British Aircraft Corporation TSR2

DamienB, how long does it take you to understand that I am not entering into any silly arguments with you. Please move-on.

Kebecker, it does indeed seem to be the case that the Arrow has followed a very similar path to TSR2 in terms of clouded history and slightly dubious historical accounts. It seems to be the way with so many stories and it can only be a reflection of human nature. For whatever reason (and I have no idea why), it seems that people are far more inclined to believe dark conspiracy theories than more mundane facts. One example of how drama sells a book is Rowland White's book on the Vulcan Black Buck raids. The story of these bombing missions was already well-known and well-documentated of course. Then, along comes an author who re-writes the story as a semi-novel, with a dose of purple prose that turned the story into something that sounds more like a dodgy Hollywood movie script, and hey presto, it's a best seller. Naturally, if that's what people want to read then fine, but I never quite understand why. You have to wonder why a simple factual account isn't sufficient. I have no doubt that even though the book I wrote on TSR2 did remarkably well, it would be even more popular if it had pursued some tale of mysterious political conspiracy. Obviously it would be complete nonsense but I'm sure it would have appealed to many readers. I guess it's just the way things are these days. My colleagues in the publishing industry are always only too keen to point-out that fiction is always far more successful than fact.

I can't have imagined Chris Ashworth and Ray Sturtivant publishing a book each on the same (lets face it, narrow and discussed to death) subject and then conducting an argument about the facts on a forum!

mawganmad I'm not arguing, just stating some salient points. I take your point though that TSR2 is a very over-discussed subject considering the brevity of the project's relevance to British military history. I think the reason for this is twofold; firstly, there's the easy opportunity to pursue the various conspiracy theories that have surrounded the project, and people do find these daft tales fascinating. The other problem is that the subject was in fact very poorly documented for many years, and this enabled rumour and gossip to develop, in the absence of anything more factual. Most of this seems to have come from early newspaper reports back in the mid 'sixties (which were often politically driven) and of course the infamous Stephen Hastings book which was shamelessly biased. The subject just ran and ran for years unchecked until everybody seemed to have lost sight of the realities of the story. When I was asked to write my book for Ian Allan my initial reaction was to groan at the prospect of the subject re-appearing again, but we eventually agreed that it would provide an opportunity to explain the realities of the story and hopefully end all the crazy stories which have been peddled for years. I think that judging by the book's success, we might have done this to some degree but I don't doubt that as the years go by the same old nonsense will re-appear again. I agree it's an absurdly over-popular subject but I guess it always will be. It's the "Elvis Syndrome" in effect!

Black Buck now there is a story, use lots of money, time & effort and one hole. Wow. It still takes a soldier on foot to capture terrain no plane can do it for you. The Arrow I remember my uncle worked on it in Canada and he was made redundant at the canceling of the contract and was very bitter like most Canadians. Lets try and preempt the next disaster, what about the 'Big Society' now there is a disaster about to happen.

Worth bearing in mind that no terrain would have been captured on foot if air superiority hadn't been established first. Black Buck helped to secure air superiority (although it was never achieved completely) by disabling Stanley's runway, effectively cutting it in two so that it was unfit for fast jet operations. This only required one bomb and that's precisely what the RAF delivered. You also have to understand that by attacking the runway at an oblique angle, there was never any possibility of hitting it with more than one bomb - that was the intention, therefore the notion that the initial raid was a failure is complete rubbish.

It's also important to note that the Vulcan raids served notice on Argentina that Britain had the capacity and will to attack the Argentine mainland. This prompted Argentina to withdraw and re-locate some of their fast jet forces in anticipation of such a possibility. This in turn helped secure air superiority over the Falklands. So to assume or suggest that spending a lot of money, time and effort on creating "one hole" was somehow pointless, couldn't be further from the truth. Although the soldiers did indeed finish the proverbial job and received all the respect that they deserved, the entire mission could not have been achieved (or even started) without air power.

Mawganmad - Tim and I certainly agree 100% on the conspiracy theories being just that; he doesn't appear to want a "silly argument" on other items purely because he has no argument to make against documented facts. I just can't understand why he comes out with obviously untrue "facts" and then refuses to take onboard corrections when offered; if anything, this is the "silly" aspect of this discussion. I repeat my offer to provide contacts and documentary references.

Richard - I'm sure you realise the Black Buck raids were as much about the RAF showing the Argentines - and RN - that they had a strategic reach as they were about attacking the airfield and its defences. Interestingly it's a mission that the TSR2 would have been even more unsuited to, with the need for much more refuelling and a navigation system so biased to operations over Eastern Europe and absolutely nothing in the way of radar fix points to be found over thousands of miles of ocean!

I believe that it was 50 years ago that a newly elected government cancelled the TSR2 project.

I have a recollection from working at the Rocker Propulsion Establishment at the time that this successful aircraft flew so fast that it could over heat the armaments that had been attached to it ?

A decade later I heard via my American contacts that the manufacturers of the F1-11 Aardvark were concerned that it would have out performed their aircraft so they were grateful for the program being cancelled as it gave them more time and to request more money to develop their own aircraft.

Rumors at the time were that the technology was being incorporated into Concorde and that the cancelling party were keen to get the prototypes recycled to the smallest parts possible to ensure that any future refurbishment and resulting test flights would not reflect badly on their decision.

Did any one on the forum follow it closely enough to correct any of my inaccurate recollections ?

It was a real shock when the cancellation was announced. I was in the RAF at the time and, collectively, we were looking forward to the aircraft coming into service. Within days of the cut, the jigs were being smashed up at Warton and much formwork burned on site as if BAC's political masters wanted to make sure that TSR2 could not be resurrected.

The overheating of externally carried stores caused by the ram-air effect is not exclusive to supersonic aircraft and sub-sonic are affected too. Typically multiple rocket launchers are high risk with high speed air channelled between rocket and tube raising nose fuze and motor temperatures. The solution is a frangible heat shield (conical one-piece fibreglass) held between an external and internal nose cone. Upon firing, the round punches through the shield. Of course, new designs of fuze and motor of unguided and guided missiles were developed to meet the new norm of external offensive stores.

Ironically, later that decade the UK Government decided to buy US designed and built aircraft (Phantom) following which I terminated from the RAF at the end of my current engagement.

Much of the then new technology for TSR2 was later incorporated into the Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MRCA), later named Tornado.

One of the TSR prototypes ended up on the test ranges of Shoeburyness gradually reduced to scrap by projectiles and explosives.

Happily, the other is preserved at the Cosford museum.

XR220 at Cosford
XR222 at Duxford