Aircraft that Britain Shouldn't have had

[Logan Hartke]

That sounds about right to me, no pun intended. I have no idea what the V-22 is like in the hover (I imagine it's quite loud), but I've had V-22s fly over my office and they seem to be quieter than the P-3s, C-130s, and CH-53Es that have flown by. In fact, because of their speed, they are also less disturbing than even the Seahawks and Blackhawks that fly by since they fly so much higher and are gone in a flash. The only odd thing is that my window panes start vibrating before you even hear them, kind of disconcerting when you notice it.

From my airshow experience, the Harrier doing a vertical take off is one of the loudest things I've ever heard. Absolutely deafening. The only thing that really comes close is a B-1B with full afterburners. Super Hornets and Phantoms with afterburners are normally the loudest things at an airshow along with those silly jet trucks, but B-1B with afterburners and Harriers in hover will put those to shame on the rare occasions that they make an appearance.

Also, I've heard that the F-35s are silly loud, but have no first hand experience up close, yet. I have seen them flying around Eglin, but too far away to hear.

Cheers,

Logan

[DarrenP]

Weaver
I Agree with your contention about the anti RN stance of the RAF especially after the sulk in the loss of the strategic deterrent to a more capable platform. Also the RAF's attitude to many aircraft being interim solutions denied development to many platforms the Jaguar GR3 is a good example of what modest investments could achieve. How ever the Tornado should have been withdrawn from service in 79 it was and is a mediocre platform the Jaguar was a better ground attack platform and recce platform, Buccaneer was a better interdictor and strike aircraft and Phantom was a better air defence platform. If the money wasted (and still being wasted) on tornado had been invested in those platforms and then into the F18 and F15 as replacements the RAF would have had Much better platforms. The money should now be invested in Typhoon as it will be the backbone of the RAF for many years to come. The Harrier I agree did split the CAS budget and was less capable and was more dependant than Jaguar however that VTOL did give allot of advantages when you deployed it closer to the FEBA.

With the interservice rivalry the treasury have allot to blame for that and the civil service played the services against one another to slash budgets. Add in incredibly short sighted analysis of future needs and trends from the scientific and diplomatic community. The Armed services did struggle to redefine their role in the post colonial era.

@Rickshaw
The obsession with stealth in the F35 will be its undoing its stealthy with a war load of 1000lbs and 2 AMRAAM hardly a credible payload of an interdictor. It will be interesting when it starts doing ACM against anything and its short coming's will become very clear. Has the US industry developed its 2nd Turkey? of the 21stC. The RAF needs to concentrate on Typhoon.

[Thorvic]

F-35. Best thing about it is that it's not as ugly as that bloody Boeing thing that looked like a Baleen whale!
UK would be better off with the USN version not what's on order, and taken up the traps n cats options for the QE and eventually the POW. Affords tons of interoperability (with other naval types) that politicos and the military keep banging on about when talking about coalition ops. Also greater payload capacity.
Ultimately junk and F-18Es a better solution?

Except F-18Es aren't as stealthy, aren't as well equipped electronically and would be limited purely to land operations.  The reality is that the QE and the PoW (perhaps soon to be renamed Ark Royal) aren't equipped for catapult ops and can't be without massive rebuilding.  That means you're limited to the F-35 for those carriers.

No the 2nd QEC is named HMS Prince of Wales, the Ark Royal story was something idiotic the press dreamed up, changing the name now is bad luck, the third CVS was changed to Ark Royal, but she hadn't been formally allocated an official name when ordered, where as HMS Prince of Wales like HMS Queen Elizabeth was allocated when they were ordered (and as such made it much harder to cancel or discard as a result  )

[rickshaw]

What is ironic is that the V-22 is noisier, now than the Rotodyne was when development was cancelled.  They are proposing civilian tiltrotors which will be just as bad as the V-22. 

Have you ever heard a real Rotodyne Brian, or are you basing your comments on some film clips of the time.

I'm basing my comments on the decibel noise levels recorded for the two aircraft.

Which is largely meaningless without flightpath and noise duration comparisons.

Fair enough, however we have the peak noise levels for the two aircraft, which are in the public domain and they are comparable, which is what I based my comment on.  I've been unable to find any indepth analysis of the either aircraft's noise level online.

Oh, and is the XV-15 really comparable to the V-22?  The V-22 is a much larger aircraft with larger rotors and more powerful engines.

The Rotodyne is dead and buried, it won't be coming back.  Unsure why people are so frightened by comparisons between it and the V-22.   

[rickshaw]

F-35. Best thing about it is that it's not as ugly as that bloody Boeing thing that looked like a Baleen whale!
UK would be better off with the USN version not what's on order, and taken up the traps n cats options for the QE and eventually the POW. Affords tons of interoperability (with other naval types) that politicos and the military keep banging on about when talking about coalition ops. Also greater payload capacity.
Ultimately junk and F-18Es a better solution?

Except F-18Es aren't as stealthy, aren't as well equipped electronically and would be limited purely to land operations.  The reality is that the QE and the PoW (perhaps soon to be renamed Ark Royal) aren't equipped for catapult ops and can't be without massive rebuilding.  That means you're limited to the F-35 for those carriers.

No the 2nd QEC is named HMS Prince of Wales, the Ark Royal story was something idiotic the press dreamed up, changing the name now is bad luck, the third CVS was changed to Ark Royal, but she hadn't been formally allocated an official name when ordered, where as HMS Prince of Wales like HMS Queen Elizabeth was allocated when they were ordered (and as such made it much harder to cancel or discard as a result  )

I agree with most of what you say but I wonder about the dangers of cancellation.  I really do.

[Librarian]

There are two points very rarely mentioned yet both are high on my list of worries. Would it be right to say that operating from forward bases/carriers using fuel burning VTOL the B variant is very heavily reliant on in-flight refuelling being available. In a full blown conventional war (it could happen) this would rely on air superiority. In Vietnam the F-105 and F-4 fleets could not have operated North without it and the Tankers were very wary of straying out of the South.

The other worry is the lack of an internal gun. I know the Hawks will claim that no fighter will get within dogfight range etc, an argument we've heard before, but a gun will have to be carried externally...like the Harrier.

Please keep this thread going, I'm very interested in what everyone has to say.

[PR19_Kit]

IIRC the QE Class carriers are being built with the necesarry hardware under the deck and ski-jump to fit an electro-magnectic catapult but without the cat itself. Sure it'll need some effort to fit but they put some thought into doing it beforehand.

[kitnut617]

I would have to agree with Kit, I find it absolutely ludicrous that a whacking great big carrier like those doesn't (or can't) have the capability.  Even arrester wires should have been installed from the get-go.  Having something that big and going to be used alongside allies carriers in future conflicts and not being able to recover another nations aircraft if they were in desperate need is short-sightedness beyond belief --

[kitbasher]

I would have to agree with Kit, I find it absolutely ludicrous that a whacking great big carrier like those doesn't (or can't) have the capability.  Even arrester wires should have been installed from the get-go.  Having something that big and going to be used alongside allies carriers in future conflicts and not being able to recover another nations aircraft if they were in desperate need is short-sightedness beyond belief --

Back to my point about interoperability and coalition ops.

[kitnut617]

The other thing I just don't understand about this design, is why it doesn't have an angled landing area.  IIRC, it was the RN that came up with the idea because it solved a lot of problems with aircraft jumping the wires and crashing into previously landed aircraft.  Why have they gone back to this old design ?

[andrewj]

The other thing I just don't understand about this design, is why it doesn't have an angled landing area.  IIRC, it was the RN that came up with the idea because it solved a lot of problems with aircraft jumping the wires and crashing into previously landed aircraft.  Why have they gone back to this old design ?

Presumably, since there are no cats or traps the aircraft are expected to recover vertically , so no need for the angled flight deck.

Andrew

[kitnut617]

Well in a scenario of maybe the swiveling gear of the exhaust nozzle doesn't work and it had to recover, what would the pilot do ? just jump out of a half a billion dollar aircraft because he/she can't land the thing ?

[McColm]

Avro Shackleton, the RAF should have stuck to the Lockheed Neptune. Would have saved thousands of aircrews' hearing.
C-130, again the RAF should have bought the Transall C-160. The Brits even applied to build there version under license. No doubt a four engine version would have been developed as a rival to the C-130.

[Weaver]

Weaver
I Agree with your contention about the anti RN stance of the RAF especially after the sulk in the loss of the strategic deterrent to a more capable platform. Also the RAF's attitude to many aircraft being interim solutions denied development to many platforms the Jaguar GR3 is a good example of what modest investments could achieve. How ever the Tornado should have been withdrawn from service in 79 it was and is a mediocre platform the Jaguar was a better ground attack platform and recce platform, Buccaneer was a better interdictor and strike aircraft and Phantom was a better air defence platform.

I don't understand your attitude to the Tornado, which, by the way, wasn't even in full service in 1979 (deliveries started in '79 but it was '81ish before they were declared operational). It has far more range and payload than the Jaguar and is far more electronically sophisticated than the Buccaneer, having automatic all-weather terrain- following and blind first-pass attack capability. A Bucc updated with Tornado-style systems might have been very tasty, but then remember that the Bucc were grounded with fatigue problems in the early '80s, so with hindsight that might have left a nasty gap in capability.

The Tonka could certainly have used more range, but you have to remember the political aspects of the programme. If the UK had pushed for a bigger aircraft, the Germans and Italians would probably walked away, leaving the UK to buy a MUCH smaller number of aircraft with a MUCH higher unit price, which in turn might have lead to it being cancelled altogether. By forging a workable compromise between the three air forces' needs, NATO got nearly 1000 highly capable strike aircraft in service at the right time for a tolerable cost.

The Tornado ADV was compared to a range of options in the mid-'70s, including a purchase of more Phantoms, and the Phantoms were found to be a worse option. In the UK air defence mission as defined at the time, loiter time was critical in order to keep as many potential kills in the air for the longest possible time, since the principle threat was seen to be regimental-strength "swamping" attacks by Backfires coming in from the North. The ADV's fuel efficiency and VG wing made it much better in this respect. An equivalent force of F-4s, F-14s or F-15 would have either had many fewer aircraft on-station at any given time, or would have needed a much larger force of expensive tankers to maintain the same number of aircraft on-station.

The Harrier I agree did split the CAS budget and was less capable and was more dependant than Jaguar however that VTOL did give allot of advantages when you deployed it closer to the FEBA.

It wasn't so much that the Harrier "split" the CAS budget, as that the CAS requirement expanded after the initial Harrier orders had been placed (Harrier was about five years ahead of Jaguar in timescale), and that expanded requirement offered the possibility of saving the Anglo-French Jaguar programme which was more politically desirable than the Anglo-American Harrier.

With the interservice rivalry the treasury have allot to blame for that and the civil service played the services against one another to slash budgets.

Weeell, yes and no. You're right, but the armed forces didn't have to play along with it to the extent they did. If the RAF had really had the country's best interest at heart, it would have conceded the blindingly obvious fact that the Polaris submarines were a much better platform for the strategic deterrent than any kind of bomber. It might then have wrtten a more realistic GOR.339 requirement that could have been met by a developed Buccaneer.

[Hobbes]

Well in a scenario of maybe the swiveling gear of the exhaust nozzle doesn't work and it had to recover, what would the pilot do ? just jump out of a half a billion dollar aircraft because he/she can't land the thing ?

Same as with the Harrier on the Invincible class.