Jetrader - Winter 2018 - 34

aviation history

The British Aircraft

BAE SYSTEMS

By Jack Feir, ISTAT Appraiser Fellow and ISTAT Member Emeritus

The BAC TSR-2 Supersonic Nuclear Bomber. This is number XR219, the only one of several prototypes that actually flew.

The Setting
At the end of WWII, Great Britain was
exhausted and looked forward to the possibility of at least some return to peace and
prosperity. Armies were being disbanded,
their troops returning home. Navy ships
were being mothballed and the Royal Air
Force's (RAF) spending was sharply cut.
One exception to the cutbacks was the
development of a light tactical bomber to
replace the de Havilland Mosquito. This
would be the English Electric Canberra,
launched in 1945 and first flown in 1949.
Larger strategic jet bombers with nuclear
weapons would have to wait. But then,
peace and prosperity faded away, beginning
with the Korean War.
Also, not content with having mere
atomic bombs, in 1952 the United States
detonated its first hydrogen bomb, hundreds of times more powerful than the
Hiroshima blast in 1945, and it was not long

before the Russians behind their iron curtain had their own A-bombs and H-bombs.
If another all-out war were to begin,
conceivably much of Britain would be wiped
out by nuclear firestorms in the first few
hours. Gone were the days when ordinary bombers would be dropping ordinary
bombs day and night while fighting off
ordinary interceptors. It would be impossible to defend Britain's cities against a
nuclear attack.
But if Britain had its own nuclear bomber
force that could survive such an attack and
punch back, the Russians wouldn't dare
attack in the first place. In 1957, Britain's
Minister of Defence, Duncan Sandys, put
it this way: "It must be frankly recognized
there is at present no means of protecting
the people of Britain against the catastrophic consequences of an attack with
nuclear weapons, and it is unhappily true
that the only existing safeguard against

34 The official publication of the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading

nuclear aggression is the power to threaten
retaliation in kind." It was futile to try
protecting the nation's population, and
the only targets worth defending would
be the retaliation forces.

The Wish List
In mid-1957, a "General Operational
Requirement" was issued to the British
aircraft industry, setting out the primary
objectives for a new bomber, including
the ability to deliver a nuclear bomb at a
combat radius of 1,000 nautical miles in
any weather conditions in day or night.
It had to be able to cruise at Mach 1.7
or more, with the final 200 miles to and
from the target flying at 200 feet or lower
at a speed of at least Mach 0.95. Lateradded requirements included a secondary role capable of carrying six 1,000 lb
non-nuclear, high-explosive bombs, and the
ability to easily convert between strike and

Jetrader - Winter 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Jetrader - Winter 2018