This Avro Vulcan has been converted to a tanker aircraft,note the refuelling gear under the rear fuselage.
The loss of Skybolt meant that the RAF was fielding a nuclear deterrent force that was increasingly outmoded and soon the arrival of Polaris ICBMs meant that the Royal Navy's submarine force took over the V-Force's nuclear deterrent role. The final Vulcan variant was the K.2 - a tanker version. Requested by the MoD during the Falklands war, a mere 51 days passed between request and delivery of the first K.2. The K.2 was basically a B.2 with an ugly box tacked underneath the tailcone (containing the drogue unit; hoses and drum unit in the ECM bay within the tailcone) and the bomb bay filled with three huge fuel tanks. The huge white areas underneath the wings (used to help pilots lining up on the tanker) added their own final uglification.
The Vulcan would have flown for its entire service life without ever dropping a bomb in anger had it not been for the Falklands war in 1982. The famous Black Buck missions, considering the age of the aircraft & their equipment and the incredible distances covered, were incredible feats. The task was to put a Vulcan over the Falklands and do some damage to the Argentine installations there. Had the Falklands not been 3,886 miles away from the nearest useable airfield, this would not have been such a difficult task to actually carry out!
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