“A team from XM135 O/H was dispatched to recover the aircraft.”

Seeing as this event ocurred at Lyneham and the main Lightning Mu,No.33 Maintenence Unit was based at Lyneham at the time I doubt if anyone was “dispatched” anywhere!

“Avro Vulcan XH558 is the last remaining icon of this era…”

Apart from all the other Vulcan’s that are left, along with the scores of other aircraft from that era, some of which still fly with the RAF, such utter twaddle!!

Taken from their latest Newsletter;

“we have to recognise that expected sponsorship has not been forthcoming and once again the project has hit the wall”

A projected £350,000 shortfall? Technicians who have given up their jobs to come and work on 558 relying on raising this money……………”can we let them down?”

How does this tie in with “hard at work in the hangar” and “moving toward first test flight in 2006”

Would a better quote not be;

We’ve got a Vulcan but not enough money????

MarkG,

That Hunter is NOT a GA11, it is a stock F4 that was one of a number that were destined for GA11 conversion but were never actually converted. They were allocated as Ground Instructional airframes and XF365 went to AES at Lee on Solent in 1962 where I guess it was photographed. Remained as a GI until sold to HSA for conversion and sale to Swiss AF.

Hi LesB,

Very true, the 35% IS including engine choice, still the likes of Smiths, GKN and BAES, amongst others, are pretty significant suppliers to the 787.

BTW,

With the RR engine the UK value of an A380 exceeds 60%.

UK Aerospace 2005

mike currill,

Perfectly serious! We have not had a GA industry since the late nineteen thirties so I do not see how that is at all relevant, BUT, take a look at UK deliveries of light a/c last year;

Top 10 supplying countries to the UK
1. USA, 134 aircraft
2. UK, 107 aircraft
3. France, 68 aircraft
4. Czech Republic, 53 aircraft
5. Germany, 26 aircraft
6= India, 15 aircraft
6= Australia, 15 aircraft
8. Italy, 11 aircraft
9. Canada, 5 aircraft
10. Ukraine, 4 aircraft.

If you don’t believe me, how about ALL this from the SBAC??

SBAC (Society of British Aerospace Companies)

SBAC, 2005 Annual Aerospace Survey, shows that orders have increased by 28 per cent to £22.6 billion and that industry productivity has increased by 7.8 per cent. The UK aerospace industry is the largest in Europe and the second largest in the world.

The UK’s aircraft and aerospace industry is the second largest in the world and a significant driver of regional and national economic growth and productivity. The UK based industry employs a highly skilled workforce of over 120,000 people and, as a major technology innovator, acts as a key stimulus to academic research

Aerospace defence sales up 3 per cent to £8.94 billion, civil aerospace sector flat at £8.35 billion and the space sector up 11 per cent rise to £427 million.

• Direct employment down by 6 per cent to 120,345 jobs, with the sector supporting a total of 255,000 jobs in the UK.

• Abroad – UK aerospace companies employ 45,000 people and generate £4.9 billion of turnover outside the UK.

At present, the UK has the world’s second largest aerospace industry. UK based aerospace activity had a turnover of more than £17bn in 2004, supporting a highly skilled workforce of over 255,000 people.

Oh yee of little faith!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MYTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Macfire/mike curril,

The killing of the British aircraft industry? It is not dead, it survives and is rather healthy as the second largest on the planet.

Mutant,

Healey was a member of the Cabinet at the time and as Chancellor of the Exchequer, as such he most certainly would have approved the cancellation. I have read one auto-biography where he discusses it quite openly. He was not alone in making the decision nor was it HIS decision.

This myth about the US support for the IMF loan and TSR-2 and F-111 is just that, a complete and total myth!
TSR-2 was cancelled in April 1965, the IMF loan (1,4Billion $ in standby credits) to the UK was made in 1967 at the time of devaluation and the exchange crisis. The condition on the IMF loan was the same as the IMF place on ANY state to which they loan money, that of reducing Government expenditure, in this case by £750 million. This reduction in Government expenditure led to the announcement of the withdrawal of all UK forces from the FAR East AND THE CANCELLATION OF THE ORDER FOR THE F-111. So that rather neatly demolishes THAT argument!

LesB,

Hello again to you too. Glad to say that I am still well though life in central London is a little more ‘interesting’ than it was when we last corresponded!

Take your point re the Lightning and 1957. I meant that the TSR-2 was the only future project allowed to continue post Sandys. Development of the Lightning was in fact severely curtailed as it was only envisaged to have about a 7 year life before being superseded entirely by Surface to Air Guided Weapons.

I still maintain that it was 1957 that potentially ripped the heart out of the UK aircraft industry. In point of fact the only real consequence was that UK had no effective follow on to the Hunter to offer and so gave the Mirage III and 5 series and the F-104 a clear market. How ever you view it we would still not have an industry larger or more profitable than it is today, funny thing hindsight isn’t it? All that passion and despair in 1957 and 1965 and when we look back from 2005 it probably didn’t matter a jot in the long term!

The brain drain of the early to mid sixties was very, very small, an Uncle of mine departed these shores for Ford Aerospace only to be left high and dry when Ford moved out of aerospace, so it wasn’t just the UK that was retrenching in those days.

Webpilot,

WAS the cancellation a mistake? We would have been left with a massively expensive and extremely complicated programme that was nowhere near ready to enter service. If it had eventually succeeded in being introduced into service I am sure that the RAF would still have had to have introduced an interim Canberra/Hunter replacement. In 1969 the RAF Germany frontline of Canberra and Hunter was dangerously reminiscent of the 1940 Fairey Battle situation when exposed to ME109s and automatic small calibre AAA. TSR-2 was NEVER going to be ready in 1969 so we were in a mess come what may.

TSR-2 would never have been a more potent combat aircraft than the Buccaneer/Phantom combination because it was single role and no where near as flexible. It would have been a SUPERB low level nuclear strike aircraft, but useless as anything else.

Mike Currill

HOW was the TSR-2 ahead of it’s time? It was a low level nuclear strike aircraft, just as the F-105, A-5, F-111 were. It most certainly would NOT still be in service as it was less effective or employable than an F-4 let alone a Jaguar or a Tornado, and if we had continued with TSR-2 there would have been NO Jaguar or Tornado.

The myth

The myth of the TSR-2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This aeroplane had one thing and ONLY one thing going for it, it looked terrific, other than that it had not one single merit.

It was NOT the death of the UK aircraft industry, it was NOT the beginning of the end, it would NOT still be in service and nobody else would have bought it.

It was both flawed and doomed from its very creation. It was the only manned combat aircraft project to survive the 1957 Duncan Sandys infamous “no more manned combat aircraft” defence white paper. As such it was the only major project for an entire industry to work on and a huge infrastructure of ministries to oversee. Two companies with competing designs, English Electric and Vickers, were forced to merge to work on collaboration, BAC being the result. There was no single design leader appointed, the thing was designed by committee to the extent that a conference to decide upon the position of a single switch in the cockpit consisted of 30 people from 8 different manufacturers and 3 separate ministries, none of whom were aircrew or production engineers!
On top of this the very concept was both flawed and outdated. It was designed as a nuclear strike aircraft pure and simple in the days when the NATO strategy was that of massive nuclear retaliation to any step over the East/West border by Warpac forces. It was supposed to be a Canberra replacement, in the days when the ONLY offensive aircraft stationed in RAF Germany were 4 Canberra squadrons with a nuclear QRA responsibility to SACEUR. The RAF in their wisdom souped up this requirement to include supersonic dash at low level AND sustained mach 2 performance at high level, the lack of this capability was why the RAF fought shy of the Buccaneer for so many years. So, as the design progressed with all of the shortcomings mentioned the world around it was changing. NATO ended its policy of the nuclear trip wire and massive nuclear retaliation to one of a graduated conventional response to any aggression, the shooting down of the U2 by the Russians ended the era of the high flying bomber flying too high and too fast to be intercepted, but nothing in the RAF requirement changed!
Then it all started to go horribly wrong, costs ballooned out of control, the design ran away with itself and the various committees could not restrain it, there were numerous and severe technical difficulties; powerplant, undercarriage, systems integration, avionics, electrics, the list went on and on. The RAF and the Government grew nervous, very nervous, they were aware of the incredible cost and the fact that it didn’t actually work, the Tory defence minister of the time has since admitted that cancellation was very likely. At this point the Labour party won the 1964 General Election, whilst it is true that some of their more extreme members campaigned against TSR-2 by no means was all opposition left of centre. Healy and Wilson did NOT rush to cancel, in the first labour Defence budget they cancelled the HS681 and P1154 and announced that the TS-2 would be looked at against more affordable alternatives. The extreme state of the UK economy at the time then slammed the final nail into the coffin of TSR-2. In the April 1965 budget the cancellation was announced.

If it had gone ahead it would have distorted the UK aircraft industry massively for decades, we could only afford 50, there would have been NO export orders, there would have been no Jaguar or Tornado, the RAF would not have received the combat aircraft it did in 1969 that it really needed to fight a conventional campaign, the Phantom and the Buccaneer. The UK now has the worlds second largest Aerospace and Defence industry, would that still be the case if TSR-2 had gone ahead?