The TSR-2 could do almost anything. Why was it cancelled?
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 8 авг 2023
- In 1951, Britain introduced the English Electric Canberra. Designed to operate at high level, it would go onto become the RAF's longest serving machine. It was an incredibly efficient aircraft, but by the late 1950s everything changed. The Soviet Union brought into service brand new surface-to-air missiles and overnight the Canberra was vulnerable.
Now the British government needed a new aircraft, one that could beat this threat and fly under the radar. It was a huge ask for the technology of the time, but had it been successful the aircraft itself would have been a world beater. In this episode of Duxford in Depth, Liam Shaw takes a detailed look at the aircraft that never was, the BAC TSR-2.
Visit IWM Duxford: www.iwm.org.uk/visits/iwm-dux...
View and licence the archive film clips used in this video on IWM Film:
film.iwmcollections.org.uk/my...
Follow IWM on social media:
Twitter: / i_w_m
Instagram: / imperialwarmuseums
Facebook: / iwm.london
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...
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.
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?
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 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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Honestly that airplane just from a looks perspective, is just beautiful, even by today standards it looks very sleek and modern
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 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
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 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.
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
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.
When you see it in person it really does have presence. A truly striking looking machine
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.
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.
Finally! Please post more of these
At least Airfix made this plane live inside our homes for many decades in the form of a miniature model.
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.
The Buccaneer was subsonic at any altitude, with a very limited specialist role and, just to ice the cake, suffered from metal fatigue.
@@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. )
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.
I knew a chap who worked on the terrain-following radar system developed by Ferranti. He said they didn't realise - or weren't told - the TSR2 was supersonic so the subsequent radar wasn't suitable for the aircraft.
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
I highly recommend the Duxford IWM experience. Brilliant!
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.
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.
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 know nothing about engineering, but 50 years later that shape is still stunning.
Another great video. Congrats.
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.
looks like the Canadian AVRO Arrow.
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!
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.
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
Outdated b4 is could be produced. The English electric lightening too. F4 Phantom was flying in 1958. There were a whole slow of aircraft projects the British engaged in during the 50s and 60s that were obsolete b4 they went into production where the Americans had a superior design like the Hercules vs Beverly or Chinnook vs belvedere
Perhaps true if you were talking about the F-111 which arguably exceeded the TSR-2 in many places despite the protracted testing time. During this era there was a fairly short period of time where very low level strikes were extremely tactically viable and aircraft like the F-4 did not have the terrain following or navigation suites radar needed to perform these kinds of strikes in all weather. This was still the very early days of 'multirole' aircraft and dedicated strike aircraft had far superior avionics for air to ground work. For peer adversaries (soviets) that 'gap' at low level was plugged really pretty quickly by advanced self propelled Short Range Air Defence (SHORAD) systems like 2K22 Tunguska (SA-19 to NATO) from ~82 and 9K330 Tor (NATO SA-15) from ~86 especially when combined with continual improvements in specialised soviet low level radars for their larger SAMs. Smart planning to ensure line of sight to an attacker running in on a likely target would mean that you'd be able to shoot at them even flying at extreme low level once these SHORAD platforms became operational, but *before* then there was a gap in defences that really only dedicated low level strike platforms could exploit, which is why you see so many nations developing these types of platforms during this period.
Somewhat ironically around the time the Tornado was becoming combat ready was when defences to this vulnerability were starting to become pretty mature and beginning to be rolled out by the Soviets
The Lightning entered service in 1960, the F-15 didn't enter service until 1976, some 16 years later. Now granted you said F-4 however while a decent fighter the F-4 was woefully inferior to the Lightning as a land based interceptor, it wasn't until the arrival of the F-15 that the USAF had a jet that could match the Lightnings capability never mind surpass it.
@@llynellyn the lightening was too short range and didn't have the long range onboard radar, the Phantom had longer endurance, similar speed, could shoot down more soviet bombers at longer range and could carry eight missles to the lightening two. In the 70s the RAF were replacing Electric Lightening squadrons in the intercept role with F4s. The Phantom was just head and shoulders above previous designs from the 50s espicially when they got the missile systems working.
@@joelbilly1355 Lightning was designed as a pure interceptor to protect the V bomber bases during a likely nuclear conflict. As such, it had different design parameters to the F4 which was designed originally as a carrier based aircraft so needed extended loiter time. Lightning was only eventually phased out with the advent of the Tornado ADV, the RAF took F4's after cancellation of TSR2 to fulfil some of the roles it was intended to carry out with Buccaneer doing the strike role. Whilst the F4 replaced Lightning in some squadron service, others kept it on as it has superior climb and agility which came in very useful on intercepts against Soviet recon aircraft, notably the Bear. Lightning performance was never totally disclosed, unlike F4 there were multiple successful interceptions of U2 aircraft which the impressive F4 wasn't quite able to achieve
@cliffdixon6422 both the F4 Phantom and electric Lightening had similar top speeds and operational heights but the big difference was the f4s radar and missile compliment. The electric Lightening was hampered by it not designed to carry a big radar or operate missiles. The F4 was just too good compared to virtually every other fighter of the era in virtually every role. The electric Lightening was like a lot of British aircraft of the period, outdated before it even flew and ultimately replaced by superior American aircraft.
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.
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
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.
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.
Love your work IWM 👍
SO well explained! Thanks!
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.
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.
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?
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.
Brings back memories of the AVRO ARROW
it looks so much like the canadian avro arrow intercepter from the 50s
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?
I hadn't heard of the TSR-2 before, thanks for a great presentation of frustrating history.
Marvellous and educational. Thanks
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).
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.
Very nice topic and very good video . 😊
😢 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.
Australia Government had pre order the TSR2 but had to order the F-111 when the British Government cancel the TSR2 Development Program. Just think of the money Britain would of made from Australian because the RAAF had the F-111 in service for over 40 years just think What if that was the TSR2
A pittance compared to the cost of developing the TSR-2. Between 1956 and 1965 around a dozen other mitiary projects were cancelled including the purchase of the Chinook helicopter. We later pre-ordered them.
The F111 was purchased due to the US giving subsidies to the Aussies.
Australia were never going to buy TSR2. It hadn't got the range and they were already realigning themselves with the USA who they felt would maintain a far Eastern presence. Aus and USA were fighting together in Vietnam. There were no customers for TSR2, we helped build 900 Tornados. You do the maths.
RAAF bought F-111 in 1963!!!! There were RAAF Officers attached to the Ministry of Aviation in the UK involved with the weapons work done at Woomerra. They knew the true state of the British projects and were reporting all back to Oz.
This was the British version of the Canadian CF-105 Arrow.
No, completely different aircraft
@@jeremystocker4707 dude, I know more about the Arrow than you could possibly imagine. My comment was very obviously about the political interference and ultimate fate. It was clearly the British version of the Arrow.
If you said 'equivalent' not 'version' you would, in political terms, be correct.@@RealDaveWinter
Great video on what is my favorite aircraft thank you ☺
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.
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 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 love that silhouette. It looks like a base jumper in his wing suit
youtube finally got a recommendation right. Brilliant.
Looks like hey nicked the air intakes from the F-104.
Likely would have had a similar accident rate.
The TSR2 would not have been a world beater, using the most optimistic estimates it would have been roughly similar in performance to an F-111 but would have carried a smaller bomb load and needed a longer runway. It would probably have been easier to maintain than an F-111 because of the absence of a variable-geometry wing, which was also why it needed a longer runway.
In the early 60s Australia was looking for a plane like the TSR2, in the end we went with the General Dynamics F111, another nail in the TSR2's coffin.
A number of years ago, I met an Australian ex-engineer at my local airshow in the the UK (Mildenhall). He explained to me that the TSR2 was never Australia's preferred option. Basically, the TSR-2 was designed to do a very specialised task, and do it very well: deep low-level penetration and precision nuclear bombing of Soviet command posts and armour bottlenecks in the event of an invasion of Western Europe. The Australians didn't need this. What they were after was an aircraft that COULD fly low level but with a much more flexible armaments load, with more hardpoints on the wings. Their concern was the potential for a pro-communist regime in Indonesia and a domino effect across the region.
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)
Engine exhaust blown across the control surfaces? I don't think so. Compressor bleed air would make more sense. 4:48
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!!!
Amazing aerospace engineering existed in Britain and the Commonwealth in the 1950s and 1960s. Unfortunately, timid governments restrained by finance, but also pressured by American defence contractors prevailed and great aircraft like the TSR-2 and Canada’s AVRO Arrow were cancelled in favour of cheaper and less advanced indigenous designs or inferior American counterparts. The only upside was for American aerospace companies who benefited from the brain drain of unemployed engineers from those countries.
Its such a handsome aircraft. Its such a shame it never got a chance to shine, particularly in the light of its abilities against much later aircraft if what was said was true.
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!!!
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.
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!
My favourite museum - was there one time when it was 40°C on the airfield 😎🏴
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.
From the end of WW2 until now the UK when it comes to jet war planes the UK cannot compete with the USA on its own. We simply don't have the resources. It's only when we collaborate with partners to reduce the cost that we stand a chance. This is how we produced the Jaguar, Tornado, Eurofighter. Even this new jet the Tempest was supposed to be British but we are now collaborating with the Japanese and Italians. Although I think the Tempest will eventually go the way of the TSR2 as well. We simply don't have the money.
We did very well still. Lightning, Harrier. Not bad aircraft I’d say.
@@moonbaby6134 Yeah, two aicrafts done "in house"
Meanwhile, in the span of time between the Lightning and now, in terms of fighters aircraft, France did the Mirage III/5, the Mirage F1, the Mirage 2000 and the Rafale, all commercial successes. And that's with engines worse than the ones Roll Royces could produce. And let's not forget that theses aircraft were done while the french defence budget had to pay for 6 (not 4) first gen SSBNs and the development of the missiles to equip them, instead of Britain just asking for the US for assistance
@ that’s called decent procurement process. Of which the MOD has always been shocking at. It’s abysmal.
@@moonbaby6134 Nah, that's not the problem of the MOD, that's a problem that goes for the post-1956 british global posture as a whole, accepting its place as a US vassal by begging twice for SLBMs.
@ seen it first hand.
Very impressive for the mid 60's !! 👍
My Dad worked on that project. He still got angry about its cancellation in the 1990s.
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.
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?
F111 aardvark made it's first flight in the same year as this aircraft and had terrain following radar ,higher mach speed,low level AND variable sweep .
F111 was still on the drawing board
@@mikerussell3298 incorrect, the F-111 *flew* in 64, the same year the TSR-2 first flew. The F-111 *did* have a very long (8 year) testing phase though, despite being accepted into service in 67
The F111 was in the end an excellent combat aircraft. It had a big advantage over the TSR2 of much lower wing loading and comparatively slow landing speeds. I recall on one (albeit windy) day touching down at just 70kts GS and pulling up in about 2,500 feet. It also had nominally a rough field capability so was better able to deal with damaged runways etc.
Recommend going to see it at Duxford. It's very striking just how big the aircraft is up close, which has a lot to do with the undercarriage I guess. You just don't expect it to be so imposing.
Mountbatten is often cast as the dastardly villian in the story of the TSR.2. It's a matter of historical record that he overtly undermined the project at every turn & was way too partisan in favouring the Navy over the RAF.
That said, when you strip away the BS, Mountbatten was essentially correct. He said you could buy five Buccaneers for the price of one TSR.2 & given our dire (& worsening) national financial position at the time, we simply couldn't afford it.
With the benefit of hindsight, TSR.2 should never ever have been started & instead, the resources poured into making a supersonic version of the Buccaneer that met the needs of BOTH the Navy & RAF.
The Buccaneer was originally fighting for the GOR.339 contract, in part because it would be in the strike role for the FAA. However the inter-service rivalry meant the RAF didn't want a "navy" aircraft. If the RAF had gone down this road earlier then the Buccaneer would have been a serious Phantom competitor, the aircraft would have entered service earlier. Plus the reduced cost would have made it more enticing to the Aussies and South Africans
@@Ibirdball When you strip away the jingoistic gloss, we're just not that good are we?? You might have thought we would have learnt something from our many mistakes over the decades but we haven't.
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.
Lucky to have seen both surviving examples. I believe the flying example in the footage XR219 ended its days on a targeting range being shot at by pilots
It ended up at an Army Experimental establishment where weapons effects test are carried out!! What was done there was studies into how modern aircraft structures reacted to battle damage from various calibres of shells from small arms to light cannons. It would be interesting to find what the results of those trials actually were. I suspect they are held in this file at the UK National Archives. Conventional Effects: Damage, Trials on Aircraft TSR 2 1968 Jan 1 - 1973 Dec 31 FIle AVIA 13/1438. I wonder it the X2020 alloy shattered like glass???
@@richardvernon317 cheers.
My parents lived on the flight path to Warton. I saw this aircraft fly overhead a couple of times. Many of my neighbours lost their jobs when this was cancelled.
The politicians who cancelled the TSR2 should, IMO, be considered traitors.
Your view is not only wrong, it's silly.
No, No , I agree with fencingcoach3w, Many of us at the time, regarded Wilson as a KGB agent!@@Poliss95
It's been said a lot, but as a UK aircraft fan, it all boils down to "Cool!" Let's build a good aircraft together at GCAP.
いろいろ言われているけど、UKの航空機好きとしてはやっぱり”カッコいい！”これに尽きる。GCAPでいい航空機を一緒に作りましょう。
こんにちは、島国の国民の皆さん！ グレートブリテン及び北アイルランド連合王国から日本へこんにちは。 私たちは両国とも誇り高い工学国と科学国であり、間もなく「テンペスト」と呼ばれる共同第6世代戦闘機プロジェクトに協力する予定です。 私たち二人とも同様の要件を持っているため、完成したプロジェクトを見るのが待ちきれません。 1) 私たちの島の家を守る 2) 空母グループの戦力投射を通じて世界の同盟国を保護します。
_Translation:_
Hello fellow island nation citizen!
Greetings to Japan from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
We are both proud engineering and science nations and will soon be working together on our joint sixth generation fighter project called, "Tempest"
I can't wait to see the finished project as we both have similar requirements:
1) Protect our island home
2) Protect our allies settings the world through Carrier Group force projection.
We will be building our 6th gen fighter Tempest in some partnership with Japan to my understanding. The new engines and radar technology will be shared between the Tempest and Mitsubushi's F-X program. :)
@@chrisgermann6658
Have you heard about them considering integration of Reaction Engines' pre-cooler technology?
That would be especially cool.
@@MostlyPennyCat No not to my knowledge. The sabre engine tech has branched out over-seas in the USA now so i think Reaction engines are working towards getting a 1:1 prototype pre- cooler ready for testing.
A side-note about the fact that the Canberra was the RAF's longest-serving aircraft, at 57 years - the Hawk T2's out-of-service date is currently 2040, which will be 64 years since the T1 entered RAF service!
Tell that to the B52.
@@mookie2637 I could be wrong, but I don't think the B52 was ever in RAF service. 😉
My 2 favorite military aircraft were both failures. TSR2 and the XB-70.
When you say "world-beater", was it really any better than the F-111?
The F-111 was Macnamara's baby; a plane for all branches - jack of all trades, master of none. Being born from such a flawed premise hampered it from the outset since the designers were also told to cut costs as well.
The TSR2 may have been better at it's intended role if given the chance; but that would probably be due to the plane's designers not being pulled in every direction. We'll never know though since it only ever had the flight testing units, and was never used for weapons testing.
No because GOR.339 was used as a basis for the F-111.
A better comparison is the North American A3J / A-5 Vigilante. Same rolls, similar performance. The biggest difference is that the Vigi could also land on an aircraft carrier and served for decades.
@@Mishn0 and instead of leaving the bombs on target it towed them home.
@@neiloflongbeck5705 Fantasy much, Neil?
I've always believed, and still do, that the USA had a hand in TSR2's demise as they had with the Canadian Avro Arrow.
Got any evidence for that?
@@Poliss95 Yes.
@@soloperformer5598 Going to show it to us?
@@Poliss95 If I were to it might put your life in danger.
At 5 minutes the voice-over relates the need for low wing loading for high speed low level flight. Earlier at 4:40, the narrator say the plane has a high wing loading, needing the blown flaps. Judging by the plane's appearance, the high loading wing seems more likely.
That's a VERY interesting Rolleicord at 9:18!