When I joined Boeing as an engineer in 1989, my manager and lead engineer were both British ex-pats who had worked on the TSR-2 and lost their jobs when it was cancelled. That brought them to the USA. The cancellation not only cost the UK a superb airplane, but created a massive brain drain. Both remained very passionate about the work they had done.
TSR2, as it stood, still had some rough edges to smooth out, but the political will did not exist ar the time. Wilson was in awe of the USA which wanted to sell the F111, a vastly inferior product. And by accepting the F111 the then Labour government put itself in hock to a foreign power TSR2, fully developed, would have been a world-beater, fulfilling so many different and advanced roles. America wanted to kill TSR2 more than the Russians did at the time! Its cancellation was one of the most wasteful and shameful acts of technological vandalism carried out by a British government and it shames me to acknowledge that it was a Labour decision.
Another in a long line of very small thinking by a British government, it's like there's a Newton's law of governance, for every piece of brilliance there's a rather unequal 100 or so bits of unthink...
My grandad worked on the Olympus engines in Bristol back in the day... he spoke very highly of the TSR2 and was very proud of the work they'd done. He was more proud of it than Concorde
One of the technologies being developed by the TSR2 was the use of air holes in the wing to supplement lift, reducing take off speed and distance. The reason why the Concorde crashed was due to its being forced to use a long runway for take off, forcing it to travel on a runway used a couple of minutes before, an item from the earlier aircraft was sent by the wheels into a wing tank. If the TSR2 technology had been implemented on Concorde, the lower take off speed, and shorter take off distance, would have made the odds of an incident much lower, and the likely consequences, due to lower speed, much less. (A number of years of expertise in using such a technology would have made implementation on the Concorde practical )
Concorde was another technical achievement that the USA couldn't match so they bad-mouthed it and tried to sabotage it. Luckily the French had written the contract so that it would cost the UK more to back out than to complete. Then they tried to get it scrapped as unable to recover its costs. The US poodle known as British Airways didn't want to know until an entrepreneur named Freddie Laker offered to buy it at scrap price and operate it at a profit, only then did BA take an interest. Even then they sold tickets dirt cheap to ensure it made a loss and looked bad. This changed when they put a retiring pilot in charge of Concorde division, possibly thinking he would have no commercial accumen. They were wrong and Concorde became very profitable. All the problems around the accident had been solved from stronger tyres to self sealing fuel tanks but the US still managed to get it withdrawn (and once again damaged beyond repair, this time by draining vital fluids). Bear in mind that every time Concorde landed in New York it was a visible reminder to thousands that Europe had achieved something the US couldn't and the USA is not top dog in technology. The lie was revealed - daily!
@@michaeledwards2251 Concorde was another technical achievement that the USA couldn't match so they bad-mouthed it and tried to sabotage it. Luckily the French had written the contract so that it would cost the UK more to back out than to complete. Then they tried to get it scrapped as unable to recover its costs. The US poodle known as British Airways didn't want to know until an entrepreneur named Freddie Laker offered to buy it at scrap price and operate it at a profit, only then did BA take an interest. Even then they sold tickets dirt cheap to ensure it made a loss and looked bad. This changed when they put a retiring pilot in charge of Concorde division, possibly thinking he would have no commercial accumen. They were wrong and Concorde became very profitable. All the problems around the accident had been solved from stronger tyres to self sealing fuel tanks but the US still managed to get it withdrawn (and once again damaged beyond repair, this time by draining vital fluids). Bear in mind that every time Concorde landed in New York it was a visible reminder to thousands that Europe had achieved something the US couldn't and the USA is not top dog in technology. The lie was revealed - daily!
@@JLSMaytham The US spent more on making wooden mock ups of proposed supersonic planes than the UK did on producing one. (Scientific American) ( Without Frank Whittle the UK would have had no jet expertise whatever : he had to create the 1st engine without being able to test its components before hand due to budgetary constraints. (Life of Frank Whittle) )
I used to work with someone who was ex-Royal Navy and he knew some of the designers and engineers who worked on TSR-2. He said that when the news came through that the aircraft was to be scrapped, those men were in tears because they knew they had a world beater.
It amazes me that a government can deal such a blow to an industry that might have brought in so much technical advancement and hard currency to the economy. I'm sure the U.S. was lobbying hard that the UK should buy TFX/F-111, aka the "wonder plane." Robert Strange McNamara (SecDef) claimed the TFX could the job of just about every kind of airplane. There was a funny satirical drawing in Aviation Week that showed the TFX in all the roles performed by other aircraft. F-111, FB-111, CF-111, KF-111, RF-111, EF-111, A-111, B-111, U-111, TF-111, etc.
The TSR-2 cancellation was a tragedy for UK aerospace but Harold Wilson did me a good turn. Following the cancellation I got the hell out of the UK and joined the US aerospace industry in California. Sixty-eight years later I'm still there. Thank you Harold, you screwed UK aerospace royally but gave me the impetus to emigrate and find a new career.
@@owensomers8572 British aerospace would have survived if it hadn't been for Wilson toadying to his overseas masters and if the government had the bollocks to invest in the abilities and skills of it's scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs. As usual, Wilson's government was a pack of useless bean counting, ineffectual bureaucrats. And we still haven't recovered from the likes of him.
My Dad worked on the TSR-2, my Mum worked on the Olympus at RR. When it was cancelled, they said Eff this, we're off to the USA. My Dad worked on C130 and C-5A.. the rest is history.
The same happened with Canada's Avro Arrow, most of the development team was recruited by NASA. It does make us wonder about the US involvement in canceling these projects as they not only get to export more fighters but also gain the expertise.
@@JLSMaytham It was less behind the scenes than it appears. The UK needed an IMF loan to protect the pound, the reason Wilson used the phrase "The pound in your pocket will still be the pound in your pocket" was to try to reassure people : it proved too effective resulting in a backlash. (I remember him appearing on TV, I can still visualize him as he spoke. In those days TV was still 405 line. ) (The US was likely the cause of the crisis : lend lease was the underlying problem : the UK should have defaulted. ) One of the conditions LBJ imposed on the UK was the destruction of the TSR2. When the planes were being destroyed, men in suits were observed watching. The destruction was done in such a way the US could be certain no trace of the operational TSR2 existed : the drawings and detailed documents were all burnt. (In those days no digital format existed, once the drawings were burnt, all detailed structural records were lost. Today a USB stick would used to smuggle out them out. ) The US gained all the experts it needed while ensuring the UK had total lost. The total loss ensured the long term loss of Concorde : had the Air France Concorde been able land on the fields surrounding the runways, the passengers would have had a chance to escape. (The TSR2 had an undercarriage system which allowed it to land on grass runways : it was part of the spec. ) The reason for the Air France Concorde suffering terminal damage was the high take off speed, and long runway, needed to take off. TSR2 technology, the use of air holes in the wing to increase lift at low speed by allowing very high angles of attack, would have allowed the use of alternative short runways, and also allowed a much lower take off speed. Both factors would either have prevented the incident, or greatly reduced the damage induced.
The parallels between the TSR2 and the CF-105 Arrow are remarkable. Both were absolutely leading edge technology at the time, and both, in retrospect, would have had a longer service life and probable lower life-cycle costs than their eventual replacements, which were perhaps less satisfactory than the Arrow or TSR2. One could also observe that neither aircraft were of American origin, and American alternatives proved to be too enticing for either the British or Canadian governments. I wonder if the newly-elected British Labour government reflected on the decision made by the Canadian Conservative government six years prior before canceling the TSR2, and how that had worked out for the Canadians.
@@gavinmclaren9416 I think both Canada and Britain were conned into getting out their own military vehicle development and construction in order to become buyers for the American military manufacturers.
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@@gavinmclaren9416 The CF-105 was obsolete the day it rolled out of the hangar. Sputnik was in orbit, and the soviets were priorizing ICBMs. It would have died a slow death intercepting soviet maritime patrol aircraft. The TSR.2's first flight happened on the year the Mirage IV entered service. The Mirage IV had a long career (or more exactly several ones, the stopgap bomber, the "second line" nuclear asset, the renewed nuclear strike aircraft with the ASMP and the closest thing to a SR-71/Recon Mig 25 in service in the non-US west) because the french needed a stopgap and had no "V-bombers" to plug the gap. Britain did not need a nuclear bomber in the like of the Mirage IV as the Polaris were around the corner, and couldn't afford it as a strike aicraft. If Britain pushed on, that means cuts. The Jaguar might have been the RAF's heavy attack aircraft in the likes of the French Air Force. No money for Tornado IDS perhaps. And the TSR.2 would have died a slow death, perhaps not surviving long enough to get a missile in the like of the ASMP. Get over it and stop whining.
@@gavinmclaren9416 The Arrow had some serious issues that may have prevented it entering service in any numbers even if it hadn't been cancelled. Aside from some serious technical hurdles, it was over budget to the extent that the RCAF would have only been able to afford a few, it had relatively little export market (mostly for the same reason) and that would have driven the cost up even more, and after the cancellation of the Sparrow II there wasn't another missile in the world that would fit into its weapons bay - and no straightforward way of extending the bay the several feet that it would require to fit one.
@gavinmclaren9416 hard to imagine being cheaper than f101s or already existing f106. Though it more or less went the way of the xf108 and the Valkyrie bomber.
Every single aircraft has problems from the start. That is what a testing program is all about. It was a tragedy of epic proportions what happened to TSR-2.
@@Poliss95 Well, not quite the plane itself having a problem but a rather critical component had an issue: Early Rolls-Royce Merlins had engine cut-outs in steeper dives. Oh, and the .303 proved a bit lacking as an aircraft weapon as the war progressed. Actual problems on the prototype seem to have been the first propellor wasn't as good for airflow lowering top speeds, and the rudders were a bit sensitive.
Simply one of the cleanest lined aircraft ever produced. Absolutely beautiful, but with deadly capabilities. Shame on the labour government of the time of cancellation.
@@Poliss95- Yes, Matt Summers did. That did not mean that the Spitfire was perfect. It meant that the machine provided an acceptable baseline for testing and refinement.
Thank you for this video. My Dad was in the RAF when the TSR2 was being developed. He said they couldn’t wait for it to enter service and they were upset when it was cancelled. I am sure if he was still alive he would have been grateful for this video. 🇬🇧🇺🇦
HOW TYPICAL OF BRITAIN, THROUGHOUT IT'S HISTORY. WHEN WE HAVE THE TECHNICAL ABILITY AND VISION FOR FUTURISTIC PROGRAMMES, ( JET ENGINE AND RADAR) BUT USUALLY LACK THE FINANCE, AND /OR ABILITY TO RECOGNISE THE IMPORTANCE OF IT.
That's odd. Just last week I asked a Lightning pilot of that time what he and his colleagues thought about the cancellation of TSR2 and he said he didn't recall any discussions about it at all.
True, but at the time the RAF didn't want to order a subsonic aircraft flown by the Navy. They wanted a supersonic aircraft they had specified. The Buccaneer wasn't what they wanted but it was exactly what they needed.
The Buccaneer was probably one of the greatest ever planes in the low-level strike role. No other plane could fly that low and that steady, even the best of the American planes like the F-15 could not catch or detect it as the Buccaneer could fly NAPE tactics like a chopper. THat's why it hung around until 1994 when the last weary airframes were finally retired, there was no adequate replacement for them (the Tornado was useless in the sea-strike capability and poor in the low-level role)
I saw the only 2 tsr-2s on display. This one and the one at raf cosford. What an amazing machine and honour to be a part of the country that developed them
My dad was an RAF pilot from 1943 to 1968 and his pal was the project nav on the TSR2 project. He said it was a brilliant aircraft and far ahead of it's time. Cancelled by the Wilson government and what did we do instead? Bought a load of second-hand Phantoms from the US and re-engined them with RR Speys at some considerable cost. Politicians, what a bunch of wankers. Nuff said.
The Royal Navy FG1's & RAF FGR2 Phantoms were all new build airframes with British engines & equipment. I think you're comment refers to the ex US navy F-4J's that were purchased by the UK in the eighties, to form the RAF's 74 Squadron, as a UK based squadron of Phantom FGR2's were moved to defend the Falkland Islands leaving the UK short of air defense aircraft. Those ex US navy Phantoms bought by the UK retained their original GE J79 engines though. I very much agree with your last statement about our politicians. 😡😱
The Spey was a good engine but so was the J79 which as a straight turbjet had very advanced features. The Spey compromised the F4 airframe. It is doubtful the GR4s had significantly better performance the J79 fitted aircraft
Going through RAF Cosford technical training in the 1980's we had various bits of the TSR2 avionics as training aids. The computers were gears, cogs, cams & synchros; the pinnacle of analogue computing. Many of the flight control components were world-leading technology, including the quadruplex taileron actuator, as re-used on tornado.
The Nav Attack Computers in the TSR2 were electronic and digital (and nowhere near powerful enough to do meet the navigation or attack profiles specified in the operational requirement) every thing else around it was analogue!!!! Auto Stab system was analogue. It never flew in the aircraft as it still wasn't working on the rigs correctly at the time of the aircrafts cancellation. Without it the Aircraft would have gone out of control at Mach 1.5.
@@richardvernon317 thanks for that. Microprocessing was in its infancy tehn, eh? I think I remember a box that was said to be an American bit of digital kit that was integrated into the Nav /Wpns system (but we didn't get taught anything about that, probably due to commercial /security classification). The Motorola 68000 was still quite young & we were trained in rudimentary programming using that too. Lots of analogue Ferranti INAS stuff as well, much of it very familiar when I worked on UK phantoms. As an aside, I went on to work on a few other UK elint platforms that had a surprising amount of American kit & along with that type of training course where you can't take anything home to read & all your notes have to be shredded after passing the exams. Very clever kit though.
@@wirdy1 I'm guessing you were FS training at Cosford. I was there early 80's on the AR side on DE 67 and ended up on Phantoms for most of my career. Definately get what you say about American kit (AWG 11/12 Looking at you!! Big lad!!) That was 4 months at Coningsby I'll never ger back 😅😅
When I started work in the UK Titanium industry in 1970, one of my earliest jobs within the Technical/Quality Control Dept was cleaning up and sorting the display cabinet in the main office entrance foyer. A couple of the items were fusilage components from the scrapped TSR-2 project. I retired in 2009 and was invited back for a look around the factory in early 2024 and hey presto, in the display cabinet one of those same fusilage components that I had cleaned and positioned from TSR-2. Of course, no one there had any idea of what it was or its origins - just a large piece of aerospace Titanium.
That makes sense, logicaly the hot engine exhaust blowing through theflaps could cause havoc to adjacent parts, burn wiring and/or boil hydraulics. I;m not an aircraft engineer, I'd welcome an knowledgable comment?
It sounds like it was more for stability of the platform, giving that smooth ride it needed for the radar intercept and weapons low down and slow etc. I guess if the air bleed system failed, you would get a much more unstable bumpy ride a lower speeds. But I suspect they had come up with a procedure to be able to land at higher speeds without the blown flaps, i.e. more runway needed in those conditions since it had less lift at slower speeds without the blown flaps.@@petunized
I have a copy of "TSR2 Britain's Lost Bomber" by Damien Burke. It summarises an RAF report titled Shortcomings of the TSR2 and drafted in October 1964. It listed: - High cost - Essentially no conventional strike capability at night or in bad weather - No real all-weather reconnaissance capability - Navigation system dependent on accurately mapped fixed points so unsuitable outside Northern Europe - Useless at altitude over Northwest Europe - More or less tied to operation from paved runways - Bad engine tunnel and accessories bays - Low reliability - Wing design too heavily biased for crew comfort. Burke said that the RAF realised that its own requirements had led to an aircraft that did not do what the Service wanted.
yeah this is a story that the British armed forces refuse to learn from. They fiddle with the requirements and the product ends up worse. Excellent aircraft (in the main) don't result from programmes that the Treasury fiddles in (like they did with TSR-2)
All of the above are standard problems with any Western fighter aircraft : Russian designs go for simplicity and robustness. For example they used valves : initially laughed at, until it was realized the usage of valves made them immune to Nuclear EMP. (A Western aircraft would have fallen out of the sky.) Russian designs assume rubble on the runways : Western ones risk loss of the aircraft before it even takes off. (For Western designs pilot ejection during take off is a necessity. ) Fighter aircraft today are forced to fly low in any protected zone due to missiles being faster than jets.
@@michaeledwards2251 It has to be remembered that no aircraft type ever meets all its requirements in prototype form. The main downfall was government refusal to fund the continued research and development to reach its full potential.
@@mothmagic1 The downfall was the IMF : Wilson had to get an IMF loan to keep the £ stable. LBJ used the opportunity to ensure TSR2 became a total loss : all flying airframes and detailed documentation was destroyed. (It was observed when the frames were burnt, men in suits were watching.) This resulted in the loss of Concorde later : the Air France disaster was due to 2 factors (a) High take off speed, requiring a low runway. (Wing air holes, a TSR2 technology, would allowed much lower take off speed, allowing the usage of the alternative short runways available at the airport) (b) Undercarriage weakness, (Concorde could not land in the fields around the airport giving the passengers a chance at evacuation. TSR2 was designed to be able to land on a grass air field. ) The burning of the detailed plans ensured Concorde could not use TSR2 landing and take off technology.
Because Louis Mountbatten toured the government heads with a suitcase of model aircraft, American and TSR2. He said 'would you like 4 of these F111s or a TSR2?' As always, the establishment kills off British entrepreneurialism. Think radar, the computer, jet engine, fracking.
If my memory serves ....., Mountbatten, being a Royal Navy man, was saying to UK ministers you can have four ( or was it 5 ? ) BUCCANEER's for the price of one TSR2 ! I've been a long time fan of the TSR2 and, if it had gone into RAF service, I could have helped to maintain as my first tour in the RAF was the Bucc. Operational Conversion Unit, No. 237 which, according to some sources, would have been the TSR2's OCU squadron number. If only..... 😪 I loved my 3 years on the mighty "Banana Jet" though. 😍😄
@@wullie3xv923 Yes sir you are correct, it was the Blackburn Buccaneer against T.S.R.-2, the us F-111 swing wing with us electronics came later, another Labour costly error, dumbos.
As a layman aviation enthusiast and history buff, I appreciate a documentary like this that has some information density. The ups and downs of aircraft design and production during that time period are such an interesting topic. Looking back, collaboration is the norm but I can only imagine the difficulties of that sort of shift back then. If I ever travel from the US I'll have a hard time hitting all the typical tourist traps when I could soak up a thousand years of military history, each day capped off with a few beers in some random pub, instead. Subscribed to IWM so I'm reminded to see more of your stuff. Looking forward to it!
John Fairley the Chief Test Pilot for the Harrier at HSA / BAE would disagree with you about the TSR2. In his view it didn't have a big enough span. Anyhow everything about the TSR2 project was declassified in 1995 and it paints a completely different picture to the state of the aircraft to what is in this video!!! The Project was a complete mess. The Aircraft was nowhere near being ready for service and all of the money allocated for R&D had already been more than spent and the budget for actually building the production aircraft was being eaten up at a massive rate. The RAF were hoping to get 300 odd TSR2's. At the time of Cancellation the maximum order the RAF were going to get had gone down to 100-150 and it looked like it would have gone even lower. The Biggest Problem was that the aircraft couldn't met any of the specifications laid down in the Operational Requirement it was built to meet!! The Chief of the Air Staff was the person who killed the project as it had already killed the P1154 and the AW Transport to release funding for the TSR2. The Navy bought the Phantom First under a Conservative Government.
It's a good saying but the issue with TSR-2 was the cost and complexity of its avionics, sensors and other systems that had yet to be flight tested all-up. Its need for computing power was beyond anything that was available and getting these systems to work and play nice with each other would have taken a lot of time and money because it always does. Look at nearly every combat jet and you see the same problem of delays and spiralling costs arising from issues with these systems.
@@richardvernon317 interesting information - I wish YTubers would try to stop passing this off as a world beater when it wasn't and probably could never have been without a massive cash injection that the country couldn't afford.
The real reason the TSR2 failed was because I worked on it in a very distant way, the flight simulation side. I didn't realise until much later the devastating effect that I would have on British technical production. I started work in 1960, no qualifications but jobs for reasonably capable youths were plentiful then. One of my early (fairly tedious) tasks was winding special coils for the Blue Streak missile. Gosh yes, we did rockets in those days! The Blue Streak was binned. Later I worked as a wireman for a well known aircraft simulator company, as I said, on the TSR2 simulator. After that project failed I moved on to non-Governmental employment. The cigarette-manufacturing industry proved particularly vulnerable to my destructive touch and I stifled many a promising development programme. The APT was NOT one of mine. That was just the British tendency to half-develop something then let others make money out of it. (Like the jet engine). Please don't misunderstand, I didn't deliberately sabotage these things, it's just something in myself that I don't quite understand. If only they had paid me not to go to work.
I was there at Duxford earlier this year. Standing there, between the TSR2 and York. I had Grandparents who worked on both those actual aircraft. A proud moment.
I worked on the TSR2 project at the English Electric factory in Clayton Le Moors (near Accrington) and was responsible for issuing any modifications eg drawings ,specs etc to the shop floor.I was made redundant when it was cancelled but some good came out of my time there,I met my wife ( married 60 years before i lost her last year) we both worked in the mods section.
My grandad worked on the engines for this aircraft, his convinced the US bribed the Labour government at the time to cancel the program to prevent competition with the F-15 and F-111 lol.
The Labour government needed the US to guarantee an IMF loan. The price the Americans demanded was the destruction of the TSR2 project.:The US demanded that even the jigs to build the aircraft had to be destroyed. The British aerospace industry never recovered from this, as many engineers involved in the project, left the country…..many to the US.
When I was an apprentice at Bristol Siddeley Engines I worked on engines for TSR2, Concord and Harrier. We also worked on the rear end fairing, Made of titanium and skinned in waspalloy. When it was cancelled I vowed to leave and never return. I returned to the then Rolls Royce factory in 1980 and had a hand on every engine in the Tornado fleet.
@@BrennanMartin Think if you check you will find some of the Arrow design team went to British Aerospace companies after the cancellation. As well as NASA and McDonald Douglas, where some of them worked on the F-111 project.
It's an aircraft that has become mythical. I'm very much a fan-boy but I had a sobering discussion with a couple of ex RAF pilots who suspected that some aspects of combat performance would have been poor, such as turn rate because of the very long fuselage (as with the Vigilante). I still think it was a massive lost opportunity for the RAF, export sales and the British aircraft industry in general. Category I flight testing of the F-111 took 8 years and the first squadrons took 3 years to become fully operational; and even then the whole fleet and to be grounded and reworked because of wing-box cracks. With a little more patience and government backing, the TSR-2 would probably have entered into service around 1972, likely with a reduced capability for the first few years - which is the norm today with Block releases. It is interesting to speculate what would have happened to the British aircraft industry though - there would likely have been no Tornado and we might well have ended up purchasing F-15s to replace the Lightning. Would the Typhoon have seen the light of day? Ironically this is a scenario where TSR-2 might have killed the British military aircraft industry in the longer term.
@@Poliss95 Possibly! It would certainly have has some export success over a 30 year service career. I'd be surprised if there weren't some divergent variants along the way: larger wings; a subsonic simplified version (Jaguar on steroids); a shortened long loiter interceptor (Tornado F.3 role). Who knows. Don't forget it is mythical so anything is possible!
It's cancelation was probably the best thing to happen to it's reputation, as it never entered production and problems in service never arose. It's total bomb load of 10,000 lbs (6,000 lbs internal) means it carries less than the F-105 (14,000 lbs), which first flew on 1955, which was when the TSR.2 began preliminary development. However, the TSR.2 first flew in 1964, which was the same year the F-105's replacement (the F-111) first flew. Something equivalent to the F-105 (a 50s jet)being put into service in the 70s, where stuff like terrain following radar and high tech avionics and precision bombing capabilities are king? I'm not so sure the TSR.2 with its tiny wings and minimal hard points and low growth potential would've been very good. This is a problem with the Lightning too. It began development with the "first wave" of supersonic interceptors, such as the F-102, F-104, but entered service in the same year as the F-4 Phantom and notably inferior. Even comparing to "second wave" interceptors like the F-106 and Draken, the Draken had superior performance and better armament for only one Avon, while the Lightning needed two. Technology back then was maturing so fast that if you waited more than half a decade to put your plane out, it would be obsolete in service. On the topic of the Lightning, the ultimate F.6 version (the only good one) entered service in 1966, and the V bombers were being denuclearized in 1969 due to polaris, making their whole mission of defending the bomber airbases while they scrambled utterly pointless. The whole low level penetration thing was found to have been bogus after the Vietnam War, but while the Tonka and Vark had the ability to fly high and do precision strikes with guided bombs, I don't think the TSR could. This kind of "prototype effect" is pervasive in the aviation community, since there is loads of media (ie marketing material) from the aircraft manufacturer about their new supposed super machine, but none of the real life service that also shows the issues the type has.
@@IgnoredAdviceProductions I think you have hit the nail on the head. I love the looks of the plane, and like most aircraft enthusiasts, would have loved to see it go on to serve in numbers. But truth is, it was fatally flawed, and even at the prototype stage there were mounting problems (quite literally; the engines didn't really fit the airframe) that would have taken years to resolve. It's an unpopular opinion, but I do think cancellation was the right thing to do. However, the WAY it was done is appalling, and a terrible indictment on those responsible (though exactly who they were has never been clear). I certainly think the Americans had a big role to play, as well as Mountbatten, who was dead against it. But as you say, its untimely demise elevated it to mythical status, a plane that was never tested against the reality of service life. But at least the two prototypes were allowed to remain somewhat intact.
It was cancelled as the RAF kept adding new tasks for it to do, the costs of all these changes got increasingly larger so the treasury said "no more" They could have had the Blackburn Buccaneer but turned that down. When the RAF finally did accept accept Buccaneers they grudgingly said that they should not have rejected it, especially not the Super Buccaneer which was an unbelievably magnificent aircraft.
@alexhills38 All aircraft suffer from metal fatigue : parts have to be replaced regularly before the cracking becomes too great. The implied problem is a lack of engine power to drive an airframe of sufficient thickness to allow practical intervals between periods of service. (This was the problem which caused the Comet crashes : the engines were chosen based on commercial considerations and the air frame lightened accordingly. The knowledge of metal fatigue from WW II allowed a prediction of the expected metal fatigue failures, and they occurred exactly as predicted. The testing rigs and other actions were all part of a cover up of deliberately flawed design. ) (Frank Whittle protested the square windows which he expected to fail exactly as they did. )
Very interesting. As a boy I had a toy model of the TSR2 about 12 inches long. It looked odd but I was happy to have it. I recall that the engines went on to be used for Concorde. Politician often cancel good projects due to cost but then will throw money for too long at a failure e.g. the Tigerfish torpedo and the army portable radio ( forgotten the name but after 10-15 years still a load of rubbish)
The main reason why funding was cut for TSR2 were 2 fold. Firstly, the US Secretary of state Mc Namara used his influence to hold up loans to the UK by the IMF unless we bought the F111. This was also one of the causes of Australia's decision to opt' for the F111 because they couldn't rely on the UK going into production. Secondly, Mountbatten was going around with photos of the Buccaneer saying he could have 5 Buccaneers for one TSR2, and championing the US cause. We could have had both TSR2 and Buccaneer but for US politics ( they were bound to support their own industry) and the commonwealth nations which failed to place orders. My father, former De Havaland/ Hawker Sidley said at the time if we were part of a European Aircraft Industry we could have stood upto the competition and the politics. It was later the EU that backed the Concorde, al be it via air france and threatened the US ban on concorde would be met with a ban of US aircraft europe wide. Also the Typhoon was similarly threatened with cancellations, however the European countries economies were strong enough to to go it alone. Now, we are weak as we are outside all the most important economic blocks. To have a credible defence you need a strong economy. Leaving the EU has left us unable to raise the funding required for a modern defence capability..
I was told in 1977 by two navigator instructors at Cosford that they had been designated for the first squadron and had "written their wills". They said they had been totally against it. I was told by another source that at a meeting immediately before the announcement, that was never made public, senior RAF chiefs told the Government they preferred F111. Then by another RAF officer that they had been very sceptical about the ground-hugging radar and didn't believe it would work. Can't verify any of it of course, but that was what was said in private.
The terrain following radar was manufactured by Ferranti. I was a radar engineer and the program manager of the radar used in the Phantom and Eurofighter. I was not directly involved in the radar used in the TSR2 or the Tornado aircraft. However I did interact with my counterparts on these other projects. The Terrain Following Radar (TFR) has been in development in parallel with that of the aircraft. There were several bench systems and two aircraft had been modified to accept the radar. The slow speed aircraft was a DC3 called Vera (which was latter used in a UK TV programme called Redcoat, loosely based on Freddie Laker). The high speed work was done using a modified Meteor. This was usually flown by Pascal Watson. The TFR worked. The problem was that the electronics of the time were not very reliable and keeping them working was an issue, but this affected all of the aircraft systems at the time. The terrain following radar for the Tornado also was installed in a test aircraft, in this case a Buccaneer. During my time in the RAF I was in the ski team and our manager was Sqn Ldr Peter Hill. He was a navigator assigned to the project and was injured ejecting when they encountered two Hawker Hunters flying the wrong way up a valley in Wales. In avoiding a collision the pilot pulled the tail off the Buccaneer saving Peter and the pilots of the Hunters, but failed to exit the aircraft, for which he was awarded (posthumously) the Air Force Cross. This radar worked as well. The test aircraft we used for the Eurofighter/Typhoon radar was a BAC 1-11, which came from Boscombe Down. It had been used in previous trials (for the Sea Harrier etc) and to obtain it, I had to buy a standard BAC 1-II as a swap. The first version of the radar was optimised for air to air operations. Latter versions included air to surface modes. With AESA, introduced in tranche 3 it has terrain following capability, which works. Although not designed as a strike (nuclear) delivery system, the Typhoon has the standard NATO interface, so could provide similar capability as the Tornado. The F-35 has similar capability. The Tempest currently under development, has all of the above and much more. The "written their wills" comment, is just a reflection of the times, if the TSR2 aircraft was was launched on a real strike mission, it was known to be a one way trip. Also of course there would be nothing left to return to. At that time senior officers in the RAF, were basing their judgement on their experience in WWII and had not taken on board the advances in electronic systems. They were still trying to fight the last war and not prepare for the next.
@@christopherrobinson7541 Very interesting. It seems there was a complete disconnect with the squadron personnel that would have to use the technology. RAF was not gagging for TSR2 as is sometimes made out today.
@@MikeLonghurst-m8m The RAF was still very much in love with the concept proposed by TSR.2... they quickly fell out of love with what BAC was actually offering.
My Dad worked at the Air Ministry at the time that TSR2 was being developed. It shocked everyone when the Government of the day just cancelled what could have been a World Beating Aircraft.
The future of TSR-2 was already in doubt before Labour came to power. Harold Wilson had promised Labour wouldn't scrap it. Everything changed after they won the election and saw the true state of the economy. They had little choice but to make big spending cuts.
The cancellation was decided on by LBJ : Wilson needed an IMF loan to protect the pound. Part of the conditions for the loan was the destruction of the UK aircraft industry.
Washington demanded the UK devalue the pound and support the USA in Vietnam. If they had demanded the destruction of the UK aircraft industry it singularly failed. The cancellation of TSR-2 did not do that and we didn't end up buying the F-111K either. As I said before, the TSR-2 was already in doubt before Labour came to power.
I was an apprentice at the Royal Radar Establishment, Malvern, when the TSR2 was cancelled and the department I was working in was given some of the stock piled components destined for the production of the aircraft. I was given four big power transistors that were intended to drive the motor actuators controlling the flying surface controls. I was going to make a 200 Watt guitar amp out of them. A huge power amp for its time. Those power amps would have been a massive weakness if used in a combat aircraft of the time as they were germanium transistors which unlike more modern transistors are silicon based. The early germanium transistors had very poor temperature characteristics and were vulnerable to thermal runaway and destroying themselves. In the early 60's many engineers in many fields fell for the dubious promise of the abilities of transistor electronics and in particular power transistors. There was still a long way to go with their development for practical and reliable usage of power transistors. At the time I would have said they were not a good idea for military use amongst many other areas. It wasn't until the late 70's, using better developed silicon transistors, many projects in many areas fell short of expectations. TSR2 was too far ahead of the available technology at the time. Just one more reason added to all those given here in the comments.
When you consider the IT equipment of the day, I'm far from convinced that the Terrain Following Radar would have worked - at least not for a couple of decades.
The USAF had experimental AN/APQ-89 on T-2 Buckeyes as early as 1965. It was well developed in the F-111. You have to remember this was the era of 2nd and 3rd generation radar guided missiles, the principles were well understood and definitely doable with the eras signal processing capabilities.
@@Poliss95 Untrue! It was actually working well in the months leading up to it's cancellation! It *did* have *major* problems and did not work for a long while. They then spent the billions extra to keep working on it and fix these issues- they were mostly resolved but it was not perfect, and it was at this point they then decided to cancel it. The aircraft was serviceable at this point and could have entered service. It did need more work but most of the major work, the stuff that costed the real money, was done. They cost themeselves *even more* by scrapping it right at that point. Scrapping it when it started having issues would have been a valid and correct call *or* letting it continue into service after all the money was dumped into it. But they chose the worst possible option.
😢 this makes cry even to this day. What a lovely aeroplane...well preserved at the IWM. Another example was displayed at RAF Cosford. These I believe are the only 2 surviving airframes. All tools, Jigs and drawings were destroyed. But.... being British, WE adapt and work with what we've got ! The cancellation of TSR2 was Britain's 911. Anyway,our government said we couldn't afford it so Off into the anals of aviation history it went. An ignominious end to such a fine flying machine.... This superb presentation left out the bit where TSR2 fired up its afterburner on 1 engine and left the Lightening chase plane standing. (And the Lightening wasn't slow by any standards) RIP TSR 2.
The TSR2 out-competed anything the Americans were working on at that time and was trashed by them in a number of underhanded ways. That same strategy continues today and the ugly hand of malfeasance, clothed in the glove of the much vaunted 'special relationship' can be seen in a number of high-tech British projects over the years. Uncle Sam will not allow competition, particularly from its allies!
It was trashed by highly-placed Brits too - Chief of the Defence Staff for one, a Navy man, who actively persuaded the Australians not to order it, for instance.
According to an article by a test pilot it flew extremely well but it never once flew with fully working electronics a major issue was cooling it all. He said the Government had expected to order an aircraft that worked straight away. Many in the Government were very upset that the company thought they the Government would pay to get the computers working. They thought the company should have just supplied a system that worked. Just as when you buy a car you expect it to function.
@@womble321 given how far they were into the test programme, electronic issues were par for the course, and frankly they were doing quite well, as the issues raised were not dangerous.
I totally agree, and could not have said it better, you only have to look at Concord and how the USA restricted its capabilities regarding where it could fly,
Trashed by high ups in all nato countries is most likely what happened. All those people do is look at their investments and potential profit.. it's vile.
In 1972, in the village of 'St.John', near Plymouth, I met Bruce, one of the former TSR-2 test pilots. He had resigned following the cancellation of the project and was living a quiet life, trying to forget what he termed as 'the worst decision ever'. Every wednesday, in the local pub, Bruce had a lock-in, from 11am to 11pm or so, a great man with many tales to tell, and a huge capacity for the local ales. I had to return to London in 1973 but never forgot Bruce or the TSR-2
A shame that Canada's Avro Arrow and the TSR-2 were both canceled. Had they collaborated to keep both their aircraft flying, they would have had the two best aircraft in the world.
It wasn't a "shame". It was interference by the US to disadvantage competition. Boeing recruiters were there the day that Avro Arrow was cancelled. When TSR2 was cancelled they made them destroy all jigs and special tools so that restarting it would not be viable Boeing and the US government fought long and hard to try to kill Airbus before it was born. US "Capitalism" can't compete so it cheats and lies to maintain profits. Having done it in Europe you don't suppose they could be doing the same thing with China do you? No! Ridiculous, this time they are being honest! (Ha ha ha) Civil Aviation Instrument Landing Systems in use around the world are US but when bidding for the contract for a standard system the US bid lied about buildings at airports to pretend other systems were less good. It is on record in aviation magazines of the day.
My dad was a British Engineer who emigrated to the US. He had several colleagues from his schooling that were involved in the TSR-2 project. He often recounted they told him the biggest fault of the TSR-2 was the landing gear, which hadn't been adequately incorporated into the initial "multi-agency" design, and most of the cost and development overruns that brought about the cancellation of the program were attributable to creating a workable landing gear.
The thing the TSR 2 told us was that the UK economy couldn't support all of the military projects we wished to pursue. It pointed us towards Panavaia and Sepecat; collaborations which produced superb aircraft. Maybe a BAC / Dassault collaboration would have worked as France was producing the Mirage IV
It wasn’t just the TSR2 that was cancelled, they also cancelled the P.1154 V/STOL interceptor and the HS681 STOL transport at the same time, I think it was the cancellation of the P.1154 that led to the purchase of the F-4 Phantom for the Royal Navy and RAF and the cancellation of the HS681 eventually led to the purchase of C-130’s.
I’ve been around the block. Seems like the two beloved, cancelled aircraft from Britain and Canada had a few things in common: Awesome feats of engineering Too big Too expensive Didn’t fit the mission US wanted them dead
Awesome007 , As a Canadian I agree . I was only two years old when the Arrow was cancelled but remember my father talking about it and he never forgave Diefenbaker for the cancellation . I also love the TSR2 and it is a pity both aircraft were put in the dustbin .
The US didn't need to kill Arrow, it killed itself having become so expensive that it would have consumed so much of the defence budget that Canada's Navy and Army would have been starved of funding. If Canada wasn't going to buy it, nobody else was either - the US already had aircraft that matched or exceeded its specifications and were working on designs that would have left it in the dust. Britain considered Arrow briefly but withdrew our interest before it was cancelled, and there was a similar story with France and the Iroquois engine. I don't doubt that the US delivered a good sales pitch to various British governments about the F-111 that was probably too optimistic in the way that these programmes usually are, but there's no credible evidence of a US plot to kill the TSR-2 and why would there be? It didn't have the export potential of earlier British jets and realistically the only customer was the RAF so it wasn't competing with US aircraft on the international market. Its cancellation in favour of F-111K would have been a modest US gain but the RAF had only ordered 50 Aardvarks and who knows what that would have been reduced to if the plan had gone ahead, given the economic and currency problems Britain faced at the time. TSR-2 was really pushing the state of the art and its avionics and systems weren't finished and a complete set of the aircraft's electronics had never been flown yet. The need for computing power had been massively underestimated which resulted in aircraft capabilities being cut back and a lot of this kit was pushing the state of the art Given the extent that these systems tend to drive cost overruns and delays time and again - look at the Foxhunter radar in the Tornado which was meant to be ready by 1982, only entered service in 1985 after a 63% cost overrun with a version that didn't meet the initial or revised requirements of the RAF, and it was after the first Gulf War that updated versions of the radar achieved the required spec. TSR-2 was pushing the limits of technology even more and on multiple systems so combine that with already high costs and a background of economic issues and it was always going to struggle to survive. Had it done so, it would probably have suffered the same criticism about delays, cost, not meeting requirements, still waiting for vital upgrades, etc that most other production combat jets have faced at some point.
Virtually all new aircraft designs go over budget and to be fair the US is one of the few countries that have virtually unlimited funds and also the best lobbyist in the world . Much of the airline industry has been kept afloat by having adjacent defence work as well as a producing passenger planes . Neither the UK or Canada has the defence influence to compete with Washington defence lobbyists . @@trolleriffic
@@trolleriffic If the USA and Canada had bought Arrow, that would have markedly changed the programs chances for success. Same for the TSR-2, if the USA and UK had bought the aircraft ... that would have been a whole new ball-game. Also, computers were about to take a huge leap forward in technology, shortly after TSR-2's first flight. We had integrated circuits coming along in our U.S. aircraft and space programs. For example, Apollo went around the moon in 1968. So if the USA had been a partner in the TSR-2 build, a Mk II version would have probably had some significant avionics upgrades. And, maybe some slight increase in wing area, along with the application the "area rule" to the fuselage (as flown on the F-104 & F-102 in '54). Purchase by the USAF would also have vastly increase the production numbers and greatly lowered unit fly-away cost.
As an alternate to the TSR2 the Dassault Mirage IV was considered by both the UK and Australia. In the end the French never exported the Mirage IV although co-operation with the UK was considered. This would have resulted in a version more suited to RAF requirements. The Government asked if the technical issues with TSR2 could be resolved and were told yes. When they asked how much it would cost and how long it would take they couldn't get a firm answer. Needless to say that didn't help.
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The French needed a stopgap bomber before the advent of the land and sub based nuclear missiles. That's why the Mirage IV existed. Britain, on the other hand, could see the Polaris right around the corner as the TSR.2 made its first flight. It would have been useless as a nuclear bomber, and too expensive as a conventional one. The Mirage IV began to agonize quite quickly. It became a second line nuclear asset quickly. Its only real usefulness during the middle of its career was as a photo recon aircraft. And then it became useful again for ten years when it got the ASMP, before finishing its career in the photo recon role again
BAC tried to get the RAF to accept the TSR2 into service with a max speed of Mach 1.5 (The R22 Olympus could actually only get the aircraft up to Mach 1.8 had the engine been able to handle the same compressor inlet Temperature as Concorde or any other Mach 2 jet at the time (which was 127 Degrees C). To do Mach 2 the CIT was 148 Degrees C for TSR2 because of the inlet design. To Go faster than Mach 1,5m, the TSR 2 need an automatic stabilisation system. The ones on the rigs don't work that well and a lot more development work is required. The RAF actually knocked a lot of the specifications back as regards Speed, Range, altitude and removed the requirements for automatic terrain following and the capability's of the Nav Attack system for a fixed price buy of 150 aircraft. BAC refused to take them up on the offer so when Healy was offered 50 F-111's on a fixed price contract, He told the RAF and the Chief of the AIr Staff said BUY THEM!!
Dassault was open to cooperation for the Mirage IV, RAF was interested but the Parliament rejected it. For some reasons they preferred the F-111K (not technical reasons). Now I wonder how many of them received “incentives” from the US
The TSR2 was undeniably a great aircraft and suited Great Britain's needs because of the closeness of any potential threats, to be financially viable there was a need to manufacture more than just Great Britains requirements, and as very expensive item there were only a few possible buyers, but most other countries in the world needed an aircraft with a greater range, the F111 fulfilled this role by having at least 4 times the range, thus America and Australia procured these aircraft instead. It is a great pity that the British having the production line going did not finish the project, at least for their own requirements.
The Canberra was a good aircraft in its day in a high altitude reconaissance role. As a bomber it was pretty much useless, as it could not carry the bomb load that Soviet and American aircraft could. During the Vietnam War, the Australian Airforce (RAAF) deployed Canberras to routinely bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail, over which munitions from China were trucked into Vietnam. The North Vietnamese never bothered too much about downing the Canberrras. They simply drove their trucks off the road and under the canopy when the Canberras were coming, the Canberras with their little bombs blew craters in the road, and then the Vietnamese got out their shovels and in a couple of hours filled the craters in and resumed their deliveries. The Vietnamese apparently thought that if they destroyed the limitted number of Canberras available, the Americans would take over and use really big bombs and make the road unusable.
The Americans never made the Ho Chi Minh trail “unusable” through bombing or otherwise. They even invaded Cambodia to attempt this late in the war. They dropped more bombs on it than the entire Second World War and still didn’t stop the Vietnamese achieving liberation.
@@kiwifruitpoo The incompetent US General in charge of the US effort in Vietnam, Gen Westmoreland, assigned responsibility for wrecking the Ho Chi Minh trail to the Australians, who used their useless Canberra bombers to churn up the dirt. It would have been difficult for the US to win in Vietnam, given they had no real support from the locals, but why the US put Westmoreland, a known idiot "rock painter" obsessed with statistics, is a bit of a mystery. With him in charge the US had no hope.
My grandparent's neighbor when I was growing up was a Canberra driver, a special USAF one that was modified to run on H2 instead of JP8. Got drilled over NV by SA-2 and spent a long hitch in Hanoi. Cool guy. He loved the aircraft.
It seems the British governments have always let us down and still are. Mr Wilson was so far forward looking he had all the tooling smashed.I appreciate that the navy and RAF had different requirements. Great video, great aircraft!
There is footage of the vandalism that the rulers of the day insisted be perpetrated. It was utterly despicable and shows a contempt for the intellectual effort and hard work that went into making this aircraft. But then, this is the way of the British establishment: penny-wise but pound-foolish, except when it comes to their own vanity projects. Britain also gave up its own orbital launcher programme at the invitation of the US, only to have to pay through the nose to get access to launches. This consumerist "buy it in" mantra led to the aborted, wasteful procurement effort around the F111 - of course it had to be a special variant, just like all the other kit Britain buys from the US - and indeed explains the broader predicament of the country today. Once you don't build and make stuff any more and your vendors realise it, what leverage do you have over the price, even if you are an eager little consumer?
Wilson was a Soviet stooge, whilst destroying British defence industry he was supporting Russian Imperialist terrorists killing British immigrants in Rhodesia
themyth of the prototype -you never get to see the problems and can exist on cosy "what ifs". The TSR was the wrong plane and the RAF knew it; it didn't work and the technology of the time probably meant it wouldn't have worked.
My dad made bits for the TSR2. Also, BAC 1-11, VC10, Concorde and the Harrier jumpjet. When I was about 10, I asked him what it was. He said " basically, it's a flying computer."
I was 10 years of age when this was cancelled, and, to this day, remember my father, ex RAF, being incandescent with rage at the actions of the labour party. Even as a mere 10 year old, i had grasped the simple fact that we needed to be ahead of cold wae enemies. There were similar actions taken by the labour party affecting our land and nayal foces equip,rnent.
I must admit that I thought that it was silly to cancel it but after reading how the RAF began flying the the Buccaneer and found that it had a similar low level range and slightly faster at low level than the TSR2 with a similar bombload. They went flying the F111 and found that the Buccaneer could do the same job at a tenth of the price so they accepted the Buccaneer. However perhaps development of the Buccaneer S.2 / P.150 which was the supersonic Buccaneer would have been the better and cheaper option in the long run for the RAF.
It was disgusting this aircraft was cancelled the main problem was the UK Gov asking for an aircraft to do nearly everything and not thinking that would cost money much like what has gone on with the F35 aircraft. If you LOOK at the real cost the TSR2 would have been cheaper in the long run than using many other aircraft all at once. The UK will NEVER be able to build any of it's own aircraft any time in the future. I was laid off from the new Nimrod aircraft and we were told that was to save money only for the UK Gov to buy the Boeing for the RAF which cost even more and can NOT be refueled by the tankers the RAF have ! Thank you.
I'm an Aussie and grew up in the 80s and considered my self a plane buff. I had no idea the TSR2 existed. I went to IWM DUxford ariound 2006 and saw this sexy white aircraft and wondered what it was - the TSR2 of course. It is one of the best looking aircraft I've seen. Really sad that the government of the day didn't bring it into service.
I've viewed another documentary about this aircraft where it was said the other airframes were burnt and all drawings and development information was destroyed, similar fate to the Canadian Arrow... It cannot be denied that UK was economically 'strapped' after WW2 however the common denominators for both aircraft was USA and the Aardvark .... It was interesting to hear Roland Beaumont .... himself an ex Typhoon pilot of WW2...view on the cancelation... although he was controlled, he was obviously spitting feathers at the police interference......
The F111, ironically, was designed using the research into swing wing technology by Barnes Wallis after the cancellation of his Swallow supersonic bomber project. The same tech was later incorporated into the Tornado.
The TSR-2 was a beautiful aircraft and an impressive airframe. I think lots of people think politicians and economics resulted in the cancellation. But it was cancelled because it couldn’t work. The Ferrari computer- terrain following radar and flight control system operated slower than the aircraft flew because of the limitations of solid state electronics. The reason for the switch to the F-111 was because the Texus Instruments APQ-110 TFR showed more promise - but this still didn’t work. So the prototypes would fly nicely, but it could never deliver its operational mission. It would have had to have been flown manually, at night, at 100 feet altitude… We had to wait another 20’years for low level TFR autopilot electronics to be developed. The TSR2 was then built with ramp intakes rather than conical and variable geometry rather than the blown flaps for STOL - and the production TRS2 was christened the Tornado.
My greatly missed late father always had an angry and bitter look on him whenever the topic of the TSR2 was raised. He said that it would've been one of the best aircraft ever produced by Britain. Since he was a qualified designing engineer I know for a fact that he designed a piece of tooling that was used to make parts for Concorde. So it wouldn't surprise me that either he had something to do with TSR2 or knew the people that did. He never forgave Callaghans short sightedness for the cancellation for the rest of his life.
It was imply too expensive. It tried to do too much. It had significant problems in initial testing and cost far more than even internal corporate estimates.
i met a guy years ago who was ex RAF Security based at Boscombe Down when the TSR2 was cancelled,one of his jobs was to watch every plan,design & paperwork & tooling be burnt & destroyed & racked or buried into the ground,he said to me everyone there was under the impression the Goverment wanted to destroy & remove any existence of the aircraft & that summed up the Goverment at the time
@@Steelbackuk Nah, they were just useless. The Arrow was obsolete the day it rolled out of the hangar, as Sputnik made it to orbit, and the soviets switched to ICBMS instead of bombers The TSR.2 was too late. It would have been in service at the same time as the entry of service of Polaris, making it useless as as strategic bomber. And it would have been too costly as a british F-111 like conventional bomber. For the TSR.2 to perhaps work, it should have been started at the same time as the Mirage IV, and even that would not have guaranteed its entry of service. Britain was going to get Polaris missiles quite fast. The french, on the other hand, needed a stopgap and had no "v-bombers" to rely on
@@Steelbackuk They really didn't. The US had better interceptors than Arrow already in service and TSR-2 wasn't a threat to F-111 sales once the Australian Air Force determined that it couldn't meet their needs. They certainly weren't bad aircraft but this conspiracy stuff is just nonsense and ignores the many, very real issues with both development programmes. Did the Americans cancel the F-108 because of the Arrow, or because they recognised that the need for a Mach 3 long range interceptor that could cruise at 70k feet wasn't enough to justify the immense cost?
Sounds exactly like the Avro Arrow in Canada. Right down to the change in government. Always a mystery how such an old design could compete for decades and new designs!
Nothing in life is perfect, and if it is, rarely stays that way. Still, a beautiful plane that should have been produced, purchased, and put in service.
Part of the ballooning cost came from the forced merger of companies and the poor project management structure. Apparently at one meeting over a relatively minor cockpit layout issue had 30 or so people attending. "this is no good" they said, "next meeting, only people directly involved should be here". At the next meeting, there were 60 people!
Ugly, but then all the UK companies would've been too small to survive spread out and competing for too few contracts post war - the merger was necessary. I'm sure merging so many different companies with different teams, facilities, management structures and work cultures to work together would have been complex at the best of times
"apparently" - weasel words. The reality is that this was a project too complex for any one company and this kind of merger was not only inevitable but the resistance to it was one of the reasons behind the failure of the british aircraft (and other) industry. Hide bound, backwards looking management structures based on class and tradition meant that the companies were not adaptable. Panavia should have started here, if not in the fifties
I'm glad to see that the TSR2 at Duxford has been fully restored to museum standard I saw this aircraft at Duxford in 1983, and it was in poor condition.
To be precise, the advantage of TFR has nothing to do with 'accuracy'. RAF pilots are quite good at flying low-level and can actually use terrain masking rather better than the TFR. This was not a Terrain-Referenced Nav system as emerged many years later. TFR gives you the ability to do it in low-vis or low-light conditions and with the reduced pilot workload; oh and an EW problem. I don't think the rear display was a HUD. A HUD allows you to view flight data while looking out forward, but there was no forward vision in the rear cockpit. The blown flaps didn't use engine exhaust. They used high-pressure air from the compressor stages. The engine being restricted in power wasn't the problem in the initial flights. Rather it was a vibration that manifested at the low power settings used in the circuit that coincided with the resonant frequency of the human eye, rendering the crew almost blind. I was fortunate enough to have met Wg Cgr Beamont and talk about many things, including this aircraft. His opinion was that Wilson was given a choice between funding Concorde or TSR2, and chose the former. Nevertheless, it's great to see Bee and this wonderful aircraft and ponder what might have been.
Vibration matching the resonant frequency of the human eye causing the pilots to become effectively blind? Is this true? If it is that is one heck of a coincidence…
There are two TSR2's in the world and I have seen both! Cosford and Duxford. Cosford is fantastic, not as big as Duxford but it has some planes they do not.
Three things were the main reasons 1. Management was atrocious 2. Australian order fell through when they were conned that the F111 was not far off 3.Cost over- runs that the Government would not cover
By being an 'if only' project we can with inpunity glory in it being a world beater and a true legend. However, it was suspicious that all the gigs were so quickly and deliberately destroyed, preventing any going back.
Nothing was destroyed for 6 months. All of the Blueprints exist, as does the confidential report written in January 1965 by BAC that says the aircraft was totally incapable of meeting the RAF Operational Requirements by some margin. They are all in the BAE Archives at Warton!!!! Its only a World beating aircraft in the eyes of people who actually know cock all about aircraft!!!
When I joined the Projects Dept of Plessey Aerospace in 1956, they were designing the TSR2 engine intake system. It had variable geometry for subsonic air speed at take-off and landing, and convergent/divergent for supersonic airspeed.
People love to harp on about the TSR2 through rose tinted glasses, but the reality is it is an excellent (and rare) example of something that should have cancelled actually getting cancelled. Let's look at it objectively, how would history have been different had it gone into production? The answer is that maybe the Vulcan would have been retired earlier and it would have been impossible for the RAF to strike the Falklands, that's the only difference. The countries that bought US/French alternatives would still have bought US/French alternatives, and the TSR2 would have been retired by Britain before Desert Storm having done nothing of any note ever expect suck up taxpayers money.
But it turned out that it was practically impossible for the RAF to strike the Falklands, given the epic but convoluted refuelling regime needed to deliver Vulcans to the target area. Indeed, one of the Vulcans had to divert to Brazil, because it was unable to refuel, where the authorities confiscated the Shrike missile it was carrying. Despite the heroics, one of the realisations from the Falklands conflict was that the RAF was simply unable to project any significant power over such distances, leaving it up to the Royal Navy who only had subsonic, limited-range Harriers plus helicopters for anti-submarine warfare. The Jaguar and Tornado (on the point of introduction as an interceptor at that stage) were unusable in the Falklands conflict. In fact, beyond the nuclear deterrent which helps the US share their own costs with a willing partner, the UK had effectively been pushed into a specialised role for any eventual conflict with the Soviet Union. I imagine that the cancellation of TSR2, besides all the overt political misdeeds, probably took place in the context of some kind of tacit political acceptance that the UK cede technological development in such realms to the US, just as it had done in other areas of aerospace procurement. Had it been successfully introduced, however, I cannot really see how the TSR2 would have impaired the RAF's capabilities at all. Even the F-4 Phantom that took on some of roles of the TSR2 had been withdrawn from RN service by the time of the Falklands conflict, those being the only ones that would have made any difference. The RAF had no opportunity to bring their own F-4s to bear offensively whatsoever.
Nonsense. It was an excellent (and rare) example of something that should have been cancelled actually getting cancelled. Let's look at it objectively, how would history have been different had it gone into production? The answer is that maybe the Vulcan would have been retired earlier and it would have been impossible for the RAF to strike the Falklands, that's the only difference. The countries that bought US/French alternatives would still have bought US/French alternatives, and the TSR2 would have been retired by Britain before Desert Storm having done nothing of any note ever expect suck up taxpayers money.
@@RJM1011 No it wouldn't because the TSR2 didn't have the range to get to the Falklands. The RAF simply did not have enough tankers to make up for the shorter range of the aircraft compared to the Vulcan.
@@llynellyn TSR2 might have had the range to bomb the Falklands, which the Tornado did not (engine oil would have run out). And we'd have had far more of an aircraft industry left to make the next generation of aircraft. You have to keep your industrial capabilities running, if not they die. We very nearly forgot how to build submarines, and when we restarted for the Astute class we needed a lot of help from the Americans.
@@owensmith7530Any aircraft capable of aerial refuelling could technically get from ascension to the Falklands and back again, however in the case of the TSR2 it would have required the use of more than two times the amount of aerial refuelling tankers than the RAF had in the 80s. This is part of my point, had it been built TSR2 would have made absolutely no impact on history before it's retirement except most likely bring about the early retirement of the Vulcan thus making the retaking the Falkland's significantly harder (as the Argentine Air Force would have been able to fly from Stanley and most likely sink some of the carrier group on it's way to the islands). Cancelling it saved the UK billions and had no ill effects (one plane would not have saved an aviation industry and the financial requirement to partner up for the Tornado, Jaguar, Typhoon, etc would still have existed).
My late father was the chief toolmaker on the TSR2 project at Weybridge (Now the site of the Brooklands Museum) and he took me to see the first flight of the aircraft. Not many people have seen one flying.
Australia considered buying the TSR-2 but in the end chose the F-111 largely because the USA had been our most important ally since 1942. Britain's days as a power in the Indo-Pacific were numbered and Harold Wilson started discussing withdrawal under his "East of Suez" policy on his election in 1965. The F-111 did however have a fine record of service with the RAAF over 40 years and most Australians wish that it was still flying. Elements of the RAAF and Dept of Air in Canberra must also have remembered the difficulty Australia had had in obtaining modern aircraft from Britain during WWII which has been well documented by historians such as David Horner, David Day and Graeme Freudenberg. It is ironic that the British valued Australia as a market for aircraft post war hence the name "Canberra" for the bomber that Australia became the first customer for.
From Hansard, Thursday 10 March 1966. Mr Mulley (Minister of Aviation): "The total cost of ordering 50 TSR2s, on April 1965 estimates, would have been upwards of £475 million of which about £125 million had been spent at the time of cancellation. 50 F111s, at a price of £2½ million each, will cost £125 million, with an additional charge of about £25 million for interest. In reaching their decisions to cancel the TSR2 and to buy the F111, the Government took full account of all relevant factors, including expenditure and liabilities on the TSR2 and differences in support and running costs. The overall comparison, on a ten year basis, shows that 50 TSR2s would have cost about £300 million more than 50 F111s".
and what would the ultimate cost of the F-111's have been? The Australians had already had their fingers burnt buying them, they were rubbish compared to the TSR-2
I always find the discussions of TSR2 funny - there's either geeking out on how advanced it was for its time, or Red Conspiracy theories of why it was cancelled. Or both. Contested narratives indeed. The delicately phrased 'Financial difficulties' mentioned in the video are the real reason and nothing else is necessary to understand the story - the UK was bankrupt, had years of payments for WW2 still ahead, the Empire was gone, no one had accepted this then (some still haven't), and Britain simply was no longer a first rate power able to develop and operate new aircraft as the US could. So finance, not Politics.
Yup. Thank you. I think their were other factors. But, when it came down to it, what mission was the aircraft to fulfill and was it worth the money. It wasn’t. The British and Canadians are smart. Mistakes are sometimes made. My Adderall must be kicking in.
And there was some pressure from the USA for Britain to cancel the TSR2. Some say that they didn't like one of their 'allies' having a better aircraft than they had.
@@steveknight878 I'm not sure about that, seems too self congratulatory. More likely the US simply wanted to sell their own aircraft to the UK, which they did in the end.
Unfortunately a lot of people read histories about the aircraft written before all of the documents about the aircraft were declassified. A friend of mine went through all of the archives both Government and industry. He wrote a book about the aircraft called TSR2 Britain's Lost Bomber. Turns out the people who killed this aircraft were not the Americans, not the Labour Party, Not Mountbatten and the Royal Navy, but the people who were going to buy it The Royal Air Force!!!! The Reason...The Aircraft could not meet the Operational Requirement!!! Turns out that the RAF top brass were fed up to the back teeth with the British Aircraft Industry dumping turkeys on them. Reason the F-111K was canned, it didn't work either, though the RAF were only going to be buying 50 of them as a stop gap until AFVG became operational. RAF only bought 48 Buccaneers in the original buy BTW.
@@steveknight878 There really wasn't. TSR-2 had no real export potential like earlier British jets and the UK's major allies had their own aircraft, many of which would be cancelled as well. Cancellation of TSR-2 was a temporary boost to the F-111, but only a minor one - the RAF only ordered 50 F-111K (less than 9% of total production) and realistically this number would almost certainly have been cut further due to Britain's economic troubles. Whether it was the better aircraft is hard to say considering it was never finished, and the US had various aircraft of their own which could match or exceed its capabilities even if they didn't offer the same package as the TSR-2.
It is said that Moscow told Harold Wilson to cancel the TSR2, not helped by Louis Mountbatten, the unofficial Queen of the Royal Navy, bad-mouthing the aircraft to the Australians, an important potential customer.
RAAF Officers attached to the Ministry of Aviation most likely told the Oz Government the project was a pile of poo. Mountbatten had no effect on the Australians decision to buy the F-111. Who told Wilson to cancel TSR2. It wasn't Moscow, it was Air Chief Marshall Charles Elworthy!!! Who is Elworthy??? He was the Chief of the Air Staff, the Boss of the RAF. Why did he want TSR2 cancelled??? Short answer, it couldn't meet the operational requirement it was designed to met!!!
I remember those days. Most Labour party politicians were admirers of the USSR. You could watch them squirming to avoid saying anything critical of that evil regime.
The TR2 program was not cancelled on cost alone there was considerable pressure from the USA to buy the F111. A system that ended up even more expensive and with far less capabilities. The government were very naive or corrupt. It was well understood that cancelling the TR2 project would have severe negative implication to British manufacturing not only in the aviation sector.
Not really. The F111 had lots of demonstrated performance. It was a true multirole aircraft. As a medium range tactical bomber it had unrefuelled combat radius of 700nm with six tons of bombs. It also had ground attack capability. Maritime strike capability and photo recce capability supported by a top speed of M2.5. It could even be used as a long range interceptor armed with gun and AIM9. In its ultimate variant it was also equipped as a pgm bomber. It also had good flying qualities and as combat aircraft go was pretty safe notwithstanding terrain following capability. On the downside it was expensive to maintain, mainly due to the need for regular costly inspection of its stainless steel central load carrying structure. The upside though was that after initial teething problems serious structural issues were rare.
@@jimgraham6722 _"The F111 had lots of demonstrated performance."_ Oh, that explains why it was call a *Pig* by the pilots then, all that "excess" performance. 🙄🙄
Government was definitely corrupt and that goes for Diefenbaker's government as well. How else would US recruiters be in the CF-105 plant on the *same day* the project was cancelled. MPs in both countries received full brown paper bags for the treachery and the US govt was involved in a lot of skulduggery most certainly with threat against the UK govt and war loan repayments. The US asked for and received on an understanding of _quid pro quo_ all information that was generated regarding speed of sound research. UK handed over all the DH-108 data and the flying tailplane which solved the Bell X-1's stability problem but the Spetics *never* keep their part of the deal. The DH-108 could tale off under it's own power using a jet engine but the X-1 needed a B-29 to haul it up to altitude and then they used a *rocket engine* to push it over the edge. PAH!! UK scientists were deeply involved with the Manhattan Project but were cut off by Truman from receiving any developments with nuclear development. NOFOR after providing so much help creating it plus the plethora of other technology that was handed over beginning with Tizard's well know trip to the old colony in 1940 nearly 18 months before WWII began if you believe the US version. UK also provided vital information about why the BAC-111 couldn't recover from the deep stall and this information was applied the B-727 which was their T-tail version and would have suffered from the same problem.
@@braveworld2707 I flew them, experienced M2.5 and delivered six tons of munitions hi-lo-hi at 700nm. As a tactical aircraft, it's performance in terms of munitions on target, unrefuelled, at range was quite remarkable, but will likely be matched by the F15EX.7
There's a pretty big and important part of the story missing here: the ordered destruction of all of the parts and tooling as part of the cancellation. I would say that this video, whilst otherwise very good, is a rather misleading version of history.
Correct, the video is very PC.. All the jigs and tooling were ordered to be destroyed and its still not known who ordered that ~ surely the people with fat brown envelopes, full of $$$
@@andyb.1026 the video avoids the misty eyed "what if" twaddle and deals with reality. What it also doesn;t mention is the ongoing problems with engines, avionics and the RAF requirements which meant that the TSR was doomed before it flew. Simply, it's a plane we couldn't build and didn't need. But being a prototype, we get to be all nostalgic. It's the aircraft version of Nick Drake
@@stewartellinson8846 Good to here you prefer Reality, just like me, so,, if it was such a "failure" then surely the party that ordered destruction of all drawings, jigs & tools should stand up and take the praise for saving the nation a mint 😀 So then UK ordered the dog of an F1-11 that only the Ausis were gullible enough to buy, the contract cancellation penalties were far more than completing Tsr2, but we had nothing to show 🤔 Then the US palmed us off with another dog F4 with Spay's an awful thing to work on, then old well used knackered version, spares cost a mint... And we still didn't have anything remotely close to Tsr2 The Spec changes were mostly down to MoD, not RAF. Like the automatic fuel system fiasco etc. I've dealt with MoD ! As a result the UK lost its position as a world leading manufacturer and many staff moved to USA. The MoD traitors should have been tried for Treason. France is now the leader in Europe 🇪🇺 so far ahead of UK we will never catch up. I've worked in France 🇫🇷 Actually we did build a few, and the Export potential was excellent, in spite of the idiot Mountbatten. Brown envelopes anyone.. Rolly Beaumont thought is was pretty damn good 👍 Nick Drake ! test Pilot ?
@@stewartellinson8846 the reality was that Roy Jenkins, then Aviation Minister, hated our aviation industry (he was even ejected from a SBAC meeting). Add to that Denis Healey who, together with Wilson wanted to court the US. and then fold in the Americans who, piqued with jealousy, blackmailed the UK with threats of war debt interest rates and IMF loan refusals. There was little 'misty eyed twaddle', but genuine and understandable anger that the aircraft had been, in effect, murdered. Concorde faced a similar crisis with the Yanks and Labour playing central stage, and it was only due to extreme pressure from the French that we continued with the project. Hearing Tony Benn bask in Concorde's glory makes me sick; the man wanted to cancel it.
@@Soupdragon1964 that's a VERY simplistic assessment that completely ignores the historical reality, some of which is mentioned in this video. I'd guess you're good on 'plane stats but haven't actually read much proper history.
When I joined Boeing as an engineer in 1989, my manager and lead engineer were both British ex-pats who had worked on the TSR-2 and lost their jobs when it was cancelled. That brought them to the USA. The cancellation not only cost the UK a superb airplane, but created a massive brain drain. Both remained very passionate about the work they had done.
Its Standard for the British government to be inept with all things to do with our military.
TSR2, as it stood, still had some rough edges to smooth out, but the political will did not exist ar the time. Wilson was in awe of the USA which wanted to sell the F111, a vastly inferior product. And by accepting the F111 the then Labour government put itself in hock to a foreign power
TSR2, fully developed, would have been a world-beater, fulfilling so many different and advanced roles. America wanted to kill TSR2 more than the Russians did at the time! Its cancellation was one of the most wasteful and shameful acts of technological vandalism carried out by a British government and it shames me to acknowledge that it was a Labour decision.
@@royfearn4345 #wibble The country couldn't afford it, nor did we miss not having it.
Did you know the history of the Arrow in Canada ?
Another in a long line of very small thinking by a British government, it's like there's a Newton's law of governance, for every piece of brilliance there's a rather unequal 100 or so bits of unthink...
My grandad worked on the Olympus engines in Bristol back in the day... he spoke very highly of the TSR2 and was very proud of the work they'd done. He was more proud of it than Concorde
One of the technologies being developed by the TSR2 was the use of air holes in the wing to supplement lift, reducing take off speed and distance.
The reason why the Concorde crashed was due to its being forced to use a long runway for take off, forcing it to travel on a runway used a couple of minutes before, an item from the earlier aircraft was sent by the wheels into a wing tank.
If the TSR2 technology had been implemented on Concorde, the lower take off speed, and shorter take off distance, would have made the odds of an incident much lower, and the likely consequences, due to lower speed, much less.
(A number of years of expertise in using such a technology would have made implementation on the Concorde practical )
Concorde was another technical achievement that the USA couldn't match so they bad-mouthed it and tried to sabotage it. Luckily the French had written the contract so that it would cost the UK more to back out than to complete.
Then they tried to get it scrapped as unable to recover its costs. The US poodle known as British Airways didn't want to know until an entrepreneur named Freddie Laker offered to buy it at scrap price and operate it at a profit, only then did BA take an interest. Even then they sold tickets dirt cheap to ensure it made a loss and looked bad. This changed when they put a retiring pilot in charge of Concorde division, possibly thinking he would have no commercial accumen. They were wrong and Concorde became very profitable.
All the problems around the accident had been solved from stronger tyres to self sealing fuel tanks but the US still managed to get it withdrawn (and once again damaged beyond repair, this time by draining vital fluids).
Bear in mind that every time Concorde landed in New York it was a visible reminder to thousands that Europe had achieved something the US couldn't and the USA is not top dog in technology. The lie was revealed - daily!
@@michaeledwards2251 Concorde was another technical achievement that the USA couldn't match so they bad-mouthed it and tried to sabotage it. Luckily the French had written the contract so that it would cost the UK more to back out than to complete.
Then they tried to get it scrapped as unable to recover its costs. The US poodle known as British Airways didn't want to know until an entrepreneur named Freddie Laker offered to buy it at scrap price and operate it at a profit, only then did BA take an interest. Even then they sold tickets dirt cheap to ensure it made a loss and looked bad. This changed when they put a retiring pilot in charge of Concorde division, possibly thinking he would have no commercial accumen. They were wrong and Concorde became very profitable.
All the problems around the accident had been solved from stronger tyres to self sealing fuel tanks but the US still managed to get it withdrawn (and once again damaged beyond repair, this time by draining vital fluids).
Bear in mind that every time Concorde landed in New York it was a visible reminder to thousands that Europe had achieved something the US couldn't and the USA is not top dog in technology. The lie was revealed - daily!
@@JLSMaytham
The US spent more on making wooden mock ups of proposed supersonic planes than the UK did on producing one. (Scientific American)
( Without Frank Whittle the UK would have had no jet expertise whatever : he had to create the 1st engine without being able to test its components before hand due to budgetary constraints. (Life of Frank Whittle) )
How many IDs in operation here? Everyone was there in some capacity or another
I used to work with someone who was ex-Royal Navy and he knew some of the designers and engineers who worked on TSR-2. He said that when the news came through that the aircraft was to be scrapped, those men were in tears because they knew they had a world beater.
It amazes me that a government can deal such a blow to an industry that might have brought in so much technical advancement and hard currency to the economy. I'm sure the U.S. was lobbying hard that the UK should buy TFX/F-111, aka the "wonder plane." Robert Strange McNamara (SecDef) claimed the TFX could the job of just about every kind of airplane. There was a funny satirical drawing in Aviation Week that showed the TFX in all the roles performed by other aircraft. F-111, FB-111, CF-111, KF-111, RF-111, EF-111, A-111, B-111, U-111, TF-111, etc.
@@michaeldelaney7271 - When you reflect that Britain used to lead the world in aircraft, warships, etc. It is immensely sad.
According to Roland Beamont a lot of those engineers went to America when they were laid off.
@@Froghood1When was that? Guess I missed that part
@@AWMJoeyjoejoe Many of the engineers from AVRO went to NASA when the Arrow was cancelled.
The TSR-2 cancellation was a tragedy for UK aerospace but Harold Wilson did me a good turn. Following the cancellation I got the hell out of the UK and joined the US aerospace
industry in California. Sixty-eight years later I'm still there. Thank you Harold, you screwed UK aerospace royally but gave me the impetus to emigrate and find a new career.
Yes, since 1945 the US has done more damage to the UK than any other country on earth.
Screwed the UK economy as they are about to do again. ( the anti semite regime, that is, led by 2 tier kier.)
@@garethdavies2538 I bet you are glad you had the balls to move.
Do you honestly believe UK aerospace would have survived as it was without Harold Wilson's input? Producing what, to sell to whom?
@@owensomers8572 British aerospace would have survived if it hadn't been for Wilson toadying to his overseas masters and if the government had the bollocks to invest in the abilities and skills of it's scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs. As usual, Wilson's government was a pack of useless bean counting, ineffectual bureaucrats. And we still haven't recovered from the likes of him.
My Dad worked on the TSR-2, my Mum worked on the Olympus at RR. When it was cancelled, they said Eff this, we're off to the USA. My Dad worked on C130 and C-5A.. the rest is history.
The same happened with Canada's Avro Arrow, most of the development team was recruited by NASA. It does make us wonder about the US involvement in canceling these projects as they not only get to export more fighters but also gain the expertise.
"F this"?
That is what the US interference behind the scenes was meant to achieve!
They were manoeuvred.
I suspect they ended up at Robbins USAF base in GA. My father very likely knew your father if they did indeed go to Georgia.
@@JLSMaytham
It was less behind the scenes than it appears.
The UK needed an IMF loan to protect the pound, the reason Wilson used the phrase "The pound in your pocket will still be the pound in your pocket" was to try to reassure people : it proved too effective resulting in a backlash.
(I remember him appearing on TV, I can still visualize him as he spoke. In those days TV was still 405 line. )
(The US was likely the cause of the crisis : lend lease was the underlying problem : the UK should have defaulted. )
One of the conditions LBJ imposed on the UK was the destruction of the TSR2. When the planes were being destroyed, men in suits were observed watching. The destruction was done in such a way the US could be certain no trace of the operational TSR2 existed : the drawings and detailed documents were all burnt.
(In those days no digital format existed, once the drawings were burnt, all detailed structural records were lost. Today a USB stick would used to smuggle out them out. )
The US gained all the experts it needed while ensuring the UK had total lost.
The total loss ensured the long term loss of Concorde : had the Air France Concorde been able land on the fields surrounding the runways, the passengers would have had a chance to escape.
(The TSR2 had an undercarriage system which allowed it to land on grass runways : it was part of the spec. )
The reason for the Air France Concorde suffering terminal damage was the high take off speed, and long runway, needed to take off.
TSR2 technology, the use of air holes in the wing to increase lift at low speed by allowing very high angles of attack, would have allowed the use of alternative short runways, and also allowed a much lower take off speed. Both factors would either have prevented the incident, or greatly reduced the damage induced.
Then they opened the Fish and Chips and eats shop?
Great video, loved learning more about the TSR2. Enjoyed that quote from Sir Sydney Camm, as well. It applies equally well to the Canadian Avro Arrow!
The parallels between the TSR2 and the CF-105 Arrow are remarkable. Both were absolutely leading edge technology at the time, and both, in retrospect, would have had a longer service life and probable lower life-cycle costs than their eventual replacements, which were perhaps less satisfactory than the Arrow or TSR2. One could also observe that neither aircraft were of American origin, and American alternatives proved to be too enticing for either the British or Canadian governments. I wonder if the newly-elected British Labour government reflected on the decision made by the Canadian Conservative government six years prior before canceling the TSR2, and how that had worked out for the Canadians.
@@gavinmclaren9416 I think both Canada and Britain were conned into getting out their own military vehicle development and construction in order to become buyers for the American military manufacturers.
@@gavinmclaren9416 The CF-105 was obsolete the day it rolled out of the hangar. Sputnik was in orbit, and the soviets were priorizing ICBMs. It would have died a slow death intercepting soviet maritime patrol aircraft.
The TSR.2's first flight happened on the year the Mirage IV entered service. The Mirage IV had a long career (or more exactly several ones, the stopgap bomber, the "second line" nuclear asset, the renewed nuclear strike aircraft with the ASMP and the closest thing to a SR-71/Recon Mig 25 in service in the non-US west) because the french needed a stopgap and had no "V-bombers" to plug the gap. Britain did not need a nuclear bomber in the like of the Mirage IV as the Polaris were around the corner, and couldn't afford it as a strike aicraft. If Britain pushed on, that means cuts. The Jaguar might have been the RAF's heavy attack aircraft in the likes of the French Air Force. No money for Tornado IDS perhaps. And the TSR.2 would have died a slow death, perhaps not surviving long enough to get a missile in the like of the ASMP.
Get over it and stop whining.
@@gavinmclaren9416 The Arrow had some serious issues that may have prevented it entering service in any numbers even if it hadn't been cancelled. Aside from some serious technical hurdles, it was over budget to the extent that the RCAF would have only been able to afford a few, it had relatively little export market (mostly for the same reason) and that would have driven the cost up even more, and after the cancellation of the Sparrow II there wasn't another missile in the world that would fit into its weapons bay - and no straightforward way of extending the bay the several feet that it would require to fit one.
@gavinmclaren9416 hard to imagine being cheaper than f101s or already existing f106. Though it more or less went the way of the xf108 and the Valkyrie bomber.
Every single aircraft has problems from the start. That is what a testing program is all about. It was a tragedy of epic proportions what happened to TSR-2.
Every single aircraft has problems from the start? Didn't Mutt Somers say 'Don't touch a thing.' after the first flight of the Spitfire?
@@Poliss95 Well, not quite the plane itself having a problem but a rather critical component had an issue: Early Rolls-Royce Merlins had engine cut-outs in steeper dives. Oh, and the .303 proved a bit lacking as an aircraft weapon as the war progressed. Actual problems on the prototype seem to have been the first propellor wasn't as good for airflow lowering top speeds, and the rudders were a bit sensitive.
The only thing this aircraft got wrong was politics!
Simply one of the cleanest lined aircraft ever produced. Absolutely beautiful, but with deadly capabilities. Shame on the labour government of the time of cancellation.
@@Poliss95- Yes, Matt Summers did. That did not mean that the Spitfire was perfect. It meant that the machine provided an acceptable baseline for testing and refinement.
Thank you for this video. My Dad was in the RAF when the TSR2 was being developed. He said they couldn’t wait for it to enter service and they were upset when it was cancelled.
I am sure if he was still alive he would have been grateful for this video. 🇬🇧🇺🇦
HOW TYPICAL OF BRITAIN, THROUGHOUT IT'S HISTORY. WHEN WE HAVE THE TECHNICAL ABILITY AND VISION FOR FUTURISTIC PROGRAMMES, ( JET ENGINE AND RADAR) BUT USUALLY LACK THE FINANCE, AND /OR ABILITY TO RECOGNISE THE IMPORTANCE OF IT.
@@MrDaiseymayTurn off your caps lock.
@@AWMJoeyjoejoe *Yes!!!*
@@MrDaiseymayChill bro , lose the caps
That's odd. Just last week I asked a Lightning pilot of that time what he and his colleagues thought about the cancellation of TSR2 and he said he didn't recall any discussions about it at all.
I am fortunate enough to possess an unused titanium rivet from TSR2. I got it back when RAF Hendon were selling them off for 50p in the gift shop!
Lucky
Rivet, rivet, 🐸
when were RAF Hendon selling bits of planes?
I've got one too :)
I have an unused Titanium screw from the Concorde program!
I highly recommend the Duxford IWM experience. Brilliant!
Thanks, Liam. Another great IWM video! But I have to say, we didn’t “put up” with our Buccaneers! Those of us who flew them, loved them!
True, but at the time the RAF didn't want to order a subsonic aircraft flown by the Navy. They wanted a supersonic aircraft they had specified. The Buccaneer wasn't what they wanted but it was exactly what they needed.
The Buccaneer was probably one of the greatest ever planes in the low-level strike role. No other plane could fly that low and that steady, even the best of the American planes like the F-15 could not catch or detect it as the Buccaneer could fly NAPE tactics like a chopper. THat's why it hung around until 1994 when the last weary airframes were finally retired, there was no adequate replacement for them (the Tornado was useless in the sea-strike capability and poor in the low-level role)
I saw the only 2 tsr-2s on display. This one and the one at raf cosford. What an amazing machine and honour to be a part of the country that developed them
Brooklands also has a cockpit section
Honestly that airplane just from a looks perspective, is just beautiful, even by today standards it looks very sleek and modern
My dad was an RAF pilot from 1943 to 1968 and his pal was the project nav on the TSR2 project. He said it was a brilliant aircraft and far ahead of it's time. Cancelled by the Wilson government and what did we do instead? Bought a load of second-hand Phantoms from the US and re-engined them with RR Speys at some considerable cost. Politicians, what a bunch of wankers. Nuff said.
The Royal Navy FG1's & RAF FGR2 Phantoms were all new build airframes with British engines & equipment. I think you're comment refers to the ex US navy F-4J's that were purchased by the UK in the eighties, to form the RAF's 74 Squadron, as a UK based squadron of Phantom FGR2's were moved to defend the Falkland Islands leaving the UK short of air defense aircraft. Those ex US navy Phantoms bought by the UK retained their original GE J79 engines though. I very much agree with your last statement about our politicians. 😡😱
Good response sir, you've obviously done your homework. Politicians eh?
The Spey was a good engine but so was the J79 which as a straight turbjet had very advanced features. The Spey compromised the F4 airframe. It is doubtful the GR4s had significantly better performance the J79 fitted aircraft
Going through RAF Cosford technical training in the 1980's we had various bits of the TSR2 avionics as training aids. The computers were gears, cogs, cams & synchros; the pinnacle of analogue computing. Many of the flight control components were world-leading technology, including the quadruplex taileron actuator, as re-used on tornado.
The Nav Attack Computers in the TSR2 were electronic and digital (and nowhere near powerful enough to do meet the navigation or attack profiles specified in the operational requirement) every thing else around it was analogue!!!! Auto Stab system was analogue. It never flew in the aircraft as it still wasn't working on the rigs correctly at the time of the aircrafts cancellation. Without it the Aircraft would have gone out of control at Mach 1.5.
@@richardvernon317 thanks for that. Microprocessing was in its infancy tehn, eh? I think I remember a box that was said to be an American bit of digital kit that was integrated into the Nav /Wpns system (but we didn't get taught anything about that, probably due to commercial /security classification). The Motorola 68000 was still quite young & we were trained in rudimentary programming using that too. Lots of analogue Ferranti INAS stuff as well, much of it very familiar when I worked on UK phantoms. As an aside, I went on to work on a few other UK elint platforms that had a surprising amount of American kit & along with that type of training course where you can't take anything home to read & all your notes have to be shredded after passing the exams. Very clever kit though.
A lot reused in US cruise missiles I believe.
@@wirdy1 I'm guessing you were FS training at Cosford. I was there early 80's on the AR side on DE 67 and ended up on Phantoms for most of my career. Definately get what you say about American kit (AWG 11/12 Looking at you!! Big lad!!) That was 4 months at Coningsby I'll never ger back 😅😅
@@wirdy1
Those old analogue systems couldn't be fried with a radiation pulse.
When I started work in the UK Titanium industry in 1970, one of my earliest jobs within the Technical/Quality Control Dept was cleaning up and sorting the display cabinet in the main office entrance foyer. A couple of the items were fusilage components from the scrapped TSR-2 project. I retired in 2009 and was invited back for a look around the factory in early 2024 and hey presto, in the display cabinet one of those same fusilage components that I had cleaned and positioned from TSR-2. Of course, no one there had any idea of what it was or its origins - just a large piece of aerospace Titanium.
The flaps were not blown "by engine exhaust". They were blown by bleed air from the engine compressor.
That makes sense, logicaly the hot engine exhaust blowing through theflaps could cause havoc to adjacent parts, burn wiring and/or boil hydraulics. I;m not an aircraft engineer, I'd welcome an knowledgable comment?
Its an exhaust of sorts, its just not a hot one
@@Jigaboo123456 engine bleed air is still incredibly hot depending on which stage of the compressor it’s taken from
so you lost an engine and you can't safely land anymore? what a great design! sadly wasn't put to production.
It sounds like it was more for stability of the platform, giving that smooth ride it needed for the radar intercept and weapons low down and slow etc. I guess if the air bleed system failed, you would get a much more unstable bumpy ride a lower speeds. But I suspect they had come up with a procedure to be able to land at higher speeds without the blown flaps, i.e. more runway needed in those conditions since it had less lift at slower speeds without the blown flaps.@@petunized
Finally! Please post more of these
I know nothing about engineering, but 50 years later that shape is still stunning.
When you see it in person it really does have presence. A truly striking looking machine
The aircraft that got me into aircraft - A thing of true beauty!
My father was made redundant after this aircraft was scrapped , it affected him and us, as a family at the time.
I have a copy of "TSR2 Britain's Lost Bomber" by Damien Burke. It summarises an RAF report titled Shortcomings of the TSR2 and drafted in October 1964. It listed:
- High cost
- Essentially no conventional strike capability at night or in bad weather
- No real all-weather reconnaissance capability
- Navigation system dependent on accurately mapped fixed points so unsuitable outside Northern Europe
- Useless at altitude over Northwest Europe
- More or less tied to operation from paved runways
- Bad engine tunnel and accessories bays
- Low reliability
- Wing design too heavily biased for crew comfort.
Burke said that the RAF realised that its own requirements had led to an aircraft that did not do what the Service wanted.
yeah this is a story that the British armed forces refuse to learn from. They fiddle with the requirements and the product ends up worse. Excellent aircraft (in the main) don't result from programmes that the Treasury fiddles in (like they did with TSR-2)
Fits with what I heard from inside the RAF. Very negative, for whatever reasons. The RAF was not sobbing.
All of the above are standard problems with any Western fighter aircraft : Russian designs go for simplicity and robustness. For example they used valves : initially laughed at, until it was realized the usage of valves made them immune to Nuclear EMP.
(A Western aircraft would have fallen out of the sky.)
Russian designs assume rubble on the runways : Western ones risk loss of the aircraft before it even takes off. (For Western designs pilot ejection during take off is a necessity. )
Fighter aircraft today are forced to fly low in any protected zone due to missiles being faster than jets.
@@michaeledwards2251 It has to be remembered that no aircraft type ever meets all its requirements in prototype form. The main downfall was government refusal to fund the continued research and development to reach its full potential.
@@mothmagic1
The downfall was the IMF : Wilson had to get an IMF loan to keep the £ stable. LBJ used the opportunity to ensure TSR2 became a total loss : all flying airframes and detailed documentation was destroyed.
(It was observed when the frames were burnt, men in suits were watching.)
This resulted in the loss of Concorde later : the Air France disaster was due to 2 factors
(a) High take off speed, requiring a low runway.
(Wing air holes, a TSR2 technology, would allowed much lower take off speed, allowing the usage of the alternative short runways available at the airport)
(b) Undercarriage weakness,
(Concorde could not land in the fields around the airport giving the passengers a chance at evacuation. TSR2 was designed to be able to land on a grass air field. )
The burning of the detailed plans ensured Concorde could not use TSR2 landing and take off technology.
Because Louis Mountbatten toured the government heads with a suitcase of model aircraft, American and TSR2.
He said 'would you like 4 of these F111s or a TSR2?'
As always, the establishment kills off British entrepreneurialism.
Think radar, the computer, jet engine, fracking.
If my memory serves ....., Mountbatten, being a Royal Navy man, was saying to UK ministers you can have four ( or was it 5 ? ) BUCCANEER's for the price of one TSR2 !
I've been a long time fan of the TSR2 and, if it had gone into RAF service, I could have helped to maintain as my first tour in the RAF was the Bucc. Operational Conversion Unit, No. 237 which, according to some sources, would have been the TSR2's OCU squadron number. If only..... 😪 I loved my 3 years on the mighty "Banana Jet" though. 😍😄
@@wullie3xv923 You are correct indeed
You can include the scramjet to that list Another British invention lost to the USA....
Why wasn't it sold overseas for a profit, then?
@@wullie3xv923 Yes sir you are correct, it was the Blackburn Buccaneer against T.S.R.-2, the us F-111 swing wing with us electronics came later, another Labour costly error, dumbos.
As a layman aviation enthusiast and history buff, I appreciate a documentary like this that has some information density. The ups and downs of aircraft design and production during that time period are such an interesting topic. Looking back, collaboration is the norm but I can only imagine the difficulties of that sort of shift back then. If I ever travel from the US I'll have a hard time hitting all the typical tourist traps when I could soak up a thousand years of military history, each day capped off with a few beers in some random pub, instead. Subscribed to IWM so I'm reminded to see more of your stuff. Looking forward to it!
Great saying about the 4 dimensions. Span, length, height and politics. With the TSR2, they only got the first three right
You forgot the 5th dimension. Money.
@@Poliss95That comes under the umbrella of politics.
John Fairley the Chief Test Pilot for the Harrier at HSA / BAE would disagree with you about the TSR2. In his view it didn't have a big enough span. Anyhow everything about the TSR2 project was declassified in 1995 and it paints a completely different picture to the state of the aircraft to what is in this video!!! The Project was a complete mess. The Aircraft was nowhere near being ready for service and all of the money allocated for R&D had already been more than spent and the budget for actually building the production aircraft was being eaten up at a massive rate. The RAF were hoping to get 300 odd TSR2's. At the time of Cancellation the maximum order the RAF were going to get had gone down to 100-150 and it looked like it would have gone even lower. The Biggest Problem was that the aircraft couldn't met any of the specifications laid down in the Operational Requirement it was built to meet!! The Chief of the Air Staff was the person who killed the project as it had already killed the P1154 and the AW Transport to release funding for the TSR2. The Navy bought the Phantom First under a Conservative Government.
It's a good saying but the issue with TSR-2 was the cost and complexity of its avionics, sensors and other systems that had yet to be flight tested all-up. Its need for computing power was beyond anything that was available and getting these systems to work and play nice with each other would have taken a lot of time and money because it always does. Look at nearly every combat jet and you see the same problem of delays and spiralling costs arising from issues with these systems.
@@richardvernon317 interesting information - I wish YTubers would try to stop passing this off as a world beater when it wasn't and probably could never have been without a massive cash injection that the country couldn't afford.
I absolutely love the TSR2. Looks business from any angle.
Can't really agree on the looks. Like a trainer jet cockpit got fused to a strike bomber jet. It may be functional but it's no looker.
@@TheGrandslam89 Ugly duckling, glad I'm not the only one to notice.
The real reason the TSR2 failed was because I worked on it in a very distant way, the flight simulation side. I didn't realise until much later the devastating effect that I would have on British technical production. I started work in 1960, no qualifications but jobs for reasonably capable youths were plentiful then. One of my early (fairly tedious) tasks was winding special coils for the Blue Streak missile. Gosh yes, we did rockets in those days! The Blue Streak was binned. Later I worked as a wireman for a well known aircraft simulator company, as I said, on the TSR2 simulator. After that project failed I moved on to non-Governmental employment. The cigarette-manufacturing industry proved particularly vulnerable to my destructive touch and I stifled many a promising development programme. The APT was NOT one of mine. That was just the British tendency to half-develop something then let others make money out of it. (Like the jet engine). Please don't misunderstand, I didn't deliberately sabotage these things, it's just something in myself that I don't quite understand. If only they had paid me not to go to work.
A refreshingly original angle! The reverse Midas touch? I think you may have worked on some projects I did too.
I was there at Duxford earlier this year. Standing there, between the TSR2 and York. I had Grandparents who worked on both those actual aircraft.
A proud moment.
Brings back memories of the AVRO ARROW
I worked on the TSR2 project at the English Electric factory in Clayton Le Moors (near Accrington) and was responsible for issuing any modifications eg drawings ,specs etc to the shop floor.I was made redundant when it was cancelled but some good came out of my time there,I met my wife ( married 60 years before i lost her last year) we both worked in the mods section.
At least Airfix made this plane live inside our homes for many decades in the form of a miniature model.
My grandad worked on the engines for this aircraft, his convinced the US bribed the Labour government at the time to cancel the program to prevent competition with the F-15 and F-111 lol.
The Labour government needed the US to guarantee an IMF loan. The price the Americans demanded was the destruction of the TSR2 project.:The US demanded that even the jigs to build the aircraft had to be destroyed. The British aerospace industry never recovered from this, as many engineers involved in the project, left the country…..many to the US.
I hadn't heard of the TSR-2 before, thanks for a great presentation of frustrating history.
When I was an apprentice at Bristol Siddeley Engines I worked on engines for TSR2, Concord and Harrier. We also worked on the rear end fairing, Made of titanium and skinned in waspalloy. When it was cancelled I vowed to leave and never return. I returned to the then Rolls Royce factory in 1980 and had a hand on every engine in the Tornado fleet.
This story sounds like the British iteration similar to the Canadian Avro Arrow story...
Was thinking the same thing while I watched the video. The Arrow was an amazing beast!
@@doberski6855
Both aircraft were. I’d love to see full scale flyable replicas of all cancelled combat aircraft.
It's true, similar, except the arrow flew 7 years earlier than the tsr2 it seems.
@@waynesworldofsci-techsome people at the aviation museum of Calgary are building a flying version of the arrow supposedly.
@@BrennanMartin Think if you check you will find some of the Arrow design team went to British Aerospace companies after the cancellation. As well as NASA and McDonald Douglas, where some of them worked on the F-111 project.
It's an aircraft that has become mythical. I'm very much a fan-boy but I had a sobering discussion with a couple of ex RAF pilots who suspected that some aspects of combat performance would have been poor, such as turn rate because of the very long fuselage (as with the Vigilante). I still think it was a massive lost opportunity for the RAF, export sales and the British aircraft industry in general. Category I flight testing of the F-111 took 8 years and the first squadrons took 3 years to become fully operational; and even then the whole fleet and to be grounded and reworked because of wing-box cracks. With a little more patience and government backing, the TSR-2 would probably have entered into service around 1972, likely with a reduced capability for the first few years - which is the norm today with Block releases. It is interesting to speculate what would have happened to the British aircraft industry though - there would likely have been no Tornado and we might well have ended up purchasing F-15s to replace the Lightning. Would the Typhoon have seen the light of day? Ironically this is a scenario where TSR-2 might have killed the British military aircraft industry in the longer term.
Who were you considering selling it to? Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel?
@@Poliss95 Possibly! It would certainly have has some export success over a 30 year service career. I'd be surprised if there weren't some divergent variants along the way: larger wings; a subsonic simplified version (Jaguar on steroids); a shortened long loiter interceptor (Tornado F.3 role). Who knows. Don't forget it is mythical so anything is possible!
It was not designed for combat, the SR in the name might give you a clue. You could say that about the Vulcan.
It's cancelation was probably the best thing to happen to it's reputation, as it never entered production and problems in service never arose. It's total bomb load of 10,000 lbs (6,000 lbs internal) means it carries less than the F-105 (14,000 lbs), which first flew on 1955, which was when the TSR.2 began preliminary development. However, the TSR.2 first flew in 1964, which was the same year the F-105's replacement (the F-111) first flew. Something equivalent to the F-105 (a 50s jet)being put into service in the 70s, where stuff like terrain following radar and high tech avionics and precision bombing capabilities are king? I'm not so sure the TSR.2 with its tiny wings and minimal hard points and low growth potential would've been very good.
This is a problem with the Lightning too. It began development with the "first wave" of supersonic interceptors, such as the F-102, F-104, but entered service in the same year as the F-4 Phantom and notably inferior. Even comparing to "second wave" interceptors like the F-106 and Draken, the Draken had superior performance and better armament for only one Avon, while the Lightning needed two. Technology back then was maturing so fast that if you waited more than half a decade to put your plane out, it would be obsolete in service.
On the topic of the Lightning, the ultimate F.6 version (the only good one) entered service in 1966, and the V bombers were being denuclearized in 1969 due to polaris, making their whole mission of defending the bomber airbases while they scrambled utterly pointless. The whole low level penetration thing was found to have been bogus after the Vietnam War, but while the Tonka and Vark had the ability to fly high and do precision strikes with guided bombs, I don't think the TSR could.
This kind of "prototype effect" is pervasive in the aviation community, since there is loads of media (ie marketing material) from the aircraft manufacturer about their new supposed super machine, but none of the real life service that also shows the issues the type has.
@@IgnoredAdviceProductions I think you have hit the nail on the head. I love the looks of the plane, and like most aircraft enthusiasts, would have loved to see it go on to serve in numbers. But truth is, it was fatally flawed, and even at the prototype stage there were mounting problems (quite literally; the engines didn't really fit the airframe) that would have taken years to resolve. It's an unpopular opinion, but I do think cancellation was the right thing to do. However, the WAY it was done is appalling, and a terrible indictment on those responsible (though exactly who they were has never been clear). I certainly think the Americans had a big role to play, as well as Mountbatten, who was dead against it. But as you say, its untimely demise elevated it to mythical status, a plane that was never tested against the reality of service life. But at least the two prototypes were allowed to remain somewhat intact.
I’ve been really lucky and have managed to see both remaining tsr2s and it’s just the most lovely and striking aircraft I’d ever seen
It was cancelled as the RAF kept adding new tasks for it to do, the costs of all these changes got increasingly larger so the treasury said "no more" They could have had the Blackburn Buccaneer but turned that down. When the RAF finally did accept accept Buccaneers they grudgingly said that they should not have rejected it, especially not the Super Buccaneer which was an unbelievably magnificent aircraft.
@alexhills38
All aircraft suffer from metal fatigue : parts have to be replaced regularly before the cracking becomes too great. The implied problem is a lack of engine power to drive an airframe of sufficient thickness to allow practical intervals between periods of service.
(This was the problem which caused the Comet crashes : the engines were chosen based on commercial considerations and the air frame lightened accordingly. The knowledge of metal fatigue from WW II allowed a prediction of the expected metal fatigue failures, and they occurred exactly as predicted.
The testing rigs and other actions were all part of a cover up of deliberately flawed design. )
(Frank Whittle protested the square windows which he expected to fail exactly as they did. )
Very interesting.
As a boy I had a toy model of the TSR2 about 12 inches long. It looked odd but I was happy to have it.
I recall that the engines went on to be used for Concorde.
Politician often cancel good projects due to cost but then will throw money for too long at a failure e.g. the Tigerfish torpedo and the army portable radio ( forgotten the name but after 10-15 years still a load of rubbish)
Another great video. Congrats.
The main reason why funding was cut for TSR2 were 2 fold. Firstly, the US Secretary of state Mc Namara used his influence to hold up loans to the UK by the IMF unless we bought the F111. This was also one of the causes of Australia's decision to opt' for the F111 because they couldn't rely on the UK going into production.
Secondly, Mountbatten was going around with photos of the Buccaneer saying he could have 5 Buccaneers for one TSR2, and championing the US cause.
We could have had both TSR2 and Buccaneer but for US politics ( they were bound to support their own industry) and the commonwealth nations which failed to place orders.
My father, former De Havaland/ Hawker Sidley said at the time if we were part of a European Aircraft Industry we could have stood upto the competition and the politics.
It was later the EU that backed the Concorde, al be it via air france and threatened the US ban on concorde would be met with a ban of US aircraft europe wide. Also the Typhoon was similarly threatened with cancellations, however the European countries economies were strong enough to to go it alone.
Now, we are weak as we are outside all the most important economic blocks. To have a credible defence you need a strong economy. Leaving the EU has left us unable to raise the funding required for a modern defence capability..
Leaving the EU was a positive for uk aviation, for got about the Tornado ang Typhoon built /developed with EU partners
@@tonysadler5290 Now we get to the heart of the cancellation.
I was told in 1977 by two navigator instructors at Cosford that they had been designated for the first squadron and had "written their wills". They said they had been totally against it. I was told by another source that at a meeting immediately before the announcement, that was never made public, senior RAF chiefs told the Government they preferred F111. Then by another RAF officer that they had been very sceptical about the ground-hugging radar and didn't believe it would work. Can't verify any of it of course, but that was what was said in private.
The terrain following radar was manufactured by Ferranti. I was a radar engineer and the program manager of the radar used in the Phantom and Eurofighter. I was not directly involved in the radar used in the TSR2 or the Tornado aircraft. However I did interact with my counterparts on these other projects.
The Terrain Following Radar (TFR) has been in development in parallel with that of the aircraft. There were several bench systems and two aircraft had been modified to accept the radar. The slow speed aircraft was a DC3 called Vera (which was latter used in a UK TV programme called Redcoat, loosely based on Freddie Laker). The high speed work was done using a modified Meteor. This was usually flown by Pascal Watson. The TFR worked. The problem was that the electronics of the time were not very reliable and keeping them working was an issue, but this affected all of the aircraft systems at the time.
The terrain following radar for the Tornado also was installed in a test aircraft, in this case a Buccaneer. During my time in the RAF I was in the ski team and our manager was Sqn Ldr Peter Hill. He was a navigator assigned to the project and was injured ejecting when they encountered two Hawker Hunters flying the wrong way up a valley in Wales. In avoiding a collision the pilot pulled the tail off the Buccaneer saving Peter and the pilots of the Hunters, but failed to exit the aircraft, for which he was awarded (posthumously) the Air Force Cross. This radar worked as well.
The test aircraft we used for the Eurofighter/Typhoon radar was a BAC 1-11, which came from Boscombe Down. It had been used in previous trials (for the Sea Harrier etc) and to obtain it, I had to buy a standard BAC 1-II as a swap.
The first version of the radar was optimised for air to air operations. Latter versions included air to surface modes. With AESA, introduced in tranche 3 it has terrain following capability, which works.
Although not designed as a strike (nuclear) delivery system, the Typhoon has the standard NATO interface, so could provide similar capability as the Tornado.
The F-35 has similar capability.
The Tempest currently under development, has all of the above and much more.
The "written their wills" comment, is just a reflection of the times, if the TSR2 aircraft was was launched on a real strike mission, it was known to be a one way trip. Also of course there would be nothing left to return to.
At that time senior officers in the RAF, were basing their judgement on their experience in WWII and had not taken on board the advances in electronic systems. They were still trying to fight the last war and not prepare for the next.
@@christopherrobinson7541 Very interesting. It seems there was a complete disconnect with the squadron personnel that would have to use the technology. RAF was not gagging for TSR2 as is sometimes made out today.
@@MikeLonghurst-m8m The RAF was still very much in love with the concept proposed by TSR.2... they quickly fell out of love with what BAC was actually offering.
My Dad worked at the Air Ministry at the time that TSR2 was being developed.
It shocked everyone when the Government of the day just cancelled what could have been a World Beating Aircraft.
Had to pay for the NHS...
That's Harold Wilson for you
The future of TSR-2 was already in doubt before Labour came to power. Harold Wilson had promised Labour wouldn't scrap it. Everything changed after they won the election and saw the true state of the economy. They had little choice but to make big spending cuts.
The cancellation was decided on by LBJ : Wilson needed an IMF loan to protect the pound. Part of the conditions for the loan was the destruction of the UK aircraft industry.
Washington demanded the UK devalue the pound and support the USA in Vietnam. If they had demanded the destruction of the UK aircraft industry it singularly failed. The cancellation of TSR-2 did not do that and we didn't end up buying the F-111K either. As I said before, the TSR-2 was already in doubt before Labour came to power.
I was an apprentice at the Royal Radar Establishment, Malvern, when the TSR2 was cancelled and the department I was working in was given some of the stock piled components destined for the production of the aircraft. I was given four big power transistors that were intended to drive the motor actuators controlling the flying surface controls. I was going to make a 200 Watt guitar amp out of them. A huge power amp for its time.
Those power amps would have been a massive weakness if used in a combat aircraft of the time as they were germanium transistors which unlike more modern transistors are silicon based. The early germanium transistors had very poor temperature characteristics and were vulnerable to thermal runaway and destroying themselves. In the early 60's many engineers in many fields fell for the dubious promise of the abilities of transistor electronics and in particular power transistors. There was still a long way to go with their development for practical and reliable usage of power transistors. At the time I would have said they were not a good idea for military use amongst many other areas. It wasn't until the late 70's, using better developed silicon transistors, many projects in many areas fell short of expectations.
TSR2 was too far ahead of the available technology at the time. Just one more reason added to all those given here in the comments.
When you consider the IT equipment of the day, I'm far from convinced that the Terrain Following Radar would have worked - at least not for a couple of decades.
They never got the radar on the Nimrod to work.
The USAF had experimental AN/APQ-89 on T-2 Buckeyes as early as 1965. It was well developed in the F-111. You have to remember this was the era of 2nd and 3rd generation radar guided missiles, the principles were well understood and definitely doable with the eras signal processing capabilities.
@@Poliss95 Untrue! It was actually working well in the months leading up to it's cancellation! It *did* have *major* problems and did not work for a long while. They then spent the billions extra to keep working on it and fix these issues- they were mostly resolved but it was not perfect, and it was at this point they then decided to cancel it. The aircraft was serviceable at this point and could have entered service. It did need more work but most of the major work, the stuff that costed the real money, was done. They cost themeselves *even more* by scrapping it right at that point. Scrapping it when it started having issues would have been a valid and correct call *or* letting it continue into service after all the money was dumped into it. But they chose the worst possible option.
😢 this makes cry even to this day. What a lovely aeroplane...well preserved at the IWM. Another example was displayed at RAF Cosford. These I believe are the only 2 surviving airframes. All tools, Jigs and drawings were destroyed. But.... being British, WE adapt and work with what we've got !
The cancellation of TSR2 was Britain's 911.
Anyway,our government said we couldn't afford it so Off into the anals of aviation history it went. An ignominious end to such a fine flying machine....
This superb presentation left out the bit where TSR2 fired up its afterburner on 1 engine and left the Lightening chase plane standing. (And the Lightening wasn't slow by any standards)
RIP TSR 2.
The TSR2 out-competed anything the Americans were working on at that time and was trashed by them in a number of underhanded ways. That same strategy continues today and the ugly hand of malfeasance, clothed in the glove of the much vaunted 'special relationship' can be seen in a number of high-tech British projects over the years. Uncle Sam will not allow competition, particularly from its allies!
It was trashed by highly-placed Brits too - Chief of the Defence Staff for one, a Navy man, who actively persuaded the Australians not to order it, for instance.
According to an article by a test pilot it flew extremely well but it never once flew with fully working electronics a major issue was cooling it all. He said the Government had expected to order an aircraft that worked straight away. Many in the Government were very upset that the company thought they the Government would pay to get the computers working. They thought the company should have just supplied a system that worked. Just as when you buy a car you expect it to function.
@@womble321 given how far they were into the test programme, electronic issues were par for the course, and frankly they were doing quite well, as the issues raised were not dangerous.
I totally agree, and could not have said it better, you only have to look at Concord and how the USA restricted its capabilities regarding where it could fly,
Trashed by high ups in all nato countries is most likely what happened. All those people do is look at their investments and potential profit.. it's vile.
In 1972, in the village of 'St.John', near Plymouth, I met Bruce, one of the former TSR-2 test pilots. He had resigned following the cancellation of the project and was living a quiet life, trying to forget what he termed as 'the worst decision ever'. Every wednesday, in the local pub, Bruce had a lock-in, from 11am to 11pm or so, a great man with many tales to tell, and a huge capacity for the local ales. I had to return to London in 1973 but never forgot Bruce or the TSR-2
A shame that Canada's Avro Arrow and the TSR-2 were both canceled. Had they collaborated to keep both their aircraft flying, they would have had the two best aircraft in the world.
It wasn't a "shame".
It was interference by the US to disadvantage competition.
Boeing recruiters were there the day that Avro Arrow was cancelled. When TSR2 was cancelled they made them destroy all jigs and special tools so that restarting it would not be viable
Boeing and the US government fought long and hard to try to kill Airbus before it was born. US "Capitalism" can't compete so it cheats and lies to maintain profits. Having done it in Europe you don't suppose they could be doing the same thing with China do you? No! Ridiculous, this time they are being honest! (Ha ha ha)
Civil Aviation Instrument Landing Systems in use around the world are US but when bidding for the contract for a standard system the US bid lied about buildings at airports to pretend other systems were less good. It is on record in aviation magazines of the day.
Why?
Not even close. Sorry.
Love your work IWM 👍
Engine exhaust blown across the control surfaces? I don't think so. Compressor bleed air would make more sense. 4:48
My dad was a British Engineer who emigrated to the US. He had several colleagues from his schooling that were involved in the TSR-2 project. He often recounted they told him the biggest fault of the TSR-2 was the landing gear, which hadn't been adequately incorporated into the initial "multi-agency" design, and most of the cost and development overruns that brought about the cancellation of the program were attributable to creating a workable landing gear.
The thing the TSR 2 told us was that the UK economy couldn't support all of the military projects we wished to pursue. It pointed us towards Panavaia and Sepecat; collaborations which produced superb aircraft. Maybe a BAC / Dassault collaboration would have worked as France was producing the Mirage IV
It wasn’t just the TSR2 that was cancelled, they also cancelled the P.1154 V/STOL interceptor and the HS681 STOL transport at the same time, I think it was the cancellation of the P.1154 that led to the purchase of the F-4 Phantom for the Royal Navy and RAF and the cancellation of the HS681 eventually led to the purchase of C-130’s.
I’ve been around the block. Seems like the two beloved, cancelled aircraft from Britain and Canada had a few things in common:
Awesome feats of engineering
Too big
Too expensive
Didn’t fit the mission
US wanted them dead
Awesome007 , As a Canadian I agree . I was only two years old when the Arrow was cancelled but remember my father talking about it and he never forgave Diefenbaker for the cancellation . I also love the TSR2 and it is a pity both aircraft were put in the dustbin .
Never underestimate the ability of the USA to screw its allies particularly with regard to the aircraft industry .
The US didn't need to kill Arrow, it killed itself having become so expensive that it would have consumed so much of the defence budget that Canada's Navy and Army would have been starved of funding. If Canada wasn't going to buy it, nobody else was either - the US already had aircraft that matched or exceeded its specifications and were working on designs that would have left it in the dust. Britain considered Arrow briefly but withdrew our interest before it was cancelled, and there was a similar story with France and the Iroquois engine.
I don't doubt that the US delivered a good sales pitch to various British governments about the F-111 that was probably too optimistic in the way that these programmes usually are, but there's no credible evidence of a US plot to kill the TSR-2 and why would there be? It didn't have the export potential of earlier British jets and realistically the only customer was the RAF so it wasn't competing with US aircraft on the international market. Its cancellation in favour of F-111K would have been a modest US gain but the RAF had only ordered 50 Aardvarks and who knows what that would have been reduced to if the plan had gone ahead, given the economic and currency problems Britain faced at the time.
TSR-2 was really pushing the state of the art and its avionics and systems weren't finished and a complete set of the aircraft's electronics had never been flown yet. The need for computing power had been massively underestimated which resulted in aircraft capabilities being cut back and a lot of this kit was pushing the state of the art Given the extent that these systems tend to drive cost overruns and delays time and again - look at the Foxhunter radar in the Tornado which was meant to be ready by 1982, only entered service in 1985 after a 63% cost overrun with a version that didn't meet the initial or revised requirements of the RAF, and it was after the first Gulf War that updated versions of the radar achieved the required spec. TSR-2 was pushing the limits of technology even more and on multiple systems so combine that with already high costs and a background of economic issues and it was always going to struggle to survive. Had it done so, it would probably have suffered the same criticism about delays, cost, not meeting requirements, still waiting for vital upgrades, etc that most other production combat jets have faced at some point.
Virtually all new aircraft designs go over budget and to be fair the US is one of the few countries that have virtually unlimited funds and also the best lobbyist in the world . Much of the airline industry has been kept afloat by having adjacent defence work as well as a producing passenger planes . Neither the UK or Canada has the defence influence to compete with Washington defence lobbyists . @@trolleriffic
@@trolleriffic If the USA and Canada had bought Arrow, that would have markedly changed the programs chances for success. Same for the TSR-2, if the USA and UK had bought the aircraft ... that would have been a whole new ball-game. Also, computers were about to take a huge leap forward in technology, shortly after TSR-2's first flight. We had integrated circuits coming along in our U.S. aircraft and space programs. For example, Apollo went around the moon in 1968. So if the USA had been a partner in the TSR-2 build, a Mk II version would have probably had some significant avionics upgrades. And, maybe some slight increase in wing area, along with the application the "area rule" to the fuselage (as flown on the F-104 & F-102 in '54). Purchase by the USAF would also have vastly increase the production numbers and greatly lowered unit fly-away cost.
youtube finally got a recommendation right. Brilliant.
As an alternate to the TSR2 the Dassault Mirage IV was considered by both the UK and Australia. In the end the French never exported the Mirage IV although co-operation with the UK was considered. This would have resulted in a version more suited to RAF requirements. The Government asked if the technical issues with TSR2 could be resolved and were told yes. When they asked how much it would cost and how long it would take they couldn't get a firm answer. Needless to say that didn't help.
The French needed a stopgap bomber before the advent of the land and sub based nuclear missiles. That's why the Mirage IV existed. Britain, on the other hand, could see the Polaris right around the corner as the TSR.2 made its first flight. It would have been useless as a nuclear bomber, and too expensive as a conventional one.
The Mirage IV began to agonize quite quickly. It became a second line nuclear asset quickly. Its only real usefulness during the middle of its career was as a photo recon aircraft. And then it became useful again for ten years when it got the ASMP, before finishing its career in the photo recon role again
BAC tried to get the RAF to accept the TSR2 into service with a max speed of Mach 1.5 (The R22 Olympus could actually only get the aircraft up to Mach 1.8 had the engine been able to handle the same compressor inlet Temperature as Concorde or any other Mach 2 jet at the time (which was 127 Degrees C). To do Mach 2 the CIT was 148 Degrees C for TSR2 because of the inlet design. To Go faster than Mach 1,5m, the TSR 2 need an automatic stabilisation system. The ones on the rigs don't work that well and a lot more development work is required. The RAF actually knocked a lot of the specifications back as regards Speed, Range, altitude and removed the requirements for automatic terrain following and the capability's of the Nav Attack system for a fixed price buy of 150 aircraft. BAC refused to take them up on the offer so when Healy was offered 50 F-111's on a fixed price contract, He told the RAF and the Chief of the AIr Staff said BUY THEM!!
Dassault was open to cooperation for the Mirage IV, RAF was interested but the Parliament rejected it. For some reasons they preferred the F-111K (not technical reasons). Now I wonder how many of them received “incentives” from the US
The TSR2 was undeniably a great aircraft and suited Great Britain's needs because of the closeness of any potential threats, to be financially viable there was a need to manufacture more than just Great Britains requirements, and as very expensive item there were only a few possible buyers, but most other countries in the world needed an aircraft with a greater range, the F111 fulfilled this role by having at least 4 times the range, thus America and Australia procured these aircraft instead. It is a great pity that the British having the production line going did not finish the project, at least for their own requirements.
The Canberra was a good aircraft in its day in a high altitude reconaissance role. As a bomber it was pretty much useless, as it could not carry the bomb load that Soviet and American aircraft could.
During the Vietnam War, the Australian Airforce (RAAF) deployed Canberras to routinely bomb the Ho Chi Minh trail, over which munitions from China were trucked into Vietnam. The North Vietnamese never bothered too much about downing the Canberrras. They simply drove their trucks off the road and under the canopy when the Canberras were coming, the Canberras with their little bombs blew craters in the road, and then the Vietnamese got out their shovels and in a couple of hours filled the craters in and resumed their deliveries. The Vietnamese apparently thought that if they destroyed the limitted number of Canberras available, the Americans would take over and use really big bombs and make the road unusable.
The Americans never made the Ho Chi Minh trail “unusable” through bombing or otherwise. They even invaded Cambodia to attempt this late in the war. They dropped more bombs on it than the entire Second World War and still didn’t stop the Vietnamese achieving liberation.
@@kiwifruitpoo The incompetent US General in charge of the US effort in Vietnam, Gen Westmoreland, assigned responsibility for wrecking the Ho Chi Minh trail to the Australians, who used their useless Canberra bombers to churn up the dirt.
It would have been difficult for the US to win in Vietnam, given they had no real support from the locals, but why the US put Westmoreland, a known idiot "rock painter" obsessed with statistics, is a bit of a mystery. With him in charge the US had no hope.
Two Australian Canberras where shot down in Vietnam, by SA2.
My grandparent's neighbor when I was growing up was a Canberra driver, a special USAF one that was modified to run on H2 instead of JP8. Got drilled over NV by SA-2 and spent a long hitch in Hanoi. Cool guy. He loved the aircraft.
It seems the British governments have always let us down and still are. Mr Wilson was so far forward looking he had all the tooling smashed.I appreciate that the navy and RAF had different requirements. Great video, great aircraft!
There is footage of the vandalism that the rulers of the day insisted be perpetrated. It was utterly despicable and shows a contempt for the intellectual effort and hard work that went into making this aircraft. But then, this is the way of the British establishment: penny-wise but pound-foolish, except when it comes to their own vanity projects.
Britain also gave up its own orbital launcher programme at the invitation of the US, only to have to pay through the nose to get access to launches. This consumerist "buy it in" mantra led to the aborted, wasteful procurement effort around the F111 - of course it had to be a special variant, just like all the other kit Britain buys from the US - and indeed explains the broader predicament of the country today. Once you don't build and make stuff any more and your vendors realise it, what leverage do you have over the price, even if you are an eager little consumer?
The biggest act of vandalism was not developing the Supersonic Buccaneer
Wilson was a Soviet stooge, whilst destroying British defence industry he was supporting Russian Imperialist terrorists killing British immigrants in Rhodesia
themyth of the prototype -you never get to see the problems and can exist on cosy "what ifs".
The TSR was the wrong plane and the RAF knew it; it didn't work and the technology of the time probably meant it wouldn't have worked.
@@heybabycometobutthead British immigrants in Rhodesia? You mean British invaders surely?
My dad made bits for the TSR2. Also, BAC 1-11, VC10, Concorde and the Harrier jumpjet. When I was about 10, I asked him what it was. He said " basically, it's a flying computer."
I was 10 years of age when this was cancelled, and, to this day, remember my father, ex RAF, being incandescent with rage at the actions of the labour party. Even as a mere 10 year old, i had grasped the simple fact that we needed to be ahead of cold wae enemies. There were similar actions taken by the labour party affecting our land and nayal foces equip,rnent.
SO well explained! Thanks!
I must admit that I thought that it was silly to cancel it but after reading how the RAF began flying the the Buccaneer and found that it had a similar low level range and slightly faster at low level than the TSR2 with a similar bombload. They went flying the F111 and found that the Buccaneer could do the same job at a tenth of the price so they accepted the Buccaneer. However perhaps development of the Buccaneer S.2 / P.150 which was the supersonic Buccaneer would have been the better and cheaper option in the long run for the RAF.
License production of Mirage IV was the best option possible.
French airframe + British engines and avionics could become descent export product.
The buccs problem was the wings fell off.
@@jimgraham6722 That was the MK2, the wings developed cracks after many years of flight.
It was disgusting this aircraft was cancelled the main problem was the UK Gov asking for an aircraft to do nearly everything and not thinking that would cost money much like what has gone on with the F35 aircraft. If you LOOK at the real cost the TSR2 would have been cheaper in the long run than using many other aircraft all at once. The UK will NEVER be able to build any of it's own aircraft any time in the future. I was laid off from the new Nimrod aircraft and we were told that was to save money only for the UK Gov to buy the Boeing for the RAF which cost even more and can NOT be refueled by the tankers the RAF have !
Thank you.
looks like the Canadian AVRO Arrow.
I'm an Aussie and grew up in the 80s and considered my self a plane buff. I had no idea the TSR2 existed. I went to IWM DUxford ariound 2006 and saw this sexy white aircraft and wondered what it was - the TSR2 of course. It is one of the best looking aircraft I've seen.
Really sad that the government of the day didn't bring it into service.
I've viewed another documentary about this aircraft where it was said the other airframes were burnt and all drawings and development information was destroyed, similar fate to the Canadian Arrow... It cannot be denied that UK was economically 'strapped' after WW2 however the common denominators for both aircraft was USA and the Aardvark .... It was interesting to hear Roland Beaumont .... himself an ex Typhoon pilot of WW2...view on the cancelation... although he was controlled, he was obviously spitting feathers at the police interference......
The F111, ironically, was designed using the research into swing wing technology by Barnes Wallis after the cancellation of his Swallow supersonic bomber project. The same tech was later incorporated into the Tornado.
The TSR-2 was a beautiful aircraft and an impressive airframe. I think lots of people think politicians and economics resulted in the cancellation. But it was cancelled because it couldn’t work. The Ferrari computer- terrain following radar and flight control system operated slower than the aircraft flew because of the limitations of solid state electronics. The reason for the switch to the F-111 was because the Texus Instruments APQ-110 TFR showed more promise - but this still didn’t work.
So the prototypes would fly nicely, but it could never deliver its operational mission. It would have had to have been flown manually, at night, at 100 feet altitude…
We had to wait another 20’years for low level TFR autopilot electronics to be developed. The TSR2 was then built with ramp intakes rather than conical and variable geometry rather than the blown flaps for STOL - and the production TRS2 was christened the Tornado.
it looks so much like the canadian avro arrow intercepter from the 50s
I was on a course in London back then and I remember there were boxes of TSR2 bits for sale outside a surplus store in Soho.
My greatly missed late father always had an angry and bitter look on him whenever the topic of the TSR2 was raised. He said that it would've been one of the best aircraft ever produced by Britain. Since he was a qualified designing engineer I know for a fact that he designed a piece of tooling that was used to make parts for Concorde. So it wouldn't surprise me that either he had something to do with TSR2 or knew the people that did. He never forgave Callaghans short sightedness for the cancellation for the rest of his life.
It was imply too expensive. It tried to do too much. It had significant problems in initial testing and cost far more than even internal corporate estimates.
@@peteconrad2077 which is always the case for something that will change the battlefield
@@nade5557 it wouldn’t really change significantly more than subsequent acquisitions that replaced it.
i met a guy years ago who was ex RAF Security based at Boscombe Down when the TSR2 was cancelled,one of his jobs was to watch every plan,design & paperwork & tooling be burnt & destroyed & racked or buried into the ground,he said to me everyone there was under the impression the Goverment wanted to destroy & remove any existence of the aircraft & that summed up the Goverment at the time
TSR2 and Arrow. Two what iff's....
And two aircraft that scared the Americans
@@Steelbackuk Nah, they were just useless.
The Arrow was obsolete the day it rolled out of the hangar, as Sputnik made it to orbit, and the soviets switched to ICBMS instead of bombers
The TSR.2 was too late. It would have been in service at the same time as the entry of service of Polaris, making it useless as as strategic bomber. And it would have been too costly as a british F-111 like conventional bomber.
For the TSR.2 to perhaps work, it should have been started at the same time as the Mirage IV, and even that would not have guaranteed its entry of service. Britain was going to get Polaris missiles quite fast. The french, on the other hand, needed a stopgap and had no "v-bombers" to rely on
@@Steelbackuk They really didn't. The US had better interceptors than Arrow already in service and TSR-2 wasn't a threat to F-111 sales once the Australian Air Force determined that it couldn't meet their needs. They certainly weren't bad aircraft but this conspiracy stuff is just nonsense and ignores the many, very real issues with both development programmes. Did the Americans cancel the F-108 because of the Arrow, or because they recognised that the need for a Mach 3 long range interceptor that could cruise at 70k feet wasn't enough to justify the immense cost?
Sounds exactly like the Avro Arrow in Canada. Right down to the change in government. Always a mystery how such an old design could compete for decades and new designs!
The labour party were responsible for cancelling this contract. The answer is do not trust the labour party.
Have you looked at the defence cuts the Tories have made?
Nothing in life is perfect, and if it is, rarely stays that way. Still, a beautiful plane that should have been produced, purchased, and put in service.
Part of the ballooning cost came from the forced merger of companies and the poor project management structure. Apparently at one meeting over a relatively minor cockpit layout issue had 30 or so people attending. "this is no good" they said, "next meeting, only people directly involved should be here". At the next meeting, there were 60 people!
that's British 1950s and 1960s bureaucracy and management for you!
Ugly, but then all the UK companies would've been too small to survive spread out and competing for too few contracts post war - the merger was necessary.
I'm sure merging so many different companies with different teams, facilities, management structures and work cultures to work together would have been complex at the best of times
"apparently" - weasel words. The reality is that this was a project too complex for any one company and this kind of merger was not only inevitable but the resistance to it was one of the reasons behind the failure of the british aircraft (and other) industry. Hide bound, backwards looking management structures based on class and tradition meant that the companies were not adaptable. Panavia should have started here, if not in the fifties
I'm glad to see that the TSR2 at Duxford has been fully restored to museum standard
I saw this aircraft at Duxford in 1983, and it was in poor condition.
To be precise, the advantage of TFR has nothing to do with 'accuracy'. RAF pilots are quite good at flying low-level and can actually use terrain masking rather better than the TFR. This was not a Terrain-Referenced Nav system as emerged many years later. TFR gives you the ability to do it in low-vis or low-light conditions and with the reduced pilot workload; oh and an EW problem.
I don't think the rear display was a HUD. A HUD allows you to view flight data while looking out forward, but there was no forward vision in the rear cockpit.
The blown flaps didn't use engine exhaust. They used high-pressure air from the compressor stages.
The engine being restricted in power wasn't the problem in the initial flights. Rather it was a vibration that manifested at the low power settings used in the circuit that coincided with the resonant frequency of the human eye, rendering the crew almost blind.
I was fortunate enough to have met Wg Cgr Beamont and talk about many things, including this aircraft. His opinion was that Wilson was given a choice between funding Concorde or TSR2, and chose the former.
Nevertheless, it's great to see Bee and this wonderful aircraft and ponder what might have been.
Vibration matching the resonant frequency of the human eye causing the pilots to become effectively blind? Is this true? If it is that is one heck of a coincidence…
@@MischeifMakerz yes true. He had to modulate the throttles till he could see😳
@@timgosling6189 Absolutely true. every time he flew the aircraft it tried to shake his eyeballs out!!!
There are two TSR2's in the world and I have seen both!
Cosford and Duxford.
Cosford is fantastic, not as big as Duxford but it has some planes they do not.
I have been to Duxford many times (museum and airshows) but haven't been to Cosford but hopefully will in the future.
Me too!
Well done. Your contribution to the British aircraft industry is magnificent.
Three things were the main reasons
1. Management was atrocious
2. Australian order fell through when they were conned that the F111 was not far off
3.Cost over- runs that the Government would not cover
By being an 'if only' project we can with inpunity glory in it being a world beater and a true legend. However, it was suspicious that all the gigs were so quickly and deliberately destroyed, preventing any going back.
The jigs were stored at the old Aston Down air base near Stroud for some time.
Nothing was destroyed for 6 months. All of the Blueprints exist, as does the confidential report written in January 1965 by BAC that says the aircraft was totally incapable of meeting the RAF Operational Requirements by some margin. They are all in the BAE Archives at Warton!!!! Its only a World beating aircraft in the eyes of people who actually know cock all about aircraft!!!
When I joined the Projects Dept of Plessey Aerospace in 1956, they were designing the TSR2 engine intake system. It had variable geometry for subsonic air speed at take-off and landing, and convergent/divergent for supersonic airspeed.
The small island nation of Britain likes to drown itself in nostalgia and it is ‘poisoned’ with ‘colonial arrogance’ and ‘dreamy jingoism’.
Knob.
People love to harp on about the TSR2 through rose tinted glasses, but the reality is it is an excellent (and rare) example of something that should have cancelled actually getting cancelled. Let's look at it objectively, how would history have been different had it gone into production? The answer is that maybe the Vulcan would have been retired earlier and it would have been impossible for the RAF to strike the Falklands, that's the only difference. The countries that bought US/French alternatives would still have bought US/French alternatives, and the TSR2 would have been retired by Britain before Desert Storm having done nothing of any note ever expect suck up taxpayers money.
But it turned out that it was practically impossible for the RAF to strike the Falklands, given the epic but convoluted refuelling regime needed to deliver Vulcans to the target area. Indeed, one of the Vulcans had to divert to Brazil, because it was unable to refuel, where the authorities confiscated the Shrike missile it was carrying.
Despite the heroics, one of the realisations from the Falklands conflict was that the RAF was simply unable to project any significant power over such distances, leaving it up to the Royal Navy who only had subsonic, limited-range Harriers plus helicopters for anti-submarine warfare. The Jaguar and Tornado (on the point of introduction as an interceptor at that stage) were unusable in the Falklands conflict.
In fact, beyond the nuclear deterrent which helps the US share their own costs with a willing partner, the UK had effectively been pushed into a specialised role for any eventual conflict with the Soviet Union. I imagine that the cancellation of TSR2, besides all the overt political misdeeds, probably took place in the context of some kind of tacit political acceptance that the UK cede technological development in such realms to the US, just as it had done in other areas of aerospace procurement.
Had it been successfully introduced, however, I cannot really see how the TSR2 would have impaired the RAF's capabilities at all. Even the F-4 Phantom that took on some of roles of the TSR2 had been withdrawn from RN service by the time of the Falklands conflict, those being the only ones that would have made any difference. The RAF had no opportunity to bring their own F-4s to bear offensively whatsoever.
The cancellation of TSR2 was a tragedy, and one that we are still paying for given what little of our aircraft industry Britain has left.
Nonsense. It was an excellent (and rare) example of something that should have been cancelled actually getting cancelled. Let's look at it objectively, how would history have been different had it gone into production? The answer is that maybe the Vulcan would have been retired earlier and it would have been impossible for the RAF to strike the Falklands, that's the only difference. The countries that bought US/French alternatives would still have bought US/French alternatives, and the TSR2 would have been retired by Britain before Desert Storm having done nothing of any note ever expect suck up taxpayers money.
@@llynellyn If the UK had the TSR2 in the Falklands war it would have been a lot BETTER for the UK !
@@RJM1011 No it wouldn't because the TSR2 didn't have the range to get to the Falklands. The RAF simply did not have enough tankers to make up for the shorter range of the aircraft compared to the Vulcan.
@@llynellyn TSR2 might have had the range to bomb the Falklands, which the Tornado did not (engine oil would have run out). And we'd have had far more of an aircraft industry left to make the next generation of aircraft. You have to keep your industrial capabilities running, if not they die. We very nearly forgot how to build submarines, and when we restarted for the Astute class we needed a lot of help from the Americans.
@@owensmith7530Any aircraft capable of aerial refuelling could technically get from ascension to the Falklands and back again, however in the case of the TSR2 it would have required the use of more than two times the amount of aerial refuelling tankers than the RAF had in the 80s. This is part of my point, had it been built TSR2 would have made absolutely no impact on history before it's retirement except most likely bring about the early retirement of the Vulcan thus making the retaking the Falkland's significantly harder (as the Argentine Air Force would have been able to fly from Stanley and most likely sink some of the carrier group on it's way to the islands). Cancelling it saved the UK billions and had no ill effects (one plane would not have saved an aviation industry and the financial requirement to partner up for the Tornado, Jaguar, Typhoon, etc would still have existed).
My late father was the chief toolmaker on the TSR2 project at Weybridge (Now the site of the Brooklands Museum) and he took me to see the first flight of the aircraft. Not many people have seen one flying.
Australia considered buying the TSR-2 but in the end chose the F-111 largely because the USA had been our most important ally since 1942. Britain's days as a power in the Indo-Pacific were numbered and Harold Wilson started discussing withdrawal under his "East of Suez" policy on his election in 1965.
The F-111 did however have a fine record of service with the RAAF over 40 years and most Australians wish that it was still flying.
Elements of the RAAF and Dept of Air in Canberra must also have remembered the difficulty Australia had had in obtaining modern aircraft from Britain during WWII which has been well documented by historians such as David Horner, David Day and Graeme Freudenberg. It is ironic that the British valued Australia as a market for aircraft post war hence the name "Canberra" for the bomber that Australia became the first customer for.
But the F111 was only a drawing board stage when Australia cancelled the TSR2 Contract.
From Hansard, Thursday 10 March 1966. Mr Mulley (Minister of Aviation): "The total cost of ordering 50 TSR2s, on April 1965 estimates, would have been upwards of £475 million of which about £125 million had been spent at the time of cancellation. 50 F111s, at a price of £2½ million each, will cost £125 million, with an additional charge of about £25 million for interest. In reaching their decisions to cancel the TSR2 and to buy the F111, the Government took full account of all relevant factors, including expenditure and liabilities on the TSR2 and differences in support and running costs. The overall comparison, on a ten year basis, shows that 50 TSR2s would have cost about £300 million more than 50 F111s".
and what would the ultimate cost of the F-111's have been? The Australians had already had their fingers burnt buying them, they were rubbish compared to the TSR-2
I always find the discussions of TSR2 funny - there's either geeking out on how advanced it was for its time, or Red Conspiracy theories of why it was cancelled. Or both. Contested narratives indeed. The delicately phrased 'Financial difficulties' mentioned in the video are the real reason and nothing else is necessary to understand the story - the UK was bankrupt, had years of payments for WW2 still ahead, the Empire was gone, no one had accepted this then (some still haven't), and Britain simply was no longer a first rate power able to develop and operate new aircraft as the US could. So finance, not Politics.
Yup. Thank you. I think their were other factors. But, when it came down to it, what mission was the aircraft to fulfill and was it worth the money. It wasn’t. The British and Canadians are smart. Mistakes are sometimes made. My Adderall must be kicking in.
And there was some pressure from the USA for Britain to cancel the TSR2. Some say that they didn't like one of their 'allies' having a better aircraft than they had.
@@steveknight878 I'm not sure about that, seems too self congratulatory. More likely the US simply wanted to sell their own aircraft to the UK, which they did in the end.
Unfortunately a lot of people read histories about the aircraft written before all of the documents about the aircraft were declassified. A friend of mine went through all of the archives both Government and industry. He wrote a book about the aircraft called TSR2 Britain's Lost Bomber. Turns out the people who killed this aircraft were not the Americans, not the Labour Party, Not Mountbatten and the Royal Navy, but the people who were going to buy it The Royal Air Force!!!! The Reason...The Aircraft could not meet the Operational Requirement!!! Turns out that the RAF top brass were fed up to the back teeth with the British Aircraft Industry dumping turkeys on them. Reason the F-111K was canned, it didn't work either, though the RAF were only going to be buying 50 of them as a stop gap until AFVG became operational. RAF only bought 48 Buccaneers in the original buy BTW.
@@steveknight878 There really wasn't. TSR-2 had no real export potential like earlier British jets and the UK's major allies had their own aircraft, many of which would be cancelled as well. Cancellation of TSR-2 was a temporary boost to the F-111, but only a minor one - the RAF only ordered 50 F-111K (less than 9% of total production) and realistically this number would almost certainly have been cut further due to Britain's economic troubles. Whether it was the better aircraft is hard to say considering it was never finished, and the US had various aircraft of their own which could match or exceed its capabilities even if they didn't offer the same package as the TSR-2.
The thing here is its not about success but maintaing but maintaining British igenuity which is priceless.
It is said that Moscow told Harold Wilson to cancel the TSR2, not helped by Louis Mountbatten, the unofficial Queen of the Royal Navy, bad-mouthing the aircraft to the Australians, an important potential customer.
It is said that you're making things up.
Cobblers.
RAAF Officers attached to the Ministry of Aviation most likely told the Oz Government the project was a pile of poo. Mountbatten had no effect on the Australians decision to buy the F-111. Who told Wilson to cancel TSR2. It wasn't Moscow, it was Air Chief Marshall Charles Elworthy!!! Who is Elworthy??? He was the Chief of the Air Staff, the Boss of the RAF. Why did he want TSR2 cancelled??? Short answer, it couldn't meet the operational requirement it was designed to met!!!
I remember those days. Most Labour party politicians were admirers of the USSR. You could watch them squirming to avoid saying anything critical of that evil regime.
@@ceciljohnrhodes4987 Fact. Too close to home?
Marvellous and educational. Thanks
The TR2 program was not cancelled on cost alone there was considerable pressure from the USA to buy the F111. A system that ended up even more expensive and with far less capabilities. The government were very naive or corrupt. It was well understood that cancelling the TR2 project would have severe negative implication to
British manufacturing not only in the aviation sector.
Not really.
The F111 had lots of demonstrated performance.
It was a true multirole aircraft. As a medium range tactical bomber it had unrefuelled combat radius of 700nm with six tons of bombs.
It also had ground attack capability. Maritime strike capability and photo recce capability supported by a top speed of M2.5.
It could even be used as a long range interceptor armed with gun and AIM9.
In its ultimate variant it was also equipped as a pgm bomber.
It also had good flying qualities and as combat aircraft go was pretty safe notwithstanding terrain following capability.
On the downside it was expensive to maintain, mainly due to the need for regular costly inspection of its stainless steel central load carrying structure. The upside though was that after initial teething problems serious structural issues were rare.
@@jimgraham6722 _"The F111 had lots of demonstrated performance."_ Oh, that explains why it was call a *Pig* by the pilots then, all that "excess" performance. 🙄🙄
Government was definitely corrupt and that goes for Diefenbaker's government as well. How else would US recruiters be in the CF-105 plant on the *same day* the project was cancelled.
MPs in both countries received full brown paper bags for the treachery and the US govt was involved in a lot of skulduggery most certainly with threat against the UK govt and war loan repayments.
The US asked for and received on an understanding of _quid pro quo_ all information that was generated regarding speed of sound research. UK handed over all the DH-108 data and the flying tailplane which solved the Bell X-1's stability problem but the Spetics *never* keep their part of the deal. The DH-108 could tale off under it's own power using a jet engine but the X-1 needed a B-29 to haul it up to altitude and then they used a *rocket engine* to push it over the edge. PAH!! UK scientists were deeply involved with the Manhattan Project but were cut off by Truman from receiving any developments with nuclear development. NOFOR after providing so much help creating it plus the plethora of other technology that was handed over beginning with Tizard's well know trip to the old colony in 1940 nearly 18 months before WWII began if you believe the US version.
UK also provided vital information about why the BAC-111 couldn't recover from the deep stall and this information was applied the B-727 which was their T-tail version and would have suffered from the same problem.
@@braveworld2707 I flew them, experienced M2.5 and delivered six tons of munitions hi-lo-hi at 700nm. As a tactical aircraft, it's performance in terms of munitions on target, unrefuelled, at range was quite remarkable, but will likely be matched by the F15EX.7
Worked on making parts for it.
What a plane. Great British engineering following the Lightning.
There's a pretty big and important part of the story missing here: the ordered destruction of all of the parts and tooling as part of the cancellation. I would say that this video, whilst otherwise very good, is a rather misleading version of history.
Correct, the video is very PC.. All the jigs and tooling were ordered to be destroyed and its still not known who ordered that ~ surely the people with fat brown envelopes, full of $$$
@@andyb.1026 the video avoids the misty eyed "what if" twaddle and deals with reality. What it also doesn;t mention is the ongoing problems with engines, avionics and the RAF requirements which meant that the TSR was doomed before it flew. Simply, it's a plane we couldn't build and didn't need. But being a prototype, we get to be all nostalgic. It's the aircraft version of Nick Drake
@@stewartellinson8846 Good to here you prefer Reality, just like me, so,,
if it was such a "failure" then surely the party that ordered destruction of all drawings, jigs & tools should stand up and take the praise for saving the nation a mint 😀
So then UK ordered the dog of an F1-11 that only the Ausis were gullible enough to buy, the contract cancellation penalties were far more than completing Tsr2, but we had nothing to show 🤔
Then the US palmed us off with another dog F4 with Spay's an awful thing to work on, then old well used knackered version, spares cost a mint... And we still didn't have anything remotely close to Tsr2
The Spec changes were mostly down to MoD, not RAF. Like the automatic fuel system fiasco etc. I've dealt with MoD !
As a result the UK lost its position as a world leading manufacturer and many staff moved to USA. The MoD traitors should have been tried for Treason. France is now the leader in Europe 🇪🇺 so far ahead of UK we will never catch up. I've worked in France 🇫🇷
Actually we did build a few, and the Export potential was excellent, in spite of the idiot Mountbatten. Brown envelopes anyone..
Rolly Beaumont thought is was pretty damn good 👍
Nick Drake ! test Pilot ?
@@stewartellinson8846 the reality was that Roy Jenkins, then Aviation Minister, hated our aviation industry (he was even ejected from a SBAC meeting). Add to that Denis Healey who, together with Wilson wanted to court the US. and then fold in the Americans who, piqued with jealousy, blackmailed the UK with threats of war debt interest rates and IMF loan refusals. There was little 'misty eyed twaddle', but genuine and understandable anger that the aircraft had been, in effect, murdered. Concorde faced a similar crisis with the Yanks and Labour playing central stage, and it was only due to extreme pressure from the French that we continued with the project. Hearing Tony Benn bask in Concorde's glory makes me sick; the man wanted to cancel it.
@@Soupdragon1964 that's a VERY simplistic assessment that completely ignores the historical reality, some of which is mentioned in this video. I'd guess you're good on 'plane stats but haven't actually read much proper history.
My Dad worked on that project. He still got angry about its cancellation in the 1990s.