The British Aircraft Corporation's TSR-2 was an ill-fated cold war project in the early 1960s to create what would, at that time, have been one of the most advanced aircraft in the world.

"All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics. TSR_2 simply got the first three right." _ Sir Sidney Camm

GOR 339

In the 1950s, the British Royal Air Force was aware that the Canberra bomber would need to be replaced, and a specification for its replacement with additional strike and reconnaissance roles was drafted in the form of GOR (General Operational Requirement) 339 in 1956. This specification was exceptionally ambitious for the technology of the day, requiring a supersonic all-weather aircraft that could deliver nuclear weapons over a long range, operate at high or low level, with a short takeoff ability from rough and ready airstrips. As this specification was being studied by various manufacturers, the first of the political storms that were to dog the project reared its head - the then defence minister Duncan Sandys stating that the era of manned combat was at an end and that guided missiles were all that would be needed in future. Within a decade this philosophy became thoroughly discredited, but at the time, it may have made a great deal more sense in the climate of the cold war and "mutual deterrence". Furthermore, it seemed that guided missiles would offer significant cost savings over manned aircraft.

Another political matter that did not help was the mutual distrust between the various services - the air force were looking at GOR 339, but it was clear that the development of the Blackburn Buccaneer for the Royal Navy was competitive with this project, so the RAF ignored or derided that project in order to ensure that they got the aircraft they wanted. Various proposals were submitted and in 1959 the go-ahead was given for the BAC entry, named the TSR-2, for Tactical Strike and Reconnaissance 2 (the TSR-1 being the pre-war biplane Fairey Swordfish, an aircraft fulfilling a similar role in its day).

Design

The leading designer was Barnes Wallis, the legendary architect of the Dambusters project. The design was a large aircraft with two Bristol-Siddeley Olympus afterburning turbojets (similar, but a much more powerful variant of those used in the Avro Vulcan and Concorde), a large shoulder mounted slab-wing with down-turned tips, all-moving swept tailplane and a large all-moving fin.

The design featured blown flaps to achieve the short take off and landing requirement, something which later designs would achieve with the technically more complex "swing_wing" design. The aircraft featured some extremely sophisticated avionics for navigation and mission delivery — far ahead of anything else available at the time — which was also to be one of the reasons for the spiralling costs of the project. Some features, such as ground_following terrain radar, FLIR cameras, side-looking airborne radar and the sophisticated autopilot are only now becoming commonplace on military aircraft.

Despite the rocketing costs (which were inevitable, given the low original estimates), two prototype aircraft were completed. The first flight took place on 27 September 1964. Over the next 6 months, many test flights were conducted, though none of the complex electronics was ready, so those flights were all concerned with the basic flying qualities of the aircraft, which were by all accounts excellent. A few niggling faults with the landing gear came to light but were relatively straightforward issues.

Project cancellation

A change of government in 1964 meant that the project, which had received a lot of negative public attention due to cost, was held up as an example of the waste and inefficiency of the previous government. Without notice, the project was cancelled on April 6, 1965. At that moment, the leadership in world aviation that Britain had enjoyed for much of the 20th century was removed, and has never been regained to this day. Some face was saved by the Concorde and Harrier projects, but from then on the Americans took the lead.

Surviving airframe at RAF Museum, Cosford

The TSR-2 tooling and partially completed aircraft were scrapped - many feel with undue haste and excessive thoroughness - though the two finished aircraft survived and can be seen in the RAF museum at Cosford, and the Imperial War Museum at Duxford. A number of unfinished airframes were hastily scrapped, with very few parts retained intact. The only airframe to ever fly, XR219, was taken to at Shoeburyness and used for as a target to test the vulnerability of a 'modern' airframe and systems to gunfire. The haste with which the project was scrapped has been the source of much argument and bitterness since _ some feel it was done with vindictiveness to score political points, though others have suggested that it was simply to prevent the very high technology secrets falling into the wrong hands, as the cancellation came at a period of particular paranoia during the cold war. Instead of the TSR_2, the RAF decided it would buy the complex swing-wing American General Dynamics F-111 - however, the F-111 itself suffered such enormous cost escalation - exceeding that of the TSR-2 projection by some margin - that the RAF eventually cancelled their order, procuring instead the Phantom and the Buccanneer, some of which were transferred from the Royal Navy. Ironically, this was the very same aircraft that the RAF chose to deride in order to get the TSR-2 the go-ahead. Fortunately, the Buccaneer proved very capable and was still in service into the early 1990s. The TSR-2 nonetheless remains a lingering 'what if?' of British aviation, as painful in Britain as the Avro Arrow in Canada.

A government study into the feasibility of resurrecting the TSR_2 project was carried out during the early 1980s shortly after Margaret Thatcher came to power. There was, briefly, some speculation that TSR_2 might yet see the light of day in an updated form, but after the study concluded that it would be far too expensive (the previous destruction requiring a complete start_over from scratch) and that the technology was no longer cutting edge, TSR_2 was buried forever.

External links

• TSR_2 (http://www.thunder_and_lightnings.co.uk/tsr2/)
• RAF Museum Cosford (TSR_2) (http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/british_aircraft_corporation_tsr_2.htm)
• Imperial War Museum, Duxford (TSR_2) (http://www.iwm.org.uk/duxford/brit15.htm)