Roar of fury over waste caused by explosion

From: SB Oliver, Churchill Grove, Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire.

HAVING always had a soft-spot for the Avro Vulcan bomber, with the deafening roar of its engines, I concur with Ralph Howard (Yorkshire Post, June 14) about its graceful, seemingly slow, display routine – that is when it is flying, which just lately is hardly ever.

I have contributed a small donation to the charity (vulcantothesky) in the past but

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I am quite furious that many of those donations from the public have been wasted due to gross incompetence by some of the servicing crew. The aircraft was about to make a practice flight for the Jubilee fly-past when two of its engines were destroyed after start-up by an explosion.

The cause of this was due to a package(s) of silica-gel which had been placed inside one engine to absorb moisture. The explosion in the one engine also damaged the adjacent engine so both left-hand engines were destroyed.

I am not an engineer or a technician or an aviation expert but my fury is that it is quite obvious that no messages or notices had been posted at important places on the aircraft, especially in the cockpit, that foreign bodies had been placed inside engines. While I know that there is some work done voluntarily on this project, I would hope that there would still be some “heads rolling” after this incompetence debacle.

Money obtained from donations is infinitely more precious and important than money from normal commercial sources, so my roar of fury matches that of Vulcan XH 558 (when it is flying, that is).