Commissioned
It occurs to me that younger, or even younger still, readers may wonder what the term V Bomber means. There was nothing clever or secret about it: the V simply represented the initial letter of the Valiant, Victor and Vulcan bombers that formed the RAF's strategic MBF (medium bomber force). And, while I'm at it, you may wonder what the difference is between a light, medium and heavy bomber? If you really want a complicated and out-of-date explanation, type 'medium bomber' into Wikipedia (or click here). Curiously, Wikipedia states that after the end of WW2 the term medium bomber '...disappeared from use almost instantly' - but that article was possibly written by an American? I was certainly part of the RAF's MBF for several years of my career in the 1970s.
Since my V Bomber days in the early 1960s, when aircrews were thought to need extra sustenance to keep them going during the rigours of high-altitude flying, I had been used to the facilities of Aircrew Restaurants. I lived mainly in Officers’ Messes in those days so I always availed myself of a full cooked breakfast before going to work. We didn't call them 'English Breakfasts' in those days - I don't know when that expression was invented: 'full fry' was our name for a hearty breakfast. On flying days the Mess breakfast was followed at about 10am by another ‘full fry’ in the Greasy Spoon, our name for the aircrew restaurant. We always took with us into the air a large box of in-flight rations which usually consisted of a selection of well-filled sandwiches, chocolate bars of our own choice, crisps and fruit. We also carried a large flask filled with coffee, tea, or fruit squash. After a typical five-hour sortie we usually had another two or three course cooked meal in the aircrew restaurant and then, if the flight de-briefing was short and one was quick, the livers-in could race to the Officers' Mess in time for a late afternoon tea of toast and preserves before showering, changing and reporting to the Mess dining room for dinner.
At one stage delicious chocolate marshmallows wrapped in silver foil became all the rage and most crews asked for a supply to be included in their in-flight rations box. These items of desire, often called chocolate teacakes, became the subjects of some rather unscientific in-flight experiments.
In normal peacetime flying conditions the crew cabin in the V Bombers was pressurised to maintain the equivalent of about 8,000 feet even though the aircraft was actually flying at well in excess of 40,000 feet. This made for a comfortable working environment and there was no need for the crew to keep an oxygen mask clamped to their face. In combat conditions the cabin pressure would have been maintained at a much lower level, the equivalent of about 25,000 feet, which did require oxygen masks to be worn. The reason for this was that if the aircraft cabin was punctured due to enemy action, the subsequent explosive decompression from 25,000 feet to the real altitude of upwards of 40,000 feet would be much less traumatic than a decompression from 8,000 feet. If the 'hole' was not too big there was an automatic emergency inflow of air, called 'flood flow', which tried to keep the cabin pressure at around 25,000ft or less.
Since Gaydon was a training station, new crews had to practice the procedures for flying with a cabin altitude of 25,000 feet and there were a number of sorties on the course syllabus where the entire high level portion of the flight was flown at a cabin altitude of 25,000 feet. It was uncomfortable, cold and unpopular. During one of these flights someone noticed that as the cabin altitude increased above about 20,000 feet, the marshmallow inside the chocolate shell had expanded sufficiently to crack the chocolate. A fair percentage of the bulk of marshmallow is, of course, made up of air bubbles trapped within the gelatinous mass. Word quickly spread and this discovery kept different crews fascinated for several days. Marshmallows were stripped of their silver foil coverings and laid out on various flat surfaces in the cabin. Notes were kept and tables were constructed to show which brand of chocolate marshmallow was the most resistant to reducing air pressure. Some aircrew discovered that the expansion was so great that they could no longer put the whole chocolate teacake into their mouth in one piece. The taste, however, appeared to be unaffected!
It was inevitable that sooner or later someone would take a batch of chocolate teacakes with them on an 'emergencies' sortie which involved a deliberate complete depressurisation of the cabin. The drill was practised when the aircraft was flying at or above 40,000 feet. The reduction in cabin pressure from 8,000 ft to the real aircraft altitude took only about 10 seconds and had an alarming effect on one’s stomach and intestines as internal body gases rapidly expanded. The student captain of the aircraft was required to initiate an immediate emergency descent to a more hospitable altitude. On the occasion in question, as soon as the instructor captain operated the switch to depressurise the cabin there was the expected loud bang and the cabin, as usual, instantly filled with an icy cold fog. The instructor had completely forgotten about the marshmallows on the ledge above the instrument panels; they burst out of their foil and disintegrated explosively; bits of chocolate and shredded marshmallow splattered all over the windscreens, instruments and the pilots' flying suits. This rather distracted the pilots from the immediate emergency actions they were supposed to take for aircraft and aircrew safety. Thereafter marshmallows were banned.
Security considerations and the need-to-know principle prevented me from making a news story out of these experiments – until now.
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