I've Been Away: Duxford 2

[Charl]

Years ago, I had a madcap notion to watch a production of Cats in London, then hop on a cross-Atlantic Concorde, have dinner in New York and afterward attend the Broadway version of Cats – all in the same evening. It was quite do-able, and I think someone wrote about the experience.
Sadly I never did manage to fly Concorde, but our paths crossed several times, and I regretted not making the effort.
So finding the #2 prototype hangered at Duxford was something of an answer to a bucket list item I didn’t know I had, really.
It is the most beautiful thing, certainly. And an astonishing bit of kit for its time as we know.
This one carries full test instrumentation which is in its own right, astonishing, and all analogue.
There’s a workstation devoted to measuring the temperature of the wing root for example.
And everything else that might have been a cause of some worry to the engineers of the time.
Which means: everything. Nobody had made one of these.



https://youtu.be/naoaeBvnu_A

https://youtu.be/FhZZ3cBIUiU

Bloody noisy thing thanks to those monster Olympus engines.

Parked carefully under the port wing is the original owner of those motors, the TSR2. This is what I really came to see.



They are clearly of the same design zeitgeist, these two. And even today look like the fastest thing you can imagine flying. Especially when compared to the Vulcan next door.



It’s much smaller than I had thought - close to the Lancaster in fact, which is parked on the other side. Here’s a doodle I made (thanks Wikipedia)
Same length (Lancaster in blue, Stirling in yellow):



Comparable range, around 4,000km
Bomb load at 4,500kg somewhat less than the Lanc’s 6,400kg but given they were to be a pair of 300 kiloton nukes…
And delivered at Mach 2.15 vs 245 knots!



I spent a long time gawping at this thing of beauty.
I can’t really add to the huge online resources regarding its history, here’s a sample which may be of interest.

https://youtu.be/XgqWEH0Dzrs?si=IJ-w74RH4hXH0ce9

[emfrat]

Charl, many thanks for those pics and that excellent video link.
I notice just above the port wingtip of the TSR2, there is a Canberra hanging up in the roof. I believe it was the need for a Canberra replacement that led to TSR2.
The US usually mentioned calling-in the Lease-Lend debt from WWII when they saw GB doing better things than they could.
I walked through the Concord at East Fortune - stored in the open then - and it seemed very small inside, not much bigger than the ERJ which took me from Heathrow to Turnhouse. RAF East Fortune in 1918 was where R34 departed, to make the first east-west crossing of the Atlantic by any aircraft, which was soon converted to the first return crossing by any aircraft.

Thanks again
Mike

[chopper_nut]

Concorde and TSR2 were both incredible aeroplanes. Who knows what would've happened if TSR2 hadn't been cancelled. TSR2 was indeed to replace the Canberra and in a funny coincidence, the Canberra was designed to replace the Mosquito which is also pictured. I don't know which of the Air France Concordes I've seen when they came to NZ but of the ones in museums now, I've seen G-BSST, G-AXDN although it was outside when I was there, and G-BOAG.

[Charl]

I trawled some of the writings, which was a fun exercise in itself.
It does seem that the TSR2 was to replace the Canberra, but ultimately the V-bomber fleet was becoming vulnerable to the latest Soviet SAM’s.
So the Ministry set about framing General Operational Requirement 339, which was rather like a four-year-old asking for the whole box of choccie fish, why just settle for one?
Requirements were:
• Delivery of tactical nuclear weapons as well as conventional bombs and rockets at medium and low level in all weathers, by day and night.
• Low level (day and night) and medium (day) reconnaissance in all weathers.
Oh, and VTOL/STOL would be nice, too - all in 1956!
It was all a very Big Ask, and no wonder the politicians got antsy about cost and time in the end.
There were many technical issues to overcome.
Here’s an early problem I’d never heard of, that kind of illustrates the unknowns in a project like this: Shortly after takeoff on XR219's second flight, vibration from a fuel pump at the resonant frequency of the human eyeball caused the pilot to throttle back one engine to avoid momentary loss of vision!
And never mind the terrain-following electronics and clever Nav/bombing gear: of all things, landing gear vibration was a major issue, and caused a no-show at Farnborough 1964. This would have been seen as a very public failure of the project.
XR219 was eventually fitted with additional tie-struts on the already complex landing gear (See above photos, it really is full of bits).
Sir Sydney Camm said of the TSR-2: "All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics. TSR-2 simply got the first three right.”

Had they seen it through, it might have seen use (with suitable avionics upgrades) right through the 1990’s, ultimately doing the Tornado’s job.
Such a shame, such a magnificent bird.

SO very glad to have gone through this wonderful toybox, you could spend a week in there just looking, and months digging through the history.
You can see it in the Volunteers there, they just love their "job"

[Splitpin]

Charl...a supreme post.
Thank you... and that's an understatement.

[chopper_nut]

Great pics, thanks for sharing. The reason that TSR2 ended up behind and over budget were two fold. First off, it was an enormously complex project. The second though is that two rival companies were forced to work together with much too much interference from Whitehall. Cockpit layout was done by committee rather than designers and test pilots. It's no wonder the project ran behind and over budget. For those that are interested, Empire Of The Clouds is a cracking read about when British aircraft ruled the skies and be warned, it may make the more nostalgic of you a little misty eyed.

[Charl]

Yes my pick might've been to just leave English Electric alone to get on with it!

Always available for a little misty-eyed nostalgia, Nick, thanks for the reading pointer.
I've also been advised to look up Antony Beevor and get Normandy out of my system by reading everything he had to say about WW2.