This Cold War aircraft was perfect. Why was it cancelled? | TSR2

above me is the English electric Canberra an aircraft that would be the raf's longest serving machine and one that was designed to operate at high level at the time of its introduction in 1951 it was an incredibly efficient aircraft but by the late 1950s everything changed the Soviet Union bought into service brand new surface-to-air missiles and suddenly overnight the Canberra was vulnerable now the British government needed a new aircraft one that could beat this threat and fly under the radar operational requirement 339 was extensive requiring an aircraft capable of supersonic speeds low level performance and carrying a nuclear weapon it was a huge ask for the technology of the time but had it been successful the aircraft itself would have been a world beta the best had seen that aircraft is the aircraft behind me the aircraft that never was the BAC tsr2 it seemed to go through the air like an arrow if it had gone into service by 1975 it would still be in service today foreign Britain in the 1950s was in a difficult position financially struggling coming out of the second world war and that financial problem extended to the aircraft industry as well in Britain there were a huge number of independent aircraft companies previously sustained by a wartime economy they were now struggling for a limited amount of lucrative government contracts the government wanted these aircraft companies to consolidate or Die the government decided that this would be too greater task for any one company and it would only be undertaken on the basis of two of the strongest companies amalgamating together with a third company to produce the engine there was a lot of the resistance of that idea but this was the only contract that was available in the military field and it had to be considered that way so with this background Vickers Armstrong who include super Marine Bristol and English electric the company responsible for the early designs of this aircraft these three aircraft companies took on the name BAC the British aircraft Corporation as a result parts of the aircraft were built by different parts of that larger organization with Vickers responsible for most of the front of the aircraft and English Electric in general the back section Vickers were also responsible for the avionics in the aircraft and English electric the aerodynamics this was further complicated from the fact that Bristol sidley were responsible for the engines and there were also numerous other subcontractors responsible for various smaller parts of the aircraft this would have consequences further down the line as the aircraft began to come together it's a rather complicated situation with csr2 everybody was doing their own thing down there I mean we had English electric Fitters we the Indian people from Olympus looking after there a bit umpteen firms if you will all looking after their own little bit but working in conjunction with each other you know the design of tsr2 was incredibly Advanced far in advance of anything in service with the RAF at the time or indeed throughout the world a key part of that would have been the terrain following radar allowing the aircraft to operate at extremely low altitudes at high speed and with accuracy and this was supplemented by the Advent of a head-up display for both the pilot and rear crew member in the cockpit allowing them to have a much better situational awareness of the aircraft in its surroundings those Advanced design features continue throughout the rest of the aircraft the specification for tsr2 required it to take off from hastily prepared and short runways as a result tsr2 would gain these massive undercarriage legs that kept the aircraft high off of the ground the role was tactical strike and reconnaissance the sort of role that the tornado carry out these days there was a very large avionics Bay behind the cockpit which is really essential for low flying aircraft that have to follow the terrain to stay under under the enemies radar to allow tsr2 to operate at high supersonic speeds and at low level required the aircraft to have very small wings and high Wing loading unfortunately this meant that at slower speeds its handling was affected meaning the engineers were required to install fully blown flaps engine exhaust blown across the control surfaces improved handling at slower speeds the idea was that you wanted an aircraft with an extremely low Wing loading so that when you're pounding along at low level you don't feel the the actual turbulence as a weapon aiming platform it can be made stable but it was a sheer power from the two olympuses which gave it its enormous performance capabilities almost sinisterly powerful tsr2 was designed to be powered by a pair of Bristol sidley Olympus engines the engines would power the aircraft to twice the speed of sound Mach 2. early on they caused a number of problems with the aircraft in its first test flight phase but the engines were developed to become a success in Concord towards the end of 1964 the aircraft had come together and was getting close to its first flight something that was achieved in September of that year but from the start there were problems problems that would continue to arise throughout its early test process key amongst them were surrounding the undercarriage and the engines the engine was an early trials version and wasn't rated for full power the undercarriage itself on the first number of flights was not retracted due to various issues however by the 10th flight of tsr2 a number of those early teething problems have been overcome allowing the pilots to finally perform supersonic flights and most importantly low-level flights through the pennines as well buy that 10th flight the pilots flying this aircraft were starting to report how well tsr2 handled and the fact that it flew beautifully the team behind the aircraft finally began to think that they had a world-beating aircraft on their hands one you saw it in flight that was a different kettle of fish altogether I mean it was absolutely magnificent it seemed to go through the air like a an arrow without any disturbance in 24 flights we achieved such an incredible confirmation of its capabilities that we the people who were on the job could see no reason no argument against it being perpetuated we we thought this this airplane is actually going to do what it's intended to do but to get to this stage costs were spiraling originally projected to costs between 15 and 35 million pounds in the money of the day it was projected that by the end of 1965 costs would have risen to around about 125 million pounds and the aircraft still wasn't ready for service in the still difficult Financial circumstances following the first flight of tsr2 a new labor government came into power in Britain a government that were promising to make cuts and with the ballooning costs of tsr2 it was Prime for The Chopping board and in the budget of April 65 the tsr2 was dealt a death blow at the very moment that tsr-2 was about to be canceled the second prototype was being readied for flight at boscom down the flight crew had adjourned to a local pub for lunch and it was here that they heard the story of the cancellation of the project he heard it on the news didn't even know about it and it was due to fly the aircraft that afternoon and he rushed back I believe to the Airfield and they said that's it because they were going to try and get up in the air before before the night fell following the cancellation the government looked abroad for a replacement and focused on the American F-111 an aircraft under development at the time and that would have a potentially similar performance to tsr2 only two now survive one of which the fourth prototype to be built is our aircraft here xr222 the the cost Effectiveness was the argument that was used against it but they didn't realize that the change from subsonic military Aviation to supersonic military Aviation was going to up the costs to get a an airplane to go from the subsonic regime to the supersonic regime you've got to overcome this vertical drag rise that occurs with with the compressibility of air from 80 of the speed to Sun up to the speed of sound that costs money and people didn't realize that then in the end the British government end up not purchasing the American F-111 as a result of experience gained by the Australians who did purchase it they find that the costs would have been even higher than those projected for tsr2 instead the RAF would have to make do with a number of different aircraft types to fulfill the role that one aircraft potentially could have done by itself aircraft such as the buccaneer and jaguar that was until the 1980s when in collaboration with the Germans and Italians the RAF would introduce the panavia tornado to service if the tsr-2 had gone into service it would have been an airplane that had a considerably longer unrefueled range than a tornado it would have done the tornadoes tactical work with terrain following radar and the wool rest of it and it would have had a 2.5 mark capability at altitude which is faster than the tornado and that's 30 years later the story behind tsr2 is full of contested narratives both from political and economic backgrounds and from the people who operated and built the aircraft as well it was an advanced aircraft probably too advanced for the economic climate in Britain at the time although the project itself was canceled the lessons learned from it were not wasted both in terms of the technology that went into the aircraft that found its way into future projects and the ability for these companies to work together that would set the seeds for the future of the British aircraft industry I think the failure of the tsr2 project is best summed up by Sir Sydney Cann designer of the Hawker haricum when he stated that all modern aircraft have four dimensions span length height and politics with tsr2 they only got the first three right

Channel: Imperial War Museums

Views: 94,664

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Id: OCd0nkSmydM

Length: 11min 27sec (687 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 09 2023