1(K)s by Flight Refuelling Aviation

at Hurn. At Hurn they were fitted with

underwing Mk32 refuelling pods and

alterations the refuelling system. On

completion they were then flown to

Filton for flight testing by BAe. The first

C1K XV101 was completed in June 1992

and the contract came to an end when

XR808 flew in February 1997. As the

VC10s were repainted their hemp or

white and grey livery was replaced by an

all grey livery. †

‡ Although the General Dynamics F-111 was not a BAe legacy programme it provided substantial work for the firm.

Between 1978 and 1992 BAe Filton worked on 328 UK-based F-111Es from 20TFW Upper Heyford and F-111Fs from

48TFW Lakenheath. (BAE SYSTEMS)

Legacy aircraft programmes