by Damien Burke
The new bomber goes public
Earlier in the year the RAF’s new tactical bomber had been launched by the Press under headlines such as ‘MINISTRIES ROW OVER NEW BOMBER’ (Daily Mail, 11 March 1958). During a debate in the House of Commons on the latest Air Estimates, the opposition Aviation Spokesman, Geoffrey de Freitas, had pressed Minister of Defence Duncan Sandys, asking several questions about the NA.39 and why he was trying to push the RAF to accept it, when the RAF wanted to order a ‘supersonic bomber’. Sandys said that there could be no supersonic replacement for the Canberra for ‘economy reasons’. Rumours abounded of various RAF chiefs being on the point of resignation.
In a strangely adversarial move, the Chiefs of the Air Staff put together a publicity exercise in May 1958 called Exercise Prospect II (Exercise Prospect I was a purely internal RAF conference held the previous month). A remarkable array of people was invited to attend various theatrical presentations on the future shape and role of the RAF; industry figures, MPs, journalists, trades union representatives and so on. The Minister of Defence was also on the invitation list, but although he said he would attend he never turned up. Among the varied topics presented to the audience in a series of mock interviews and presentations was the need for advanced high-performance aircraft in both fighter and bomber form. The result was a storm of controversy, the newspapers reporting an apparent mutiny by the RAF, and the government desperately trying to play down the apparent disagreement between RAF thinking and government defence policy as nothing of the sort (while working behind the scenes to ensure such an exercise was not repeated).
Privately, various members of the government no doubt realized that the 1957 White Paper had badly misjudged the future needs of the nation’s defence, but face had been lost. The RAF, and its new bomber, were continuing to lose friends and make enemies. By the end of the year, mention of the words ‘supersonic bomber’ was anathema, with the Air Staff desperate to point out that their requirement was not for a supersonic bomber, but for a ‘strike reconnaissance aircraft’ which just happened to be supersonic, naturally. And could drop bombs.
Choosing the winners
Examination of the firms’ proposals went hand-in-hand with examination of the firms themselves. Three firms immediately stood out from the rest: Vickers-Armstrongs, Avro and English Electric. The last was considered to be leader of the pack by virtue of the experience gained in the successful development of the supersonic P.1B fighter. De Havilland, which would normally have been considered the equal of these three firms, had the problem that its Hatfield division was busy on civil work, and its Christchurch division was thought to be of significantly lower quality in terms of leadership and production capacity. The top three firms all had adequate staff and windtunnel facilities. For flight-testing, Warton (English Electric), Filton (Bristol) and Woodford (Avro) were all sufficiently large airfields, but Wisley (Vickers) was uncomfortably short at 2,200yd (2,010m). By comparison, Hatfield and Hurn (de Havilland) and Holme-on-Spalding-Moor (Blackburn) had even shorter runways, and Fairey had a comparatively tiny grass runway at White Waltham. All of the companies had adequate manpower for production. Indeed, it was suggested that most were overmanned on their own, never mind grouped together. A blunt assessment of the quality of each firm’s design teams by the RAE makes interesting reading: English Electric, ‘… excellent team spirit and from seniors to juniors there is a consistency of strong technical ability…’; Avro, ‘… thoroughly experienced …’; Vickers, ‘… attracts confidence …’. Things went downhill for the other firms: Bristol, ‘… strong on theoretical problems but the translation of their solutions into engineered products is often unsatisfactory’; Blackburn and Fairey, ‘… neither inspires confidence. Each contains one or two competent men but there is no evidence of any well-knit team’; de Havilland Christchurch ‘… [comparable] with Blackburn and Fairey’.
George Edwards of Vickers-Armstrongs. Edwards’s leadership of Vickers was considered to be of the highest standard by the RAF and the various Ministries, his performance on the Valiant contract having been particularly impressive. BAE Systems
Of the various groupings proposed, the ones that seemed to offer be the best all-round fit and be the most soundly based in terms of financial muscle and civilian orders were English Electric/Vickers/Shorts and Hawker Siddeley (with Avro as a focal point). Swaying the decision was the technical superiority of English Electric with its supersonics experience, and on 28 March 1958 the recommendation was made that the order for an aircraft to satisfy OR.339 should be placed with a group to be formed by English Electric, Short Brothers & Harland and Vickers-Armstrongs, with design leadership vested in English Electric. Vickers was told to drop its single-engine aircraft and concentrate on the larger, twin-engine type, which could take its ‘bonus’ higher performance and use it for shorter take-off rolls. The companies had also been informed that their work so far was first-class, and OR.339 was as good as in the bag for them.
The CA produced a note on 8 July 1958, seeking authority to incorporate formally the development of a weapons system to meet OR.339 within the R&D programme, ratify the selection of the firms chosen to undertake the task, and to approach the Treasury for financial approval. Once again the preferred firms were listed: English Electric with Shorts & Vickers, Vickers-Armstrongs with English Electric, or Hawker Siddeley. English Electric was spoken of in glowing terms, but only on the technical side. Confidence in its top-level management was ‘exceedingly tenuous’, and this led to serious doubt that English Electric should be awarded leadership. This was not helped by its report on the economics of GOR.339 and the complex political situation of including Shorts (who were largely government-owned). In contrast, Vickers’s leadership under George Edwards could not be faulted, and they were also technically strong (albeit lacking a little on the aero-dynamics and structural sides, where partnership with English Electric would work well). Hawker Siddeley had a high reputation, but Hawker and Avro had muddied the waters by making their own individual submissions, and the proposed structure for the project management raised questions: ‘a new design team, led by a highly individualistic designer (in his 64th year)’ (Sir Sydney Camm), under the general leadership of ‘a strong minded Technical Director’ (Avro’s Stuart Davies). The inevitable conclusion was that the job should be given to a combination of Vickers and English Electric, with some support from Shorts (notably now downgraded from being an equal partner), and that leadership should be given to Vickers rather than English Electric.
At a meeting on 14 July 1958, the R&D Board of the MoS agreed to recommend the selection of Vickers and English Electric, though by now Short’s name was conspicuous by its complete absence. Despite this decision, work continued in an apparently unrestrained and chaotic manner to see if another aircraft could satisfy the requirement. Within NATO, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) was considering a similar requirement, and it was suggested that European manufacture of a Republic F-105 Thunderchief variant re-engined with the Conway, Olympus or Gyron engine would be of some interest. Alternatively, the North American A-3J Vigilante had just flown, and its combat radius, take-off performance and equipment were more in line with the RAF’s concept of OR.339. Both were examined in some detail before being put aside for work to continue on a wholly British solution.
On 29 July a meeting at the MoS took place, with representatives of English Electric and Vickers in attendance. The Minister made the mistake of saying, in front of these men, that ‘we preferred the English Electric design but we also preferred the Vickers management’. The result was unfortunate, in that Vickers was now of the firm belief that it would be in charge, while English Electric believed that the P.17 was actually going to be the aircraft to be built. The CA tried to explain that GOR.339 was not about choosing a design, but about investigating the feasibility of building any aircraft to satisfy the requirement, but it was far too late to be saying that. Throughout the project to come, English Electric would be
resentful of Vickers taking away ‘its aircraft’, and negotiations between the two companies to form a joint company would suffer a setback because of Vickers’s attitude that it was to be ‘the boss’ in any joining.
The late Hawker P.1121 and Hawker Siddeley P.1129 Development submissions complicated matters only a little, in that the men at the Ministry had to deal with letters and meetings with representatives of these companies while knowing full well that their submissions had already been disregarded owing to what they considered was a lack of technical understanding of the sheer scale and complexity of the overall weapons system. Avro’s Roy Dobson continued to press his case, however, stating that the company could build two or three prototypes in ‘under three years’. When the realism of that estimate was questioned, he memorably stated: ‘By God, I’ll make the buggers do it’. The Ministry was not impressed by his invective; strong management was obviously only of interest if it did not have a northern accent.
The NA.39 also continued to be a thorn in the RAF’s side, pressure to adopt the type (if only as an interim measure until the OR.339 aircraft was fully capable) continuing throughout 1958. The RAF was desperately worried that the limited pot of money available for defence was going to see one of the two projects cancelled in favour of the other, and that it would be OR.339 that suffered, as the NA.39 was already flying. An increasingly bitter battle was going on behind the scenes, but the RAF’s efforts to scupper the NA.39 came to naught, and on 10 September 1958 Duncan Sandys wrote to the First Lord of the Admiralty, giving him the good news that he was still satisfied with the requirement for the NA.39 and had informed the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer accordingly. Once again NA.39 had survived the RAF’s flak, and OR.339’s fate apparently remained in the balance.
The choice of a development batch of ten aircraft was made primarily on grounds of economy, but ironically this provoked more Treasury attention than a bigger batch would have done. The NA.39, after all, needed twenty development batch aircraft, and so did the P.1 (in addition to five prototypes). The Treasury was concerned that this was an attempt to sneak an expensive development past it, and that additional development aircraft would have to be paid for out of the production run (precisely what would happen with the so-called ‘preproduction’ aircraft). The MoS’s response was a superb example of the sort of manoeuvring that was going on all the way through this period. Only ten development batch aircraft would be needed, it said, because ‘… the in-service date of 1965 limits the design concept for OR.339 to a conventional twin-engined aircraft. It is not as radical a development as either the NA.39 or the P.1’, and the various components of the instrument and electronic systems were just ‘further developments of existing equipment’. Thus OR.339 was to be a simpler aircraft than the NA.39; but the more sophisticated NA.39 could not meet the requirement because it was too small an advance over the Canberra!
After several tense weeks and flurries of correspondence, the Minister of Defence finally gave the go-ahead to fulfil OR.339 on 13 November 1958, though the Treasury then jumped into the argument, wondering, yet again, why the NA.39 would not do instead, and delaying its own approval for several more weeks in the process while Hawker took the opportunity to make one last desperate attempt to have its P.1121 Stage B considered, to no avail. The choice of Vickers and English Electric, with Vickers in the lead slot, was endorsed and accepted by everybody involved. This was probably the only aspect of the project so far that had not led to sustained arguments (though the Minister of Supply did make it a condition that this grouping could be chosen only if Bristol Aero Engines and Armstrong-Siddeley Motors were given the engine contract).
Shorts gets shafted
Short had realized that the Air Staff’s initial enthusiasm for its lifting platform concept had gradually leaked away during 1958. It went away and worked on a smaller and cheaper version that could both carry out a useful task of its own (providing VTOL to lightweight Folland Gnat fighters) and also act as a proof-of-concept vehicle and a preliminary step in the development of the PD.17. This was the PD.34, a ten-engine lifting platform submitted to the Air Staff in September 1958. The PD.34 would weigh 11,960lb (5,430kg), (rising to 21,600lb (9,800kg) with a fully fuelled Gnat on board), and would have a combat radius of 570nm (655 miles; 1,050km) at 275kt (240mph; 390km/h) (minus the Gnat). The ten RB.108 lift jets would be split into three groups; two to be used for lifting and propulsion in forward flight, four for lift only, and four primarily for lift but able to be tilted to provide a horizontal thrust component for acceleration and deceleration. Hovering control would be effected by a 10 per cent bleed from each engine ducted to nozzles around the extremities of the platform, based on the system Short had developed for its SC.1 VTOL research aircraft. The Gnat’s own engine would be idling when the platform was static, but throttled up to assist with acceleration during the transition from hover to forward flight.
The initial thoughts of the OR department were that the concept had some legs. It thought it possible that a suitably adapted version of the Gnat combined with the PD.34 might be able to undertake some of the short-range tasks for the Army and thus release its OR.339 aircraft for longer and more demanding operations, and the R&D benefit was obvious. However, further discussions and the revelation of Hawker’s work on its P.1127 (which would later be developed into the Kestrel, the basis for the Harrier) soon put an end to any interest in Short’s unwieldy lifting-platform concept. By December 1958 the Air Staff’s Director of Operational Requirements had replied, saying that he could not see any operational application for the lifting platform, and that R&D money would be better spent on the development of a direct-lift system incorporated within an aircraft, such as the Hawker P.1127. Coupled with the MoS’s decision that the OR.339 project should be carried out by a grouping of English Electric and Vickers, with no sign of Shorts, this was extremely disappointing. The lifting-platform concept, it seemed, was dead; and so were Short’s chances of being involved in the project to build an aircraft for OR.339.
This was a highly embarrassing situation for English Electric. After all, it had put a lot of work into the joint English Electric/ Shorts submission, with the full intention of partnering with Shorts, and now it seemed that both the Air Staff and the MoS had arranged it so that Shorts had nothing useful to do, and was not to be involved at all. Shorts could not simply be dumped by English Electric; it was already a valuable and trusted subcontractor, carrying out some of the design and construction work on both the Canberra and P.1, and the relationship between the two companies could not be thrown away lightly. Efforts were put into hand to try and tactfully wriggle out of the English Electric/ Shorts GOR.339 joint arrangement while giving Shorts something else to make up for it.
OR.339 gets the go-ahead, and a name – not a number
The date chosen to announce the start of the programme to build a new strike reconnaissance aircraft for the RAF was 1 January 1959. While initial drafts of the press release included a suggested description of ‘B-/58’ (i.e. a number using the traditional Air Ministry bomber specification sequence), it was felt that this ran the risk of adverse press publicity. After all, the RAF could not be seen to be getting a supersonic ‘bomber’ after the Minister of Defence had said there was no money for such an aircraft! An alternative designation was chosen instead; this was ‘TSR/2’, standing for Tactical Strike Reconnaissance, Mach 2.
An intermediate D. Notice (No. 30.6.55) was issued on the same day, formally preventing any publication of information about the project except for a very brief description that ‘this aircraft will be a strike reconnaissance aircraft which will be supersonic and capable of operating from small airfields with rudimentary surfaces’. Vickers-Armstrongs Ltd and English Electric Ltd were listed as the builders. Oddly, the name of the engine manufacturer was omitted, though by this point Bristol-Siddeley Engines had got the job.
Names tended not to be assigned to Service aircraft until a production order had been placed, but wi
th the fuss the Air Ministry had made about not using a traditional bomber sequence number, and its objections to ‘TSR/2’ as it gave too much away (such was the culture of secrecy at the time), one wag at the MoS, fresh from his New Year’s Eve celebrations, wrote a somewhat tonguein-cheek note on 1 January 1959 suggesting a solution to the problem; simply name the aircraft immediately. His suggestion was ‘Velvet’, of which he said:
Apart from the pleasant associations with mailed fist, it of course stands for Vickers English Electric Various Explosives Transporter.
It will annoy the Air Ministry to name the thing at this stage but it is their own fault for being so fussy about the number.
However, his suggestion was not acted upon. If any serious discussions about naming the aircraft ever took place after that point, then no record of them appears to have survived in the archive material consulted at the time of writing. Discussions on naming the General Dynamics F-111 have been recorded; the final two possibilities were ‘Richmond’ (in keeping with the theme of Commonwealth city names for bombers, and an Australian city in the hope it would convince the Australians to choose the same name) and ‘Merlin’. When the Australians decided that ‘F-111’ was a satisfactory title in itself, ‘Richmond’ was dropped and the RAF F-111 would have been known as the ‘Merlin’. As with the Vickers VC.10 airliner, which ended up simply being called the VC.10 in both commercial and RAF service (‘Victoria’ having been suggested and discarded), it is likely the TSR2 may simply have soldiered on as ‘TSR2’ had it entered service. There was, incidentally, no definitive style for the aircraft’s designation; TSR/2, TSR-2, T.S.R.2, TSR.2 and TSR2 were all used by the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) and the various Ministries at one point or another. In this book ‘TSR2’ is used for consistency and brevity.
