Am I the only person who thinks its bad taste to have a TSR2 at Cosford? And just where did this grass strip idea spring from? Haven read the paper from the RAF historical society even Roly Beamonth doesnt know, just look at the one at Cosford or Duxford, could it really have operated from a 3000 foot grass strip?
I forgot to acknowledge that the assembly of the aircraft was at Weybridge.
The wing skins were milled out of solid block using the new fangled NCR milling machines. As I recall, one machine operator was given an award for suggesting a change to the 'programme' which resulted in a significant saving of the amount of the expensive alloy removed and recovered for scrap.
'Stretch' forming of sheet material in huge presses enabled one piece skins of compound curvature for the intake ducts.
One thing I did have doubts about was the integral wing tanks. The integral tanks of the Lighting were a constant source of fuel leaks in service to the point where an Air Poster was issued showing what were and were not acceptable leaks. Starting with 'stain' and continuing to 'weep', 'drip' and 'flow'
I did a school visit to Weybridge in abour '64 or '65 when the VC10 was in full production. The wing skins for the VC10 were produced in the same way as TSR 2 ie milling from 32mm alloy, but were formed using shot blasting by lead shot. They were meant to be 'wet'.
Am I the only person who thinks its bad taste to have a TSR2 at Cosford? And just where did this grass strip idea spring from? Haven read the paper from the RAF historical society even Roly Beamonth doesnt know, just look at the one at Cosford or Duxford, could it really have operated from a 3000 foot grass strip?
I always assumed the tandem wheel configuration was specifically to enable flight from 'unprepared' surfaces, otherwise smaller side by side wheels could have been used and all the undercarriage problems which occured eg the 'bogie' failing to rotate to horizontal after the leg extended would then have been eliminated.
Let's face it, those mainwheels were far bigger than would be necessary to operate from hard surfaces.
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