Its said that modern aircraft have four dimensions, span, length, height and
politics. the TSR-2 was a world-beating jet bomber which got
the first three right but ultimately fell foul of a last one. In 1957 British
aviation was flying high it was producing the most advanced jets in the
world, ahead of everyone else including the US. The English Electric Canberra set
a world record for altitude at 70,310 feet over 21 kilometers. The Canberra
was Britain's first jet bomber and was more capable than any other aircraft of
its class worldwide. It was widely exported with America building more than
400 under licence but there was concern that soon but Canberra would be
threatened by new Russian interceptors and a new high-altitude reconnaissance
and bomber aircraft would be required. At the time the British aircraft industry
was made up of many different manufacturers all feeding into the large
defense budget but Britain was spending far more than he could afford and in
September 1957 the head of the Ministry of supply called a meeting at Shell Max
house in London gathering together the Chiefs of all the major aerospace
companies. There he announced that the canberra replacement would be the
government's main aerospace contract but the job would only go to those companies
who agreed to conglomerate, basically merge or die.
The government was determined to cut the fat for a more streamlined aviation
industry now that ballistic missiles would carry
the nuclear deterrent the new aircraft had an ambitious specification. The RAF
wanted an aircraft that could take off on over a thousand airfields in Western
Europe with just 600 yards of runway. This was considered necessary
because in the event of a nuclear war all the major airfields and runways were
expected to be destroyed as well as being capable of STOL, short takeoff and
landing the new aircraft was also expected to fly it Mach 1.1
200 feet a Mach 2.2 at medium to high altitudes. Not only was the new aircraft
to be the successor to the Canberra but it could also be possibly a replacement
for the V bombers victor, vulcan and valiant. After the meeting at Shell-Mex
house the initial shock gave way to fierce competition for the big contract.
Vickers headed by Sir George Edwards put forward a single-engine design called
the "Type 571" although Edwards was a capable
administrator the Vickers only real experience with high speed jet bombers
was with a Valiant "V" bomber which due to structural issues had to be withdrawn
after just five years. English Electric on the other hand had built the
successful lightning supersonic fighter with a super successful Canberra they
submitted a proposal for P.17 an advanced concept design that used a
detachable vertical takeoff and landing aircraft called the P17.D, it was a
radical idea but the company had proven themselves with a success of the Canberra.
Vickers however won the prime contract and were responsible for the front
fuselage section cockpit and weapons English Electric were to be contracted
to build the wings tail and rear fuselage. At the time English Electric
will looked down upon and seen as newcomers by the much more established
makers even though they had considerably more experience with supersonic aircraft.
This split contract also meant the project had split management and split
assembly lines that were well over a hundred miles apart. There was also a lot
of extra management input into the design from the defense ministry. All
this extra import leading to extended deadlines and increasing costs. The
aerodynamics for the futuristic P17 had impressed and the shape would provide a
distinctive look for the new jet together Vickers and English Electric
formed a new company with the Bristol aeroplane company and hunting aircraft
under the name BAC or British Aircraft Corporation.
Their project soon became known as Tactical Strike Reconnaissance aircraft
or TSR-2. 30 years earlier the Fairey swordfish
had flown the first TSR as Torpedo Spotter Reconnaissance plane but the
acronym gave some impression of the advanced capabilities of Britain's new
special aircraft. TSR-2 would be fitted with the most advanced electronic
systems in the world with independent targeting and front and sideways looking
radars. The engines would be the Olympus 22R developed by bristol siddeley
which would later power the concorde. The new engine was an advanced turbojet but
at the time was also untested and its development caused major setbacks to the
development of a TSR-2. In 1962 the engine burst into flames during a ground
test on a modified Vulcan destroying both the plane and the engine. There were
also problems fitting the Olympus into a fuselage as they was so little clearance
between the two that each engine had to be precisely measured to ensure it would
fit into a particular aircraft but on the 27th of September 1964 the first
prototype XR219 took its first flight from Boscombe down in Wiltshire. The
aircraft handled beautifully according to the test pilots, like a big version of
English electrics supersonic lightning. However the first test flights revealed
problems with the landing gear. The long-stroke design necessary for a super
short takeoff and landing produced huge lateral vibrations on touchdown which
went through the entire fuselage and happened to coincide with a resonant
frequency of a human eyeball. The result of this vibration was to cause the
pilots eyes to shake giving a brief moment of blindness for the pilot
Roland Beaumont on landing. Engineers worked around the clock to fix the
issues one by one and by early 1965 XR219 was flying well. In the first and
only supersonic test the prototype broke the sound barrier with just
it's engines on reheat, leaving its lightening escort which had both engines
on full reheat in the dust. A second prototype was about to begin
testing and 17 aircraft were in varying stages of completion however political
forces were moving against the project behind closed doors and it's cost
overruns and delays only added to the calls from those who opposed it.
There was also inter-service rivalry between the RAF and the Navy which
deepened when the nuclear deterrent was given to the Navy in the form of a
polaris submarines and the RAF V bombers were sidelined. The Navy disliked
the large sums of money that were going into the TSR-2
an RAF project. When Labour won the general election in 1964 there was also
the belief that they would undo much of what the tories had started including the
TRS-2 The RAF were due to take a hundred and
fifty airframes and the first international order of a TSR-2
was to be 30 airframes for the Australian Air Force. However when the British Chief
of Defence Staff Lord Mountbatten who was a Navy man and one of the TSR-2's
biggest critics visited Australia, he actively tried to persuade them to order
the Navy's Blackburn Buccaneer instead he talked up the TSR-2 setbacks and
hinted that the jet might never make it into production. Meanwhile the new
British Prime Minister Harold Wilson had been visiting the United States with the
defense minister Denis Healey .The Americans also viewed the TSR-2 as a
direct threat to their own aviation programs like their swing wing aircraft
the General Dynamics F-111 aardvark. They'd offered the Australians the F-111
at a knockdown price and the pitch worked. The RAAF withdrew there order for
the TSR-2 and instead went through the american F-111. In the April 1965 budget
the newly elected Labour government announced the cancellation of a whole
previously Tory led project apparently because of budget and
schedule overruns but then in an unprecedented move both before and since
someone ordered that all tools Jiggs and part completed aircraft be
destroyed, even a wooden mock-up of the TSR-2 was dragged out onto the runway
and burned, somebody somewhere wanted to ensure that
there will be no chance of a project coming back to life. The workers at BAC
were baffled as were of a national press and the public. The TSR-2
a world beater and pride of the aviation industry would come to nothing. Many of the
highly skilled workers lost their jobs and ended up going to America. Britain
then placed an order for fifty F-111s but the American aircraft also over ran
in cost and delivery dates just like the TSR. Some say that the Americans put
pressure on the UK government in return for backing for the upcoming IMF loan to
the UK but both parties have denied that. Eventually though with the weakening of
a pound against the dollar the whole deal fell through anyway. The
RAF repurposed for V bombers to do low altitude missions until a newly modified
Buccaneer and an order for American F4 phantoms took over the cameras
reconnaissance roll. BAC desperate to keep the knowledge gained in the
high-speed jet design alive offered to use the only flying TSR-2
for 100 hours of research for one and a half million pounds, the knowledge gained
from this research would go towards the new supersonic Concorde project which
was to use the same engines but the government refused. The cancellation of the
TSR-2 marked a decisive point as Britain stepped back from its ambition to lead
the world in aerospace design almost as if the government of the day and
successive ones have lacked faith in their own homegrown industries even when
they were world beaters. Only two airframes remained after a decade of
development over £200 million spent in investment.
XR219 the only prototype to have flown ended up being used for target
practice at the Shoeburyness test range. XR 220 the second prototype however was
lucky and can be seen at the RAF Museum in Cosford. Considering the extent of a
destruction of almost anything to do with the TSR-2
after it was cancelled including photos and film, it's may be surprising to know
that a third although much less complete airframe XR222- also survived and after
an extensive restoration it now resides at the Imperial War Museum Duxford. A lot
of the knowledge gained from the TSR - ended up in the Panavia Tornado which
did pretty much what we the RAF originally wanted but with a plane built
by an international consortium instead of a truly British one. So thanks for
watching and this episode shirt was the Trip Clouds by madcap England and is
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