I'm not sure that the return leg of any nuclear sortie is a valid issue. Where would they recover to? The home bases would have been first/second strike targets. I cant think of any V force aircraft that had return capability for all of the targets they were covering.
If there were recovery bases, then I'm fairly sure they weren't in the UK.
I understood that the design payload for TSR2 was no longer available (read acceptable under international agreement etc) and the airframe was too role specific to use elsewhere.
TSR2 history is emotive and rarely objective. Its difficult to establish exactly what the truth was and I'm not convinced that we ever will know.
But, I will never vote Labour
