TSR2

by Damien Burke

  The next stop on de Vere’s increasingly tiresome tour was Roland Beamont himself. Beamont humoured him and pointed out a few basic flaws (for air defence, for example, the high wing loading made turning performance inadequate) and the costs of incorporating a different engine. He then added the coup de grace, pointing out that the RAF was now a tactical air force, not a strategic one, and until the Air Staff and Government accepted the need for a strategic nuclear role the TSR2 was never going to be of interest. Even if it was, a ‘fully developed’ TSR2 would only ‘possibly’ be cheaper than developing an entirely new aircraft.

  The next person to be hit by the campaign was Group Captain Mason at the RAF Staff College. He too was unimpressed but, obviously appreciating a good laugh, asked de Vere to please forward on any other papers that he considered would influence his arguments. Things were not going well, and de Vere decided that the similarities of all the replies he was getting meant there was some conspiracy behind the scenes to derail his plan. Stephen Hastings MP received another verbose and rambling letter in March 1980, to which he replied with a typically restrained re-statement of the fundamental problem that the RAF had no strategic role. De Vere was not put off, and, amplifying his achievements, contacts and prospects somewhat, went back to Roland Beamont, who simply pointed out the key obstacles as he saw them: the Olympus 320 engine and undercarriage problems which still needed some work to fix them when the project was cancelled.

  The whole sorry story went on, to appear as an article in Air Pictorial magazine in September 1981. Basically a straight copy of de Vere’s long-winded justifications for the idea, this version of the story was represented as being kicked-off by the Conservative Aviation Committee asking ‘a group of aviation engineers’ to ‘study the feasibility of rebuilding the TSR-2’. This was hardly an accurate portrayal of Stephen Hastings’s initial response to de Vere’s letter, and it gave rise to a myth that Margaret Thatcher’s incoming government threatened to restart TSR2 as Tornado was suffering delays. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

  The P.28 Canberra design study proposed an upgraded Canberra, but was of no interest to the RAF. BAE Systems via Warton Heritage Group

  Alternatives to TSR2

  With TSR2 dead, and TFX lined up to take its place, no time was wasted in looking for alternatives that could retain some genuine UK involvement in design and production, rather than handing over all future RAF contracts to the USA. On the near horizon was the AFVG, stemming from a confused combined requirement for a TSR2-lite for the RAF and an interceptor for the French Air Force which owed more to the government’s wish for European cooperation than to any real need for yet another new strike aircraft. However, it would be some years before it was a sure thing, and BAC needed to get new work going immediately.

  P.28 (mod) Canberra

  The first, and most desperate, attempt was a design study on improving the Canberra. A BAC board meeting within days of the TSR2 cancellation authorized another look at the clipped-wing Canberra variant, the P.28, first studied way back in 1958. The study, which had concluded that reducing the wingspan and fitting more-powerful Avon engines could result in a useful low-level bomber, was dug out of the archives, dusted off and reappraised in light of current engine developments and TSR2 experience. The result was a selection of three suggested Canberra variants encompassing ever-greater changes to the basic airframe, with the Phases 0 and 1 as simpler, cheaper options for possible overseas customers and the Phase 2 version for the RAF. This would basically be the B.2 airframe with the strengthened tailplane of the PR.9, a larger fin, six feet chopped off each wing, powered flying controls, Spey engines, integral tip tanks, and a nose similar to that of the PR.9 but lengthened and incorporating the TSR2’s FLR. A reconnaissance pack could be fitted in the weapons bay; either the TSR2 pack (a scheme had already been drawn up for Canberra carriage of test packs during TSR2 development), or the pack then proposed for the South African Air Force but fitted with TSR2 cameras. Low-level range would be similar to that of the Buccaneer, but speed at low level would be Mach 0.75, versus 0.85 for the Buccaneer. It will come as no surprise to the reader that the RAF did not think much of this proposal when it was fully expecting to be operating the TFX and AFVG in the near future.

  The Mirage IVA, re-engined with Speys and fitted with TSR2 reconnaissance equipment and P.1154 avionics, was an interesting co-operative proposal from BAC and Dassault, but again found little favour with the RAF. BAE Systems via Brooklands Museum

  Spey Mirage IV

  Later, in May 1965, BAC approached General Aeronautique Marcel Dassault in France to sound it out on a possible derivative of its Mirage IV. The proposal was to re-engine the type with the Spey and kit it out with various pieces of TSR2 equipment, co-operate on the build, and hopefully sell this new low-level version of the Mirage IV both to the French Air Force and Royal Air Force, and possibly others. Dassault responded with alacrity. It was, after all, teaming up with BAC on the AFVG project also, and in mid-July BAC submitted a basic proposal to the MoA.

  BAC described the Spey Mirage IV as a ‘straightforward development of the Mirage IV-A’; while designed as a high-level strategic bomber, its structure was suitable for transonic operation at low level and its fatigue life would be good enough if low-level operation was restricted to 20 per cent of its flying life. Take-off thrust would be increased from 30,000lb (13,600kg) to 41,700lb (18,900kg) by using Speys instead of the existing Atar 9K turbojets, and specific fuel consumption reduced by 30 per cent. The result would be an aircraft that could nearly match the TSR2’s combat radius while carrying a somewhat higher conventional bomb load. All of the reconnaissance equipment designed for the TSR2 could be carried, and there was an agreement to develop a new nav/attack system including terrain following, comparable with that of the TSR2 (this was based on the P.1154 system, with a French Antilope FLR). An in-service date for the first sixteen aircraft of March 1970 was predicted by BAC, if an instruction to proceed was given in March 1966. Unit cost would be £2.321 million if fifty were ordered, reducing to £2.067 million each if 110 were ordered. If the French Air Force also bought some the unit cost would fall even more. Regardless, it would be a cheaper aircraft than TFX, particularly as only half of the cost would be in foreign currency.

  The attractions were obvious, and an A&AEE team even visited France during September 1965 to fly one of the first production Mirage IV-As, making a total of eleven flights and logging 15hr, including flight at Mach 2.0 and transonic at low level. The verdict from the two Boscombe pilots was positive, but the RAF was lukewarm on the subject; Mirage IV with Spey did not have the airfield performance of the TFX, nor the range. By December the matter had been debated in the Commons and the government made it clear that they regarded Mirage IV with Spey as a paper project that would arrive later than TFX with inferior performance. The French were unimpressed, as they saw the UK’s possible acquisition of TFX as a slap in the face and a threat to the AFVG project. If the UK was to buy TFX, the threat went, then France would pull out of AFVG.

  With the UK’s option to buy TFX expiring at the beginning of 1966, the government requested an extension from the Americans to give them more time to make a decision, and this was granted. In February 1966 they exercised the option and ordered fifty TFX. Mirage IV Spey was forgotten. As for the French threat to AFVG, well, they did indeed pull out, but not until July 1967, after Dassault had launched its own Mirage G variable-geometry type, pressuring the French government to order these instead of continuing with AVFG. Mirage G had no doubt benefited from some development assistance from the joint Anglo-French work on variable sweep. Outraged, BAC viewed the entire French part in AFVG as little more than an information grab on VG (this was a little unfair, given that Dassault’s development of Mirage G had begun some years before). But Dassault’s victory was pyrrhic. The French government delayed funding, never made a firm order, and the Mirage G programme suffered even more changed requirements and cost increases than TS
R2, ending in cancellation in the mid-1970s. Similarly, TFX, suffered development problems and cost overruns and the UK government cancelled that order in January 1968, paying cancellation fees on top of the millions already spent.

  A general-arrangement drawing of the AFVG. As it was the product of a political requirement rather than a military one, it was hardly surprising that the AFVG never took to the air. Damien Burke

  The AFVG did not get beyond the mockup stage (seen here in a long exposure showing the variations in wing sweep), the French pulling out in 1967 and the project continuing on as UKVG until it was cancelled entirely later in the year. Jaguar did rather better; the tail of a mockup is just about visible here. BAE Systems via Warton Heritage Group

  Conclusion

  The TSR2, as this book has revealed, was not quite the wonder jet of popular myth. It was certainly far more capable than the RAF had any right to expect after producing an operational requirement that included just about everything except the kitchen sink, but, as shown by the report on its shortcomings and the last-minute revision of the specification, the TSR2 was some distance away from actually meeting either the original requirements or the RAF’s real needs. This is not to take too much away from its likely capability as a strike aircraft. Differences of hundreds of yards in take-off roll or a few hundred miles in combat radius would not, in reality, have made it any less useful for delivering tactical nuclear weapons, and the world of fewer and changed defence commitments could not have been foreseen by the planners of 1957. As a flying machine it was by all accounts a remarkably successful design, managing to pull off a workable compromise between the ridiculous combination of ‘cabbage patch’ operations, high-subsonic low-level operations and high-supersonic medium- to high-altitude missions. It remained superbly controllable throughout the entire flight envelope in which it would realistically have spent most of its time, even without the sophisticated autostabilization and flight control system it was intended to use.

  As with any narrative covering an engineering project, the problems have provided the interest, but many of the problems related in this book were either fixed or well understood and on their way to being resolved. The more serious issues would have been those of reliability. Electronic components of the time were a world away from the reliability and longevity that is now commonplace, and early studies on TSR2 reliability did not instil confidence. A protracted and painful introduction into RAF service could well have been the result; perhaps even as painful as the first decade of F-111 service, which was blighted by several fatal crashes.

  Much of what has been written about the aircraft has naturally come from those closely involved with the project, by far the most prolific of these being Roland Beamont himself, who was always overwhelmingly positive about the quality of the aircraft and the entirely political nature of its cancellation. While the author enjoys a good polemic aimed at politicians as much as the next man, the available evidence points only to sheer cost as the reason. No government could have held out for long before either cancelling or further downgrading the specification, and TSR2 was already too expensive to survive as a downgraded weapons system. Had the project continued any longer, it could well have bled both BAC and the RAF dry, resulting in a far more disastrous ending for all concerned. While BAC suffered significant redundancies, it did not undergo the near-total collapse predicted before the cancellation. This was in no small part down to the hard work of everybody at BAC resulting in the export success of the Lightning and the firm manner in which George Edwards took the company forward into other projects without wasting time worrying unnecessarily about what might have been.

  The Tornado GR.1 entered front-line service in 1982, some seventeen years after the TSR2 was cancelled, finally giving the RAF a supersonic strike aircraft, though with a top speed limited to only Mach 1.3 and a combat radius of 400nm (460 miles; 740km). It also had no significant reconnaissance capability until the introduction of the GR.1A in 1989; this version was equipped with a comprehensive IR reconnaissance suite including linescan. The further upgraded GR.4A, seen here, entered service in 2001. Damien Burke

  Ironically, the RAF ended up with the one aircraft it had never wanted, the NA.39/ Buccaneer, which proved to be a superb asset. Upon its retirement in 1994, RAF pilots complained that the only real replacement for a Buccaneer was a new Buccaneer. It is perhaps the saddest part of the story that the RAF’s opposition to the type meant that Blackburn was never permitted to develop its excellent aircraft fully, and exports were thus limited to a handful of sales to South Africa. Earl Mountbatten and the RN have been painted as the villains in many discussions of the TSR2 fiasco, but the evidence of repeated RAF attempts to sabotage both the Buccaneer and the Spey engine appears to indicate that Mountbatten was really only beating the Service at its own game. It is particularly shameful that the behaviour of all three branches of the armed forces conspired to cause such damage to the nation’s defence, with single-Service needs being put above all else, regardless of the consequences.

  The efforts put into TSR2 were not entirely wasted. Much of the knowledge and system principles, and a few of the electronic systems, found their way into other aircraft projects, directly benefiting the Jaguar, Concorde, Phantom, Buccaneer, Tornado and others. The aviation industry learned the invaluable lesson that it is much harder for a government to cancel its way out of a contract if that contract is a multinational one. Jaguar, Concorde and Typhoon all survived delays and cost increases that would have killed any entirely home-grown project.

  The Soviet Union countered developments like TSR2 by pouring money into fighter and missile defences, and into its own advanced bombers, and, in the process, eventually reduced the standard of living of its population to unsustainable levels. In the end it was bankrupted by the cost of countering advanced NATO technology, and thus the TSR2 played its own small part in winning the Cold War without ever entering service. Thankfully, therefore, no Soviet target ever had to suffer the fate illustrated on the cover of this book, and TSR2 was never called upon to add any new names to the list of cities such as Hamburg and Hiroshima that have suffered the obscenity of a firestorm.

  Sunset on Duxford’s TSR2. The end of the project did not spell an end to the British aviation industry, but it was one of the last entirely home-grown military aircraft, and since 1965 the only entirely British military projects have been the first-generation Harriers, the Strikemaster, Hawk and Nimrod. Damien Burke

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Unbuilt Versions

  Various investigations and proposals into novel variants of the TSR2 were made both during the initial 1959/60 design progression and at later dates. Some of these are described here.

  STOL

  Vickers-Armstrongs’s project office carried out an investigation into incorporating nose lifting engines during July/August 1959; the investigation that had so enraged Shorts when it found out about it. The idea was to reduce take-off and landing distances by adding a vertical-thrust component to enable the nose to be lifted earlier in the take-off roll than would otherwise be possible. Vickers was well aware that the idea was not new, and its own report referred to the previous English Electric/Shorts work. Vickers began by looking at adding the lift engines with the minimum of changes to the airframe, but it was clear that adding the lift engines far enough forward to be of use would unbalance the aircraft to such an extent that the wings would need to be moved forward, or considerable ballast would have to be added to the tail. Installing the lift engines nearer the c.g. would defeat the purpose almost entirely. There was little choice but to work on a more substantial redesign of the airframe. This entailed reducing the wing area from 675sq ft (62.7sq m) to 610sq ft (56.7sq m), reducing the tailplane area from 144sq ft (13.38sq m) to 124sq ft (11.5sq m), increasing the fuselage height and moving the wing up 4in (10cm) to allow extra fuel capacity (thickening the wing was another option), reducing the nose length by 2.5ft (0.76m) and moving the engines 1ft (0.3m) aft. The additional wei
ght of the lifting engines and extra fuel was nearly all counteracted by the reduction in the aircraft’s overall size, but it would still end up being around 900lb (400kg) heavier. The lifting engines themselves would not be the RB.108s already available, but a developed version, the RB.153, which gave 4,000lb (1,800kg) of thrust, compared with the RB.108’s 2,350lb (1,060kg). For the 450nm high/low sortie the improvements in airfield performance would be a take-off and landing roll 60yd (55m) shorter, unsticking at 138kt (207mph; 333km/h) instead of 149kt (171mph; 276km/h), plus a reduction in approach speed from 138kt (207mph; 333km/h) to 118kt (136mph; 218km/h). For the 1,000nm sortie the improvements were less impressive, knocking only 20yd (18m) off the take-off roll and 35yd (32m) from the landing roll, unstick speed barely changing and approach speed reduced to 123kt (141mph; 227km/h).

  STOL TSR2 General Arrangement. In the end, an extending nose gear leg was a simpler solution to the problem of getting the nose in the air earlier on the take-off run. Damien Burke

  Drawbacks of the scheme were that increased tailplane travel would be needed to trim out the jet lift engine effects, and lack of ground clearance meant the tailplane would ideally need to be mounted higher on the fuselage, into possible interference of airflow from the mainplane. All in all, the many disadvantages of all such schemes outweighed the benefits, and the much simpler idea of the extending nose gear leg was adopted instead.