Seasons greetings

I know the posting of links to pictures on here is frowned upon by some, but this is simply stunning and real food for thought for what might have been…

TSR2

Nice pic

Typical BAC aircraft lots of stright lines, its a shame that Hawker didn't get their hands on it to add a few curves and a bit of a better shape (in looks that is).

Shame our friends up north didn't have the use of french curves when designing the airframe outline. Putting aside what the aircraft does, as a designer I've alway's liked the look of Hawker aircraft (hence why I wanted to work for them), as pilots and the end user what has been the best looking British airframe built and seen operational service in your opinion.

Sea Fury
Sea Hawk
Harrier
Buc
Hunter
etc

Happy Christmas to all

At the risk of being labeled spotter ..... this site has some excellent information on TSR2 history and systems as well as a few good photo's.

http://www.targetlock.org.uk/tsr2/

Should have gone into production and would no doubt still be providing sterling service today.

Yes there were production issues, cock ups etc...

But it was criminal to kill her.

Shame on those who did!

Sir Sidney Camm's design for the GOR339 requirement, the P1129, was, if anything, even more good-looking than TSR2.

These are good ones a well.

Is it only me who doesn't see the connection between "good looking" and "TSR2"?

Probably. But you are a helicopter pilot, after all....

shouldn't that be "even better looking"?

If I hadn't hyphenated the two words, quite probably. Thus instead of 'better looking' for the comparative and 'best looking' for the superlative, my phraseology suggests 'more good-looking' for the comparative and 'most good-looking' for the superlative.

But I never did the 'C' exam, OCC, ISS or any other reeding and riteing course during my time in the RAF .

Anyway, the TSR2 looks superb!

I think I just got out-ed







I was born in 1960, so I vaguely remember hearing adults talk about it being scrapped. Yes she was beautiful alright. Very powerful looking.

Once Typhoon is delivered that's it for the British aircraft industry. How different it once may have been if we'd been more like the French.....(and that's something I don't say every day.)

MightyGem
That's pretty damned close to blasphemy - wash your mouth out at once!

Skipness
Agreed, so why doesn't our aviation industry get a head start in the next technology and spend some real dosh on RPVs, UPVs, UMVs, uPVCs or whatever they're called before it's totally washed up. It is the only way (left) to go.

My apologies to TSR2 fans but allow me to put a different point of view.

Critics are seldom popular, but as a one time professional critic of potential military aircraft I have to say that an aerodynamic design optimised around a specification that gives priority to payload, range and a high cruise speed at low level will always have a tiny wing in order to minimise drag and improve cruise fuel consumption.

A tiny wing unavoidably leads to real problems with respect to takeoff and landing distances as well as providing an inferior medium speed manoeuvring capability. So personally I was relieved that the TSR2 was among the batch of cancelled projects that included the P1154, Fairey Rotodyne and AW681 because I felt all four were fatally flawed technically.

The P1154 design (a supersonic vertical lander which was pre Harrier) had silly efflux temperatures and velocities around and under the aeroplane during takeoff and landing and all wingborne flight with the PCB lit.

The Fairy Rotodyne was a design intended for city centre operation that thanks to a rotor driven by tip jets was so noisy it presented a real danger to the hearing of anybody in its vicinity who was not wearing ear defenders.

The AW681 (a VSTOL jet transport aircraft to support the P1154 concept of tactical ops.) was designed to do a job that clearly could have been done for a fraction of the cost by a helicopter.

Mind you I do accept that the reasons for cancelling this batch of programmes were most likely based on political expediency rather than technical merit.

Skipness one echo,

You might as well say that once Rafale is delivered that's it for the French aircraft industry.

How different it once may have been if we'd been more like the British....(then we too may be able to say that we have the 2nd largest aerospace industry in the world, like the British have)


Stop spreading ridiculous urban myths.

Yeah, but fifty thousand feet a minute at sea-level

It'd make one hell of a jump plane.




It's not often you hear that

Proone

Airbus, albeit civil at Toulouse, building hundreds of airframes per year is a fact not a myth. Airbus is in France because the French invested heavily after Concorde. They are even assembled in Germany because the Germans wanted it badly.
In the UK we have Typhoon, the Hawk(still) and some rebuilt Nimrods. Name me a new aircraft design that will be UK built? No?
BAe even sold the 125 sold to the US as BAe wouldn't develop it - the US did and still build it. All BAE do is manfacture bits for other more ambitious people.
Wake up and smell the coffee

Skipness One Echo,

More urban myth!

A few facts;

Airbus at Toulouse is building forward fuselages for hundreds of Airbus airliners, they are also “assembling” the wide bodies. The actual aircraft is “built” all around Europe, with all of the wings, fuel systems, undercarriage systems for the entire range and every centre fuselage for the A321s all built, designed and engineered in the UK.

There is very little value add in the actual final assembly process, especially the way that Airbus builds aircraft. BAE were offered the A320 final assembly and turned it down as it was not high tech and nowhere near as beneficial to their technology as the wing design and build. Add to that the 300 UK companies who are suppliers to the Airbus programme.

Airbus by the way is not French, it is a consortium owned 80% by EADS, itself a multi-national consortium consisting of the French, germans, Italians and Spanish, and 20% by BAES.

BAE may have sold the 125 design to the US but the entire airframe is still built at Hawarden.

The future of Aerospace manufacturing is in systems, integration and design, all areas where the UK is world class. Take the US where even Boeing put up their aerostructures business for sale, GKN of the UK bought the military side at St.Louis but turned down the civil side at Seattle as there was not enough margin in it.

UK still has a larger Aerospace industry than any other country after the US in terms of turn over and numbers of people employed. With major investments in huge multi-national projects such as F-35, Typhoon, A380, A400M and as revealed this week R and D into future UCAV systems. Hang RR engines on the new Boeing 787 and with all the other UK content they are over 38% British, the same figures for the A380 is over 60%.

UK Aerospace is NOT all about BAES, don’t forget huge international players such as Smiths, Rolls-Royce, GKN and Meggit, without even mentioning world class players such as Martin Baker.

Industry is about far far more than mere assembly, genuine high margin high tech systems are the future, shareholder value demands a concentration there rather than assembly plants that look good but add nothing to your core competences, technology or future.

Fully awake and enjoying a latte…………………..

O he who does it vertically

Before your time there but I was in the maintainance hangar @ Bedford when the rotodyne landed on the threashold of 09.
conversation was imposible and the vibration was amazing

Sorry to take you all way back to the 2nd post on this thread but, seand, are you seriously suggesting within your seemingly Hawker list of beautifully designed aircraft that the 'Buc' was a Hawker design?

Not according to the late (& great) Roy Boot of the Blackburn Aircraft Company!