TSR-2 primary role
As a Vulcan captain in the early 1970s I would very much rather have been flying the TSR-2, after which I had hankered futilely ten years earlier.
The primary role was to wander our great big aircraft at low level into Western Russia. Whatever serious defence we had against Russian SAM was bundled up in our AEO and his magic boxes. If we were to attack by night we would use terrain following radar, which offered a generous invitation to whatever radar-homing missiles they might have positioned ahead of us.
Day or night, missiles or no, the Russians had literally thousands of the AA armoured vehicles known as ZSU-23-4. I was not alone, I am sure, in feeling that our Vulcans would be swiftly shredded by the first of these weapon systems we met.
Now the TSR-2 might have taken ages to bed in its computing system - but it would have moved through Western Russia like s*** off a shovel. I suspect we and our Vulcans were wasting our time even attempting this exercise; in TSR-2s, on the other hand, we would have got to our targets with just two good engines and a Pilot Nav Card.