When reading about some of the controversial aircraft cancellations (military and civilian) over history, the line ‘all production tooling and technical data was destroyed’ seems to come up quite a lot and its usually implied or said that this was to ensure there was no chance of resurrection.
How much space would that tooling, data etc take up if it had just been disassembled and stored?
By: Vega ECM - 11th April 2008 at 23:00
Aston Down, up until the mid/late 90’s, stored large quantities of MOD jigs, rigs and tooling. In the early 80’s I visited an area at AD where jigs had been recently scraped and picked up a discarded data plate from one of these …it was Avro York!. Also I was amazed to find on the east side of the airfield a number of Gloster Javelin jigs, .. these survived to the late 1980’s. Even in the early 1990’s I noted the following jigs scattered around the various hangers , Gnat, Nimrod MR2&AEW3, Victor, Vulcan, Jaguar, Harrier, and Phantom. From the data plates, the Phantom jigs were manufactured in the UK, shipped Stateside to produce the A/C, and then returned to AD for long term storage …..& scrapping!. Other items either stored here or allegedly stored here included;-The Phantom fatigue airframe (in fact a former flying development aircraft), Large quantities of aero engine tooling , development test engines e.g RB199/Peg/Oly, 6 spare Merlin’s for the Bosc blower rig, AWE test equipment/development rigs/weapons production tooling (In a high Security central compound hanger cleared out c1982), and according to at least one person, TSR2 jigs (apparently up until early 80’s… but not confirmed by own observations).
During Nimrod MRA4 development, the stored MR2 jigs were examined but where found to be too badly corroded for reuse…….. So new ones were produced.
By: 12jaguar - 11th April 2008 at 21:09
Some years ago I had to go to Aston Down before it’s closure to categorize Jaguar and Canberra production tooling (mostly Jag) that was held there. Whilst most of it was badly corroded and not much use, we were able to pass on some Jag Flap and Slat jigs and fixtures to Beagle aircraft who carried out a lot of component refurb. The tooling itself took up nearly half of a blister hangar and I think that was less than half of the total tooling that would be needed for productionisation.
Unfortunately a lot of the items could not be identified and I believed they were sold for scrap. 🙁
By: Creaking Door - 11th April 2008 at 20:09
There is some method in their madness!
Don’t forget also there would have potentially been much classified information contained within the design / drawings…
…how embarrassing would it have been if some other nation started production of the TSR2…..after the UK had cancelled it! 😀
By: J Boyle - 11th April 2008 at 19:33
More than you might think!
At D-M in the U.S., I saw the production tooling for something…A-10 (I believe) and there was enough to fill a good size warehouse.
There would be thousands of drawings (depending on the type of course) on fairly large sheets.
They’re not easy or cheap to keep around (judging by the cost to a classic car club to which I belong to keep their archieves).
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April 11, 2008 at 7:15 pm