The Vickers Valiant was built to restore Britain’s place among the world’s great military powers at the dawn of the Cold War. As the first of the legendary V-bombers, it became the Royal Air Force’s first true strategic jet bomber and the only British aircraft ever to drop live atomic and hydrogen bombs during nuclear weapons tests in Australia and the Pacific. Yet behind those historic achievements lay a program plagued by structural flaws, dangerous flight tests, failed modifications, and mounting doubts over whether the aircraft could survive a real war. While the Valiant entered combat during the Suez Crisis and briefly gave Britain an independent nuclear strike capability, the rapid advance of Soviet surface-to-air missiles forced it into a role its fragile airframe had never been designed to perform. Cracks spread through its wings, low-level operations accelerated its deterioratio

Source: The 700MPH Bomber that Shook Itself Apart