RN cvarriers on Yankee station

Fantastic shots! Oh to see it happen again………….

Well, all-being-well if one or both CVFs are built and commissioned with catapults and arrestor gear, we shall :-).

Fantastic shots! Oh to see it happen again………….

Always lots of fun when cousins meet.

😀

Another cross deck shot:

But re the Colonial Navy (& I know I’ve posted this before but what the heck)

Check out the tail fin

Thanks for a very good birthday pressie, now my desktop, both keep swapping 😛

Brilliant picture. Love Colonial Navy

A favorite “cross-deck aftermath” photo…

Thanks for the B-day present.

Here in western Colorado I miss the sea and ships.
Fortunately, the airport here is a refueling stop for USN/USMC fighters & other carrier aircraft, as well as the occasional USAF aircraft (mainly KC-135s).

Yes, those J52s are loud engines… to this day (22 years after I departed the USMC & the A-6E maintenance community) I can tell when an EA-6B is flying over my house… from the inside.

Despite only putting out 12,000 lb.s.t., the sound put out by those J52-P-409s is louder (and crisper) than that put out by 15,000 (22,000) lb.s.t. F414s in F/A-18E/Fs.

Or that put out by the engines on various regional airliners (mostly Bombardiers) that fly regular service here.

I did not know that Intruders ever operated off the Ark! How did the A-6 stack up to the Buc?

And it was the noisiest aircraft I ever heard on the cat!

FWIW, Eagle’s hull and fitout (984, etc) were far, far better than the Ark. Feedwater problems, rusting hull inlets, accommodation standards on Ark were woeful compared to Eagle 🙁

The USA had all the control it needed & wanted, in that it had a licence to modify the Spey freely, not just build it. It had no interest in controlling what the UK did with it, & the UK would never have granted that control. Why should either party even consider that?

US export sales of Buccaneer, with US-built Speys/TF41s – why not? It would have been a gain for the UK as well, from licence fees & the supply of parts. Ditto with fitting Spey/TF41 in other US aircraft & selling them. They wouldn’t have been cannibalising British sales (what British sales?), so no problem. But control? Dammit, man, RR is still selling Marine Speys for new ships, the Tay (derived from the Spey) has been fitted to 850 or so civil aircraft, & the Spey itself over 2000, including well over 1000 built in the UK, the Netherlands, Italy & Brazil, mostly twin & some 4-engined. Who would hand over control of such an immensely valuable asset, when there was absolutely no need to do so?

TF41 is just a placeholder designation. Even if the Spey began production in England they would have wanted control by the time it entered into stateside production. That’s just the game of politics when the US gets involved as the majority shareholder. If London wanted royalties then Washington would want control.

You probably would have seen TF41-powered F-4’s eventually in European NATO service. J79, being used across the continent for the F-104 operators, would have made sense for most. But the potential was there, especially if one was operating primarily in the lower altitudes. Maybe, just maybe, the Buccaneer finds service in continental Europe, too.

H_K,
Swerve,

What timeline are you referring, the F-4K/M or the Buc? I thought A-6A was early 60’s, same time F-4 was developing. Was the Bucks much earlier?

Both.

The first TF41-equipped A-7D didn’t fly until 1968, when the RNs fleet of Spey-equipped Buccaneers was effectively complete, & the new-build aircraft for the RAF were on the line. With a fleet of Spey-equipped aircraft in service, & only a relatively small additional number building, it was too late to standardise on a different variant. It would have meant re-engining the entire fleet! Even with cannibalising the existing engines for common parts, it would have been a huge cost, for no benefit.

The first F-4K flew 2 years before the first TF41 flight. TF41 development would have had to start a few years earlier, as it would not only have had to be ready two years earlier, but with an afterburner.

I don’t see standardisation on the TF41 needed to justify its purchase. The USAF & USN found the TF41 sufficiently superior to the TF30 to justify buying the A-7D & A-7E despite already having TF30 in their inventories.

Exact A to original Q is that RN was in theatre and did fine, thanks.

US, UK, Oz, NZ were all in SEATO, which had the same all for one, one for all doctrine as NATO. Because UK saw the Vietnam/1965 imbroglio for what it was (a nationalist Civil War, not a formed-force external invasion), UK did not treat that issue as a SEATO Case. In July,1966 LBJ sought UK support in SE.Asia i: “a platoon of bagpipers would be sufficient. It’s the Br. flag that’s needed.” He got that…under SEATO Command, on his SW.flank.

CVA-01 had died 2/66. What PM Wilson had to hand, 7/66, were:
– Eagle, which he put on (Med, which could have been: )/Far East stations with Bucc.1, 25/8/65-14/8/66, then with Bucc.2, 26/6/67-23/3/70, 2/10/70-23/1/72; and:
– Victorious which supplanted E, with Bucc.2, 14/5/66-13/6/67; then:
– Hermes/Bucc.2, 18/1/67-18/2/68, 31/5/68-14/6/70.
He was rebuilding Ark for F-4K and put that in theatre, with Bucc.2, 14/6/70, his successor keeping it there to 24/7/73, and from 6/6/74 beyond US withdrawal fr. ‘Nam.

RN out of Singapore was exposed to (surrogate Indo-Chinese, actual: ) Sov/Sino sorties: US was in SE Asia because exactly that would follow the “loss” of ‘Nam (“Domino Theory”). So RN operated as if facing MiG/Bear/AS-4 Kitchen, as if in N.Sea/Arctic, and would have performed exactly as in (the iron opening phase of) a NATO engagement.

So the A to the Q is: would Vixen 2/Red Top have given effective Fleet Air Defence; would Buccs have delivered (iron) shock and awe…all in a (BPF-style) Joint (SEATO) Task Force?

A6A
Won competition January 1958; first flight 19 April 1960; combat squadron deliveries from October 1963; first combat sortie 1 July 1965

Buccaneer
S.1 (Gyron Jr.)
Won competition July 1955; first flight 30 April 1958; combat squadron deliveries from July 1962; out of front-line service by the late 1960s

S.2 (Spey)*
First flight 17 May 1963; combat squadron deliveries from October 1965

* While discussions on the Mk.2 Buccaneer had begun in late 1959, conversion work did not start until January 1962, being completed in May 1963.

Three of the test aircraft flew to the US in the summer of 1965 to perform hot weather and carrier trials on the USS LEXINGTON.

Spey
Mk 101 (Buccaneer S.2) 11,030 lb.s.t.; SFC .63
Mk 201 (FG.1 Phantom) 12,550 lb.s.t. (20,515 lb.s.t.); SFC .63/1.95

TF41
-2 (A-7E) 15,000 lb.s.t. (*est. 24,519 lb.s.t.); SFC .647/?

TF30-412 (F-14A) 12,350 lb.s.t. (20,900 lb.s.t.); SFC .63/2.78

TF30-100 (F-111F**) 15,000 lb.s.t. (25,100 lb.s.t.); SFC .64/2.45

* keeping the same dry:reheated thrust ratio

** a naval version of this “ultimate TF30” would be virtually the equivalent of an afterburning TF41… except for the higher reheated fuel consumption, and the continued compressor stall issues that plagued all versions of the TF30 throughout its service life.

H_K,
The Buccaneer was heavier and had higher wingloading so it would at best used comparable fuel rates. I was under the impression that the Spey burnt more than that.

Swerve,

What timeline are you referring, the F-4K/M or the Buc? I thought A-6A was early 60’s, same time F-4 was developing. Was the Bucks much earlier?

How much thrust would such a TF41 with afterburners provide? I’m thinking not enough. Its too slow on the phone to look up.

The only potential for Buccaneer in the USN is if you could have convinced the British to standardize around the TF41. The USN might have even been convinced by US politicians to move their F-4 over to the TF41, giving the FAA an easier mode to accepting the F-4. (Imagine how now the USN and USAF programs diverge, for the sake of simplifying the food chain of engines maintained on carriers.) That meant more jobs lost in the UK, but a more affordable program cost. The irony being the TF41 was a Spey derivative. The royalties for a state-side Buccaneer production would have helped with that.

I imagine that a US Buccaneer variant with the TF41 (a licence-built, modified, Spey) instead of a standard Spey would have been quite easy to produce. But I don’t see where you get the idea that a US Buccaneer buy would have been dependent on the UK adopting the US modifications to the Spey. I think the USN would have bought the Buccaneer or not for its own reasons, & regardless of which Spey variant the UK used, & where it was built. Having the engines for British Buccaneers licence-built in the USA would just have been a loss of income for the UK, & at a time when the UK had to be careful with foreign exchange.

BTW, the timeline’s wrong for the UK to standardise on TF41. It would have necessitated refitting most of the aircraft built for the UK (all except those built new for the RAF predated the TF41 being available), & scrapping the existing inventory of engines. I can’t imagine anyone even thinking of suggesting it, let alone it being done. What should have been done was for the USN to adopt an afterburning TF41 for the F-14. :diablo:

Buccaneer should take up ~25% less space and burn ~25% less fuel than the A-6, shouldn’t it?

Buccaneer: 96m2 folded (16m x 6.1m)
A-6: 128m2 folded (17m x 7.7m)

Spey RB.168-1A Mk 101: SFC 0.63 lb/lbf-hr
J52-P8: SFC 0.86 lb/lbf-hr

The only potential for Buccaneer in the USN is if you could have convinced the British to standardize around the TF41. The USN might have even been convinced by US politicians to move their F-4 over to the TF41, giving the FAA an easier mode to accepting the F-4. (Imagine how now the USN and USAF programs diverge, for the sake of simplifying the food chain of engines maintained on carriers.) That meant more jobs lost in the UK, but a more affordable program cost. The irony being the TF41 was a Spey derivative. The royalties for a state-side Buccaneer production would have helped with that.

Can anyone think of any situation where the A-6 was too valuable to sacrifice for Buccaneer? DIANE should have fit. It was probably more suited to the Iron Hand role than the A-6. The TRIM package could have fit. It would have had a better pace for buddy refueling. The only real knock on it that sticks out is the shipboard footprint for space and the extra fuel it would consume. Otherwise it looks like it could have been plausible.

Looking at performance numbers, it looks like the A-6 had to choose between speed & payload/range: it could fly far with 2-3 300gal tanks, but that implied carring multiple ejector racks which would slow it down and in fact eat up most of the range gain. Or it could carry bombs/missiles in low drag single setups, but then it couldn’t carry as many drop tanks and wouldn’t fly as far or as fast as the Bucc. Some numbers:

Max Speed
A-6E – 18x 500lb Snakeye: 500kts
A-6E – 4x Harpoon: 520kts
A-6A – 5x 1,000lb: 554kts
A-6E – 1x 2,000lb: 560kts
A-6E – clean: 571kts
Buccaneer S.2 – 4x 1,000lb internal: 580+kts (from flight test report at flightglobal.com)

–> In fairly slick conditions, the A-6 flew at least 10-30kts slower than the Bucc. With multiple ejector racks (i.e. most of the time), it slowed down another 40-50kts.

Hi-Lo-Hi radius
A-6A – 3x 1,000lb, 2x 300gal tanks: ~1,000nm
A-6A – 4x 1,000lb, 1x 300gal tanks: ~930nm –> Matching the Buccaneer’s payload means losing a drop tank & losing range
A-6E – 6x 1,000lb, 3x 300gal tanks: ~950nm –> Those multiple ejector racks are draggy! Even if range is OK, speed won’t be so good.
Buccaneer S.2 -4x 1,000lb internal, 2x 300gal tanks: ~1,000nm

–> The Buccaneer could fly fast AND far. Too bad I don’t have performance figures for the Bucc. with 4 Martel & internal bombbay fuel tank. That would be a good alternative comparison with the A-6 carrying 4 Bullpups/Harpoon.

(All A-6 numbers extrapolated from the A-6A & A-6E standard aircraft characteristics: http://www.alternatewars.com/SAC)