The days... of 3 different strategic bombers...

[brabazon]

BAE Systems have just announced another 1396 job losses, in the BBC news item on it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4212851.stm

there is the following quote:

"It's to do with workload; it's as simple as that, BAE spokesman Richard Caltart told BBC News. "The days when there were three different types of strategic bomber in production have gone."

I think those days have long gone by I would suggest this was back in the late 50s, 60s the days of the 3 V's - Valiant, Vulcan and Victor. There may have been days when Harrier, Jaguar and Tornado were all in production but wouldn't call them strategic bombers.

[Archimedes]

And the days of having three companies able to design and build their own strategic bomber (and to deliver them either spot on or almost on time) are also long departed....

[bigflyingrob]

The trouble is these days is the requirement moves faster than the aircraft!

[KPax]

Or if we built a good enough ac that people would want to buy then we might keep our industry. Bring back the TSR2

[TurbineTooHot]

KPax & Archimedes,

Dudes, spot on. Lets kiss of joint ventures and build the aircraft we want to our spec, set it out to tender and get bids from several firms.

Bollards. we can't do that because we let a monoply for in our once world leading aero-industry with the political power to put the govt over a barrel for if they don't get the contract, which they cannot meet on time, on spec and within budget anyway.

Get some competition back in, and maybe we'll get the right ac for the right price!

Discuss.

Turbs

[pr00ne]

TurbineTooHot,

Oh please, come on! Kiss Off joint ventures? Bids from several firms? Get some competition back in?

Look at the real world outside your Boys own book of great British planes world, there are TWO companies producing wide body airliners, a total of 4 producing commercial airliners, only 3 who can offer genuine combat aircraft, where are you going to get your competition from in the UK with a global aerospace industry like that?

It may have been very exciting back in the days of Avro, Blackburn, De Havilland and all the rest but they were all too small to compete and HAD to merge or die.

We are left with the second largest Aerospace industry outside of the USA, the single largest offshore supplier to the US Dept of Defense and our largest Aerospace company is the 4th largest on the planet.

Your lovely little world of domestic competition would not survive the first contract award, the losers would all go bust instantly, why else do you think 2 of the top 4 aerospace companies on the planet, BAES and Lockheed-Martin, are collaborating on the F-35? Not even the largest aerospace industry in the world can afford to go it alone with domestic competitions any more.

We have more of a world leading industry now than we ever did, our 4 top first tier companies are global players with a massive world wide market share, and that’s before you even get anywhere near the likes of Martin baker who have a cool 75% global market share.

“Let a monopoly in” my a**e!

[Pontius Navigator]

Who said 3 companies making strategic bombers?

It was four albeit the first didn't make it.

Shorts - Stirling to Sperrin
Vickers - Wellington to Valiant
Handley Page - Halifax to Victor
Avro - Lancaster - Lincoln to Vulcan.

Then Vickers had the Mark 2 Valiant - very fast at low level I am told.
The Victor moved from Mark 1 to Mark 1a with a fair amount of modifications. Similarly Avros did substantial conversions on the Vulcan 1 design too.

Then the HP Victor 2 was a wholly different beast from the Mark 1a. Electrics, engines, wings, weapons.

Similarly the Vulcan 2 had a new undercarriage as well as the engines, wings and electrical changes.

Both aircraft picked up the Smiths MFS in place of the earlier G4B.

The Vulcan 2 came in 3 flavours too. The straight 201 Mark 2, the 201 Blue Steel and the 301 Sky Bolt.

I make that about 10 different aircraft in design, build or production in a periods of about 10 years 1954-1964.

By 1965 the Victor 1as were being converted to tankers and we had a fleet of 5 types. In other words 5 others were out of service!

I forgot, 543 had different flavours of Valiant and Victor and 90 Sqn's Valiants were different too.

[BEagle]

"The days... of 3 different strategic bombers..."

Or even 4?

Whereas nowadays the RAF has only 1. The Avro Lancaster of the BBMF.....

[pr00ne]

PN,

"I make that about 10 different aircraft in design, build or production in a periods of about 10 years 1954-1964."


No wonder the companies concerned never made a profit out of them!

BEagle,

Along the lines of your statement, how useful as a LGB carrier would have Vulcans or Victors been in GW1 or 2?
Remembering back to formations of 2 or 3 Tornado's being lasered by a Buccaneer, what price a Vulcan with a Pod underwing and a bombay full of Paveway nastiness?

[The Rocket]

pr00ne,

No wonder the companies concerned never made a profit out of them!

Your comment aptly sums up what helped to kill off the British aircraft industry, and what is doing it's best to finish it off now.

Back in the 50's and 60's there was a very real reason for being ahead of other countries in the arms race, and for designing, and building 3 types of strategic bomber on time, and on cost. And making a hefty profit was not one of them.

I'm just a little bit miffed that we seem to have gone from a country with an aircraft industry with numerous seperate companies that can produce such forward looking aircraft as the Vulcan, Lightning, TSR2, etc.. to a single large amalgamated company, who it seems, cannot produce an Airfix model on time, on cost, with a comparable capability to what we used to look on as "Small fry" manufacturers

I eagerly anticipate a reply from all you loyal BWoS employees.

[BEagle]

pr00ne - you mean a Buccaneer, 3 Tornados plus a tanker!

With a decent avionic upgrade, a single Vulcan could have probably have replaced the whole lot.

Mainly because of the Labour luvvies' insistence that a Tornado couldn't reach Moscow unrefuelled from the UK....

[Pontius Navigator]

And carried sidewinders and skyflash to boot.

[Art Field]

But did not have a clue as to its fuel burn rate.

[BEagle]

Or rather didn't bother to consult the ODM and just used normal training weight figures.

Bloke was an ar$e, Art. The fuel burn figures were readily to hand, but he thought he knew better. And as for the dickheads who went from 2359 to 0100 and thought that they'd lost an hour's worth of fuel.....

[WE Branch Fanatic]

BEagle

Mainly because of the Labour luvvies' insistence that a Tornado couldn't reach Moscow unrefuelled from the UK....

Is that true? Did they water down that part of the spec?

[BEagle]

You'll have to ask one of the bunch of card-carrying Commies who were in positions of power at the time.........

[Pontius Navigator]

I heard they chopped out 3 feet or so to make it shorter for the Canadians who then went and didn't buy it.

[pr00ne]

The Rocket,

“Kill off?” What on earth are you talking about? The UK has the second largest aerospace industry on the planet and that “single large amalgamated company you so chastise is the 4th largest in the world.

What miffs you about this country going from a large number of separate companies has also happened in every other country on the planet, it’s a global phenomena and is NOT exclusive to the UK.

As for designing and building 3 types of strategic bomber, there was NOT any reason for there being 3 (4?) other than procurement indecision, there should have been 2, the Sperrin or Valiant as the interim and 1 out of the Vulcan or Victor as the evolved platform.

Companies do exist for profit you know, even back in the 50’s and 60’s, if you think they should exist for some other higher purpose then what you are advocating is a Soviet style command economy of nationalised corporations, didn’t really work for them or us did it?

As for delivering on time, NONE of the V-bombers was on time or within budget, nor was the Lightning………………….

Rose tinted spectacles me thinks.

WEBF,

No it is NOT true!

MRCA had its range curtailed back when it was UKACA or the Anglo-French AFVG thingy. There were two reasons for the range reduction from the original spec, first was the UK pull out from the Far East when the need for it to have the range to operate from Australia and Singapore unrefuelled was abandoned, secondly and most importantly was when it became a European collaborative programme and the Germans, Italians, Canadians and Dutch had no need for anything like the range the RAF had in the spec. When the RAF concentrated on Europe they had no such requirement either.
Not one of the various projects that the RAF dallied with to replace the Canberra and that eventually became the IDS variant of the Tornado ever had a spec with the range to reach Moscow.

Beagle,

The folk who were in power when specs of the sort you describe were being thrashed out were TORY and NOT Labour! The Labour party came into power in 1974 when the range and endurance of the beast were long established.
BTW, those “card carrying communists” you so lovingly describe were the folk who approved the UK Atomic weapon programme and who instigated the V-force development programme.

[BEagle]

Healey and Wilson - aided and abetted by Mountbottom - killed off TSR2 in 1965 and later AFVG in 1967 after the French had decided to abandon it. Both could have reached Moscow, albeit not lo-lo-lo from the UK. But F-111K was still on order until the long-range requirement was killed off by Wilson's Labour government - ostensibly by his 'East of Suez' policy of Jan 1968.

A less-capable UK-only VG a/c, 'UKVG' was proposed in Nov 1967; eventually this morphed into the European compromise Panavia MRCA on 22 Jul 1970, again under the patronage of a Labour government....which had been defeated just a month beforehand. But by then it was too late to change things.

Avion de Combat Futur (ACF - not ACA) was the French requirement which became the Mirage 2000 after evolving from the AFVG.

Avion de Combat Experimentaux (ACX) came about after the lack of success in 1985 of a later European collaborative project (European Combat Aircraft - ECA) when the French decided to go their own way with the Rafale.

Agile Combat Aircraft (ACA)/European Aircraft Programme (EAP) eventually became European Fighter Aircraft (EAF), then Eurofighter, EF2000 and finally TypHoon.

[buoy15]

Brabazon

Interesting callsign

About 1956 (correct me if I'm wrong Beags) I saw an aeroplane fly at medium level over Halfpenny Green (Wolverhampton) which at the time was still an RAF field used by Boulton Paul (next door) It had a lot of engines and was making a lot of noise - I was told it was a Brabazon. I said "Wow! it's big"

I lived in a cottage opposite this airfield, and my playground was through a hole in the fence to a graveyard jam-packed with Defiants, Hurricanes, Spitfires, Rapides. etc. etc. and no security - Heaven!

I stayed well past my bedtime many nights because I didn't have a mobile phone calling me to go home - However, I never got into trouble, because I just played in the cockpits and didm't trash them!

Nothing to do with thead - just nostalgia

[BEagle]

Regrettably not the Brab' in 1956, buoy15 - the only prototype to fly was broken up in 1953 along with the uncompleted second prototype.

Interestingly, other people have reported seeing what they thought was a Bristol Brabazon in 1956; however, what you might have seen was an aircraft with exactly the same wingspan and with multiple piston engines which certainly was flying in 1956 and certainly visited the UK - the Convair B-36.

One of my earliest memories was hearing people say "It's the Brabazon" and seeing a big shiny aeroplane flying over Bristol. But as I was only 2 years old when the Brabazon was scrapped, I don't think that it could have been. Although even allowing for the passage of time, I remember the shape and noise and they were just like those of the Brab.!

[allan907]

....and while we're on nostalgia....

I had a dream last night which involved an airshow (Finningley??) and the aircraft that sticks in my (now conscious) mind is the Beverley. Why? I really don't know. Hadn't been reading about them, seen pictures or any association with that aircraft in at least the previous year.

Luvverly old bus though. Shame they scrapped the one outside the RAF Museum - I'd have put that down to criminal negligence.

Had a boss at Benson who had been closely associated with the beast and who told many tales of the machine. Mike, do you visit the hallowed halls of Pprune??? - if so PM me.

[Biggus]

I was pretty sure it was the Germans who watered down the range of the Tornado! For obvious political reasons they didn't want it to be able to reach Russia (across Poland) from bases in, what was then West, Germany.

The Buccaneer in RAFG had some targets (not Moscow I hasten to add!!) allocated to it if WWIII kicked off in Europe that the RAF could no longer cover when the Tornado came into service, due to its shorter range. So there was obviuosly a practical, if not political, need for a greater range for the Tornado.

[Pontius Navigator]

Biggus
I was chatting with a Bucc mate in the days when most things were a deep shade of red.

Fencing around the subject it seemed their target was barely inside bad land. Oddly one of ours had a very similar description.

Bit more fencing and it became fairly clear that he, and a mate, were going for the 2 SA2 sites either side of our target.

Nice to know, after the event. I guess in a way we did not want to know in advance in case we relied on the SA having been supressed when it hadn't. Assumming a simulatneous launch they would have been there a good hour ahead of us in teh mighty triangle.

[buoy15]

Beags

Just checked the family history

Apparently, at the time, I was a "vibrant" 6 year old, which would make it 1952 - so could I have been right? - so far north?

By the way, was it the Brabazon that Howard Hughes was involved with?
Sort of millionaires toy - actually piloted it's maiden flight but ditched shortly after getting airborne? :hmm:

[BEagle]

buoy15, the Brabazon clocked up around 400 hours in testing before it was scrapped; I don't know where you could find the details of such flights, but it's entirely possible that it was indeed the Brabazon which you saw in 1952.

The other aircraft accident to which you refer involved a Brittania flown by Bill Peggin 1953; this had a serious in flight fire which at one stage caused a quadruple engine failure, although they eventually managed to get the port engines re-lit. Due to the intense fire and the icy runway at Filton, Pegg decided to force land it on mud flats in the Severn Estuary - which he did entirely successfully.

I don't know about the Howard Hughes connection - it seems highly unlikely to me. But since people have often confused the Brabazon with the Saro Princess flying boat - and talk about the Hughes 'Spruce Goose' and the Princess being the last ever long range flying boats is often muddled, perhaps that's the link?

When I was at RAFC Cranwell, in the groundschool film cupboard was an old documentary about the Princess - I wonder whether it's still around?

[XV208 SNOOPY]

Beag's,
The fuselage of the Brittania, eventually ended up at Boscombe Down, where it was used as a training aid.
It served with the Aeromedical and Safety Training School, part of ETPS, and I last used it around 2002 to practice slide evac drills for my aircrew cat renewal.

Havn't been to Boscombe for a few years so not sure if it is still there.

[Navaleye]

I vaguely recall that someone managed to obtain one of the Brab's tyres and part of the landing gear. I think that's all that's left now.