Club Meeting 12th January 2026

Deputising for the president, vice president Ted Collett wished everyone a Happy New Year and welcomed them, Katherine Maxwell, and today’s speaker Barry Hamblin to the meeting.

The vice president introduced today’s speaker Barry Hamblin to talk on the subject of “ Operation Black Buck”. After giving a brief resume of his career as a navigation officer in the R.A.F. Barry began by describing what happened to him following the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands on the 2nd April 1982.Earlier consensus by Defence chiefs suggested that the Islands were indefensible with the nearest usable airfield on Ascension Island 3300 nautical miles away. The task then was to be able to carry out long range operations with Avro Vulcan bombers using aerial refuelling. Barry continued by describing his involvement in setting up the logistics to make this possible and how it all came together using Victor K2 tankers.

Initially the target for the mission was the Port Stanley Airport runway which if successful would seriously impair the activities of the Argentinian air force. Using 1000lb bombs and flying across the runway at 35 degrees the bomb release system was timed to drop bombs sequentially so that at least one would hit the runway. Aerial photographs showed that this was successful in destroying the end of the runway. Subsequent raids also showed hits at the edge of the runway. Barry showed diagrams outlining the complexity of aerial refuelling and took us through Operation Black Buck operations 1 through 7, not all being completed. However these raids, at 7600 miles round trip were the longest raids in history at that time.

Following questions from the floor the vote of thanks was given by Don McPhail who was able to tell us about his involvement in the operations whilst serving in the RAF. Members showed their appreciation of a fine talk with a round of applause.