The TSR-2 is a cautionary tale. Or perhaps just the tail end of a larger cautionary tale.
From World War II through the 1950’s, the British aerospace industry was second to none. Their planes were top of the line, ugly as hell and gave the Russian military the cold sweats. Their industry was forward thinking, stuck liquid fueled rocket engines on airplanes just for giggles, produced a seemingly endless stream of quality products with terrible names and called no man Mister. Well, except for the Queen… seems they got all deferential and whatnot around her for some reason. Shrug. But with the 1957 “Defence White Paper” by Minister of Defence Duncan Sandys, things started going straight down the tubes. The white paper essentially called for the end of manned military aircraft, their roles supposed to be taken by unmanned missiles; it also called for the merger of Britain’s many independent aircraft companies into a few large companies, and promised to only offer contracts to such merged companies. Instead of doing the right and proper thing, and flinging Sandys across the English Channel with a giant rocket-boosted trebuchet, the British government and aviation industry actually followed the directives. Many promising programs were killed outright; the companies began to merge.
Developed in the early 1960’s by the British Aircraft Corporation (itself formed in 1960 by the merger of several formerly successful aviation firms) as a fast, low-altitude strike bomber. It was born as a program in March of 1957 with the release of General Operational Requirement 339, and somehow, apparently magically, survived the Sandys culling of manned aircraft projects. The mission was to fly low and fast, hugging the terrain to stay under the radar. A pseudo-stealth tactic then being designed for the Pluto nuclear ramjet and later utilized on cruise missiles.
It advanced as far as the first prototype taking flight (Sept 1964). Shortly afterwards (April 1965), of course, it was cancelled in favor of buying the General Dynamics F-111K which was thought would be cheaper. And as it turned out, the costs of the F-111 program skyrocketted, far in excess of the projected TSR-2 costs, so even the F-111K purchase was cancelled. Britain would not get a plane to fill the role until the Panavia Tornado.
The British Aircraft Corporation went on to not build any further military aircraft on its own, and was eventually merged with the other sad remnants of the once-proud British aerospace industry to form the nationalized company British Aerospace. Since it’s formation in 1977, BAe has gone on to fill the skies with precisely zero military aircraft of its own, only being able to produce the Typhoon in conjunction with Italian, German and Spanish companies. The Typhoon began its life with preliminary requirements from the RAF in 1971, and as of 2010 is actually in series production. Britain has developed no bombers since the TSR-2.
The lesson: bureaucrats wiped out one of the worlds great industries, virtually overnight, by a few simple proclamations. All that’s left are a few broken museum pieces, photos, film, artwork and drawings showing what might have been.
The source of this drawing is unknown to me.
9 Responses to “TSR-2”
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There were later proposals to resurrect the TSR-2 for other purposes, including as a launcher for small satellites. This proposal was apparently the inspiration for one of the “meteor-defense launchers” in the Japanese anime “Stratos 4”:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=1969
http://denbeste.nu/Chizumatic/reviews/Stratos4.shtml
One of the big problems with the TSR-2 was that it was _too_ capable.
That sounds strange to say, but here’s my argument for that conclusion.
The Canberra made a very good replacement for the Mosquito, and its fairly low cost, easy maintenance, and mission flexibility gave it great overseas sales potential, and it served with several air forces (including our own, as the B-57 Intruder).
But the TSR-2 was a whole differnt ball of wax; although capable of doing conventional bombing missions and recon missions, its main mission was supersonic nuclear strike, like the Mirage IV.
Right there, a lot of potential customers vanished; France wouldn’t use it out of national pride, Australia didn’t have nuclear weapons, Canada was far enough from the USSR to make it out of range of TSR-2 strikes, South Africa didn’t have a nuclear program at the time of its design, and did anyone want Germany to have supersonic attack bombers that could reach anywhere in England or Europe?
Besides which, it would have been a lot more expensive than the Canberra on a per-plane basis, as well as having higher maintenance demands.
Which meant that the cost of developing and deploying it could not be offset by any sure foreign sales of the aircraft outside of possibly Australia, (which bought the F-111.)
Besides which, the Thor IRBM was already in the pipeline for Britain, and as capable as TSR-2 was, a Thor could get a nuclear warhead to any desired target in Eastern Europe a lot faster than a TSR-2, and with a lot less chance of being shot down on the way.
Although the cancellation of the TSR-2 was a major blow to the British aerospace industry, the aircraft, when you get right down to it, was unnecessary…the Soviet Union collapsed, Britain was never attacked by it, and even if it had been built it would probably be going out of service by now, as SAMs have gotten a lot more capable as the years went on.
As the British found out the hard way in Desert Storm, flying really low over the desert at high speed didn’t work that well against a modern air defense system.
This autumn Crowood will release a new book about the TSR2, which should surpass all books written on the topic to date. It’s going to be a pretty hefty edition, with tons of new material and a lot of myth busting. A must have for anyone with even a passing interest in the type.
More here: http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=10221.0
Having done the artwork (http://www.thunder-and-lightnings.co.uk/public8/tsr2britainslostbomber.jpg) for the front cover of this book, I may be slightly biased, but I truly believe this book will become the new standard in TSR2 references. I’ve had a sneak peek at some of the material which will be published within the 300+ pages and it’s going to be very interesting!
Cheers,
Ronnie
It was Aircraft a head of his time
even 15 year after it was cancelled, the Thatcher government look for rebuild the TSR-2
because it uniqueness, like the short takeoff and landing
but the Harold Wilson labor government make hell of a Job
not only the bloody bastards cancell the program,
the gave order the remaining 6 prototype at BAC had be cut with welding torch
while on BAC parking lot goverment officials piles up TSR-2 Blueprints, documents, data, records
and starting making a “bonfire”
that’s was no program cancellation, This was ASSASSINATION of the British aerospace industry
A sad reminder of the Arrow program,which suffered the same fate.
The aircraft that never enters operational service was always going to be the greatest aircraft of all.
As was pointed out in the movie “Flight Of The Arrow” Canada could buy the off-the-shelf Bomarc missile from the US and destroy incoming Soviet bombers in its sparsely inhabited northern areas, or build the Arrow and have US Bomarcs detonating nuclear warheads over its far more populous southern areas taking out the bombers the Arrows missed.
Did they need an aircraft as fast as the Arrow? The DEW line would give plenty of warning of the approach of Soviet bombers, and the CF-101’s could reach them with their Genie nuclear rockets.
The real root problem though was that the Soviets under Khrushchev largely abandoned their manned bomber force, and concentrated on their ICBMs and SLBMs instead.
That, and rumors that the Arrow program had be severely infiltrated by Soviet agents, with feedback from it going straight into the MiG-25 Foxbat program, argued that it wasn’t that great of an idea, especially when total cost of getting it into service in any numbers was taken into account.
There were some plans to deploy F-108 Rapiers for defense of the Canadian far North (later the YF-12 was suggested for the same mission) but if those would have been CAF or USAF operated out of Alaska is a very good question…they were probably too expensive for Canada to afford in any numbers.
But with the small number of Bears assigned to the bombing mission, the cancellation of the Bounder, and the conversion of the Bisons into refueling tankers, there was really no need for a large indigenous Canadian bomber defense force beyond the CF-101s, CF-104s. and later CF-18s.
You could make the argument that the Blackjack re-energized the Soviet bomber threat, but by the time that came into service, the Arrow would have been obsolete anyway.
I was reading up on the TSR-2 mission profile in the book “Project Canceled”, and checked on something via Google Earth.
Carrying a pair of under-wing drop tanks, max mission radius on a nuclear strike mission was 1,500 nautical miles with a 2,000 pound nuclear weapon stowed in the bomb bay (or two 1,000 pounds nuclear weapons, also carried internally).
On such a mission, the concept was to have it fly to within 300 nm of the target at Mach 0.9 and 25,000 – 35,000 feet, then climb to around 48,000 feet and accelerate to Mach 1.7 – 2.0 300 nm from the target to get through the border air defenses, followed by flying the last 200 nm at Mach 0.9 and 200 feet. Return to base would be subsonic, with most of it flown at high altitude as soon as enemy defenses were cleared.
So far, so good.
Taking off from North of London near Great Yarmouth put Moscow 1,265 nm away on a great-circle route that would take you over Lithuania and the southern tip of Latvia, so Moscow was indeed in range, with some extra fuel left over to help get you back home.
But there’s a problem; you are going to enter Lithuanian airspace 560 nautical miles from Moscow, nearly double the distance that the high altitude supersonic penetration maneuver was supposed to occur at before the descent to the on-the-deck target approach under the radar.
At that point, you would be traveling at subsonic speed and medium-high altitude, and make a pretty good target for both fighters and SAMs stationed in Lithuania.
Going supersonic at that distance from the target will mean that your range is going to be severely compromised, as now you are going to be flying 460 nm of the final approach at low altitude.
So unless you are going to be taking off from a NATO base in Europe, not in England, you are going to have real problems getting back to your home base again.
This brings up the interesting question of whether a non-nuclear NATO country would let you station TSR-2’s on their territory, knowing it would make them a potential target for preemptive attack in the event of hostilities flaring up.
For some reason I don’t completely understand, the outer wing pylons of the TSR-2 do not appear to be plumbed to carry a pair of additional drop tanks, although that would seem to have been necessary to give it a real chance to get to Moscow and back from England.
Other than short duration supersonic performance, the Blackburn Buccaneer was superior in both range and weapons carrying potential.
Max bomb load on the TSR-2 lo-lo 400 nm radius subsonic mission was 8,000 pounds. The Buccaneer could carry a max bomb load of 12,000 pounds on a similar mission, and when set up for a h-lo-hi attack mission with slipper tanks had a 2,000 nm mission radius.
I was thinking more about this today…you know what would have been the perfect plane for the RAF out of this time period?
The B-58 Hustler.
SAC didn’t like it due to its short range by their standards; it would have been just right for RAF attacks on the Soviet Union, and there were plans to mount JATO bottles on it and get it out of a concrete blast-proof shelter and into the air in no time flat with a minimal takeoff run.
Dear Pat, despite all of that, the Arrow and the TSR were aircraft ahead of their time and it’s a shame they never reached operational status.
The same goes for the XB-70, what I would give to see all three aircraft flying in formation 🙂
And yes, I’m Canadian and damn proud of it ^_^