TSR2 Britain’s Lost Cold War Strike Aircraft by Tim McLelland, HB, 228 pages. Originally published in 2010 and reissued in 2025 in a Revised and Updated Edition with Additional Material from Tony Buttler, Ken Ellis and Clive Richards. 75 B&W and 49 colour images, 70 line drawings, two double page colour plates, Crécy Publishing Ltd, £27.95, ISBN 978-1-80035-331-2.
A number of years ago, I was very kindly allowed to climb into TSR2 XR220 at the RAF Museum, Cosford. It really is a design born of its time and would not have looked out of place in an episode of Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlet.
It is 60 years since the TSR2 project was brought to an abrupt end after just 24 test flights of the sole flying example, XR219. It took ten of those before problems with the landing gear and airframe vibration could be fixed, and so enable the process of exploring the flight envelope to begin. All bar one were less than an hour in duration. According to the highly experienced Chief Test Pilot, ‘Bea’ Beaumont, it performed faultlessly, albeit briefly, over a range of heights, speeds and attitudes. So why was TSR2 cancelled? Was it a potential world-beater, a technological marvel or a white elephant? This is what the author attempts to explain in this very full and absorbing account of the genesis, design and short life of the aircraft.
It was intended as a replacement for the highly successful English Electric Canberra and was mostly designed by the same team that had produced the marvellous English Electric Lightning. The first problem was that the government insisted that EE and Vickers should merge and form the basis of BAC and that Vickers should take the lead on the project. The second was that the Air Staff wanted an aircraft that would achieve ‘Mach 2 from a cabbage patch’ – a supersonic bomber that could operate just as efficiently at high-level as low-level, to which would be added high-speed reconnaissance and the capability of operating out of a grass field. They were not prepared to settle for anything less, such as the contemporary Blackburn NA.39 Buccaneer, particularly as this was a naval aeroplane in which no self-respecting light blue type could be seen. The government then compounded the issue firstly by being lukewarm about the project, then by overlaying it with vast swathes of bureaucracy and finally by removing one of its raison d’être by moving towards a geographical contraction of UK Defence interests. The inevitable result was delay, spiralling costs and the realisation that, in all probability, some of the over-ambitious capabilities would never be attained. The author sums it all up very well: ‘TSR 2 was a victim of circumstance, the politics of bureaucracy, inter-service battles, foreign policy, industrial policy and international relations which conspired to create an atmosphere in which the TSR2 project was inevitably doomed to failure almost from the point at which it first began’. Were the Secretary of State for Defence, Denis Healey and Minister of Aviation, Roy Jenkins, the villains of the piece? No, not really, they were in the unenviable position of trying to sort out the mess. It can certainly be said, however, that neither Sir George Edwards of Vickers nor the Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Mountbatten, covered themselves in glory. The RAF ended up with the Buccaneer and learned to love it. BAC (BAe etc) went European and produced the Tornado and Typhoon.
The story is told in a logical and cogent style with a superb array of photographs and drawings. Chapter 12 is given over to a technical description with as many plans and annotations as you could possibly want. It also includes a highly interesting speculation regarding the likely deployments had TSR2 been accepted into service. I was intrigued to note that the two-seater Hawker Hunter would have been employed in the lead-in training role, as would in fact be the case later with the Buccaneer. Tony Buttler contributes an Appendix on the F-111, the replacement for the TSR2 programme, which was itself cancelled in 1968.
I have absolutely no hesitation in highly recommending this book to anyone interested in aviation history and also anyone currently involved in procurement for the RAF.
