Aircraft that Britain Shouldn't have had

[DarrenP]

Exactly weaver it should never have entered service. the Buccaneer was starved of funds as it was an "interim solution" and there was a huge degree of snobbery because it was designed for the Navy but it was still a better aircraft than Tornado and Gulf war 1 proved that. Its Low level performance it had better range and better weapon loads. GW1 also proved it was superior.Yes it had fatigue problems but how much of that was due to major refurbishment not happening. As you say the RAF shouldn't have been allowed to go down the TSR2 route they should have had Buccaneer from the outset.
F4/F14 & F15 were better options than tornado. The Germans upgraded F4F was replaced by Typhoons says allot about the phantom and the F3's we loaned the Italians they got shot of asap. Tornado F3 never delivered the much vaunted ability to carry amraam was a major embarrassment as the Navy Sea Harrier had full AMRAAM capability and the principle air defence fighter had limited capability. I know the Phantom FGR2 were knackered because of their days as low level ground attack days.

To be honest keeping Buccaneer, Phantom and Jaguar to the mid to late 80's then replacing the whole lot with F18 would have been good idea. However then we wouldn't be getting Typhoon which I think is being sold very short and I have already seen commentators describe it as an "Interim" solution till the F35 is developed.

[DarrenP]

McColm I disagree about the C130 vs C160 I think the Hercules was one of the RAF's better decisions and they should have bought more and earlier instead of the Argosy. I also would like to have seen the Belfast better developed and possibly dusted off as a rival to the A400m.

Maritime patrol Nimrod was probably the best and New builds would have been better than the hash they made in the recent debacle.

Helicopters Whirlwind HAR 10 I would say the Iorquois would have been a better option and the Wessex HC2 with 72sqn should have been replaced by Pumas earlier

[The Wooksta!]

Avro Shackleton, the RAF should have stuck to the Lockheed Neptune. Would have saved thousands of aircrews' hearing.

Rot!  The Shackleton was ordered, designed, bought and paid for before we got Neptunes - they were a short term measure.  And the Shackleton was loved by most of it's crews.

You know, I'm sick and tired of people bleating about how we should buy this and that US "wonderplane".  No we shouldn't.  Why?  Because for starters, building our own keeps British people in jobs and not either emigrating or drawing dole.  Buying British keeps currency in the country, boosting our economy.  Buying British ensures we retain the design and manufacturing base to look after ourselves.  And finally, buying British ensures that we're not at the whim of whichever muppet is in the Whitehouse.  If the RAF has only US aircraft, we have to source the spares from the US.  Go against what the State Department want?  No spares and the aircraft are grounded.  Won't happen?  Look at what happened to Indonesia, or Iran to name but two.

And anyone who argues otherwise is selling his own country short.

Rant over.

[pyro-manic]

DarrenP, the F.3 did carry AMRAAM, and did just fine in it's role.

Re. the QE's deck - it's laid out for vertical recoveries, operating the same way the Invincible class did with Harriers. There is no risk of overcooking it and crashing into the bow deck park area because the aircraft is not moving forward when landing.

[DarrenP]

Unfortunatley Wooksta it is usually the case with some noticible exceptions that American''s have produced better products F4/F14/F15/F16 & F18 were all superior to what UK industry was producing. Britain did produce aircraft that were better than the American products Buccaneer/Harrier/Hawk/Nimrod spring instantly to mind.
I suspect Typhoon will prove to be better than the F35 and F22

[kitbasher]

The Shackleton: I know it probably wouldn't have happened because of when it was designed (i.e. prevailing economic and political conditions) but I wonder whether the Shack would have attracted more foreign sales had it been designed with a tricycle u/c from the off (so the GR.1/MR.1 looked more like the MR.3), and so looked more modern?

Looks aren't everything of course, but if the Hunter had looked more like the Swift would it be loved as much as it is?

[DarrenP]

DarrenP, the F.3 did carry AMRAAM, and did just fine in it's role.

But it was never fully integrated unlike the Sea Harrier and Typhoon

[pyro-manic]

Yes it was. It took a long time, but it was eventually integrated under the FSP programme.

[McColm]

I'm not disputing that the Shackleton was loved by its crews or that the C-130 is better value for money. The question was raised and I gave my opinion. The Buccaneer boys hated the Tonka at first but learned to live with it. They really wanted the F3 with the GR1 nose. Just as they would have wanted the CP-140 over the P-3 Orion, as the kit is much better.
Likewise the USNavy would have bought the Nimrod if they had the chance,they loved it. On the exchange tours.
Even Lockheed held talks with the Brits in license building the C-130K. The parts would have been built in the UK, shipped over to the USA. Assembled and flown back to the UK.
The only gripes,
I had was if flown to a hot country the condensation built up and where ever I sat I got drenched when it landed . Then the noise of the engines and toilet facilities for the passengers.

[Mr.Creak]

Yes it was. It took a long time, but it was eventually integrated under the FSP programme.

Not quite.
FSP gave Tornado the ability to use AMRAAM, but (according to the RAF) that still meant it was "partially integrated onto the Tornado F3".
http://www.raf.mod.uk/equipment/amraam.cfm

[jcf]

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.   

I was adressing your statement about 'proposed civil tilt-rotors' and your presumption of excessive noise.
The AW609, which is in flight-test, is similar in size to the XV-15.

No one is 'afraid' of the V-22 vs. Rotodyne comparison. 

[Weaver]

Exactly weaver it should never have entered service. the Buccaneer was starved of funds as it was an "interim solution" and there was a huge degree of snobbery because it was designed for the Navy but it was still a better aircraft than Tornado and Gulf war 1 proved that. Its Low level performance it had better range and better weapon loads. GW1 also proved it was superior.Yes it had fatigue problems but how much of that was due to major refurbishment not happening. As you say the RAF shouldn't have been allowed to go down the TSR2 route they should have had Buccaneer from the outset.

You're completely ignoring the issue of avionics. The Tornado could navigate to a land target, in the dark, in the rain, and hit it on the first pass, something the Bucc could never have done without as much money spending on it's avionics as was spent on the Tonka's. Gulf War 1 proved nothing: the Bucc could only have flown the low-level anti-runway missions that the Tornado did in the early days in daylight and clear weather, and it wouldn't have been doing it any faster (the Tornado is damn near supersonic at TFR height, the Bucc does M=0.. The only reason the Buccs went at all was that they had Pave Spike integrated onto them so they could laser designate, while the Tornados were still waiting for TIALD.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the Bucc, but it was a 1950s aircraft. If the RAF had been forced to buy them against GOR.339, they'd have been in service by '65 and needed replacing by '85 so the Tornado or something like it would still have been needed, just a few years later. The only reason the RAF was able to afford anything like the 365 Tornados they got was because the three-nation production total was 900-odd, thus bringing the unit price down. Would the RAF have been better off with a longer-ranged Tornado if only we bought it and we could only afford 120?

F4/F14 & F15 were better options than tornado.

You have to look at the context in which the decision was made and what the mission was. A decision on the ADV had to be made in 1975 for an in-service date of 1985. Whatever was chosen couldn't be afforded until then due to the cost of the IDS procurement. At the time, it was expected that the F-4 would go out of production in 1979, so the UK would either have to pay to keep the line open or buy the tooling, both of which were expensive "dead-end" options since there was no export market for the UK version. The future of both the F-14 and the F-15 were also in doubt at the time, the F-14 due to it's humungous price tag and the F-15 due to the F-16 (had the fighter mafia had their way, the former would have been cancelled in favour of the latter).

The F-14 would not only cost a fortune to buy but also to run due to the price of it's Phoenix missiles: RAF training standards were that each crew should fire one live missile per year. Without the Pheonix, it was an over-sized, over-spec platform for four Sparrows and four Sidewinders, i.e. exactly the same loadout as all the other contenders. The F-15 was single-seater so the RAF would have required a custom variant of the -B model to meet their requirement for a two-seater aircraft, thus incurring development costs. You can argue the 1 vs 2 seat thing back and forth, but the RAF's point was that the single-seat F-15 was intended to fight Soviet tactial aircraft with limited electronic warfare capabiltiy over the Central Front. The UK air defence aircraft however, would have to fight Backfires over the North Sea which had much more powerful and sophisticated ECM and deidcated crewmen to run it. Under those circumstances, they felt that a back-seater to run the interceptor's radar full-time was a must, and I agree with them: I've read any number of accounts of F-15 pilots under-performing because they either didn't use their radar to the full or they did, but then got bounced visually because they had their head down in the cockpit.

As previously explained, if any of the American options had been chosen, the UK would have also had to invest serious money in a much bigger tanker force, since their higher fuel consumption would mean fewer aircraft on BARCAP other wise. This means that something like 1/10th the price of a tanker needs to be added to the unit price of every F-4/14/15 when comparing them for this mission.

The Tornado ADV was ideally suited to the mission for which it was designed and bought. It always got slagged off because it wasn't an agile dogfighter, but it was never intended to be. Criticising it on those grounds is like slagging off a 747 for it's lack of VTOL capability.

The Germans upgraded F4F was replaced by Typhoons says allot about the phantom

No, it says a lot about the delays in the Eurofighter program and the German's desparate measures to keep their F-4s flying and barely credible (remember the F-4F had no Sparrow capability in the quest for lightness....). The Italians replaced F-104s with Typhoons: is that a tribute to what a wonderful aircraft the Starfighter was?

and the F3's we loaned the Italians they got shot of asap.

No they didn't: they leased them for ten years starting in 1993 and gave the last one back in 2004, so in fact, they kept them as long as they could. The reasons why they didn't extend the lease to cover the continued non-appearance of the Typhoon were:

1. The RAF was upgrading it's fleet to the CSP standard (AMRAAM capability), so the Italians would either have to pay to do the same or have a non-standard "orphan" fleet,

2. The F-16 was felt to be a better introduction to the Typhoon for pilots since it was a single-seater.

So they leased F-16s from the US in 2004. The last of those was handed back in 2012, which means that actually, they kept the F-16s for less time than they did the Tornados......

Tornado F3 never delivered the much vaunted ability to carry amraam was a major embarrassment as the Navy Sea Harrier had full AMRAAM capability and the principle air defence fighter had limited capability.

The only reason for that was that the government initially went for a limited upgrade in 1996 in the belief that the Typhoons would be along in a few years. They then went for a further upgrade in 2001, giving complete AMRAAM capability. Had they been willing to spend the money, the full upgrade could have been done in the first place.

To be honest keeping Buccaneer, Phantom and Jaguar to the mid to late 80's then replacing the whole lot with F18 would have been good idea. However then we wouldn't be getting Typhoon which I think is being sold very short and I have already seen commentators describe it as an "Interim" solution till the F35 is developed.

It would have been a terrible idea: the F-18 is notoriously short-legged which would be a major handicap in both the Bucc/Tonka role and the air defence role. It would have been even more compromised in the latter by it's lack of missile warload: only two Sparrows in low-drag carriage. For any kind of low-level strike mission in a European war, it would have need serious avionics changes/upgrades to do the job.

[PR19_Kit]

You know, I'm sick and tired of people bleating about how we should buy this and that US "wonderplane".  No we shouldn't.  Why?  Because for starters, building our own keeps British people in jobs and not either emigrating or drawing dole.  Buying British keeps currency in the country, boosting our economy.  Buying British ensures we retain the design and manufacturing base to look after ourselves.  And finally, buying British ensures that we're not at the whim of whichever muppet is in the Whitehouse.  If the RAF has only US aircraft, we have to source the spares from the US.  Go against what the State Department want?  No spares and the aircraft are grounded.  Won't happen?  Look at what happened to Indonesia, or Iran to name but two.

And anyone who argues otherwise is selling his own country short.

Rant over.

PRECISELY!

[jcf]

You know, I'm sick and tired of people bleating about how we should buy this and that US "wonderplane".  No we shouldn't.  Why?  Because for starters, building our own keeps British people in jobs and not either emigrating or drawing dole.  Buying British keeps currency in the country, boosting our economy.  Buying British ensures we retain the design and manufacturing base to look after ourselves.  And finally, buying British ensures that we're not at the whim of whichever muppet is in the Whitehouse.  If the RAF has only US aircraft, we have to source the spares from the US.  Go against what the State Department want?  No spares and the aircraft are grounded.  Won't happen?  Look at what happened to Indonesia, or Iran to name but two.

And anyone who argues otherwise is selling his own country short.

Rant over.

PRECISELY!

Remember that when folks are preaching why the Yanks should've bought British or Euro instead of ______.

[McColm]

That would be a great topic to start.