Maritime radar reconnaissance
Not every Vulcan in the 1970s was a bomber waiting for QRA. From 1973 until 1982, No. 27 Squadron at RAF Scampton flew a small fleet of B.2s converted for maritime radar reconnaissance — often abbreviated B.2 MRR. They took over a task previously associated with Victor SR.2 aircraft of No. 543 Squadron, which were themselves needed as tankers.
What the role was
MRR meant using the bomber’s radar and navigation fit, plus additional sensors, to look at the sea and the things on it. In the North Atlantic of the 1970s that was a NATO problem: locating surface units, contributing to the maritime picture, and doing it at ranges a fighter could not. The Vulcan’s combination of range, crew and a large radar was a reasonable tool even if the airframe had been designed to bomb cities.
What changed on the aeroplane
Open sources describe LORAN-C for long overwater navigation, additional fuel in the bay, and the removal of the TFR thimble on at least some of the converted aircraft. Air-sampling pods could be carried under the wings to collect radioactive debris after foreign nuclear tests — a scientific and political task that sat oddly on a V-bomber but used its ability to go far and stay up.
The H2S was still the big radar. Interpreting a sea clutter picture is a different skill from interpreting a city, which is why the role had its own training and its own culture inside the Waddington/Scampton world.
End of the task
No. 27 Squadron gave up the MRR Vulcans in 1982 as the type’s remaining years were consumed by the Falklands war and then by retirement. The maritime picture did not stop needing aircraft; it stopped being a Vulcan job. The conversion is worth remembering because it shows the airframe’s last decade was not a single mission. It was a set of jobs for a bomber that had outlived its original war.