So, Did Concorde kill TSR2...contintinued
Many years ago I remember going to an airshow at Cranfield, or was it Cosford, and seeing in the back of a hangar a beautiful white aircraft covered in dust - TSR2. I also remember as a boy being taken up to the airport at Nairobi to see the Britannia and Comet out on proving trials. Much later, long after Handley Page had crashed, when I worked at Heathrow I well remember the intense feeling of pride at seeing Concorde, and when it passed over Reading my old Dad would stand up in his garden and salute. Sad fact is, though they were all brilliant aircraft, they were not commercially successful. Why? Could the fault lie with the very poor record of us British in terms of development, sales and production. True, we were brilliant innovators but after that, not so good. Think about Penecillin, nuclear power and all the other things we have given the world only to have to buy them back. To think that we rely upon our French neighbours to run our electricity network whilst we jeer,rant and criticise them and other Europeans is beyond me. So, did Concorde polish off the TSR2? Probably not, perhaps we just weren't rich, powerful or organised enough to take on all those challenges at the time.