AS NUCLEAR bombers go, it’s a bargain. A Vulcan aircraft, once the pride of the RAF’s atomic strike force, has gone on sale on the auction website eBay for a minimum bid of just £6,000.

The plane, which was originally bought by a collector when it was decommissioned 18 years ago, is taking up valuable space at Blackpool airport.

Brian Bateson, the airport’s owner, is trying to get rid of the plane to allow the airport to expand as it prepares to take advantage of the likely arrival of mega-casinos in Blackpool.

Bateson opened bids for the plane, one of the largest items ever sold on eBay, last Wednesday afternoon and has already been offered the reserve price.

Bidders who log on to eBay can put in bids to buy Vulcan XL391 — item number 5530699633 on the website — until Saturday.

“It’s getting hundreds of hits a day from around the world,” said Bateson, owner of Blackpool Air Centre. “But whoever gets it will have to come up here and cart it away. It’s certainly not flyable.”

Bateson, a former RAF radio engineer, bought the aircraft when the V-bomber force was being brought to an end. It flew into Blackpool airport and has been an unmoving and unmistakable reminder of Britain’s cold war heritage ever since.

The Vulcans, with their striking delta-wing shape and huge deep-roaring engines, were once the RAF’s biggest planes, but the country no longer possesses air-launched atomic weapons.

During the cold war Vulcans were on 24-hour stand-by to take off at two minutes’ notice to attack Warsaw pact targets.The American air force still has B2 nuclear bombers, but these cost about £100m each.

The Blackpool Vulcan was one of seven that flew to Ascension Island during the Falklands conflict in 1982 and provided a back-up to the aircraft that flew an 8,000-mile round trip — then the longest bombing mission in history — to bomb Port Stanley airfield.

The dilapidated state of the plane has put off one potential buyer, the Vulcan-to-the-Sky Trust, which has a £2.7m lottery grant to help to get one of the last flyable Vulcans back into the air.

Robert Pleming, the project’s director, said of the plane which is on offer on eBay: “We have had a look, but it is just too corroded inside for us to use it for spare parts.

“It would cost several thousand pounds to dismantle it. It is maybe worth £3,000- £4,000 in scrap.”

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