Death of an Industry, Part II

The industry was having enough troubles as it was. Hobson’s choice was applied by the British Government when it told the industry’s various companies, all proud of their name and independence, “Amalgamate or get off the world”.

Industry leaders had all been told, most cruelly, that Britain’s sole remaining military project, labelled GOR 339 (later to be OR 343) and ostensibly to be built as a Canberra replacement, would not be offered to organisations other than those made up of two or three firms acting in coordination with one firm acting as group leader.

The Government was making sure that amalgamation and rationalisation would be the prerequisite of any work orders.

There was a January 1958 deadline.

The line-up in January was interesting, oddly brilliant and diverse:

• English Electric came up with the P 17 A, delta wing, tandem Seat twin engines with reheat. The P 22 was a fighter offering for good measure.

• English Electric teamed with Short Bros. in producing a lifting Platform (P 17 D) to give the P 17 A VTOL capabilities. The P 17 D had no less than 60 lift engines and ten propulsion motors!

• Vickers Armstrong came up with a Scimitar development using blown flaps, one engine and two seats – really a Supersonic Buccaneer.

• Supermarine offered twin seats with two engines, plus integrated terrain-following nav-attack systems.

• Bristol put forward a canard gothic delta design powered by two Olympus engines.

• The Hawker Siddeley Group was undecided, disagreeing within the group on whether the submission should be a Javelin derivative or a P 1121 update.

While all this was going on, a Whitehall lobby contra GOR 339 was getting increasing support, backed up by the Treasury who believed that Blackburn’s NA 39 project (the Buccaneer) was a going concern being partly financed by the US under the Mutual Weapons Development Programme.

The late Lord Louis Mountbatten, then First Sea Lord, was among the more powerful Blackburn allies in pushing the Buccaneer as a Royal Air Force Canberra replacement. The RAF top brass, however, stood firm for a long, anxious time.

With Government backing, the GOR 339 project was funded in mid-1958 despite Treasury sniping, and renamed OR 343. Winners in the competition were Vickers and English Electric, announced early the following year.

The task before them was horrendous; what the RAF wanted was Mach 2+ at medium heights, Mach 1. 1 at low level, ferry range nearing 3,000 n. m. , off-runway capability (ground roll not more than 1,800ft off rough strips!), SLAR with an uncanny accuracy, automatic terrain-following radar with minimum gust response, a high thrust-weight ratio plus many other seemingly impossible attributes.

The whole thing was loaded right from the start. It was asking a racehorse to win while tying its legs together and blindfolding the jockey.

The Royal Navy, certain sections of the civil service, the Treasury . . . all played a significant part in killing the TSR 2 project, all playing their own game and fighting for their own ends.

And at the end of it all, some of these opponents had the gall to say the whole thing had been a waste of money . . .

The Olympus-powered TSR 2 development programme was carried through with dazzling expertise, magnificent effort and thorough brains. The entire development story would take a volume to tell.

Many facets combined to make the killing factor, but one of the most telling, as mentioned in this article, was the Whitehall meddling, the overkill on Committees and the unwelcome attention of a largely ignorant Ministry of Aviation.

A year after the contract award, the Government Treasury reviewed spending to date and asked if the RAF would cut out some of the more advanced electronics. The Air Staff refused.

Spiralling costs were, of course, the result of too many individual contracts, fragmented supervision.

With the Buccaneer project still hovering in the background, the TSR 2 project went on. Money was getting shorter. Defence Minister Peter Thorneycroft chopped the Army’s Blue Water surface/surface missile and shared the balance between TSR 2 and the Polaris programme.

Came 1963; the R & D bill had reached an estimated £200 million. Control reviews were urgently needed. TSR 2 entry into squadron service had receded to 1968. The Olympus 22 R was giving troubles.

Politics, always questionable in peacetime, were rearing their ugly heads. Sir Solly Zuckermann, the Defence Ministry chief scientific adviser, firmly believed the US to be the best source of technology. . Lord Louis wanted the RAF to accept a land-based Buccaneer, and spend the TSR 2 money on more aircraft carriers.

Lord Mountbatten, sad to say, also nobbled Britain’s attempts to get Australia to order TSR 2s. (This writer has had personal knowledge of this fine gentleman’s determination to achieve something which he believed, no matter what the cost).

Undoing Sir George Edwards’ good work in sweetening the Australian government toward the TSR 2, Lord Louis travelledto Australia to tell Canberra that he doubted whether TSR 2 would ever hit the squadrons, being too costly and too complex.

Australia eventually went F-111C, as the world knows . . .

Back in England, 1964 was a bad year. A Labour Government was elected late that year, with two of its main immediate targets being the decimation of aviation and defence spending.

It didn’t really matter, apparently, about Britain’s standing in world aerodynamic research or aviation progress. Short-term money saving was all that mattered to Harold Wilson’s government.

The TSR 2 flying programme began in 1964 and after engine and undercarriage glitches were ironed out, was an obvious ironclad certainty in terms of type design, airframe capability and overall professional success.

The bomb went off in February 1965, when Wilson told the House that the P 1154 VTO fighter and the HS 681 V/STOL transport were to hit the spike.

US-built C-130s and Phantoms would be bought, he added.

A thinly-disguised sop was his statement that the TSR 2 development would provisionally continue for performance matching against the F-111.

His timing couldn’t have been better; the TSR 2 flying programme had progressed to the stage where supersonic flight had caused Roly Beamont no sweat, buffet or disturbance of any sort.

Wilson took the last, inevitable step in April 1965, getting James Callaghan to announce the official decision to scrap TSR 2 in his Budget speech as Chancellor fo the Exchequer.

Options were taken out on the American F-111.

When Callaghan made his speech, the reasons to kill the TSR 2 were officially based on three prime factors; cost of development, cost of production and cost to field maintenance.

As it happened the eventual cost of 50 F-111s equalled the cost to Britain of 50 TSR 2s at the worst estimate . . .

At the time of having its neck wrung, the TSR 2 had been proven to be a good flying machine, its electronics were judged to be 80 per cent developed and the engines well on the way to 100 per cent efficiency.

As time proved, the F-111 programme for Britain collapsed; and the Blackburn Buccaneer was turned down by the British Government in its Mk 2 RAF version, in competition with the MCRA.

Records show that Britain had spent £195 million on the TSR 2 project at the time of cancellation; the figure is broken down into two sections-£125 million spent on actual development and £70 million compensation to BAC.

And what about manned bombers?

The postwar British Labour government had decreed, after consulting their own peculiar and particular crystal ball, that British defence thinking would evolve around the dogma that there would be no war threat for at least a decade.

RAF specs were therefore tailored to march in step with this war-free period, and complex long-term requirements were the order of the day while the beloved Lanes were replaced with Lincolns.

The long-term needs were built around an OR for very advanced jet bombers capable of carrying a crude atom bomb. The bombers had not only to digest the 24ft long and 52in diameter bomb but travel twice as fast and operate at nearly thrice the height of the Lincoln.

Electronic counter-measures gear, blind bombing equipment and various active and passive radars had to be fitted, all built into Spec B 35/46.

Handley Page and A. V. Roe were awarded contracts for developing the Victor crescent-wing and Vulcan respectively. Meanwhile, Shorts were commissioned to build an interim straight-wing type, the Sperrin, with four Avons in vertical pairs.

The Sperrin was an early casualty; the RAF eventually ended up with Vickers’ Valiant which promised better all-round figures.

To help fill the vacuum until the ultimate bombers were rolled out, US-supplied B-29s were flown under the brand name of Washington.

Came in 1951 and a change of Government, with Churchill at the helm. Beliefs of a ten-year moratorium on war were swept away when Intelligence reports surfaced of a Russian plan for awesome action in 1953- the only question mark was where this dreadful threat would manifest itself.

The Churchillian response was decisive. The PM ordered priority for aircraft and weapons programmes plus a revamp of Britain’s air defence network.

His predecessor, Clem Attlee, had already fortuitously approved an RPV (remotely piloted vehicle) programme. Bristol and Vickers-Armstrong were both given the green light for RPV development.

Bristol’s 182 was cancelled after two prototypes had been built, modified for pilot testing. The 182 in its piloted version used the developing Gnat’s wing (by arrangement) and a Venom’s undercard for take-off.

Vickers’ project was likewise cancelled, after Government policy decided that a manned bomber wedded to a stand-off weapon would stop any Soviet incursion just as effectively.

The RAF was going well with the development of a nuclear strike force; Blue Steel was an official Spec, after Vickers had spent time and money on the earlier Blue Boar which didn’t have inertial guidance.

But the service wanted a long-range high altitude recce machine, spelt out in OR 330. The requirements were deterring to say the least. The RAF wanted a type with a minimum range of 5,000 n. m. , a Mach 2. 5 cruise and a 60,000ft operating height.

Vickers, Handley Page and A. V. Roe grasped the nettle.

Vickers came up with a single-seat canard Delta powered by six RB 121 turbos.

Handley Page entered another delta, crewed by three and powered by a round dozen RB 121s in boxes of six under each wing.

Avro came up with the winning submission. The A. V. Roe design was the Avro 730, an unswept canard in a stainless steel honeycomb sandwich.

The 730 had just about everything to fill the bill for OR 330; four Armstrong Siddeley turbos in pairs on each wingtip, giving the type a total still-air range of 4,740 n. m. , a cruise speed near Mach 2. 6, and an initial climb rate of 12,300 fpm.

The three-man crew had command of Red Drover X-Band SLAR, RATO gear for assisted take-off, a periscope for landing and take-off, and assorted electronics for snooping, detecting and reporting.

The original OR was modified in 1955 to include a bombing capability. Avros had already thought of that one-the warload was expected to be a megaton warhead stand-off missile.

The same old, sorry story was told during the mid-50s. The first 730 fuselage was almost ready in 1957 when the Sandys Axe whistled down, chopping the programme out of existence. The effort was switched to the Blue Streak ballistic missile, which was in turn later killed.

The Bristol 188 stainless steel test vehicle embodied many 730 features and design formulae five years later, but the 188 programme was abandoned because of dual problems with welding and engine snags.

Meanwhile, the V-Bombers were goers. . .

One stand-off missile, the Blue Steel, hit the dirt in 1959 because of policy changes.

That left Blue Streak as an intermediate-range ballistic missile. America was approached to provide Thors to bridge the surface/surface missile gap. This wasn’t altogether popular, and the opponents had different reasons for voicing disapproval.

• The Air Staff weren’t ecstatic about fixed-site unhardened deterrents and wanted a more flexible long-range stand-off missile carried by aircraft.
• Lord Mountbatten wanted Blue Streak killed and the money spent on Polaris submarines.

Defence Minister Hal Watkinson had the misfortune to attempt to have a foot in each camp. With Blue Streak killed off in 1960 because of rising costs, liquid rocket fuel snags and viability, the Minister tried to please the Air Staff by sending a UK team to America to study the Skybolt airborne ballistic missile, and please his PM Harold Macmillan (and Lord Mountbatten) by ordering Admiralty to put in hand a priority study of British-built Polaris-carrying subs.

It all sounded too good; the Americans agreed to Britain buying 100 Skybolts to hang on the Vulcans.

Then the in-fighting started between Hawker Siddeley and Avro. HS proposed putting Skybolts on long-range VC 10s. The matter was decided by two unforeseen happenings:

• Skybolt ran into propulsion and guidance snags.
• And President Kennedy became the unwitting tool of De- fence Secretary Bob McNamara, who successfully cancel- led the Skybolt programme and replaced it with Minutemans and submarine-based Polaris missiles.

A decision point was reached in the US in 1962. The British government reeled under the pronouncement realising that it had just lost its independent deterrent.

Kennedy saw his error, said “sorry” and offered the entire Skybolt programme to Macmillan; but Britain couldn’t afford it.

The 1962 Nassau talks some observers still insist were loaded-broke up with Britain losing its airborne ballistic missile force, getting Polaris on favourable terms, but having yet another project consigned to the dustbin at terrible cost.

Civil aviation fared no better. . .

The general opinion is that cancellation of the great Vickers V 1000 long-range jet aircraft and the whittling down of the Trident 1 did more to stunt the British airliner development programme than anything else in sight during the 1950-60 period.

There were many brilliant projects in the industry at that time, dealt with in earlier issues of AADR.

The Comet 1, the mighty Brabazon, the Saro Princess, the Avro Tudor. . .

The V 1000 began life as far back as 1952, in response to an MoS spec. Two years later an order was placed for the RAF. There was, it transpired, a need for more power to get the heavier-than-expected V 1000 into its projected operating envelope as flight tests progressed.

The Government began niggling at the project for numerous reasons, including expenditure (the buck was passed to the Air Staff for implementation); Government backing for the Britannia to be built at Shorts -this company had been smitten by the Swift cancellation and the Comet 2 abandonment – for RAF use.

With this Government-built cushion on which to fall, an official decision to drop the V 1000 was taken in late 1955.

The published reason was a review of equipment plans for Transport Command.

Reaction was one of outrage and indignation; there were justifiable accusations of shortsightedness from industry executives and aviation experts alike. Their protestations were blown away in a silent wind . . .

BOAC, already hard hit by the Comet crashes, didn’t want the Vickers VC 7 derivative and was committed to getting the Comet 4, anyway.

And so about £4 million went down the drain, in V 1000 development money.

Trident development went ahead with no sign of trouble – until 1969 when the then British European Airways reacted with ultimate sharpness to traffic trends. What they finished up with was a stunted Trident, and an invitation to the US to take over the market in that category . . .

It was almost too much; DH had fought off Bristols/HS, juggled with consortium requirements laid down by the Government, and got a foot in the door of the world medium haul jet market for Britain’s industry . . .

The Medway powerplant, however, survived, in derivative form.

The rotary wing sector fared no better in the Meddling Stakes.

Largely developed in its initial stages by private enterprise funding, the British picture eventually ended up by being more of a sketch than a portrait.

The Army requirement in backup to an MoS outlet produced competition. Fairey, Saro, Bristol, Shorts and Percival came to the party with entries.

It looked brave – but basic failures including engine snags, inefficient cost control and poor research, sent the whole project down in flames And the British Government eventually dropped the Army idea and concentrated on the Saro Skeeter.

Percival’s entry wouldn’t fly; Fairey’s design was good but didn’t get the order, Fairey eventually turned its interest to the Senior Service for further development; Sara’s Skeeter plugged on, backed by the British Government, and got Skeeter orders from Germany; Shorts’ design was too big.

In the heavier field, Bristol, Westland and Fairey were the main combatants vying for Government funding.

Bristol’s tandem-rotor type was destined for the RN, but the Navy cancelled out in 1956. Rising costs, rotor interference and gearbox troubles were listed as reasons.

The RAF eventually used Bristol’s Belvedere, eventually.

Fairey’s Rotodyne had a troubled childhood but grew up with parental interest from civil and Service elders until the money ran out. There wasn’t cash in the Defence Budget to pay for any more, and eventually, there was a shotgun wedding between the Rotodyne’s financial appetite and civil aviation (BEA).

Duncan Sandys eventually did it again . . . In 1959 he assumed the role of Government hangman and gave Fairey the option of carrying on with the Rotodyne or paying Rotodyne work itself losing guided weapons division contracts.

His Government brief was that a reduction in the number of British aviation firms as part of an industry rationalisation was needed. Westland was the Government’s favourite kingpin in the helicopter field. Westland first took over Saunders-Roe, then Bristol and eventually Fairey.

Ringing down the curtain on this stranger-than-fiction account of an industry’s torment, one should dwell for a silent while on the transport sector . . .

The V 1000 and Trident decisions were the most significant, but fuel for this particular fire was added in the shape of the too-late VC 10 in the face of US advancement; the Belfast heavy strategic transport which was only ordered in a penny packet; the HS 681 vectored thrust concept which was shot down by an incoming Labour government in the name of economy; Shorts SC 5 which hit the deck after Labour rearranged its Far East commitment; the BAC 311 which became a political sacrifice when the Conservative government in Britain decided not to back either. European Airbus engine development (strangling Rolls Royce in the process), or the BAC project.

So many worthy, brilliant projects; so much research gathering dust . . .

One wonders what would have happened had the panoply of all that was good in VG development and research, vectored thrust brains, brave schemes with logically-stepped lives, had been loyally supported by Britain’s government?

More relevant, is it too late to start again?

A prerequisite would, of course, be the immediate transportation to a certain infernal region, of all meddling bureaucratic Empire-builders, ingratiating middle executive civil service types and other technically ignorant people of that ilk.

It is difficult to imagine traditionally Conservative Britain going along socialist lines in its aviation industry – but with British diplomacy and tact, one feels sure that any such insurance would be bought in the name of something sounding entirely different . . .

Perhaps it will take another War to create the Miracle. So many questions, so much to gain if the right chord is struck.

* (Much of the research material for this series has been culled from Derek Woods’ excellent work, Project Cancelled. Other material has been gleaned from works in public libraries and the writer’s own technical library).