Putting it all to bed...
Just been reading 'TSR2 - bombing the myth', on the Hush Kit site. A fascinating account of what happened and might have happened to that glorious-looking aircraft had it been allowed to continue. How could it all have happened? Why did it happen? The consequences of it all ripple on down the decades...
I was a Handley Page apprentice at the time and well remember the shock of the TSR cancellation and the upheaval it caused. I suppose that we can start by pointing the finger of accusation at WW2, which not only stimulated all aeronautics, but bankrupted the country, leaving the USA the major post-war beneficiary in aviation (and most other) knowledge and commercial know-how. The miracle is that old war-torn GB was able to innovate and produce such brilliant new aircraft as the Comet and TSR2 at all, but it did. HP took over Miles at Reading and when I much later learnt about the brilliant Miles supersonic jet aircraft well on the way to completion before the end of the war, and the shabby way it was cancelled and destroyed by the politicians, to the direct benefit of the Americans and their supersonic aircraft, I was sickened and angered. But then of course old HP itself was soon to be sacrificed on the same altar of political expediency.
That seems to be the British way, so it is probably just as well that the Tornado, Jaguar, Harrier and Concorde programmes were international efforts and that the Typhoon still is. All this is now beginning to gather layers of dust on the library shelves of history, but when I look around at the poor state of UK aviation research, development and production today, I am proud to have lived through the heady days when old GB was up there with the best of the workd's aviation greats.