I confess to being obsessed with radius of action questions, fuel burn and tactical range has always fascinated me for reasons I can't explain - a Tornado laden down with 8 thousand pounders on the fuselage stations, 2 drop tanks, max internal, and ECM/chaff Flare pods on the outers just never seemed to have much in the way of range if it was committed to a draggy flight at 200 feet through East Germany - at least that was the equation I could never get straight in my adolescent brain, then there was the line I recall from TSR2 development notes about it being able to "take a triple to Moscow" - really ?
In short I could never reconcile the vast distances required for flights into the former Soviet Union, the warload required, and the need to maintain highly inefficient low level flights. Except for the Vulcan as always which had the legs of course.
Apologies for derailing the nuclear weapons discussion, because as interested as I am in that topic (the Green Grass device deserves a discussion of its own for example) I do find the question of fuel and range more interesting.
Last edited by Fonsini; 23rd Dec 2015 at 15:37.