Nimrod - a beginner's question

[c52]

I believe the reason for the Nimrod's odd shape is that the Comet 4 wasn't big enough to hold everything that needed to go inside it.

So why wasn't the (Super) VC-10 chosen, or even the Belfast or CL-44 if it HAD to be a British aircraft? I assume the CL-44 could have become British again.

At the time (I was 12) it felt to me as if the main point of the project was to find a home for two unsellable Comets.

[Martin the Martian]

The Nimrod design retained the Comet fuselage and added the weapons pannier so that the crew area would not be compromised. The two prototypes used unfinished Comet airframes.

Designs were made using just about every British multi-engined aircraft in production at the time, though a jet aircraft was always preferred over a turboprop. I think the Air Staff Requirement that led to the Nimrod specified jet engines, though I remain to be corrected on that. Hawker Siddeley also offered a Maritime Trident, though later concentrated on the Maritime Comet. BAC offered variants of the One-Eleven and the VC10, though the One-Eleven was always an outsider as it only had two engines.

A lot of it came down to cost and capacity. Hawker Siddeley at Woodford had the capacity to build the Nimrod, while BAC at Weybridge were already working on the VC10 and would not have had the capacity to build a maritime version. It would also have been more expensive.

There is a lot more to it of course, but that is the basics of the answer.

[Innominate]

Chris Gibson's book Nimrod's genesis would be the most reliable source, but a paper given to the RAF Historical Society includes a lot of mateiral provided by him.

It seems that there was no specific requirement for a jet aircraft. Air Staff Requirement 381, issued in 1964, called for a patrol time of 5 hours 1000 miles from base, with a transit speed of 300 knots. The Orion could not accept British sonobuoys, but a number of British proposals (including maritime version of the Trident, Belfast, VC 10, BAC 111, Vanguard and two Comet-based proposals) were assessed using the Breguet Atlantic as a yardstick.

Interestingly, a speaker at the same RAFHS seminar mentioned that "the propellers of a P-3 or an Atlantic produced a harmonic that the submarines could detect and identify from several miles away" whereas jet aircraft were less detectable.

[c52]

Thank you. I'll have a look for the book.

[Shackman]

In 1968 I was 'keeper' of the RAF Coastal Command history room as one of my secondary duties whilst working 'down the hole'. As such I got to see a lot of documents as they were filed away or even just left out for perusal. Included were a lot of proposals for the Shackleton replacement, including all the ones mentioned above. However there were some even more esoteric designs, including one that particularly stuck in my mind - essentially a flying wing. This had all been sent up for storage since the Nimrod had been selected. Unfortunately this mine of historical information was on the top floor of HQCC - which was burnt down in early 1969. Not only was the document room destroyed, but also much of the other memorabilia as well.
I have never seen any mention of the flying wing design since, and no one else seems to have either - unless there is someone else out there in ppruneland?

[Innominate]

never seen any mention of the flying wing design since, and no one else seems to have either Back to Chris Gibson - the HP 117 was a flying wing airliner project, presumably offered as a maritime variant. There may be a copy of the proposal in the AST 530 files at Kew, and the HP archive is held by the RAF Museum.

[Shackman]

Innominate:
Eureka (I think). That looks very much like the beast (assuming memory functions still working correctly after nearly 50 years), although probably slightly smaller but with a really big weapons bay. I seem to remember it didn't get through to the second stage because it was too wide for the taxiways at any of the CC stations at that stage (St Mawgan, Ballykelly, Kinloss, Luqa and Changi, let alone Gibraltar) thus incurring even more rebuilding costs.

Also many thanks for the heads up on the book - I'm off down that South American river forthwith!