TSR.2: The Cold War's Cancelled Strike Aircarft
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- Опубликовано: 13 сен 2024
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The thumbnail has aircraft misspelled
In the video it says criminalist lol. I just wanted to let you know.
Aircarft. Neat!
Substitute Avco Arrow for TSR and you have Canada’s version of the same story. The killer is the American aviation industry belittled the backwood engineers from Canada. After Arrow was killed, NASA hired these engineers to help put a man on the moon. A shameful chapter in Canadian history.
*Avro
yeh the yanks have a habit of stiffing other countries
Have you heard of the F-108 Rapier? America's even more ambitious Arrow that was also cancelled because of SAMs dramatically reducing the value of dedicated interceptor platforms. You'd be hard pressed to find a western fighter project that survived the era of the Arrow's cancellation, except for the F-4. Most of the designs that received investment in that era were intended as tactical fighter-bombers or were developed in that direction despite previously being considered primarily fighters or interceptors (F-105 for the former, F-104G, Mirage IIIE, etc for the latter).
Makes you wonder how much influence the U.S aviation industrial complex had over stopping the development of both the Arrow and TSR2 when you consider how quickly both were instantly and literally scrapped, their plans mysteriously lost to history.
@@IBelieve.............. It could be a conspiracy, or it could just be that both programs had solid cases for their cancellation.
The Olympus engine was a Bristol design, not Rolls Royce. It only became a 'Rolls Royce' engine following the government sponsored take over of Bristol by Rolls in the later 1960's after the TSR 2 was dead and buried. A clue to the origin of British jet engines of this period is found in their names. Bristol engines were named after classical Greek mythology, Olympus, Pegasus,Proteus, etc. Rolls engines used rivers, Tyne, Dart, Avon, etc. DeHavilland engines all started with a G, Ghost, Goblin, Gyron, etc. Armstrong Siddeley used names of snakes, Viper, Mamba, etc. Most of these companies did in time disappear into Rolls Royce, but at the end of the 50's, early 60's were for the most part still independent companies.
Armstrong Siddeley also used gemstone names, eg. Beryl and Sapphire.
Excellent video. I trained as an Airframe Fitter at Short Brothers in the 1980s and later I worked in Europe for contract agencies. I had the pleasure to work with quite a few men who had been involved with the TSR2. They spoke with deep pride about it and the technological breakthroughs it achieved; however, they were still angry at what they saw as a stab in the back by their own government.
Kennedy should have left Robert McNamara counting beans at Ford.
Wonder if that would have helped prevent the war vietnam?
@@chheinrich8486 not to mention all the incidents “McNamara’s morons” caused
Funny thing is.... a few years before his death, McNamara was asked what he thought his greatest accomplishment was. He said that it was getting seatbelts required in all American cars. That's not nothing, but it sure looks lonely all by itself in the 'plus' column.
He wasn't even particularly good at Ford, either. He regularly overruled engineers and vetoed a lot of improvements like underbody coating because he didn't want to put money into minor plant changes to apply it, and cars in the early 60s were only meant to last three or four years anyway.
Third and last.... the US Government used to do a lot of its' own weapons R&D, and most of those projects stayed reasonably on-budget and on-schedule, but McNamara privatized almost all of it (including shutting down the Springfield Armory) and that led to....well, things not being on schedule or on budget anymore. Cue the Pentagon Wars.
Worst and most arrogant asshole ever to be SecDef
There are 4 dimensions to any aircraft: length, width, height, politics.
TSR.2 was excellent in 3 out of 4 of those dimensions.
Men over 60 will be along soon to tell us that the TSR2 is better than the Typhoon :)
@@engineeringvision9507
I think it could have been better in many ways than the Tornado, but it definitely wouldn't have held a candle to the Typhoon.
Very true, I have posted practically the same comment, but I remember the source.
@@pacobelmonte
Think it was Camm, if memory serves. It is one of the most famous quotes in British aeronautical engineering, afterall.
@@joeyaldente8858
Wait, you mean you don't know what an aircarft is?! smh
The greatest bit of self harm and vandalism in British government history.......and that's quite a achievement.
I think voting in Boris Johnson has done far more damage.
To be fair, they also killed off their ENTIRE automotive, and motorcycle industry.
Oh no, you are wrong. It was the Americans, according to simon.
🤭
Have you heard of Brexit?
TSR.2 and the Avro Arrow met very similar fates, and it's kind of sad to think back on.
Beat me to it. The TSR 2 is more of a Avro Arrow 2.
You could have bought B-52's and still be flying them today, but instead you went with the V bombers, all retired now.
@@dave8599 I mean, Canada went with neither of them, so we really did it the worst.
Substitute Avro Arrow every time Simon says TSR and you have the same story. Canadian government cow tows to American demands and self-implodes an aviation industry. To top it off, NASA recruits these backwoods engineers to help put a man on the moon. A shameful chapter in Canadian history.
@@WolvenSpectre The Arrow’s planned and engineered improvements/variants would’ve seen it even exceed TSR.2 capabilities for the Long-Range Mach 3 Variant, but nonetheless both were gorgeous, potent platforms.
The TSR2 cancellation has eerie similar points to Canada's Avro Arrow, the American government at the time, not wanting to be usurped by superior aviation engineering from the UK/Canada (UK engineers were heavily involved with the Arrow as well).
But of note is the Labour Government of of Mr. Attlee in 1946/47 who approved the sale of the Rolls Royce Nene turbojet engine, to the Soviets, provided they were not used for military purposes. Stalin himself was quoted as saying "what fool will sell us his secrets?" Apparently the Labour government were not aware of the rapidly building "Cold War".
The Mig 15 was powered by the Nene
I was just going to leave a comment about this, I had the same thought. Man, us yanks are a bunch of wankers sometimes.
The TSR-2 and Arrow both represent over-investment in an overly specialized tool.
It's easy to blame the Yanks and it might be more fair with the TSR-2 than the Arrow because the Yanks actually had a product to compete against the TSR-2, but don't forget that they killed off their own more ambitious Arrow (F-108) and struggled with their own TSR-2 equivalent (F-111).
I propose that the lack of consolidation within Western aerospace industries is the primary cause, with the Arrow's doom being compounded by the general sense that interceptors had been made obsolete by SAMs. The TSR-2s was likely compounded by the American design reaching production and the British design being too ambitious relative to anticipated sales.
Without a greater investment base (more countries onboard as partners or a more consolidated industry) and without a larger pool of viable customers a project like the Arrow or TSR-2 is unlikely to be seen through. Imagine Canada or the UK trying to develop the F-22, of course they'd end up cancelling it before completion because they can't afford it even if they succeed at developing it.
@@andrewmurray9350 The Mig 15 project and several other Soviet advanced jet fighter projects were in the early post WW2 "tin bending" phase of development but a massive problem lay ahead. New aircraft designs at the test flight stage usually rely on fitting older model reliable engines so any serious problems that show up first can be dealt with on the logical basis that those engines are not going to be a major part of any initial problems.
The top Soviets knew the UK was desperate to export anything to stave off bankruptcy and surprise, surprise, Soviet gold for a bunch of "dead end design" RR Nene engines was found to be "no problem". Everybody got what they wanted and more. Soviet designers did some reverse engineering on the Nenes and came up with their own more powerful version which was an ideal item to power their planes in combat over Korea while their own jet engine designs went through a less frantic extensive testing program.
Diefenbaker killed the Arrow he saw it as a white elephant and one of multiple schemes to pump tax dollars into eastern Canadian industry at the expense of the rest of the country
There was also a Marine variant of the Olympus engine which powered many Naval vessels including HMS Ark Royal.
Would be interesting to see a Megaptojects or Sideprojects on the Olympus Engine.
Thanks for presenting this tragedy of technology and to the economy. It's interestingly similar to the cancellation of the Canadian Avro Arrow. None of those airframes was allowed to survive, and the mass exodus of the skilled workers and the engineers to the US mirrors the loss of that talent from the UK. Methinks that duck had far-reaching influence.
At the time it was called the Brain Drain and I moved to GD first in Rochester then to San Diego. A decade later I left GD and went into commercial electronics. I was always sad that the UK government paid for my education, indeed the gave me a small grant and they gained nothing for all that expenditure.
My dad worked on TSR2 back in the 60s and actually helped build XR220. He thought all the prototypes had been destroyed and was very pleased to find XR220 (which he referred to as "my TSR-2") when we visited the Cosford museum. :) I remember talking to him about it a few years ago, everyone involved was angry about the way it was cancelled (in the middle of a budget speech so there was no chance of discussing the decision). Apparently at the time XR220 was virtually ready to go, the aircrew rushed back to the airfield to try and get the thing flying to present a second (and far more advanced) prototype to the government to prove the worth of the project. He did say however that in some ways it was right to cancel the project. The plane was just too advanced for its time and if any of the electronics had been hit by enemy fire it would have taken weeks to find where the damaged part was, let alone replace it. It was also designed for a very specific role, a tactical strike reconnaissance plane can only do 2 things, low level nuclear bombing (tactical strike) or reconnaissance. It wasn't flexible enough to be used for other things eg a normal bomber or a ground strike aircraft. There's no doubt it was far ahead of its time (how many planes could out-run a Lightning with only 1 working afterburner???) and the Yanks were very worried about its capabilities making their planes look silly, hence their eagerness to get rid of it. The MRCA project which eventually became the Tornado achieved about 80% of what TSR.2 was built to do, and that took the cooperation of 3 countries...
Thank god at least one person is able to think about this rationally instead of sobbing emotionally over the pretty airplane.
A Tornado could fly day or night at low level and do some harm with conventional weapons like destroying an airfield in a single run, it did not have laser-guided weapons targeting pod capabilities during the Cold War unlike F-111 which was far more advanced in some aspects, and was about a decade too late to the party, but it was far more useful in real conflicts than TSR2 despite the fact that even late Cold War F-16 multirole jet was a better machine for all weather ground attacks than dedicated Tornados developed by cooperation of multiple nations with defense budget issues for decades. No matter how good TSR2 engines were, Europe could not deliver in the avionics department to be real competition for the US jets, Phantom II which the UK eventually bought though expensive had far higher conventional combat value than TSR2 ever could in the same time period without pulling in well-funded multinational cooperation as eventually happened with Eurofighter, which was first decent UK jet since Harrier despite being underfunded program after Cold War ended and nowadays overshadowed by much faster improving Rafale.
USA very keen to clamp down on the 'socialist' Labour government and bully it into complying with a variety of US plans, e.g. forcing the UK civil nuclear industry to supply USA with weapons grade plutonium which US civil reactors couldn't produce. Enhancing US civil & military aviation exports by stopping non US aviation programmes all part of the same business led power politics. At least Wilson held out against the pressure to go to Vietnam.
The instant the name Robert MacNamara came into the story, I knew what was coming next. To Her Majesty's Royal Air Force, for whatever it is worth, I am truly sorry for the loss of the TSR.2. Could've been one hell of an aircraft. If it's any consolation at all, the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines loathed that guy just as much as you did.
What a schmuck.
If you think of it, we could have sold you TSR2'S on the cheap, like we did with the Canberra. So even you missed out, if only indirectly.
@@robertwilloughby8050
Americans already had the F-111 though, so they really had no use for the TSR.
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 Agreed, but maybe it could perhaps have tided you over with the F-111 development problems. And we were thinking of a specialist strike fighter variant....... just saying😉 Anyhoo, you're right, but more weaponry is better weaponry.
@@robertwilloughby8050
The F-111 and TSR both had substantial teething problems but only one was being funded by a state that could afford to dump more money into the project. Further, that project (TFX) was newer than the TSR by 6 years.
If you have the option to buy the F-111 the TSR.2 doesn't make sense unless you're the government who funded it and you're also too proud to admit it was a poor investment and should have been cancelled several years sooner.
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 Well..... lets say they were good in their own ways and leave it at that.
Wow, this is like deja Vu. The exact same US playbook that was used to kill the Canadian aircraft industry and specifically the Avro Arrow
🤫 only the USSR was supposed to be abusive to it's allies
1:56 background
3:58 sponsorship
5:41 proposals
9:35 specs and flight tests
12:56 the beginning of the end
16:43 the death of TSR.2
A hero among men
What happened to the TSR-2 was tragic but you will be surprised how much of the tech went into the Tornado. I worked on GR4’s and the TFR, engine control system, flight control system and other bits have there origins in the TSR-2. Even the brake fans were far ahead of the time, now being found on the Eurofighter Typhoon
Shades of the Avro arrow
Jim Floyd worked on the TSR.2 after the Arrow, if I’m not mistaken. I know he worked on the Concorde design also.
My dad worked on this aircraft and was heartbroken when they scrapped it in such a nefarious fashion. A beautiful aircraft that looked like it was doing mach2 just sat in the hanger.
Ironically i followed in his footsteps and watched Nimrod fly just before I left BAE, only to watch it on the news being smashed up by the new Labour government.
Politicians are twits with a capital A
... or ethics with a capital F
I thought it was the Tory/Lib Dem coalition that killed the Nimrod in the 2010 Strategic Defence Review?
Why is that irony?
There was nothing more nefarious than BAC... the whole thing was political corruption, merge 4 failed British aircraft companies under an additional layer of government beauracacy and management and anyone expect this dumpster fire to produce excellent aircraft???
@@DialecticDave If they had working electronic systems might not have been axed by Cameroon (see also Harrier).
In the late 1960's, I was in a military audience listening to Sir George Edwards, the big cheese of the British Aircraft Corporation, he described dealing with the government as 'walking along the gloomy corridors of power looking for a faint glimmer of a coherent policy'!
And sadly it seems little has changed to this day, since the time you heard this from Sir George!
This sounds exactly like what happened to the Avro Arrow 6 years earlier. How history repeats.
Exactly what I thought. But instead of an airplane, the Americans manage to convince Deffenbaker’s people that interceptors were obsolete and the Beaumark intercontinental missiles were the way of the future. If not for short sited politicians that think only of the next election, Canada would have been the leader in fighter/interceptor technology in the 60’s. Instead we suffered a brain drain to NASA.
The Arrow was cancelled when all the other interceptors were cancelled. The fighter designs that survived that era were all either already in production, intended as multirole or both. Designs like the Mirage and F-104 became multirole (Mirage 3E, F-104G). The F-8 was already in production; the F-4 survived because it was a multirole naval fighter; most of the other western designs of that era were intended as multirole fighter-bombers (even the intended for export only F-5 was intended to be multirole).
The US cancelled their own interceptor projects too. If cost and viability weren't the main concerns why wouldn't the US have taken advantage of the cancellation of the CF-105 to push their own F-108? Oh right, they didn't feel F-108s would have made for a worthwhile investment either.
It also has to be remembered, there were those within the British establishment conspiring against the TSR2. There was also a lot of inter-service rivalry with the Royal Navy who wanted monies spent on nuclear subs and aircraft carriers. Louis Mountbatten was a good example of this. A high ranking naval officer, he naturally promoted the Buccaneer. Apparently, one tactic of his was to throw down 5 photos of the Buccaneer and one of the TSR2 and say ''Five of those for one of those".
According to the TSR-2 chief test pilot Roland Beamont, Mountbatten actually carried around a briefcase with models of the aircraft in. 5 buccaneers and one TSR-2. He took it around Australia trying to drum up sales for the Buccaneer.
@@AWMJoeyjoejoe I read it was photos. Still, we are on the same wavelength.
Hence our dazzling Aircraft Carrier fleet, being mended somewhere as I write.
The Americans being mad about better planes? Canada feels you via Avro Arrow
Not mad just business...nothing personal.
I get why Canadians view the Avro Arrow cancellation negatively, but at the same time some Canadians look back and inflate the Arrow into a better plane than it was.
As a schoolboy living through these years and studying fitfully for A Levels whilst preferring the attractions of the local pub, I remember the furore about the cancellation and the subsequent F-111 order. There was a ditty popular at the time;
"Oh the F-111, it is a wondrous plane.
It flies at twice the speed of sound and scatters bombs like rain...
Its wings go back and forward,
It's the greatest thing around!
But isn't it a pity they can't get it off the ground..."
Always said it all to me about the whole sad affair really.
I've touched the TSR2 X222... after spending 10 mins stood gawping at the sheer size of the thing.
The amazing thing about RAF Duxford is that they have the weapons that would have been carried as well.
There is a connection between the Avro / BAC projects and it has to do with the Crown... in closing the projects and sending the engineers to the USA, the Crown could make more money... thats why Crown bought out the other nations that had bits of N.A. (southern states) who are controlled by The Plymouth Company.
I'd reccomend going to Duxford if your ever anywhere near, go stand next to a Polaris Missile, a TSR2... one of Rommels command wagons and an anti-aircraft cannon that has a rotary mag just like a six-shooter, things freekin Huge.
One of the reasons I went there some years ago
A similar story as AVRO Canada's Arrow. It was signiificantly superior to the F-111 and the US forced Canada to destroy everything including all designs, airframes and the tooling.
The Arrow was basically a heavier and less efficient Phantom II. It wasn’t terrible, but it was simply a typical design of the period.
Compare the XF-108, for example (also cancelled).
@@Justanotherconsumer
Like that, except also designed for only a single role. The F-4 likely only survived that era because the navy still needed something for CAP.
McDonnell had also initially designed it as a fighter bomber with multiple, modular nose assemblies. Even if the 'swapping noses' gimmick was abandoned MDD still had development invested into making it a multirole fighter for clients other than the USN.
Come to think of it, the irony is the cancellation of all of those other fighters is what made the navy's F-4 so popular as a land-based fighter. It's not that F-4s were inherently superior to the others, it's that they're the one who survived.
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 The F-4 was a stalwart interceptor, but useless for CAP b/c it was not very manoeuvrable. Built for speed..
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 the CF-105 may have been as good as the F-4 in many roles, but there’s no indication that it was better at any of them, and the F-4 could do things the CF-105 could not (carrier operations the most notable).
Why was the CF-105 needed, if it wasn’t better than the Phantom?
@@Justanotherconsumer
The big advantage the Arrow was intended to have was the Sparrow II active radar missile, the Phantom was designed around the less sophisticated (but more feasible) Sparrow III. Beyond that it was intended to have a longer range (it didn't, another goal missed).
I've got to reverse your question though, if the Phantom was ever an option for Canada, why did the Canadians ever bother starting Arrow development? Instead they ended up with Voodoos.
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The TSR-2 was known as the Eagle GR.1
Looks like a Duck, quacks like a Duck, waddles like a Duck, it's a Turkey... ;)
RAF Cosford! Great musuem, luckily live 15 mins away. Have always loved the TSR2
Cosford is a wonderful museum. I used to go there on the regular with my grandfather. Need to go back at some point.
@@ToaArcan Do it! Its well worth it and changed a fair bit.
I've been in Cosford and I've spend almost an hour watching the TSR-2 prototype. I can't possibly imagine what would have been if this machine would have gone in production, but I've never seen anything as impressive as the TSR-2 is. Anyway, now I think it would be time to make a video about the Tornado, which is sort of "spiritual successor" to the TSR-2.
The XB-70 lost its mission to the ICBM, the Arrow to the surface to air missiles, and the TSR2 to the lack of needing such specs (or lack of capabilities) and too much in terms of initial and operational costs. Sure fantastic aircrafts, just there were other, better, cheaper options to the missions assigned to them. Knock it off with all the political intrigue.
"Frankly, I do not believe that we will get much operational value out of the Canberra from 1955 onwards...The aircraft is already out of date..." Ironically, the Canberra was built under license in the US and operated by the USAF as the B-57/RB-57. It served in reconnaissance and interdiction bombing through the Viet Nam conflict and if I'm not mistaken, remained in US Air National Guard service in one capacity or another into the mid-1980s. I believe the airframe is still being used in some research capacity by NASA.
Not bad for an aircraft that was declared "already out of date," by Air Vice Marshal Geoffrey Tuttle in 1952. It would seem the Canberra's utility has vastly surpassed Geoffrey Tuttle's.
Probably driven by necessity because of sanctions, the South African Air Force still used Canberras in the 1980s (and maybe even early 90s).
The RAF ended up using them up until 2006... he was only wide of the mark by a shade over 50 years...
@@FallenPhoenix86 and if the money had been available the raf would have continued to use the Canberra and would still be today.
He was right, given he understood it's role to be a strategic bomber capable of being used against peer adversaries. The Canberra was obsolete in that role but other roles could be found where it would still excel.
Think about it, all of the subsonic bombers of that era have been obsolete for most of their service lives for the role they were initially intended for. Bears, B-52, whatever else you can name, they're never going to be used to destroy the major military and industrial centres of a peer-enemy with free-fall bombs as initially envisioned but they're still quite effective as bomb trucks once air superiority has been established and they're still quite effective as cruise missile platforms.
Tuttle wasn't wrong though, strategic bomber platforms really aren't used for that job and in the event of a conflict in that era using them in their intended roles would have been suicide for the crews. We should all be grateful he looks wrong because we wouldn't want to be living here after he got proven right and he would have been proven right had the conflict he was preparing for occurred.
The Canberra was a medium bomber not a strategic bomber.
These videos is the thing we need
Why would anyone sub to a channel without any videos?
@@travisinthetrunk idiots just exist.
The design was compromised from it's inception. Due to money being tight it had to use the same basic engine, the Bristol Olympus turbojet, as the Concorde. The F111 and Mirage-V both used more efficient turbofan engines. Although slightly smaller the F111 had a greater range with a greater weapons load, this being the main reason for the Australia's order. RR had offered a turbojet design for the TSR2 program, before the BAC design was selected but this engine could not be used on the Concorde. With the introduction of ballistic missiles it's roll as a strategic nuclear bomber was no longer required leaving the TSR2 to expensive for it's other intended roles. The later Tornado as we know was a lot small, uses turbofans and was not a true strategic bomber.
I think those who have nuke the project should have been put on trial for treason…
Imagine how it could have changed the shape of uk aircraft manufacturing…
Intresting how this kind of things just keep happening.
In 2019 and 2020 two nuclear reactors was closed by the extreme left wing government in Sweden. Usually when reactors are closed they are just left sitting around 10 years or so for the radiation to calm down.
Suddenly this spring they hastialy start destroing equpment at the plant to make sure it was not restarted after the election..
How strange.. why are they doing that?
Lord Mountbatten told the Australians to avoid buying the TSR-2. M.
Imagine believing that a sound financial decision was treason as expecting to be taken seriously. 😂
Sounds very familiar... ah yes, the AVRO Arrow. The "great" American Military Industry will do whatever it can to suppress other industries. They did it with more than just the Arrow or the TSR2.
Not only military industry. Every part of industry! There’s also a story about a European antidepressant where the Americans condcted fake studies. By the time the European Pharmaceutical Company debunked all of the studies the damage was already done!
Best country in the world my ass!
Just a bunch of greedy assholes governing over and lying to a much poorer bunch of citizens!
They did it with English Electric Lightning and Germany and other European countries, which meant the lawn dart flew into Europe in large numbers and all those countries were after the lightning until words were had with brown envelope hand overs
America hated the Arrow so much they cancelled their own equivalent as well? Arrow fanboys love to blame the Yanks without even understanding that everyone cancelled their interceptors all around the same period for the same reasons. Missiles would do the job better for cheaper.
If a platform like the CF-105 made sense why wouldn't the US have tried to sell more F-108s once the Arrow was cancelled instead of killing the F-108 as well? Because they genuinely believed that missiles would do that job better for cheaper. Considering no interceptors have been proposed since the late '50s I've gotta conclude they were correct about missiles vs. manned interceptors.
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 oh yes the missile system was the new thing to replace the interceptor. Funny though how that didn't pan out. Oh and the F-108... was not scrapped nor were the designs destroyed. It kept going as another model. Very big difference between the F-108 and all other countries' designs. Another example of the US military industry interfering is the F-104 Starfighter (widowmaker). That is a dark history in aviation and military industry.
@@Ulgarth
The -108 evolved into the A-5, but the A-5 seems a fair bit less ambitious.
For what it's worth, when you compare the Starfighter to other comparable contemporaries (Mirage 3, MiG 21, other century fighters) or to the aircraft it replaced (F-86 is the main one I've seen stats for) the accident rate isn't significantly higher.
It was quite sobering to notice the accident rates for other fighters of the era and really speaks to how inherently dangerous that job was in that era regardless of the platform you were assigned.
I've actually seen both of the surviving prototypes of this plane. It's a weird-looking one, but quite elegant in its weirdness.
This _and_ the Arrow, huh? At least the Yanks didn't manage to kill the Harrier, Vulcan, or Tornado.
I didn’t think there was anything left whatsoever, what museum has them?!? I would absolutely love to see them, bein Canadian myself!!
@@HighSideHustler811 It's mentioned in the video- RAF Cosford and the Imperial War Museum at Duxford.
You only got the Tornado because of the TSR-2 being cancelled. Of course, I always wonder where the magical money that would have funded the rest of the Arrow and TSR-2 projects was supposed to come from, because there sure as fuck wasn't more real money available.
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 they’re supposed to bankrupt the country to pay for the military industrial complex, didn’t you get the memo?
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 There was always Mony for idiotic politics such as paying for the BBC, or balling out falling industry's only to not get them properly sorted (looking at ship building in Scotland). Heck the ERC mechanism chasing and gold standard come to mind. Or giving tax breaks to there mates. I'm sure we could do something if we wanted to.
Very similar outcomes to the Avro Arrow here in Canada.
Similar reasons too - outdated and expensive project with little value beyond boosting the aircraft industry.
@@Justanotherconsumer except for the fact that all the staff got "relocated" within a few months of the project cancellation. A lot of technical expertise appropriation. The Avro Arrow was ahead of its time and a lot of the staff went to work for Boeing and NASA.
@@Justanotherconsumer not true
greater than mach 1 flight without the use of afterburner 🤔 i believe today they call that supercruise lol pretty high-tech for back then
The YF-104A, English Electric Lightning and T-38 Talon are all capable of exceeding Mach 1 without using afterburners. The T-38 doesn't even have them.
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 wow 🤔 true true
What happened to the UK, it was once the toolbox of the world. Back in the day some of the best cars (E-Type), ships (Queen Mary/Queen Elizabeth), and aircraft (Spitfire) were built there. Seems time to get some politicians that put their countrymen first.
Simon, to continue the "Duck Based" analogy, I would suggest you look into the history of the British military's Lee Enfield replacement.... Rifle...Number 9, Mk 1. More often called the Janssen EM2. Chambered for a cartridge the Americans simply didn't want , the .280 British, so they basically stopped the project.....forced NATO to use their ammo, then, a few years later switched to the even smaller 5.56 x 45. Oddly enough the US military will soon start replacing that with a .277 cartridge....what goes around comes around.
The new cartridge is about the problem of proliferation of effective body armor, not because it would have been a better idea of the time.
and the raf after all that problems with the tsr 2 ending up with the Tornado f2/f3 and the gr1/gr4 😊
Great video. You should really do a story on the Canadian Avro Arrow. It was an amazing aircraft, decades ahead of its time, that was sadly killed off by politics.
ruclips.net/video/em06II6ScnA/видео.html
He did. On his Megaprojects channel a year or so ago
It's not so much POLITICIANS as it is POLITICS itself. The politics of military leadership is as bad as anyone else anywhere else.
With the cancelled TSR2 we look at it’s potential. The cancellation means we can look at the “what if’s?” of what the TSR2 ‘could’ have been. There’s the potential performance as compared to whatever the actual performance would have been had the aircraft gone into production and squadron service.
video suggestion would be interesting to see something on Monte Casino, the monastery was beautiful and since it is no longer with us I believe it's important to talk to the people who are unaware of it
My father worked in the Air Ministry when TSR2 was cancelled.
It came as a bit of a shock.
2:00 - Chapter 1 - Background
4:00 - Mid roll ads
5:45 - Chapter 2 - Proposals
9:40 - Chapter 3 - Specs & flight tests
13:00 - Chapter 4 - The beginning of the end
16:45 - Chapter 5 - The death of TSR.2
But yet, many of the engineers who worked on the TSR.2 ended up working on a way more successful project: the Panavia Tornado. The Tornado could carry more weapons, especially weapons types.
The Tornado was designed almost 20 years later than the TSR.2, of course it would be superior.
@@rubiconnn The Tornado was designed between 1969 (when the Panavia consortium was formed) and 1973, with the first flight in 1974. The first deliveries started in 1980. It really wasn’t that much newer than the TSR.2 design.
@@rubiconnn
Almost like TSR development dragged on for too long and left them with an obsolete platform to work with.
Oh stop it, it wasn't needed (i.e., lost its mission), too expensive, wasn't meeting performance targets, numerous technical issues, and was a one-trick-pony. On top of all that Britain was in extreme financial problems at the time.
Even the replacement alternative (F-111) only survived so long because it was repurposed as an electric warfare countermeasure platform
echoes here of Canada's experience with the Avro Arrow.
I think the moral of this story is that having a brilliant aircraft design isn’t enough to take a giant leap into the future of technology. You need a government willing to spend the money required to turn ideas into reality. America’s aviation technology is as far ahead as it is today because it learned from both friends and foes and was determined enough to spend the resources required.
Project Lead: " Okay, guys....we need a basic design for the TSR.2 and the deadline is coming up in one hour. What do we got?"
10-Yr-Old Holding a Paper Airplane: "I have an idea..."
Interesting to note that the only U.K. post war military aircraft project brought in under time and below budget was the Vickers Valiant and the English Electric Lighting, the letter was a test bed that was already flying as an English Electric research project.
other video suggestion it would be interesting to see a video on Malbork Castle. located in Poland it is the largest single Castle fortification made by man definitely more of a mega project than some of the other things that have been covered recently.
My father was due to move onto TSR2 aircrew and, unsurprisingly, held very dim views of the politicians involved in its demise. Many years later, I was a passenger on an RAF VC-10 and someone had left an RAF Engineering magazine in the seat pocket, which contained an article detailing retrospective computer modelling of the TSR.2's airframe structure - as I recall, this modelling indicated that the huge stresses imposed during low level operations using the novel ground hugging radar system would likely have resulted in major structural failures. Of course, that's someone's model and theoretical, but maybe those politicians did, accidentally, do the right thing?
As for the Canberra, AVM Tuttle would no doubt have been amazed that this aircraft actually served on for many decades, well into the 21st century.
The Majority of the Aircraft structure was made from a new Aluminum / Lithium Alloy known as X2020. This metal was used due to its light weight and without it, the aircraft would have been so overweight that it would have been totally incapable of meeting the RAF's operational requirements. Unfortunately when BAC started building the aircraft out of the stuff, they found it was brittle as hell and any damage post construction (dents and scratches) or poor machining during manufacturer immediately caused fatigue cracks to form. Even with this Alloy, the aircraft would have ended up very overweight and BAC couldn't promise that the aircraft could met the range, speed and altitude requirements specified in the revised operational requirement that the RAF issued in early 1965 which cut all three requirements by up to 25% (1000 NM range down to 750NM and Max speed from Mach 2 down to Mach 1.75). When the USA offered 50 F-111K's to the UK in early 1965, Healey told the RAF Air Staff about the offer and the RAF said "BUY THEM". It was the RAF that canned the project!!!
TSR2 and the Avro Arrow are both victims of American politicians looking to curry favor with American aircraft producers. They were two of the most strikingly beautiful and powerful aircraft to come out of the late 50's and early 60's and never see production.
Didn't help with the MOD sales team leader Mountbatten actively selling the aircraft short.
Sure, it was the Americans that stormed the company offices.
Back then the US was a global superpower and Britain was basically bankrupt. I say back then because the US hasn't been a superpower since at least 2010, maybe the late 90s.
@@engineeringvision9507 curious how you define superpower. US has outspent #2 through #10 combined (at least as of 2020)
@@MrTexasDan The US a great power (but not a superpower) country with a superpower military tacked on. The military is the jewel in the crown of the US, it's the country itself that is letting the side down. I don't say this with any great pleasure either. If you look at the US economy and industry in the 50s, and now, the one in the 50s was in a totally different league. I've long since stopped bothering to argue this with Americans though as they just want to hear "America bestest" and go on with their day in blissful denial that all of their industry is now in China.
I read a number of years ago that the Chief of the Defence Staff had a big part to play in the decommissioning of the TSR2 project, in the late 50's CDS was from RAF followed early 60's Royal Navy, in 1965 CDS changed to Army and the incumbent disgruntled by the lack of defence budget allocated to the Army helped to end the project.
The irony is that the Canberra found niches for which it remained in service for decades afterwards, and the US are famously still using a couple of very heavily modified version!
+1 for consistency in misspelling aircraft (in title and thumbnail)
originally it was supposed to unmanned, but someone got scared with the thought of it carrying on to the target after a recall order was given
My favourite of all cold war jets. Although I can understand the reasons for cancelling the TSR2 I cannot understand why all but 2 of the airframes were destroyed. It just seems vindictive looking back, an insult to everyone who worked on the project.
Duncan Sandys cancelled UKs whole aviation industry. UK politicians have made horrendous decisions.
@@InquisitiveBaldMan Agreed. Turning the royal navy into a glorified anti submarine flotilla is another one.
@@AWMJoeyjoejoeFrom what i've heard about the time, its seems a lot of politicians had no problem with bribery. Another excellent design was the Saunders Roe sr 177, West Germany was also very interested till big sums of money were offered by lockheed to politicians. The lockheed starfighter they bought instead was disastrous junk and killed 116 of their pilots. I'm really not sure why the politicians get the final say about how the money is spent. Or even any say.
@@InquisitiveBaldMan SR177 a barking idea!!! Explosion on the Flight Line waiting to happen. Germans were never going to buy that thing. Had anybody in the Fleet Air Arm asked the rest Of the Royal Navy if it was OK to put HTP on a Carrier (plus the RFA's to replenish them), they would have been told to F**K Off. Lockheed Bribes killed the Aircraft that should have won the NATO strike fighter competition. which was the Grumman F-11F Super Tiger.
@@InquisitiveBaldMan
You don't understand why civilian government has oversight over the military and it's budget? If that wasn't the case you'd be living under a military dictatorship.
I think that engine torque is not a relevant consideration for a Newton's Third Law propulsion system; thrust measured simply in pounds is.
20 months to go from the mig 9 to the mig 15…
YEAH!!!! It helps when you give your enemy the engine.
You kinda glossed over that part.
This is one of the most beautiful aircrafts ever designed!
I've worked in defence procurement and I endorse this video.
Remind me, did you ever do one about the Canadian Avro Arrow?
Yes. On Megaprojects a year or so ago
not the first time usa have offerd somthing at cut price to stop a uk project only to then withbraw that offer after we have have stopped
Blame-wise:
Don't forget the role of Mountbatten (Navy) who wanted the Buccaneer and lobbied against the TSR.2 down under.
Would Labour have won the '64 general election without the Profumo scandal?
The Americans had a habit of sabotaging the UK (and other) aviation industry, ably assisted by the Labour party. We gave away key technology in an "information exchange" about the sound barrier (Miles Aircraft M52) without receiving anything in return.
But my contempt mostly goes to Denis Healey.
On the other hand, the decimation of the UK aviation industry meant a lot of aerodynamicists and engineers joined British motorsport manufacturing which now leads the world.
The supersonic, stainless steel Miles 52 suffered a similar fate in the late 1940s. It's technologies were given to Bell which helped the X-1 break the sound barrier.
Complete bullshite. X-1 had an elevator. The moving tailplane was for trim control. Yanks actually tested their design with supersonic rocket boosted and free fall (dropped from high altitude from a B-29) radio controlled model before they built the X-1. There are no records in either the US or UK archives of any copying of the M.52 by Bell. Two small groups of US personnel were shown around the Miles plant in 1944, but they were not given any documents to take home with them and none of them worked for Bell or NACA.
My dad built the avionics to this place!!! He was working for Vickers before they were forced to join British Aerospace
The TSR-2 has some similarities in appearance to the avro arrow.
Typical period design.
3:15 AVM Tuttle was being a little pessimistic in saying the RAF would get no mileage from the Canberra beyond 1955. It was still in service in 2005.
Sorry to say it, but the TSR.2 is a great example of a waste of money that should have been cancelled actually getting cancelled. Something a lot of people forget when looking back at the "glorious" TSR.2 and it's "satanic" cancellation is what would actually have changed if it hadn't been cancelled? The answer is that it would have never seen any real use, been retired by the 90s if not earlier, never sold internationally (as better alternatives like the F-111 and Mirage IV existed) and wasted even more taxpayers money over the years.
Indeed, the TSR.2 was an unmitigated failure and its cancelation was inevitable.
Britain was bankrupt and could not afford to build it.
Interesting how the U.S. government was involved in the end of the TSR2 and the Avro Arrow. And how many of the employees wound up at U.S. aerospace companies.
wow 😮 lol so we basically brain drained these guys 😂 after we brain drained Germany at the end of WW2 we basically did it to Canada and the British and probably others lol 🤔 kinda explains why we're always ahead of everyone
As Viva Frei so aptly puts it . . .
Politics Ruins Everything
So you are saying that this aircraft had supper cruise back in the 1960's ? Amazing.
‘Strike Aircarft’? Really Simon? Love the presentation. One aircraft I wish I could have worked on.
So! There was the Starfighter known affectionately as the widow maker!
Yeah! And?....
impressive....especially when the RR Nene was given to the Soviet Union, PROVIDED it was ONLY used for civilian purposes. Yeah, that agreement was followed, until a version of the Nene was installed in the MiG-15/MiG-17....
Just another "what-if" techno fish-story: long on hype but short on facts. The one that got away gets bigger every year.
You mention the BAe 146 but the Hawk would have been a far better reflection of BAE's full in-house capability. So good the US bought them, quietly, as Navy trainer aircraft and they were sale success across the Middle East and beyond, as light attack fighter bombers
Hi Simon,
That was another great video. It feels a lot like what happened with the British Black Arrow Rocket that the UK canceled in 1971 after the US government promised that they would launch British satellites on American rockets for a discount if the Black Arrow was canceled. However, after the British government canceled the Black Arrow rocket, the US Government withdrew their discount offer. History tends to repeat itself.
At the time it looked a brilliant aircraft but with hind sight it had severe limitations. The UK would have been better putting the money into the proposed advanced development of the Buccaneer.
That’s what made it such a significant mistake….. if TSR2 had been in service it would probably have deterred the Falklands…. As would a gen 2 buccaneer (probably more so as that might have lead to some big carriers after Ark Royal)
The other problem that faced TSR2 was the development of Russian SAM’s which took the high level penetration out of the mix. This also was a problem for the F111, pushing both aircraft to a very low level role. The RAF tried the F111 at low level and one bright spark discovered that the Blackburn Buccaneers could do the same low level as the F111 and TSR2 but about 100mph faster and at 10% of the cost.
Just a pity that the supersonic Buccaneer 2 was not progressed
The problem with TSR.2 was BAC couldn't built it... the merger of 4 failed british companies saddled with the burdon of additional layers of government beauracacy was an unmitigated disaster.
BAC never produced a single successful aircraft.
@@WilhelmKarsten it was actually English Electric and Vickers that were the original designers and builders but is was a Tory government that forced a merger of these 2 plus Bristol and Hunting to from BAC
@@JohnSmith-bx8zb It was Labour that tried to keep the British aircraft industry on life support long after its expiration date,
The only alternative to the merger was the sale to a foreign aircraft company or allow them all to go defunct.
You can't support British companies that lose money because their planes don't sell.
Capitalism would have allowed the strong to survive and the weak to die.
TSR.2 was not a realistic program and was doomed to failure.
As an American. I apologize for the abuse of our politicians.
To be fair, Mountbatten was undermining it from the inside as well.
American politicans didn't make this plane over-budget and not up to specifications required. The Brits did that on their own.
Mountbatten was right. Is one TSR worth 5 Buccaneers?
A real shame, but also very much of a piece with a lot of other things that were cancelled around the same time.... the Type 82 destroyer, CV-01 aircraft carrier, Skybolt, various armored vehicles, etc. The UK had a major habit at the time of spending huge amounts of money on R&D for major projects, only to cancel in favor of a cheaper alternative... and then canceling the cheaper alternative too.... or just deciding "OK we're just not going to *do* aircraft carriers anymore." If there WAS a plot against Harold Wilson it's tempting to think the managers of BAC were among the ringleaders.
Britain was bankrupt and heavily in debt, it defaulted on its war debt in 1964 and again in 1965. The government had no choice but to cancel or face the humiliation of the Americans stepping in and taking control over British domestic affairs.
I'll never forgive that over-promoted charlatan Mountbatten for helping to kill this plane.
Reminds me alot of what happened to the Avro Arrow in 1959.
Similar fiasco, a plane the government could not afford to pay for... and no one wanted to buy.
Sounds similar to the Canadian 'Avro Arrow' program. It also went belly up, with rumors that any prototypes and incomplete planes were buried somewhere!
Same fate the AVRO Arrow here in Canada.
If I ever get the money, I would love to right this wrong, and somehow, redress the balance. Tbf, the new Tempest project looks very promising, if it will deliver it remains to be seen. However it wouldn't be accurate to suggest that the British Aerospace industry is dead. Having had family ties to it for generations, I think there are still many reasons to be positive about it
Simon doesn't live in the UK?? My world is shattered and I'm questioning everything ☹️
Politics & money - the two horsemen of any advanced military project. The TSR.2 is one of the great "What if it had entered service?" of aviation history... 🚀
I'm not sayin' it was aliens, but it was the United States.😁
In the US we call this good business.
Id love to see a restored flying example of the TSR2,Its got to be possible,If I happened to win the lottery,Id give every penny trying to do so!!
The English Electric Canberra was finally retried by the RAF in 2006 - although they had not been operational for many years. The Martin B57 variant was used by NASA for high altitude research, these were mothballed for thirty or so years, then reused as communications aircraft during the Iraqi wars.
I believe NASA still use a couple of highly modified high altitude B57's for research and observation work.
You can see the legacy of the TSR2 in the Jaguar Twin seat.
The olympus engines are Bristol siddeley not rolls royce
Kinda sad to think that I was 9 when the mach 2 Concorde first flew and eventually went into passenger service. Today I am 63 and we don't even have passenger jets that can break mach 1 now.
I have seen the one in Cosford, a true testimony to British engineering, and how the wrong political party can destroy a nations work.