Thanks for the open house invitation:

That’s easy –

it’s the little known Handley-Page Flying Conservatory, designed during Sir Fred’s little known landscape gardening phase. The plants and wicker furniture were deleted at the RFC’s request and it was redesigned as the 0/100. Apparently Sir Fred misheard the request for a “bloody paralyser” as “lots of bloody fertilizer” and it was a very cold Sping at the time.

🙂

it wasnt just cancelled, someone attempted to surgically remove the project alltogether. someone did their absolute hardest to make sure that there would be no way the project could be restarted, and no way that they would fly again

It was bought and paid for the government they owned the whole lot and disposed of everything as was their right. As for the drawings, special machinery etc. have you considered there could be data and details which were of a classified nature and the government was looking at the security aspect – if there was things of that nature they weren’t going to leave that around to become souvenirs for the workers. On ordinary engineering projects all the drawings etc. and data is the property of the client who paid for it. The contractor may retain the knowledge but the actual data belongs to whoever paid for it. Standard practice at the end of the project is hand over or destroy – makes way for the next. I cannot see any evidence of conspiracy just a hard nosed economic decision.

i can see all of what you are saying, to do with affording her ete. but amongst all these very plausible arguments, not one of you has fielded a decent reason as to why the programme was dismantled with such disgusting haste, and the absolute best dont to wipe any remenants of its material existence off the face of the planet.

How about –

Redundant large aeroplanes and jigs, special machinery etc. take up valuable storage space, and as they all belonged to the government then the government could do as it wished. If the program had been cancelled there was no point in keeping them. There is one preserved, isn’t that enough.

Also given the resistance to the cancellation in certain areas I imagine the government didn’t want any large viable units sitting around that might serve as a rallying point by some to bring pressure to bear on reopening the project. It had been decided that the project was redundant and time has demonstrated that that decision was correct, the last thing anybody wanted was one of those silly stubborn ongoing fights that was doomed to failure anyway as the UK could not afford the TSR2. On balance, and I know this is distasteful to some, the government probably made the right decision. Saved a lot of time, money and wasted effort.

Some interesting points there. I’d be inclined to add that:-

It’s largely irrelevant whether the Soviet threat was real or not. Point is, it was perceived as being very real at the time.

It would be foolish to assume that Britain’s defence expenditure was significantly increased because of any industry pressure. If anything, the reverse was the case.

Nuclear bombs are cheap if you accept the “bang for buck” theory. However the basics of nuclear weaponry is not cheap to develop. The British Government spent a huge amount on the programmes which they could ill afford, such was the Soviet threat (real or otherwise).

As has been said, the fact that four V-Bomber designs were created does not mean that any one could have been chosen at the time. The Sperrin and Valiant were essentially separate generations as mentioned, therefore the only choice could ultimately have been between Vulcan and Victor, but having already financed their development (because there was no guarantee that both would perform as predicted), there was no major financial advantage in making the choice. It would be wrong to assume that the Air Ministry was lazily ordering unnecessary equipment. Quite the contrary was the case – the country was virtually bankrupt and faced with the Soviet threat which might seem a tad unreal and unlikely now in retrospect, but it was very real at the time.

TSR2 didn’t have a “limited tactical capability” – it wasn’t limited at all. It did have a future but it was simply unaffordable. Ultimately we opted for the Buccaneer which, if anything, was even more limited, but performed admirably.

With all respect, I think you are putting a bias on the events which while admirable in terms of forgiving the imperfect knowledge of the AM Mandarins of the time for their failure to recognise the allure of the TSR2, fails actually to recognise that they actually made the right decision. A decision which events since have demonstrated to be quite correct. The decision to proceed with the V Bomber trio predates that group of Mandarins but I suspect that if those who made the hard decision* regarding the TSR2 had been in decisive positions for the V Bomber program they would have made the same decision.

Political and economic realities are rather immutable, while aesthetic appeal tend to vary with age and experience.

*We forget that given the amount already expended it was a very hard political decision – it was not a spot of spite.

[QUOTE=J Boyle;The fact is, in the late 50s through late 70s, the USSR had more strategic programs on going than the west…with probably larger fleets. [/QUOTE]

And this, with all due respect, is where you are wrong. The idea of some sort of strategic gap began in the late 50s due to our inability to gain adequate data on Rusian production capacity. In essence we took a safe course and opted for the worst case scenario, and as time pased and spending increased this initial guesstimate became enshrined as fact. Probably on the principle of “Well we working to a plan so the fact that we are working to a plan should mean that the plan is right.

Economics despite the cloud of confusion that seems to surround its day to day manifestations is pretty basically simple – goods produced are paid for in some form or other from the financial outcome of labour. This is as true for a western free market economy as for an old style socialist command economy – it is only the physical form of the financial outcome that changes. We can barter with money or with bags of wheat – for the provider of the goods being bartered for they are the same.

The strategic gap, or the missile gap or whatever gap (the mineshaft gap in Dr Strangelove 😀 ) were political tools used by the supporters and adherents of the inflated and basically wrong intelligence data to justify further expansion of spending and growth of defence assets. I am not saying that they were lying, they fell into the trap of assuming that a supposition no matter how well based in reason is correct when in fact it is still only a supposition until hard data confirms it. What was lacking on our side was hard data while on the Soviet side they saw only our expansion, not that we were basing that expansion on a mistake concerning their capability.

Thus we had the Cold War escalation which continued until the Soviets found that their economy had not just stagnated because of an increasing defence production, but that they still had never passed the West in military capability and to boot their domestic goods production was approaching third world levels. Once the initiatives to reverse this costly adherence to incorrect assumptions was begun under Reagan and Gorbachev the Soviet Union began finally to move towards some sort of relative parity with the West in terms of the balance between defence spending and non-defence domestic expenditure – that is why we now see the market economy in post-Soviet Russia.

Further to that what we see as a dangerous parity in that period was in reality the effect of the hugely destructive nature of the arsenal itself, not the quantity – the West’s ratio of superiority was around 6:1 all of the time. It didn’t matter that the Soviets had fleets of aircraft – if it had come to war between Russia and the West it would not have been limited and it would not have been conventional for very long. The first sign of ascendency by either side would have led to the only predictable outcome – nuclear response, first tactical then strategic. The question which frightened the politicians and military of both sides throught the Cold War was once that stage is reached when is enough enough? And that was what created the MAD doctrine.

But again we come back to the TSR2, for which the above is a bit of a side issue. It was unaffordable for Britain, and had a limited tactical role, so as I repeat it did not have a future, and as we see from the events since the 60s we have not had cause to miss it – no matter how pretty it looks. It reminds me of something I read many years ago when IIRC someone noted with horror that the first contract for Spitfires was only for approx. 1000 aircraft. They thought this was shortsightedness on the side of the AM, what they ignored was that there were several years between the placing of the contract and the outbreak of WW2 and that events occurred that caused the quantity needed to change. Same with the TSR2 except reversed.

I’m not sure that history confirms your view that the Soviet threat was not as strong as we believe. Indeed, the urgency with which the V-Force was developed was in direct response to a very serious perceived threat – not the wishes of the aerospace industry. The situation may have been slightly different in the US but as far as Britain was concerned, the Government was prepared to almost bankrupt itself in order to get a credible deterrent as quickly as possible. I don’t think anyone imagines for a minute that Britain would have spent such a huge amount of money (which we didn’t have!) in order to develop an atomic bomb, a thermonuclear bomb and no less than three (four, technically-speaking) aircraft with which to deliver it, unless the situation was perceived to be deadly serious. Clearly, they would have much preferred to spend the money on more politically-popular projects!

Without disagreeing with you that we are, of course, arguing from the wisdom of hindsight, the benefit of history is that, despite the accusations levelled at “revisionist” historians by those who feel threatened when their perceptions are challenged (and I am not saying that of you), we can see with the help of new releases of once secret documentation what actually happened as against what we perceived as outsiders to have happened.

A very interesting book Arsenals of Folly by Richard Rhodes was published in 2008 and it goes to some length to examine the perception of the West’s side of the Cold War from the Russian perspective. The thing it shows clearly is that the West inflated the figures of Russian arms assets basically because of very poor intelligence rather than a deliberate attempt to pour public funds into defence spending to make the arms makers rich. Ironically it was the Russians who might have ended the arms race by allowing unfettered inspection of their defences which would have revealed to the West that Russian military might while formidable was considerably less than what the West imagined it to be.

This trapped the West in ever increasing and wasteful defence spending (one wonders how much of our current economic crisis is down to these debt chickens coming home to roost) which saw the proliferation of redundant systems, i.e. Three V bombers instead of one, B58, TSR2, Vigilante, F111, Mirage IV etc. etc. etc. while we had in service the much more effective nuclear armed submarine force and ICBMs. I realise that I am lumping together the assets of several countries but in the end the West was a defensive unity as was Russia who equally were trapped in this spiralling cost of defence expenditure based on completely bogus data. I am not arguing that it was a deliberate falsehood to begin with but by the late 70s it would have been a very brave government who said “Ummmm folks, I am rather afraid we got it wrong about the Russian capability and we could have had those 1000 new hospitals and 1000 new schools rather than spending the money on several new submarines and a fleet of expensive bombers, because what we had with restrained upgrades was enough to defend us” The book’s title says it all.

Another thing which is made clear is that nuclear weapons are cheap while their delivery systems with their attendant defensive systems are very very expensive. Also we did indulge in metaphoric overkill with these given that targets on both sides were to be subjected to multiple strikes any one of which was sufficient to destroy it. 30 or 40 massive nuclear weapons aimed at Moscow or New York or London when one of those would have destroyed the target completely. When this race began Churchill is quoted as saying words to the effect that “Any future war would be just stirring the rubble after the first attack” and his experience was rooted in the conventional area campaigns of WW2.

But to return to the TSR2, while I understand what you are saying about the defence initiatives that led to projects like the TSR2 being being based in a real perception at the time, the reality is that the perception was skewed by extremely faulty data based on guesses supported only by estimates. Finally, of course, the duplication and triplication of similar defence systems in the end created the seeds of their own demise because politicians ultimately have to bow to economic pressures created by other budgetary needs and the TSR2 on its own lacked sufficient flexibility to change roles in a time when duplicated defence systems were already in place which did the job equally as well.

The situation regarding the recovery of lost US Navy aircraft has finally changed (for the better) following the appointment of a new director.

That’s good news, the old dog in the manger attitude was not very helpful for preservation – these wrecks are not getting any younger.

On the subject of Devastators there is one in the waters of a Pacific atoll whose name escapes me. It is however pretty encrusted and damaged – conservation might be very difficult.

I think that her role as a supersonic bomber, would have meant a lesser order for tonkas and jaguars

You can go round in circles speculating what might have happened. Certainly, the Tornado would doubtless have never happened – it wouldn’t have been necessary. The Jaguar might still have appeared though, not least because of its political roots. The Buccaneer would have stayed with the Navy and the Vulcan fleet would have been withdrawn sooner. The TSR2’s presence would have created a very different manufacturing and political climate so it’s impossible to judge what decisions might have been made. Even the Phantom’s purchase (primarily for the FAA) is open to question – given the cost of TSR2.

Likewise, it’s impossible to make an accurate guess as to what would have replaced the TSR2. Clearly, it would have been retired by now, but without the legacy of the Tornado, it’s impossible to judge whether Britain would have had the resources to design an indigenous replacement. It seems logical that an American purchase would have been made – possibly the F-15E.

In some respects the loss of the TSR2 wasn’t a disaster as some like to imagine. The RAF got the Buccaneer which was, by any standards, a brilliant aircraft. Okay, the TSR2 had great potential but as has been said many times before, the Buccaneer with the right equipment was just as suitable for the RAF’s requirements – perhaps even more so – and certainly cheaper.

Given that TSR2 would now be gone in any case, my best guess is that if it had entered service, we would now have a fleet of F-15E’s. The Phantom would never have been ordered (I suspect the carriers would simply have been dumped as being unaffordable) and we might well have purchased F-15A’s to ultimately replace the Lightnings.

Read my preceding post Britain couldn’t afford the TSR2, and history has shown that the West got along perfectly well without it. I don’t recall WW3 breaking out – do you?