Just been reading 'TSR2 - bombing the myth'
Might I suggest the "Aeroplane Icons" TSR2 special or my book on TSR2 (published by Ian Allan/Classic). In both publications you can read the real story of TSR2, rather than the nonsensical tales that have been peddled for fifty years.
There was absolutely
no link between TSR2 and Concorde. The US
never made any hints about favouring Concorde if TSR2 was cancelled. In fact, McNamara was in favour of TSR2 being built, because it supported US foreign policy at that time.
TSR2 was cancelled because it was costing a fortune and the UK defence budget was struggling, because so much money had been diverted to the nuclear deterrent. It was this factor that drove the infamous 1957 Defence White Paper, rather than the much-quoted "obsession with missiles" that Sandys supposedly suffered from. The basic fact was that Britain couldn't afford the defence procurement programme as it stood, and TSR2 was hugely over-budget and still getting more expensive to the tune of millions, every week.
Healey tried to find an alternative that suited the RAF (he asked the RAF what they wanted). The RAF asked for TFX (F-111) and Healey managed to secure a favourable deal with the US. The trump card was the knowledge that TFX could be paid-for on credit, and spread over successive budgets.
The "Supersonic Harrier" was cancelled simply because the Navy lost interest in it. Mountbatten fell in love with the Phantom because it required large aircraft carriers, and would therefore ensure that Mountbatten got his romantic global carrier force that he was fighting for. The fact that the Supersonic Harrier would probably have never worked in any case (thanks to its plenum chamber burning system that would have destroyed the carrier decks) was simply an additional factor. Even so, Healey fought to keep the subsonic Harrier alive after this project was terminated.
Ultimately it was the RAF that abandoned TSR2. CAS decided to dump it weeks before the Government met to debate it and abandon it. F-111 was a much better proposition on cost grounds, and promised to be just as good as TSR2. The fact that the role for which TSR2 (and F-111) was being bought for disappeared (when Britain withdrew from East of Suez) simply proved that both aircraft would have been pointless in any case. There is no evidence to indicate whether TSR2 would have been a huge success or a dismal failure. All that is known is that it handled well in terms of flying qualities. Everything else is a matter of debate. Many of the aircraft's systems were still under development, some were distinctly crude, and there's every reason to imagine that some would have failed to deliver.
The story of TSR2 jigs being destroyed to prevent possible further development is an old one, and it's rubbish. This never happened. The jigs (and everything else) were simply destroyed as a matter of standard practise after the programme ended. The Government had
no interest in destroying every trace of TSR2. In fact, they agreed to allow the two airworthy examples to continue flying, but only at BAC's expense. It was BAC that refused to continue development at a fixed price and it was BAC that refused to pay to continue flying the two aircraft on research duties.
There are countless stories about TSR2 that have been regurgitated in books and magazines for fifty years. Sadly, they are almost all based on the nonsense that was written shortly after TSR2's cancellation, in an infamous book written by Stephen Hastings. In that book, Hastings peddled a lot of ill-informed assertions that supported his political agenda, and most of this material was used as the basis of every subsequent TSR2 story. Sadly, a lot of the "facts" were simply not true.
Hope this helps to clear up a few points
Incidentally, it's not
The TSR2, it's
TSR2. It was the project name (in much the same way that Tornado was MRCA). The actual aeroplane was the Vickers-Supermarine Type 571