Buccaneer/F-111 as TSR2 Alternatives

[kitnut617]

It's eerie how similar the real story follows what happened to the Avro Arrow. 

I'm trying to work out my backstory Joe, if there was only going to be 30 aircraft, how many were to be the Mk.1, and then Mk.2 etc. or would they all have been just one mark and then that was it ?

[uk 75]

Joe

Good to read you on TSR2 again (I really miss the TSR2 Research Group stuff).

The numbers thrown around on TSR2 and F111 in various sources are always hard
to tie in with what the RAF looked like in the 60s.  30 aircraft presumably would have been intended to set up a base and OCU with initial squadron, but not much more.
If I remember right the RAF only ordered 50 F111Ks for an OCU and 2 squadrons or so.

Presumably the RAF hoped that if it could get some TSR2s into service by 1970, others would follow.

Interestingly the RAF did get its TSR2s in the form of the Buccaneer S2 as a Canberra replacement.  Unlike TSR2 or F111 these had to be based forward in Germany (15 and 16 Sqn I think).  Eventually the RAF operated the Tornado GR1 in Germany in some seven squadrons.  If TSR2 had worked I assume a roughly similar number of aircraft would have been in service by 1975-80, but in the UK (assuming we had pulled out of East of Suez).

Sadly both the TSR 2 and the F111K were lemons.  It took the resources of the USAF to produce the excellent F111E and F versions that became the real Vulcan and TSR 2 replacements in the UK for NATO (at Upper Heyford and later at Lakenheath). Both NATO and the US would have been delighted if these could have been provided by the UK, but the capability had to be provided. 

Until its demise in 1965, the Valiant provided SACEUR with an operational nuclear strike force at Marham (a wing of 3 squadrons or so).  I am sure NATO wanted the UK to upgrade this capability with TSR2 or F111K.  By 1975 the Vulcans were doing the job from the UK and the Buccaneers in Germany (those in the UK were maritime I think).

This blurring of TSR2's role between Canberra replacement and operational strike as a Valiant/Vulcan replacement made it deeply unpopular in Whitehall, where it was seen as the RAF trying to keep its deep bombing role despite Polaris. 

In some ways it is a pity that a simpler, Tornado like aircraft did not emerge from the drawing board in the late 50s and that would have saved the UK all those Dollars and Francs for Phantoms and Jaguars. 

UK 75

[PR19_Kit]

Sadly both the TSR 2 and the F111K were lemons.

Boy oh boy, are you dicing with death saying that on here.............  

[uk 75]

I am happy to qualify my comment.  Let me begin by saying that I have loved the TSR2 since I was a kid in 1964 and got the Marx battery powered version for Christmas (I still have it and occasionally play with it!). I also loved the snazzy photo mockup of the F111K in a 1968 RAF brochure and tried unsuccessfully to paint the Airfix kit in the same colours.

BUT unfortunately over the last 45 years I have read a lot of material and chatted to many people about this passion.  In sum, TSR2 like the Comet 1 and the VC10 still moves the spirit and is a fantastic machine. BUT as a strike aircraft for a Britain in the 60s it was the wrong plane at the wrong time at the wrong price. The problem can be summed up in the words "Canberra replacement".  What the RAF needed was a cost effective light strike aircraft to be in service from about 1966 to allow the ageing and obsolete Canberras to be pensioned off.  By 1970 it received a combination of Phantoms and Buccaneers to do this job, badly.  In the same timescale the RN had received the Buccaneer S2 which did the job, badly. No aircraft available in the period could do the job well. It was not until the mid-70s that the F-111 had been tweaked sufficiently to do the job well (even the early F111Es at Heyford had their problems). The problem was the leap forward in on-board electronics and deployable weapons, which made it hard for manufacturers to keep up.  The right answer, with caveats, was Tornado, but in 1966 not 1981!

UK 75

[rickshaw]

Interesting that you'd suggest the F-111 was a "lemon".  The RAAF found their F-111cs worked quite well (and still do).  I wonder why their experience was so different with what was basically an F-111a (as far as electronics went).

[Weaver]

Interesting that you'd suggest the F-111 was a "lemon".  The RAAF found their F-111cs worked quite well (and still do).  I wonder why their experience was so different with what was basically an F-111a (as far as electronics went).

I'm not the expert, but wern't the RAAF F-111s delivered WAY late (so late that they had some temporary F-4s as an interim solution)? I'd suggest that maybe the RAAF ones benefitted from the experience and modifications gained at great pain by the early USAF experience.


On uk75's general point, I'd agree - I'm not a TSR.2 fan either: wrong aircraft at the wrong time. When you read just how far the nav-attack system was pushing the state of basic technology for the time, it's hard to believe that it wouldn't have run into horrendous development problems and delays had it gone ahead, and maybe ended up being cancelled anyway, after even more money and time had been wasted.

My solution would be to bang their Airships' heads together hard enough and early enough to make them drop the "sub-strategic" requirement and their snotty "we don't buy naval aircraft" attitude and accept a properly adapted land-based Buccaneer in the early 1960s. The TSR.2 avionics program would then have gone ahead as a rolling, platform-independent "TSRA" program, that would have fed things like inertial nav and terrain-following radar into Buccanee upgrade programs ONLY when they were mature and reliable.

[rickshaw]

Interesting that you'd suggest the F-111 was a "lemon".  The RAAF found their F-111cs worked quite well (and still do).  I wonder why their experience was so different with what was basically an F-111a (as far as electronics went).

I'm not the expert, but wern't the RAAF F-111s delivered WAY late (so late that they had some temporary F-4s as an interim solution)? I'd suggest that maybe the RAAF ones benefitted from the experience and modifications gained at great pain by the early USAF experience.

The only experience they benefited from was General-Dynamics fixing the wing carry through boxes, which unfortunately had a distressing tendency to fail during the prototype testing.  The RAAF refused to take delivery of its aircraft until that had been fixed and leased, in the meantime F4Es in the Fighter-Bomber role.  Essentially, the aircraft they received were the same aircraft they had ordered.  They lasted them very well, until the decision was made to remanufacture them back to zero hours (and update the avionics to digital).  This was done and they continue to serve, being due for retirement in IIRC 2012.  Their loss is much regretted and their temporary replacement by F/A-18Es has been subject to much debate downunder.

On uk75's general point, I'd agree - I'm not a TSR.2 fan either: wrong aircraft at the wrong time. When you read just how far the nav-attack system was pushing the state of basic technology for the time, it's hard to believe that it wouldn't have run into horrendous development problems and delays had it gone ahead, and maybe ended up being cancelled anyway, after even more money and time had been wasted.

My solution would be to bang their Airships' heads together hard enough and early enough to make them drop the "sub-strategic" requirement and their snotty "we don't buy naval aircraft" attitude and accept a properly adapted land-based Buccaneer in the early 1960s. The TSR.2 avionics program would then have gone ahead as a rolling, platform-independent "TSRA" program, that would have fed things like inertial nav and terrain-following radar into Buccanee upgrade programs ONLY when they were mature and reliable.

A possibility.  Wasn't there an upgraded Bucc which was put forward as an alternative to TSR2?

However, I tend to disagree with you about the avionics "pushing the envelope".  Don't forget, most aircraft when they initially enter service still have significant bugs which need to be worked out and it is not until several years after they start using such systems are they fully operational.  I fail to see why the TSR2 should have been any different.  One only has to look at the V-bombers - most of them weren't working properly until the second version was built as far as the aerodynamics and engines were concerned and even beyond that in the case of the avionics.

[PR19_Kit]

When any aircraft reaches service these days it's systems are anything but state-of-the-art, and don't 'push the envelope' at all.

The answer lies in one word, 'reliability'. The very last thing they need in a service aircraft is something brand new and unproven, and with today's extended development periods, measured in years or even decades, by the time the systems are in service they are already out of date. But they do work by then because of all the development effort put into them over the years. That's why 1960s aircraft were still using valve radios, because the worked 100%, or at least predictably.

And for the record I disagree totally about various aircraft types quoted as being 'lemons'. The point is that at the time they worked and did the job within the limited finances available. If we all paid 50% income tax we'd have the most wonderful force of superior aircraft to defend us, but we wouldn't be on this Forum as none of us would be able to afford the PC to access it.

Well we would have if our MPs hadn't fiddled all the money into their 'expenses'......

[Hobbes]

PR19, you're right about today's commercial aircraft, but in 1960 military aircraft the situation was rather different. Even today, military aircraft tend to push the envelope, viz several crashes during the Gripen development program due to fly-by-wire software errors

[Weaver]

A possibility.  Wasn't there an upgraded Bucc which was put forward as an alternative to TSR2?

There were several: I was pretty much thinking of the B.108, which had a stretched (and somewhat less lumpy) fuselage, revised cockpit, non-folding wings etc... It was originally designed to use an advanced version of the Gyron Junior, but of course, it would have benefitted from the change to Speys. There werre other proposals with re-heated Speysa, the idea being to improve takeoff performance at high weights, rather than outright speed.

However, I tend to disagree with you about the avionics "pushing the envelope".  Don't forget, most aircraft when they initially enter service still have significant bugs which need to be worked out and it is not until several years after they start using such systems are they fully operational.  I fail to see why the TSR2 should have been any different.  One only has to look at the V-bombers - most of them weren't working properly until the second version was built as far as the aerodynamics and engines were concerned and even beyond that in the case of the avionics.

My opinion is largely based on this monograph from one of the computer programmers working on the project:

http://www.stevebroadbent.net/036a.pdf

In a nutshell, he seems to me to be saying that the selected hardware couldn't do the computing job required (which was WAY in excess of any previous requirement) and by the time this was acknowledged, a change of hardware would have had huge cost and time implications. Essentially, the low-level, supersonic, blind, automatic navigation function was impossible with early 1960s hardware: it had to wait for the next generation of more capable digital computers to come along.

(Thanks to Overscan who originally posted this link on Secret Projects)

[rickshaw]

Interesting link.  I suspect what would have happened would have been a program to replace the computer with a fully digital one.  My question is this.  The F-111 has an approximately similar design time-frame and was designed to an approximately similar specification.  Were their avionics so different?  Yet the F-111 succeeded whereas you're suggesting the TSR2 was a non-starter from the beginning.

[Thorvic]

Tecnincally the TSR2, the F-111 and the Mirage IV are in effect lemons. All were large supersonic strike aircraft intended to take over the medium bomber role using state of the art technology. Yes the F-111 and the Mirage IV entered service but exports failed to to appear and many of their variants and upgrades RF-111A, FB-111G, FB-111H, Spey Mirage IV, conentional strike Mirage IV were cancelled as Strike Fighters have been found to be better value for money by offereing similar capability at a much reduced cost, true thay may not be as optimised to the role as the larger aircraft, but the job still gets done.

As for TSR2 systems, the industry were hard pushed but managed to develop everything specified for the TSR2 design pushing the technology envelope beyond what was deemed possible at the time, however such steps forward came at an horrendous cost that in the end was impossoble to justify on the budget we could afford. Some of the systems eventually appeared in the Tornado. As for the Bucc it was at the time optimised for Naval Strike and would have been hard pushed to match the then requirement of the TSR2. Sure blackburn had many propossals to upgrade the perfomance and capability of the buccaneer, but the money had already been blown, so only the minimal mods were applies to create the spey powered S2. (Try "From Spitfire to Eurofighter" by Roy Boot, as he covers many of the Buccaneer proposals he was involved with)

G

[rickshaw]

Tecnincally the TSR2, the F-111 and the Mirage IV are in effect lemons. All were large supersonic strike aircraft intended to take over the medium bomber role using state of the art technology. Yes the F-111 and the Mirage IV entered service but exports failed to to appear and many of their variants and upgrades RF-111A, FB-111G, FB-111H, Spey Mirage IV, conentional strike Mirage IV were cancelled as Strike Fighters have been found to be better value for money by offereing similar capability at a much reduced cost, true thay may not be as optimised to the role as the larger aircraft, but the job still gets done.

"Exports failed to appear"?  What pray tell were the 24 F-111Cs and the 15 F-111Gs which the RAAF purchased?

Again, if the F-111 was a "lemon" why then is the RAAF opinion of the F-111 so good?  Why has their retirement brought about so much controversy?  Your opinion is, IMHO, rather harsh and over the top.  As it was, the RAAF nearly bought the Mirage IV (having already purchased the Mirage III over the other contenders - the F-104 and the Lightning).   The RAAF are well known to be very hard-headed about their choices.  They haven't picked a "lemon" since the Meteor.

[GTX]

This was done and they continue to serve, being due for retirement in IIRC 2012.

EO 2010 actually - when IFRC all but 2 will be destroyed.

Regards,

Greg

[Weaver]

Interesting link.  I suspect what would have happened would have been a program to replace the computer with a fully digital one.  My question is this.  The F-111 has an approximately similar design time-frame and was designed to an approximately similar specification.  Were their avionics so different?  Yet the F-111 succeeded whereas you're suggesting the TSR2 was a non-starter from the beginning.

I don't know enough about the details of the F-111 avionics to answer that. The author states in that link that during the development period, they got their first look at a next-generation digital computer, but it was still too big and not rugged enough for the job. My impression from reading it is that the people specifying the original hardware didn't understand the performance requirements of the "software": maybe it would have been doable with more DDAs, but then how much bigger would that have made the already huge TSR.2 avionics bay? This all reinforces my impression that the requirement wasn't really achievable until the late 1960s.

The only experience they benefited from was General-Dynamics fixing the wing carry through boxes, which unfortunately had a distressing tendency to fail during the prototype testing.  The RAAF refused to take delivery of its aircraft until that had been fixed and leased, in the meantime F4Es in the Fighter-Bomber role.  Essentially, the aircraft they received were the same aircraft they had ordered.  They lasted them very well, until the decision was made to remanufacture them back to zero hours (and update the avionics to digital).  This was done and they continue to serve, being due for retirement in IIRC 2012.  Their loss is much regretted and their temporary replacement by F/A-18Es has been subject to much debate downunder.

The RAAF F-111s were in storage from 1968 to 1973, a period during which the USAF absorbed and learnt to deal with many of the aircraft's huge avionics reliability/serviceability issues. Are you suggesting that the USAF didn't pass that experience on to the RAAF when they trained their maintainence and logistics crews? Why on earth wouldn't they?

IIRC RAAF F-111s have been upgraded on a number of occasions since their introduction: how much of the RAAF's good opinion of them is post modernisation when they (and the USAF ones) have benefitted from the introduction of later generations of electronics?