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majorshrapnel

Date Posted：2023-03-10 01:20:03

The BritishTSR2. This superb, highly advanced strike and reconnaissance aircraft is known in aviation circles as the plane that was shot down by its own government, as it never saw service or action. It was and still is, surrounded by mystery, conspiracy and conjecture. It was given a remarkable specification at birth, all of which were achieved and more. For a start it had to gain flight in under 600 yards and reach Mach 1.1 at ground level (200ft max) and Mach 2.2 at medium to high altitude, carry a nuclear bomb to Russia, dogfight with the best and remember we are dealing with an aircraft conceived in the 50's. It would have both front and side seeking radar and its Bristol Siddeley engines would later be fitted to the Concorde but only after the TSR2 had sorted its many faults out.The British aircraft industry had come out of WW2 as one of the very best, innovative designers and builders and with a nuclear Soviet Union to tend to the west needed such a high specification aircraft. The problem with the industry though was that we had no war to feed it and with an almost bankrupt nation it had too many companies chasing too few contracts, which led to a poison atmosphere in the industry and its various manufacturers, all stoked by political favouritism. The answer was the amalgamation of them to form BAC the British Aircraft Corporation and it was this company that would build the TSR2, all be it around the country, which became its first fault. Before it had been laid fully out it suffered political interference and design tampering, all of which began to raise the time and cost of it. Eventually it took to the air and it was spectacular and no exaggeration to say it was the finest aircraft on earth. Unfortunately it had just too many enemies, both at home and abroad, most notably the US with its rival F111. At home there was Louis Mountbatten a devoted navy man who wanted money for the Royal Navy. The RAF had 126 aircraft on order and the first overseas order was 30 for Australia but then we sent its biggest enemy to Australia in Mountbatten who then did his best to scupper the deal. In 1964 the Labour govt under Wilson came to power and the new PM visited the US to meet Johnson, a President who had been putting pressure on the Aussies to cancel their order and buy the F111 at a rock bottom price, ie under cost and between them they had the order cancelled with no objection from Wilson, who was after US loans and feared they would scupper his plans to borrow money from the IMF. Attacked from both sides the project was suddenly cancelled but not only was it cancelled but the political order went out that all built airframes, machines and tooling was to be destroyed and it was, including a wooden mock up, so that there would be no chance of another change of mind. The only change of mind was that we then bought 50 F111's from the Yanks. The govt wouldn't even allow the manufacturers to keep one for research, not one, it had to go, lock, stock and barrel and were even used as target practice. However, two in various states of finish were kept aside and they do survive and are on show at RAF Duxford museum.

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-10 01:39:34

Arnie used to get all worked up about Harold Wilson's defence policy.

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-10 02:51:00

Can someone tell me how to post photos on here

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-10 02:59:18

Amalgamation eh? Add the Concorde, Typhoon Eurofighter, & the Tornado to that list. It is said that the camel was the result of a committee's effort to build a horse.

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-10 03:00:29

Your own or from a website?

If from a website - find one (on Google images for instance) making sure it's not too big 350 x 350 is about right or smaller. Right click on it and click on Copy Image.

Then place the cursor where you want the image to appear in your post and click on Ctrl and V. It should appear as this magnificent one has. There is a way to reduce them in size, but it's not easy to explain, but I can go in and do it, I used to with some of the HUGE photos Pete would post, lifesize photos of elk that kind of thing.

I Was A Teenage Girl In Britney Spears's Heyday. The Way She Was Treated Hurt Us All | British Vogue

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-10 03:01:37

Scupper the deal Art? Well shiver me timbers.

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-10 03:21:05

Never heard of the TSR2, but I do know a little about the F111. It was actually kind of a bust with the insiders calling it a "pig" because of the way it looked. At the time the U.S. Airforce & Navy were looking to combine (there is the amalgamation thingy again) to make one jet fighter for both services. Never a good idea as each one had unique & special needs. The F111 did see service in Iraq but with little competition in air to air combat.

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-10 08:41:38

I can't get a photo to stick for some unknown reason Mark, can you post a pic of the TSR2 for me?

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-10 08:50:05

The great benefactors of this political nonsense was both Canada and the US, who sucked up hundreds of highly skilled British aviation designers and engineers. This is how my brother ended up in Canada and when he got there the whole design and illustration departments were fully stocked with Brits.

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-10 09:33:53

BAC TSR.2 Profile

Britney is better looking.

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-10 10:25:27

The great benefactors of this political nonsense was both Canada and the US, who sucked up hundreds of highly skilled British aviation designers and engineers. This is how my brother ended up in Canada and when he got there the whole design and illustration departments were fully stocked with Brits.

The Soviets got their jet engine design from GB as well. How did that happen?

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-11 09:23:39

Do you want the long story or the short? The confusing American version or the baffling British one? The industrial version or the political one? It was primarily Sir Stafford Cripps' decision, a naive man in love with the communist ideal and like all western communists of the time, completely ignorant of the barbarity of it. Wedded to the extreme far left he was expelled from the Labour Party before the war because of it but managed to rejoin the Labour Party in 1945, and was made President of the Board of Trade in the 1945 Labour government. He was besotted with Communist Russia and so was naturally inclined to agree when a Russian trade delegation asked to buy a few Nene engines and a licence to produce it. Astonishingly, the Nene was not on the secret list at that time, despite the Derwent, a scaled-down Nene, being the power plant for the Gloster Meteor. The Nene was a centrifugal-flow engine, and Rolls-Royce were concentrating on the axial-flow Avon by then. Also, when the govt took the decision the cold war was not underway Moreover relations between the US and UK were not warm. The Truman administration had abruptly terminated lend lease after Japan had surrendered, forcing the UK to negotiate an emergency loan from US banks. This was considered to be an economic and political attack on the Labour government and by association, Britain itself, making the govt believe it was essential to maintain an amiable relationship with the Russians, if only to stop the US from taking us for granted. Moreover, selling the Nene to the Soviets was regarded as a good will gesture without great strategic significance as the Soviets already had access to German jet technology and the British had decided to concentrate future jet development on axial flow engines rather then centrifugal compressor engines like the Nene. If the Soviets did renege on the no military use clause and reverse engineer the Nene it would give them a temporary benefit but it would also send them down a technological dead end. Soviet technicians did reverse engineer the Nene and produced their own version, the Klimov VK-1. What people don't know is that the Nene was also being produced under licence in Canada, Australia and France of all places and we got virtually nothing out of them, when the Russians paid lovely gold for theirs, at first. There was another reason too and that was not just that the US enjoyed Lording it over Britain now, it shit on us when it reneged on the wartime deal to share nuclear technology. Britain was ahead before the war and following it we were forced to go it alone. We were not happy bunnies.

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-11 11:39:23

OK, so to capsulize...............GB sold the Russians an outmoded design jet for gold, & gave it away to former allies. The Americans seeking to replace GB as a world power with Pax Americana policies & called in the war loan. Lend Lease was a good deal for the U.S. by shipping outmoded materiel & other needed stuff to GB in exchange for military bases all over the world, many of which the U.S. still occupies today. WWII basically broke the U.K. & started it on the way to socialism with the labor unions, & passed the burden of the crown onto the U.S. which it enjoyed until being challenged today by China.

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-11 12:58:28

Yes, it's all your fault.

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-11 03:08:53

This ugly monster is the Kalanin K7 and if you think it has Russia written large all over it, you'd be right. You can see from these photos, it actually has an elliptical wing, exactly the same shape as the Spitfire. It took two years to build, which is not hard to imagine when given its dimensions, 92ft long with a wingspan of 174ft and a 40ft high, double the size in one go of anything flying in its time

.

It had a twin boom because no single boom could have taken the weight. The crosswing on the end of the booms was as wide as a Spitfires entire wing. Empty it had the weight of almost three fully loaded DC3's. This was a civil airliner but who on earth would be allowed to fly in it in Stalin's regime I don't know, considering it could take 124 people and a crew of 19. You will notice that the shields around the landing gear make it look like a seaplane but it wasn't, what they did hold was a staircase which went up into the wing itself where the passenger seats were situated, with windows in front of them. In the military version they carried gunners, who stood up in them with machine guns. As a bomber it could carry almost double what the B29 did, although how they shifted them from the bomb bay I don't know, but knowing the Russians they probably just opened up a trap door and rolled them out. It is notable for being the first aircraft built of Russian made steel actually produced in Russia. It won't come as any surprise for you to know that it soon crashed when part of its rear wing fell off due to vibration, although sabotage by its main competitor, Tupolev, was suspected but never proved. As for Kalanin himself, he fell victim to the Stalinist purges and was shot in 1938.

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-11 03:17:46

Re post 4. Yep, I'm sure I'd rather take a ride in Britney than that monstrosity above.

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-11 03:21:46

Re the TSR2. There was an interesting occurrence during the testing of the aircraft when pilots reported having their sight go blurred during flight. It turned out a part of the plane was vibrating at the same frequency as the human eye uses and this interfered with it. It was found and rectified.

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-11 03:25:31

Re post 4. Yep, I'm sure I'd rather take a ride in Britney than that monstrosity above.

Well, Britney does have more passenger capacity.

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-11 09:34:33

Incredible to think that this photo was taken in Russia in 1913, a Sikorski S-22 Ilya Muromets.

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-13 09:38:36

Have a guess just how many different models of military gliders were produced around the world in the 30's and 40's? A staggering 60 but the largest pre war model was the Messerschmidt 321 Gigant, a true giant of a glider that came with giant problems. The nose of this glider could open up and fit a large truck through it but it's all very well building something like this but then they embarrassingly found they couldn't get it into the air so that required one of the strangest planes ever produced, the Heinkel HE 111 Zwilling.

Before this Frankenstein of an aircraft came along they were using three individual BF 110's flying suicidally side by side, all with tow ropes and the Giant glider with a rocket strapped to its back. So terrifying was this for those involved that a different solution had to be found and so Heinkel was approached to solve the problem and this was the result, the Zwilling. They already had a successful design in the H6 bomber and it really wasn't too difficult to come up with a method of joining them together and stick another engine in the middle for good luck and this is why it has two cockpits. It had limited success and only 12 were ever built with none surviving the war. As for the Gigant, they stuck six engines on that airframe and used that instead.

Re：Reply Topic

Date Posted：2023-03-14 10:25:43

You mean it actually got off the ground!

majorshrapnel
	Date Posted：2023-03-10 01:20:03 The BritishTSR2. This superb, highly advanced strike and reconnaissance aircraft is known in aviation circles as the plane that was shot down by its own government, as it never saw service or action. It was and still is, surrounded by mystery, conspiracy and conjecture. It was given a remarkable specification at birth, all of which were achieved and more. For a start it had to gain flight in under 600 yards and reach Mach 1.1 at ground level (200ft max) and Mach 2.2 at medium to high altitude, carry a nuclear bomb to Russia, dogfight with the best and remember we are dealing with an aircraft conceived in the 50's. It would have both front and side seeking radar and its Bristol Siddeley engines would later be fitted to the Concorde but only after the TSR2 had sorted its many faults out.The British aircraft industry had come out of WW2 as one of the very best, innovative designers and builders and with a nuclear Soviet Union to tend to the west needed such a high specification aircraft. The problem with the industry though was that we had no war to feed it and with an almost bankrupt nation it had too many companies chasing too few contracts, which led to a poison atmosphere in the industry and its various manufacturers, all stoked by political favouritism. The answer was the amalgamation of them to form BAC the British Aircraft Corporation and it was this company that would build the TSR2, all be it around the country, which became its first fault. Before it had been laid fully out it suffered political interference and design tampering, all of which began to raise the time and cost of it. Eventually it took to the air and it was spectacular and no exaggeration to say it was the finest aircraft on earth. Unfortunately it had just too many enemies, both at home and abroad, most notably the US with its rival F111. At home there was Louis Mountbatten a devoted navy man who wanted money for the Royal Navy. The RAF had 126 aircraft on order and the first overseas order was 30 for Australia but then we sent its biggest enemy to Australia in Mountbatten who then did his best to scupper the deal. In 1964 the Labour govt under Wilson came to power and the new PM visited the US to meet Johnson, a President who had been putting pressure on the Aussies to cancel their order and buy the F111 at a rock bottom price, ie under cost and between them they had the order cancelled with no objection from Wilson, who was after US loans and feared they would scupper his plans to borrow money from the IMF. Attacked from both sides the project was suddenly cancelled but not only was it cancelled but the political order went out that all built airframes, machines and tooling was to be destroyed and it was, including a wooden mock up, so that there would be no chance of another change of mind. The only change of mind was that we then bought 50 F111's from the Yanks. The govt wouldn't even allow the manufacturers to keep one for research, not one, it had to go, lock, stock and barrel and were even used as target practice. However, two in various states of finish were kept aside and they do survive and are on show at RAF Duxford museum.
MarkUK	#1
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-10 01:39:34 Arnie used to get all worked up about Harold Wilson's defence policy.
majorshrapnel	#2
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-10 02:51:00 Can someone tell me how to post photos on here
tommytalldog	#3
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-10 02:59:18 Amalgamation eh? Add the Concorde, Typhoon Eurofighter, & the Tornado to that list. It is said that the camel was the result of a committee's effort to build a horse.
MarkUK	#4
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-10 03:00:29 Your own or from a website? If from a website - find one (on Google images for instance) making sure it's not too big 350 x 350 is about right or smaller. Right click on it and click on Copy Image. Then place the cursor where you want the image to appear in your post and click on Ctrl and V. It should appear as this magnificent one has. There is a way to reduce them in size, but it's not easy to explain, but I can go in and do it, I used to with some of the HUGE photos Pete would post, lifesize photos of elk that kind of thing.
tommytalldog	#5
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-10 03:01:37 Scupper the deal Art? Well shiver me timbers.
tommytalldog	#6
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-10 03:21:05 Never heard of the TSR2, but I do know a little about the F111. It was actually kind of a bust with the insiders calling it a "pig" because of the way it looked. At the time the U.S. Airforce & Navy were looking to combine (there is the amalgamation thingy again) to make one jet fighter for both services. Never a good idea as each one had unique & special needs. The F111 did see service in Iraq but with little competition in air to air combat.
majorshrapnel	#7
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-10 08:41:38 I can't get a photo to stick for some unknown reason Mark, can you post a pic of the TSR2 for me?
majorshrapnel	#8
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-10 08:50:05 The great benefactors of this political nonsense was both Canada and the US, who sucked up hundreds of highly skilled British aviation designers and engineers. This is how my brother ended up in Canada and when he got there the whole design and illustration departments were fully stocked with Brits.
MarkUK	#9
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-10 09:33:53 Britney is better looking.
tommytalldog	#10
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-10 10:25:27 The great benefactors of this political nonsense was both Canada and the US, who sucked up hundreds of highly skilled British aviation designers and engineers. This is how my brother ended up in Canada and when he got there the whole design and illustration departments were fully stocked with Brits. The Soviets got their jet engine design from GB as well. How did that happen?
majorshrapnel	#11
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-11 09:23:39 Do you want the long story or the short? The confusing American version or the baffling British one? The industrial version or the political one? It was primarily Sir Stafford Cripps' decision, a naive man in love with the communist ideal and like all western communists of the time, completely ignorant of the barbarity of it. Wedded to the extreme far left he was expelled from the Labour Party before the war because of it but managed to rejoin the Labour Party in 1945, and was made President of the Board of Trade in the 1945 Labour government. He was besotted with Communist Russia and so was naturally inclined to agree when a Russian trade delegation asked to buy a few Nene engines and a licence to produce it. Astonishingly, the Nene was not on the secret list at that time, despite the Derwent, a scaled-down Nene, being the power plant for the Gloster Meteor. The Nene was a centrifugal-flow engine, and Rolls-Royce were concentrating on the axial-flow Avon by then. Also, when the govt took the decision the cold war was not underway Moreover relations between the US and UK were not warm. The Truman administration had abruptly terminated lend lease after Japan had surrendered, forcing the UK to negotiate an emergency loan from US banks. This was considered to be an economic and political attack on the Labour government and by association, Britain itself, making the govt believe it was essential to maintain an amiable relationship with the Russians, if only to stop the US from taking us for granted. Moreover, selling the Nene to the Soviets was regarded as a good will gesture without great strategic significance as the Soviets already had access to German jet technology and the British had decided to concentrate future jet development on axial flow engines rather then centrifugal compressor engines like the Nene. If the Soviets did renege on the no military use clause and reverse engineer the Nene it would give them a temporary benefit but it would also send them down a technological dead end. Soviet technicians did reverse engineer the Nene and produced their own version, the Klimov VK-1. What people don't know is that the Nene was also being produced under licence in Canada, Australia and France of all places and we got virtually nothing out of them, when the Russians paid lovely gold for theirs, at first. There was another reason too and that was not just that the US enjoyed Lording it over Britain now, it shit on us when it reneged on the wartime deal to share nuclear technology. Britain was ahead before the war and following it we were forced to go it alone. We were not happy bunnies.
tommytalldog	#12
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-11 11:39:23 OK, so to capsulize...............GB sold the Russians an outmoded design jet for gold, & gave it away to former allies. The Americans seeking to replace GB as a world power with Pax Americana policies & called in the war loan. Lend Lease was a good deal for the U.S. by shipping outmoded materiel & other needed stuff to GB in exchange for military bases all over the world, many of which the U.S. still occupies today. WWII basically broke the U.K. & started it on the way to socialism with the labor unions, & passed the burden of the crown onto the U.S. which it enjoyed until being challenged today by China.
MarkUK	#13
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-11 12:58:28 Yes, it's all your fault.
majorshrapnel	#14
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-11 03:08:53 This ugly monster is the Kalanin K7 and if you think it has Russia written large all over it, you'd be right. You can see from these photos, it actually has an elliptical wing, exactly the same shape as the Spitfire. It took two years to build, which is not hard to imagine when given its dimensions, 92ft long with a wingspan of 174ft and a 40ft high, double the size in one go of anything flying in its time . It had a twin boom because no single boom could have taken the weight. The crosswing on the end of the booms was as wide as a Spitfires entire wing. Empty it had the weight of almost three fully loaded DC3's. This was a civil airliner but who on earth would be allowed to fly in it in Stalin's regime I don't know, considering it could take 124 people and a crew of 19. You will notice that the shields around the landing gear make it look like a seaplane but it wasn't, what they did hold was a staircase which went up into the wing itself where the passenger seats were situated, with windows in front of them. In the military version they carried gunners, who stood up in them with machine guns. As a bomber it could carry almost double what the B29 did, although how they shifted them from the bomb bay I don't know, but knowing the Russians they probably just opened up a trap door and rolled them out. It is notable for being the first aircraft built of Russian made steel actually produced in Russia. It won't come as any surprise for you to know that it soon crashed when part of its rear wing fell off due to vibration, although sabotage by its main competitor, Tupolev, was suspected but never proved. As for Kalanin himself, he fell victim to the Stalinist purges and was shot in 1938.
majorshrapnel	#15
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-11 03:17:46 Re post 4. Yep, I'm sure I'd rather take a ride in Britney than that monstrosity above.
majorshrapnel	#16
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-11 03:21:46 Re the TSR2. There was an interesting occurrence during the testing of the aircraft when pilots reported having their sight go blurred during flight. It turned out a part of the plane was vibrating at the same frequency as the human eye uses and this interfered with it. It was found and rectified.
tommytalldog	#17
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-11 03:25:31 Re post 4. Yep, I'm sure I'd rather take a ride in Britney than that monstrosity above. Well, Britney does have more passenger capacity.
MarkUK	#18
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-11 09:34:33 Incredible to think that this photo was taken in Russia in 1913, a Sikorski S-22 Ilya Muromets.
majorshrapnel	#19
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-13 09:38:36 Have a guess just how many different models of military gliders were produced around the world in the 30's and 40's? A staggering 60 but the largest pre war model was the Messerschmidt 321 Gigant, a true giant of a glider that came with giant problems. The nose of this glider could open up and fit a large truck through it but it's all very well building something like this but then they embarrassingly found they couldn't get it into the air so that required one of the strangest planes ever produced, the Heinkel HE 111 Zwilling. Before this Frankenstein of an aircraft came along they were using three individual BF 110's flying suicidally side by side, all with tow ropes and the Giant glider with a rocket strapped to its back. So terrifying was this for those involved that a different solution had to be found and so Heinkel was approached to solve the problem and this was the result, the Zwilling. They already had a successful design in the H6 bomber and it really wasn't too difficult to come up with a method of joining them together and stick another engine in the middle for good luck and this is why it has two cockpits. It had limited success and only 12 were ever built with none surviving the war. As for the Gigant, they stuck six engines on that airframe and used that instead.
MarkUK	#20
	Re：Reply Topic Date Posted：2023-03-14 10:25:43 You mean it actually got off the ground!