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TSR-2 and model shop guys


Mentalguru

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:Viewed from this point in history ie. some 40 years on and without the emotions that ran hot at the time, it strikes me as more of a footnote in the annals of aviation history when compared with a lot of other types. To that end I wish Airfix would leave the 'what might have been' alone for now and concentrate on the 'what actually was' such as the Meteor or Vampire or Venom and the 'what still is' such as a decent retooled Tornado.

Well lets see now, its production run sold out, the Xtradecal sets that Jennings created for Hannasnt sold out three times and have been thier best selling decals ever. MAM's TSR2 articles by Paul Lucas were the best selling editions of the magazine and the resin after market sets sold like wild fire. Various other publications and aftermarket items have been produced and sold exceptionaly well so from a commercial point of view it was very successful.

Doubtful that any of the kits you mentioned would have had the same effect especially after Revell issued thier Tornado. As for the kit itself you would need to know the context behind its choice and the state of Airfix at the time. There were alot of factors coming into play which i can discuss at length given the time but are not really suitable for discussion on the forum.

There will always be some who didn't get the idea and will always question the aircraft or the choice of kit, and some were downright offensive to those championing the idea, however i feel the time and effort put into the kit campaign has proved to be fully vindicated.

One note however nobody else has yet bothered to try and motive modellers to support a campaign to produce a new kit of something else or even identified a subject to get them interested.........

Geoff

TSR2 SIG member

Edited by Geoff_B
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I seem to remember that Dennis Healy gave false numbers for the cost of the TSR.2 program (£750 Million, about £300 Million more than the real amount IIRC) to scare everyone into cancelling it. Unit cost was supposed to be around £2.1 Million for each plane (Healy claimed it was £5 Million). The Labour Government had already done a deal to get options on the F-111's before the cancellation was made public. Unit cost of the first ten F-111's was supposed to be comparable with the TSR.2 but the rest (of 158) were supposed to be around the 2.3 Million mark. I'm not a mathematician but I think 2.1 Million is less than 2.3 Million by £200,000. The RAF had sent people to see the F-111 and told the government that there were big problems with it, and it was likely to get a lot more expensive, but were ignored.

Paul Harrison

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Well lets see now, its production run sold out, the Xtradecal sets that Jennings created for Hannasnt sold out three times and have been thier best selling decals ever. MAM's TSR2 articles by Paul Lucas were the best selling editions of the magazine and the resin after market sets sold like wild fire. Various other publications and aftermarket items have been produced and sold exceptionaly well so from a commercial point of view it was very successful.

---

Geoff

TSR2 SIG member

I plead guilty on all accounts, except the Xtradecal sheets. :blush:

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Didnt know Jennings made those sheets...

Never bought one, they didnt seem quite right to me, even for a what-if...

But the Lakenheath sheet was the only one I considered and rejected.

The kits are quite special, they seem to sell for double their release price without any questions asked...

Airfix made the right decission in making them thats for sure.

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the Australians were going to buy it until our wonderous Labour Government, on the advice of the Americans, actually told them to buy F-111 instead. Yes, that's right, our own Government was working to scupper an export contract for one of its own aircraft, built by a state-run company, in favour of a competitor.

It's not quite as clear as that.

To quote from The Lincoln, Canberra & F111, in Australian Service by Stewart Wilson:

"The process that would eventually see the General Dynamics F111 enter service with the RAAF began in May 1963 when the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, announced that a mission led by the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshall Sir Valston Hancock KBE CB DFC, would evaluate potential Canberra replacements in France (the Mirage IV), Britain (BAC TSR2) and the United States, which offered the North American A-5 Vigilante , McDonnel Douglas F-4 Phantom and the General Dynamics TFX.

Officially the TSR2 was already out of contention for the RAAF contract due to an apparently unfavourable delivery schedule, doubts about its attack radar being suitable, doubts about it having sufficient range and even greater - and well founded as it turned out - doubts about its political future. Just after the F-111 was selected as the Canberra's replacement - amid some contoversy due to the still strong 'buy British' lobby - it was revealed that the TSR2 had been subject to an attractive offer from the British, an offer which included 25 examples of the new aircraft plus 2 squadrons of bombers from the RAF's V Force (either Vulcans, Victors or soon to be retired Valiants) and their crews on loan pending the arrival of the TSR2's."

Now that to me doesn't seem to be the British Government scuppering an export contract.

On a further note, the aircraft recommended by Sir Valston Hancock's mission was actually the A-5 Vigilante: "an aircraft which meets the Air Staff Requirement in all improtant aspects, and one squadron could be operationally ready by December 1966 or earlier" Now that would make an interesting What If, but that's another thread.

Despite the recommendation, the Vigilante quickly disappeared from the equation and on 24 October 1963, the F-111 was announced as the winner. Pity it was another 10 years before delivery.

Now, according to Wikipeadia, the Wilson Labour Government assumed power in October 1964, so could hardly be blamed for a decision made by the Australian Government to buy F-111 a year earlier. If any fault lies with a British government then it must have been with the preceding Macmillan/Douglas-Home Conservertive Government.

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The Government tried to have them both destroyed as well, but saw better of it. A lot of what survives only does so because BAC employees stole it or hid it from the Government people sent to destroy it.

As the to later statement, as I wrote earlier in the thread that I wrote to BAC back in the mid '70s and they supplied with significant amount for information on the machine and least appeared to have a healthy official. archive back then which does not tally with the above.

The original suggestion here was the Goverenment had gone out it was to prevent the project being 'remembered' which is different entirley from the manufacturing facility being dismembered - one can say that happened with undue haste. But the reality is, that happens with all cancelled projects. Furthermore a lot of what was developed with TSR-2, was used on MRCA and Jaguar. Yes, TSR-2 could have been retro fitted with digtial technologoy - but more expense and delay.

I'm must say when I started taking an interest in the subject - I was one who also believed in the conspiracy theory. But when starts digging through the the true records and stripping away the rhetoric one easily changes thier mind. Yes, bad decsions were made, there was questionable project management and whole host other issues that contributed the downfall of the project, including techical issues that had yet still be resolved. But the reality was the project was doomed well before the Labour adminstration took over the reins.

It's an extremely interesting debate, that will no doubt rage for enternity, but as I as I said at the outset the truth is far more mudane than than the myth.

Marty...

Edited by marty_hopkirk
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BAC were threatend by the government, that if they did not destroy the jigs and drawings, however many have been secretly kept, they would get no contracts for other designs they were working on. IIRC specifically airliner work. I recall a tv programme many years ago where Healey and BAC staff spoke of this. Labour were worried that work on the aircraft would continue behind the scenes as a private venture, to be offerd at a later date, to the RAF or Foreign governments.

At the same time the P1154 was scrapped and the v/stol freighter we were developing. Essentially, we were pretty bankrupt, but Labour promised the Unions, who ran the country back then, that the cash was needed for Health and Schools'. Always the same old song. Don't forget who backed the Unions............Russia.

Whatever the 'myth' fact and history shows it was a political sacrifical lamb because no-one wanted us to have the best, just like today.

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I think the real story is a lot more mundane - and I've dug through a lot of archive material.

Unit costs are always very difficult to pin down - manufacturers will try and claim smaller figures, the treasury will include associated costs to try and get a real picture of actual cost, it all ends up as a huge mess. Do you include lifetime spare parts costs, for instance?

I've never found anything to back up BAC being ordered to destroy the jigs - and I don't think anybody else has either? My own theory on that one is they did it themselves entirely voluntarily, knowing full well the project was dead and buried, and to get it cleared out so they could get on with guaranteed paying work without having the ghost of a dead project looming over their workers. It is apparently fairly standard practice to break down jigs etc. when a project is complete. Burning the wooden mockup, given that it was filmed, strikes me as a simple bit of theatre - it was of no real value after all.

I used to think differently but having dug through mountains of paperwork on the beast I think it simply fell foul of poor management, escalating costs and a simple lack of money to pay for it all. It taught the industry a lot of lessons in effective management and the writing of better contracts (witness the Concorde one which neither side could get out of without incurring huge penalties, so the programme continued!).

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I too researched it, as did many otheres here DamienB and others, in fact I think there are few who havent researched the facts of what happened.

So things were documented, some wernt, those cases are nothing more than memories of those who were there at the time and can remember it because it was so sureal.

BAC wasnt ordered to destroy the tooling and jigs, it was done for them, they were told it was happening as it was happening, they did of course destroy some after the main ones were destroyed on a large scale.

Few projects are destroyed in such a manner before or since, and it was only because it was such a money swallowing pit was it remembered by the public, there were only memories left, that and "two" prototypes... of course neither of those two jets remaining can be called a TSR.2 as was intended, the one at RAF Cosford is closest but even then the project was stopped in such a way as to mean some parts of that jet are missing and can never be made for it.

Its true the state of the country at the time was a major factor in the project and its troubles, i mean the country at the time didnt have two pennies to rub together and it was being run by people who were only out for what they could get [and I dont mean the elected government of the day], sure it was the Labour party in power at the time, but it wasnt nessacerily them who eneded it in such a complete manner.

The TSR.2 was open to worldwide politics, and thats where it suffered.

Many projects of BAC have failed in the past, but they were not halted in such a way and in such a dramatic manner.

As mentioned above, a man working at a machine, finnished his work at that machine, the machine was then taken away and destroyed...

And I think it is most odd that no conclusive documentation has been held by either BAC or the government to show just what exactly did happen...

No, it was all swept away and in the end we ended up with promises of the F-111K, which should have and could have been as good as the TSR.2, if it ever happened, but as with all programs of the time it didnt happen for one reason or another.

We of course ended up with the Tornado, a plane that is very good but not as good as the F-111F and or the plane the TSR.2 would have evolved into after it went into service.

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I went to BACs factory just after the first TSR flight to look at the new VC10 being manufactured with my ATC squadron. We even met Barnes Wallis! But as we went past the hanger where the TSR was we were instructed to look to your left at the VC10 hanger but of course we all looked to the right to look at her in all her glory.

At the time BAC were having real trouble with the VC10 programme and the one I saw under construction had bulges just in front of the engine pods to improve the airflow.

I have been facinated by both aircarft since.

As to the politics I was too young to vote but I do remember the economic woes of the time and I think any polititian would have prefferred not to have that poison chalice!

Regards

David

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Whatever the 'myth' fact and history shows it was a political sacrifical lamb because no-one wanted us to have the best, just like today.

That is certainly a view, or is it a myth? From all the reading of archive material I have done to date on the subject [from the early mid '70s until today] its one I can't reconcile. I really do concur with Damien B view on the matter.

Marty...

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I suspect that the truth was somewhere in between.

I don't doubt that there were some political wranglings, and the idiot that signed the contract for the F-111 should be shot for not reading the part about penalty clauses & delays. I'd also think that politicians would make sure that their fingerprints were not to be seen in the surviving documentation, as these things have a habit of coming back to bite them if they're not thorough enough. I watched a DVD on the cancellation, and interviews with Dennis Healy & Woy Jenkins didn't even establish which one of them did the deed, even after all these years.

Politics has always been about spin, and seldom about truth, which is why I dislike it so much. :shrug:

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Maybe a bit OT, but to me, for what I know, there seems to be may similarities between the TSR.2 "issue" in the UK and the CF-105 "issue" roughly at the same time in Canada.

:oops: I might just have opened another can of worms...

Edited by Sten Ekedahl
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Maybe a bit OT, but to me, for what I know, there seems to be may similarities between the TSR.2 "issue" in the UK and the CF-105 "issue" roughly at the same time in Canada.

:oops: I might just have opened another can of worms...

Sten!

Didn't your Mum tell you that cans marked "Worms" don't have resealable lids!

I think you're right though... :wicked:

Wez

Edited by Wez
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There are many reasons given as to why it was completely destroyed. One of the biggest was the Government was 'bribed' by the US Government to not produce it with the offer of F-111 combined with the writing off of some of our WW2 debt. It was certainly a threat to the F-111 - the Australians were going to buy it until our wonderous Labour Government, on the advice of the Americans, actually told them to buy F-111 instead. Yes, that's right, our own Government was working to scupper an export contract for one of its own aircraft, built by a state-run company, in favour of a competitor. Lord knows how many jobs would have been created or kept in the industry if the so-called party of the working man hadn't gone out its way to sabotage the project.

One of the reasons for the demise of the TSR2 was the then Chief of the Defence staff, Lord Louis Mountbatten- he ensured that the Australians were well "briefed" at every opportunity on the TSR2 and was determined that the aircraft would not be procured by the R.A.F. so as not to pose a threat to funding for the Navy's Fixed wing fleet carriers.

potted history here: http://www.spyflight.co.uk/TSR2.htm

Troffa

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I must admit to being unconvinced that the TSR-2 would have enjoyed substantial export sales. Two types beloved of us modellers, the Lightning and Buccaneer (and their part-successor the Tornado), sold in only very limited numbers outside the countries for which they were designed. The reasons for this are manyfold but fundamentally the US and the French managed, by a variety of means, to sell their products (e.g. F-104, F-4, Mirage) to many more air forces.

The last front-line British type to have made it big in the export market was the Hunter, which was successful because it was powerful, well-armed, robust and adaptable, it suited the needs of a wide variety of air arms and was not excessively complex to fly or maintain. I think the TSR-2 would only tick a couple of those boxes and if you look at the F-111, which was probably closest to it in concept and performance, it did not succeed in the export market, with only one sale outside the USA.

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The TSR2 is certainly an emotive subject and there are many different opinions. But trying to fight through the emotion, myth and rose tinted glasses, I'm with "Marty Hopkirk" and DamienB on this one.

As far as I can see, the reasons for its abandonment really were pretty mundane and logical. I appreciate that this is my personal conclusion and that many of you have a different view, but IMHO:

- We REALLY couldn't afford it. F-111K seemed to offer a cheaper, better alternative. Of course this turned out not to be true, but politicians have to believe what they are told by industry, civil servants and the military at the time - and the US Military/Industrial Machine (a phrase coined by a concerned right wing US Republican President; General Eisenhower) lied, or at the very least, fell victim to a culture of "optimism bias". Note also that it was Lord Louis Mountbatten who briefed the Ozzies against TSR2 - NOT exactly someone you could desribe as a "left wing politician, sucking up to Russia".

- Neither was Baron Solly Zuckerman, the Govt's Chief Scientific Advisor, any friend of Russia - it was his insistence that the UK must throw its lot totally in with the US and that national pride be sacrificed for operational effectiveness, which really killed the TSR2. The politicians, Healey (Defence and an ex Royal Engineer Major) and Wedgewood-Benn (Industry, and an ex-RAF pilot) acted mainly on his advice. I doubt whether many front line servicemen would disagree with that operationally focussed sentiment today.

- It couldn't meet the CHANGING requirement of the RAF. USN experience with the A-5 Vigilante (similar role, similar layout) gives a real clue as to its potential operational unsuitablility, and we already had the superb, if ageing, Canberra for reconnaissance (the A-5, unable to perform its strike role, became the RA-5). Marvellous technical achievement it might have become, but at cancellation it certainly had not yet proved this - some really basic airframe issues were causing problems, never mind the avionics/radar and weapons systems, so why take the risk, when the US had far more resources available to counter similar problems in the F-111 (and look how long and how much money that took!).

Some might claim that the real tragedy of the TSR2 is not the ending of one aircraft project, but the death of the British Aircraft Industry. However, I'm sure that BAE Systems would strongly dispute that they were ever dead !. Perhaps one of the UK's most successful and profitable companies ever, BAe arose directly out of the forced mergers that the TSR project brought. Whatever you feel about the BAE Systems "monopoly", they are a mainstream contributor to the UK economy and have weathered some pretty lean times, that the likes of Handley Page, English Electric, Hunting, Vickers & Bristol would not have survived on their own. Even Hawker eventually had to throw their lot in with the TSR2 inspired BAC conglomerate to form the basis of today's BAe.

So what is the real legacy of the TSR 2? - well not what Zuckerman envisioned, (UK dependency on the US) but a thriving and vibrant UK national defence contractor, increasingly a mainstream supplier of choice to the US armed forces. Not too bad, considering !

Edited by gengriz
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The reason the Lightning lost out to the F-104 was due to the government of the day, in the light of the Sandys White Paper, telling everyone that the manned interceptor was dead, and that it would be cancelled. Europe then ordered the inferior F-104. The Germans wanted the Lightning, but by the time production was assured, the ink was already dry on the American's order books. Yet another political blunder and lost orders.

As has been mentioned, the Navy wanted their CVN-01, and we supposedly could not afford both. Not surprising Mountbatten, as a Navy man, fought for his corner. Inter service rivalry still robs us of cost effective systems that all branches of the services would benefit from.

Of course, we didn't get CVN-01 either, and only half the Phantom fleet. HMS Eagle, which trialled the F-4K, was never made up to operate them, even though she was in better shape than Ark Royal.

Another classic example of Military/Government/Civil Service incompetence.

Edited by bentwaters81tfw
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If BAE is so great why can't they build anything on budget or on time? I can't think of one program that they did right. You would think that after a hundred years of aviation in Britain they could do something right for a change.

Paul Harrison

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  • 1 month later...
BAC were threatend by the government, that if they did not destroy the jigs and drawings, however many have been secretly kept, they would get no contracts for other designs they were working on. IIRC specifically airliner work. I recall a tv programme many years ago where Healey and BAC staff spoke of this. Labour were worried that work on the aircraft would continue behind the scenes as a private venture, to be offerd at a later date, to the RAF or Foreign governments.

I have seen no evidence to support this view, nor I believe any one else that has resarched the project. I have managed a design office - once a project comes none fee paying everything not needed is ditched, just economics and standard practice, nothing more or less. Given that some design development was used in MRCA and Jaguar would pop that particular bubble.

At the same time the P1154 was scrapped and the v/stol freighter we were developing. Essentially, we were pretty bankrupt, but Labour promised the Unions, who ran the country back then, that the cash was needed for Health and Schools'. Always the same old song. Don't forget who backed the Unions............Russia.

During my reseach and reading of others - industrial relations did not play any part in TSR-2's downfall. As to the later statement this is not supported in the annuals of social history.

Whatever the 'myth' fact and history shows it was a political sacrifical lamb because no-one wanted us to have the best, just like today.

Again not true, the project death was sealed by others,not least by better project management and proper change control process's.

Marty...

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The reason the Lightning lost out to the F-104 was due to the government of the day, in the light of the Sandys White Paper, telling everyone that the manned interceptor was dead, and that it would be cancelled. Europe then ordered the inferior F-104. The Germans wanted the Lightning, but by the time production was assured, the ink was already dry on the American's order books. Yet another political blunder and lost orders.

As has been mentioned, the Navy wanted their CVN-01, and we supposedly could not afford both. Not surprising Mountbatten, as a Navy man, fought for his corner. Inter service rivalry still robs us of cost effective systems that all branches of the services would benefit from.

Of course, we didn't get CVN-01 either, and only half the Phantom fleet. HMS Eagle, which trialled the F-4K, was never made up to operate them, even though she was in better shape than Ark Royal.

Another classic example of Military/Government/Civil Service incompetence.

CVA-01, not CVN-01

It wasnt going to be nuclear powered

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One of the reasons why Humbrol made the 1/72 TSR.2 kit a limited edition was because it was felt that it wasn't a sufficiently well-known subject in the wider market to sell as a open-production kit. Humbrol wanted to minimise the risk of the thing being a flop so they crunched the numbers to work out what the best run would be vs tooling costs in order to make it viable.

Of course what happened then was that it became rarer than hens teeth but I personally don't think that was down to the world wanting a TSR.2 en-masse but, as many have commented, on people with little interest in the aircraft hearing the words "limited edition" and snapping them up so they could hoard them and hope to flog them off at an inflated price on e-Bay.

I actually still think the limited run was the best way of doing some subjects, but that perhaps Humbrol should have just made it a larger run (and there were various faux figures doing the rounds) - it was a lesson learned on the Nimrod where the figures were set by the trade pre orders.

And, in case it does get asked again, the 1/72 moulds were not made from soft tooling, they were not run to destruction, they are industrial grade tooling as per any other kit.

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One of the reasons why Humbrol made the 1/72 TSR.2 kit a limited edition was because it was felt that it wasn't a sufficiently well-known subject in the wider market to sell as a open-production kit. Humbrol wanted to minimise the risk of the thing being a flop so they crunched the numbers to work out what the best run would be vs tooling costs in order to make it viable.

Of course what happened then was that it became rarer than hens teeth but I personally don't think that was down to the world wanting a TSR.2 en-masse but, as many have commented, on people with little interest in the aircraft hearing the words "limited edition" and snapping them up so they could hoard them and hope to flog them off at an inflated price on e-Bay.

I actually still think the limited run was the best way of doing some subjects, but that perhaps Humbrol should have just made it a larger run (and there were various faux figures doing the rounds) - it was a lesson learned on the Nimrod where the figures were set by the trade pre orders.

And, in case it does get asked again, the 1/72 moulds were not made from soft tooling, they were not run to destruction, they are industrial grade tooling as per any other kit.

Hi Jonathon

I think they need to rethink the limited edition concept a bit, perhaps do the single production run but keep it in stock rather than try and flog it all in one go. The TSR2 were all preordered and demand exceed production, with Nimrod the retaillers decided to stock up assuming demand would be similar to TSR2 but made the mistake of not taking into account that the price and size was double that of TSR2 and whilst a wanted subject, the majority of modellers would settle for just the one, and of course others would compare price to the Revell Orion and go for that at half the price :undecided: . With a Feburary release they also missed the Christmas sales where younger modellers hight have been able to justify getting a Nimrod for Christmas as a special present !.

Hopefully next years limited edition will be better thought out and marketed (hopefully to be announced at SMW perhaps ?), as i doubt the retaillers will buy into the next one as much as they did on Nimrod !!!.

Maybe if they went for one production run but distributed it over the year then the retailers would be happier and it also allows for cock ups such as the printing of the decal sheets to be rectified, as 23,000 large sheets rushed out for the Nimrod resulted in alot of unhappy customers. A phased distribution would hopefully allow time for these to be checked and rectified plus the printers are not forced into doing massive print runs where their own QC goes out the window...

Cheers

Geoff

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