A bit more detailed than 607's account, how lucky were the people on the ground.
I was surprised to read that the pilot was also involved in another Vulcan crash in 1975, whilst landing XM645 in Malta. How unlucky !
When I was an SAC, I actually worked on XM610 the night before it crashed but I don't think they can blame me as I only did a wheel change! A few years later while working on the OCU at Scampton, I met A Cpl who was on Crash & Smash at the time that 610 crashed and he was part of the team that was sent to recover it. They had to dig down 50 feet to recover the engines as the aircraft hit the ground so hard.
While at the crash site he paid a visit to the Post Office at Wingate and the Post Master told him that on the day the aircraft crashed all the OAP's were in the Post Office collecting their pensions when the aircraft screamed overhead and ploughed into the field behind them. Apparently, they all dived to the floor because they thought that WW3 had started and the “Doodle Bugs” had come back.
The aircraft that crashed in Malta, XM645, was actually arriving on a short deployment (we used to call them Rangers in those days) and Malta was on exercise at the time so Air Traffic asked the crew if they would play the part of an enemy aircraft that was trying to escape and surrender at Malta. The Captain agreed and tasked the Co-Pilot to do the landing.
Unfortunately the aircraft dropped too low on its approach and landed short of the runway on the rough ground. There was a large step up onto the runway and when the aircraft hit the step up, it tore off one main undercarriage and pushed the other one up into the wing which ruptured the fuel tanks. The Pilot managed to get the aircraft airborne and tried to gain height to allow the rear crew to bail out (they needed at least 1000 feet for their chutes to open) when the aircraft exploded, the two pilots actually ejected as the aircraft was exploding around them.
Apparently, as this was accident happening, at one of the local village school’s the kids were at play time and they were misbehaving so the teacher called them all over to a corner of the playground to tell them off, as she was doing it part of the Vulcan’s wing crashed onto the ground where the kids would have been playing if she had not called them all together.
How do I know this, well about 8 years later I was working with an FS who was a Chief at Malta at the time of the crash and he was put in charge of the crash recovery team, what he found was not pretty and in respect of the crew’s relatives, something I will not repeat here.
DT_Xtremez_09: