Originally Posted by
Chancros
Current Nimrod programme makes one wonder why they did not just build a new airframe - would have been cheaper.
Well it worked successfully for the Mk 2 upgrade. It worked for the 1966 Dominie avionics upgrade although they did avoid doing the engines and tried to avoid a radar upgrade.
But someone asssumed using tired old bits of ancient, salt corroded airframes would be cheaper.
Probably because the staff who had overseen the upgrade to Mk 2, when the Mk 1 had only been in service 8-9 years, had all retired. The Mk 2 was alswys weight limited so the only bit worth keeping was, as you said, the 30 year old fuselage.
And then digitised one airfame onto CAD and assumed all the others were identical - 1940's tech had 2 inch tolerances on wing fittings, but all the old hands who knew this had been pensioned off, so the CAM built wings only fit one airfame. So cheap became bloody expensive.
Now there's a surprise. Oddly, when Mr Roe's old factory took Sir Freddie Page's old jets and made a jig from one set of wings, they found all the wing sets they made would only fit one airframe. But that was 35 years or so ago.
Clearly the guys at Mr Roe's factory had all retired by the time some thought they could take one of Sir Godfree's planes and do it again, even if Mr Hawker was the one that first built them in Mr Roe's factory.
It's not just lack of engineering skills but lack of historical research too. History isn't just kings and queens but can be reseach as recently as a few years past.
W2