Here's a little bit of fun. The reason being this shows Vulcan with the Skybolt nuclear standoff missile on pylon mounts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEVdMgvUkaM
The planned B.3 had wing hardpoints for the Skybolt, to replace the Blue Steel missile which was carried in the bay, although the bay doors were modified etc. That block was never built althought he prototypes for the launch rails was created. Eight B.2 Vulcans were initially modified to B.2MRR (Marine Reconaisance) with long range LORAN. Of those eight, five were fitted with Skybolt rails to hold radiation collector pods fashioned from old Hawker Hunter drop tanks.
When Operation Corporate was in planning, the five Vulcans that had the Skybolt hardpoints, but more importantly the Olympus 301, were selected from 101 Squadron and repainted dark gray on the underside, for war.
Elizabeth, note that your beloved Concorde flew on Olympus as well, although a later version. When I was a kid a half century ago we lived in Bristol for a while when dad was in charge of the United Airlines Concorde purchase. He used to go out to Filton every day and I only went out twice, but I got to see the protos, the tie down test pad that had the road diverted around it, and did a bunch of corporate flights down to Toulouse and back on SUD corporate aircraft.
Back to the Falklands, the selected Vulcans were repainted and sent to Ascencion. I will look further and see how many were there at a given time, but I think there were three; XM597, 598, 607.
It's not up to this post to recount the Black Buck missions, but the most interesting ones for me are the anti radar ones.In at least the first two raids, two Vulcans were deployed, armed, and launched, although by Three I haven't found a definitive source except for Six so take your own conclusion.
One, Two and Three were iron bomb loads. They were all targeted at Stanley airport to shorten the runway and prevent long range resupply from Argentina, and in the first two raids were successful. In Black Buck One, the lead aircraft XM598 had a cabin seal failure and the backup aircraft . XM607 continued on. That's the one Airfix models.
Four carried two Shrike missiles, supplied by the US, but was aborted five hours out due to the failure of one of the Victors in the refueling plan to continue.
Five attacked a Westinghouse TPS-43 station with a range of 450 km that had been set up for theater control, and damaged it.
Six is a good study. It was a Shrike mission flown by XM597. It destroyed a Skyguard twin 35 mm Oerlikon cannon base, but could not refuel on the return leg due to a refueling probe break. It diverted to Brazil and was impounded. On the flight the crew jettisoned the paper work out of the access hatch and fired off one Shrike. The other hung up on the rails and was confiscated after landing by Brazil.
The aircraft and crew were repatriated,
The last Black Buck mission, number Seven, dropped air burst weapons over Stanley Airport that largely destroyed aircraft on the ground but did not do damage to the runways, as invasion was in progress.
I hope this is an inspiration for at least one Vulcan build. Although described as a large aircraft, it is about the size of a Boeing 737, which is a short haul airliner.
Like our host said, imagine Ascension at 0200 where six Victors go out, four Saphirres each in full chat, a Vulcan with four Olympus, four more Victors, another Vulcan and four more Victors?