Incidentally
Ian I'm not quite sure what your political biography details about Jenkins is meant to suggest? Yes, that's who Jenkins was and we already knew that. He did oversee the cancellation of TSR2 (and was involved in the Concorde saga) and of course Healey was more directly involved from the very beginning of the Labour Government. Both politicians wrestled long and hard over TSR2 for a long time and contrary to the much-published story, Healey was not against TSR2 as such. The RAF considered Healey to be a very able and wise defence minister who supported the RAF at every stage. TSR2 was simply out of control and monstrously expensive by the time that Healey had to deal with it. Callaghan's extremely tight purse strings left Healey with no option other than to look at ways to get out of so many of the expensive programmes that had been dragging-on aimlessly for years, consuming vast amounts of money. TSR2 was only one of them.
At no stage could Healey be accused of having and dark desire to destroy TSR2, and even Jenkins can't be accused of being set against it on principle. There simply wasn't enough money to pursue it any longer. That much is clear. The real issue is how TSR2 got to that stage in the first place. The blame can be laid at the door of the Government for using TSR2 as a means of creating a "shotgun wedding" between Vickers and English Electric, and for insisting that the project should be managed by committee, with nobody capable of taking control and making key decisions.
But blame can also be laid squarely on the doorstep of the Air Staff, who clearly didn't know what they wanted in the first place. Their aspirations shifted regularly and eventually began to become more and more ambitious, for no logical reason. Even Beamont accepts this point. Of course there was a reason, and it was a political one. The Air Staff were under pressure to buy the Buccaneer because Mountbatten was hell-bent on getting the RAF to take the Navy's aircraft, so that the money being poured into TSR2 could be made available to finance his ostentatious super carrier ambitions. Despite Mountbatten's outrageous actions, the basic concept of giving the RAF the Buccaneer did actually make sense, but the Air Staff were entrenched in an anti-Navy attitude and believed in principle that accepting a naval aircraft would be to accept second best. They wanted their own design and so they continually hyped-up the TSR2 specification, so as to ensure that the Buccaneer couldn't match it.
So the Air Staff were just as culpable as the Government, Mountbatten, and Vickers, when it comes to apportioning blame. The irony is that the person who doesn't deserve any blame is Healey - the man who has always been painted as the villain!
