Tsr2

[wub]

This is the 2nd protoype, which was days from flying before cancellation. The machine was being moved from Henlow to Cosford in 1975.

[foldingwings]

IIRC, did its demise not have something to do with, or was it not connected directly with, Duncan Sandys' (in)famous statement about the demise of the manned aircraft.

Here we are, 40 years on, and still drawing our Flying Pay!

Labour Tw@s!!

[Seloco]

For those that may be interested, the TSR2 at Duxford is currently undergoing a major restoration and can be seen in all its stripped down glory in Hangar 5 (I think). Be it whole or in bits, it is still one awesome aeroplane.

[Dr Illitout]

One thing that has always puzzeled me about the TSR2. With those HUGE engines and tiny wings where were they going to put the fuel and bombs?. To me it looked a fine aircraft for dropping a hand granade on Guilford, but to go and fight the red hoards it looked a bit useless!!
The one thing that the TSR2 has done for us is to provide work for aviation journalists!. Every time a magazine runs a bit short of material they trot out another "The best aircraft we never had" artical!!. I can't wait for somebody to say "It's a good thing it was cancelled because......"
Rgds Dr. I.

[Nopax,thanx]

Good news for all you hobbyists out there is that Airfix are releasing a 1/72nd scale version this year - mine's on backorder!

[effortless]

I thought it was cancelled because US wouldn't give us Polaris if we didn't. Didn't Blue Streak go for the same reason.

[Yellow Sun]

One thing that has always puzzeled me about the TSR2. With those HUGE engines and tiny wings where were they going to put the fuel and bombs?. To me it looked a fine aircraft for dropping a hand granade on Guilford, but to go and fight the red hoards it looked a bit useless!!

Plenty of space for a WE177, which wasn't a very large weapon. I do recall being told once (at Wittering?) that the spec. for the 177 series was drawn up with the TSR2 in mind.

But back to the aircraft itself, I have little doubt that the airframe/engine combination would have met the performance targets. I would have had less confidence about the mission avionics. Maybe this is was foretold to some extent by ORAC snr.:

My father worked on the electrical generation system. It was state of the art and right up against the limit, they could not squeeze one more volt from - but every day someone came around asking for a few more....

The success of the project was predicated upon a mission avionics suite that did not exist when the prototype flew and given subsequent events was probably seriously over ambitious (shades here of Nimrod AEW?). An examination of the difficulties encountered with the F111 development, electronics not A&P, gives a fair indication of what we would have run up against in the turning TSR2 into an operational system. Could we have found the resources to do it?, would it have been cost effective? what other programmes would have had to be sacrificed to achieve it? I don't know the answers to those questions, but "feel" that the lower cost/risk option of the F111 must have looked very attractive.

The cancellation of the F111, well that's another, possibly even bigger, "what if?" We may well have had a very different air force if it had come into service, providing that we bought into the US development programme and didn't attempt to re-invent the wheel. Planning for the F111 was fairly advanced, personnel to fill key posts were identified, as one of my Vulcan sqn cdrs said to a captain who was complaining about a posting "What have you got to bitch about? They told me I was getting the F111 OCU!"

I would have loved to have seen TSR2 succeed, but I fear that the odds were stacked against it, technologically, economically and politically.

YS

[Maple 01]

IIRC, did its demise not have something to do with, or was it not connected directly with, Duncan Sandys' (in)famous statement about the demise of the manned aircraft.

Here we are, 40 years on, and still drawing our Flying Pay!

Labour Tw@s!!

Errrrr Sandys was a Conservative - Conservative tw@ts!

[ORAC]

TSR2 avionics bay

[engineer(retard)]

Would not have met the spec...nothing is painted black.

[Argonautical]

quote

TSR2 - the best aeroplane the RAF never had.

end quote

I would like to put forward the Martin-Baker MB5.

Any more ?

[Cambridge Crash]

Cancellation of TSR2

Now there are scurrilous rumours that a certain SofS of the time was not allowed to see documents classified above Confidential...something to do about his alleged connections with Philby, Burgess, McLean, Blunt, Cairncross. Now this is a particularly fantastic rumour which we should all dismiss and clearly unrelated to the swingeing cuts to the Defence Vote - especially of capability-enhancing programmes - that occured under his leadership.

Now the F1-11. The (planned) delivery of these aircraft did correspond to the warming of relations with USSR (Brandt's Ostpolitic), Prague Spring notwithstanding. The Soviet Air Force - especially GBAD - contrary to popular opinion, was in a parlous state. The negotiations for SALT...(pause whilst VC-10 goes over my study in Cambridge)...were presaged with considerable negotiations wherein the USSR attempted to have US Naval and CONUS based ac included in the count - this is long, long before the CFE treaty. Some allied documents allude to Soviet threats to deploy IRBM to counter allied ac superiority; 50-odd RAF F1-11s would have been a major strategic shift in Europe; perhaps the UK government accepted that these aircraft could be bargained away?

Now we know? (appologies to Gaddes).

CC

[L J R]

If we had the TSR2 in the late '60s/early '70s (and therefore NOT the Tornado by now) we would have replaced it (the TSR-2) in the mid '90s with the F-15E, and we would all now be very happy!

[Safeware]

Would we all be happy?

One of my 'leads' at Cranditz was the Defence Studies project - did TSR2 awesome aircraft which gave birth, either directly or indirectly to a lot of the technology used in subsequent aircraft.

However, as for LJR,

If we had the TSR2 in the late '60s/early '70s (and therefore NOT the Tornado by now) we would have replaced it (the TSR-2) in the mid '90s with the F-15E, and we would all now be very happy!

I think that we all know there would be no Tornado GR, hence no F3, TSR2 would still be in service (look at Tornado GR4 - now going on to 2018) and, with no F3 we would have been looking at getting an AD aircraft of a much earlier generation than Typhoon so no Typhoon, and living with that until about 2030 or later. Everyone happy now?

sw

[Heimdall]

IMHO a whole host of individuals were responsible for the death of TSR-2. In the end runaway costs killed the project, those costs were caused by many factors but a considerable amount were the result of some very odd specifications and those can be laid firmly at certain men in light blue.

For a longer explaination see:

www.spyflight.co.uk/tsr2.htm

Heimdall

[Pontius Navigator]

Yellow Sun is quite right. The WE177 was designed for the TSR2 which could carry not one but two of the beasts. Designed release was mach 1.2 at 50 feet. Now that might not be low but at that speed it is not exactly high.

At one and the same time Bomber Command has both TSR2 and F111 teams! The former probably slow to disband; the latter working up. They were different personnel possibly because of the potential for split loyalties.

The TSR2 was planned to use SLAR which was a major departure from the Vs but one that RRE had been playing with for some time. Problem with SLAR is that you were not getting a fix in real time but had to look at a stored image. A perceived problem was in-flight fix point interpretation. The high definition available was far superior than much 'better' radars years later.

To help fix-point identification JARIC tried making 3 dimensional models of the fix-points and then photographing them at the right angle so that they would resemble the real fix-point. It was like something out of Blue Peter with pipe cleaners and other bits stuck to card and paper.

A sod to service, expensive as hell, and as high a risk as you could think of. One reason why a nervous labour government cancelled the project.

[Blacksheep]

...Lord Louis Mountbatten, an over-promoted charlatan...

Its nice to know that one is not alone in one's opinion.

[BEagle]

Whilst attempting to struggle through 237 OCU on the Buccaneer, I was on leave at a friend's place at Broadlands and was introduced to Mountbottom. He asked what I did and I told him I was on the Bucc. "Fine naval aeroplane" he pontificated. "Not a patch on the TSR2 which we should have had instead", I told him. Or rather, following a rather liquid lunch, I think I said that it was "killed off by incompetent idiots".....


He then went to talk to someone else.

[SmilingKnifed]

The accounts of the Dieppe raid seemingly say enough for Mountbatten's judgment. One of his infamous quotes being that he couldn't recall having ever being wrong.

[pulse1]

Back in the late 60's I was privileged to be drinking with a group of RAF test pilots from Boscombe Down. They were discussing the TSR2 and, as far as I recall, were unanimous in the view that it was scrapped because it did not have the required range, above Mach 1 at low level. The F111 was cancelled for the same reason.

The next best option was to fly subsonic and the Buccaneer was the best in the world at the time i.e lower, further, faster.