Ground crew of a Valiant
Title
Ground crew of a Valiant
Description
Ground crew working on the Valiant 'Whisky Zulu' in advance of a Battle of Britain display. In charge is Chief Technician Alexander 'Sixty' Hill.
Temporal Coverage
Language
Format
One newspaper cutting
Publisher
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
Identifier
SIvesonD19171121v10033
Transcription
QUITE A LADY’
“Whisky Zulu,” one of Gaydon’s Valiant bombers, gets the full treatment from its ground crew before taking part in today’s Battle of Britain display. The Valiants were the first of the V-force aircraft to come to the station and they first went into operational service in the Suez crisis of 1956. Valiant ground crews – like their opposite numbers on the Victors – remain firmly attached to a particular aircraft; and the men who look after “Whisky Zulu” say she is “quite a lady.” In charge of the ground crew is Chief Technician Alexander Hill, better known as “Sixty” Hill because he is the oldest of all “old sweats” on this newest of all V-bomber stations. Grey-haired “Sixty” says he can take the leg-pulling, because in all his Service life he has never enjoyed himself more than at Gaydon. Here, hands on hips, he supervises a final check up on “Whisky Zulu.”
[photograph]
[photograph]
MEN BEHIND THE MACHINES
COMPLICATED COMPUTER
This complicated mass of equipment is part of the computer room for the V-bomber flight simulator, a dummy crew cabin in which aircrew “fly” without leaving the ground
[photograph]
Born of [missing words] and [missing words]
“Whisky Zulu,” one of Gaydon’s Valiant bombers, gets the full treatment from its ground crew before taking part in today’s Battle of Britain display. The Valiants were the first of the V-force aircraft to come to the station and they first went into operational service in the Suez crisis of 1956. Valiant ground crews – like their opposite numbers on the Victors – remain firmly attached to a particular aircraft; and the men who look after “Whisky Zulu” say she is “quite a lady.” In charge of the ground crew is Chief Technician Alexander Hill, better known as “Sixty” Hill because he is the oldest of all “old sweats” on this newest of all V-bomber stations. Grey-haired “Sixty” says he can take the leg-pulling, because in all his Service life he has never enjoyed himself more than at Gaydon. Here, hands on hips, he supervises a final check up on “Whisky Zulu.”
[photograph]
[photograph]
MEN BEHIND THE MACHINES
COMPLICATED COMPUTER
This complicated mass of equipment is part of the computer room for the V-bomber flight simulator, a dummy crew cabin in which aircrew “fly” without leaving the ground
[photograph]
Born of [missing words] and [missing words]
Collection
Citation
“Ground crew of a Valiant,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed July 15, 2026, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/collections/document/44817.