TSR2: Precision Attack to Tornado E-Book

John Forbat

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Included are details on the ground-breaking navigation and attack system, its Cold War context, its requirements and the development of ATF (advanced terrain following), and in-depth analysis of automatic flight control systems, analogue and digital simulations at Weybridge and the reconnaissance pack for mapping enemy territory. It finishes with a look at the final throes of TSR2's cancellation by the Labour government in 1965. 'This fascinating personal account of the behind the scenes action at Vickers during the heyday of British aviation and weaponry invention in the 1950s and 1960s is both authoritative and very, very readable.' Wg Cdr Al Monkman, D.F.C., M.A., B.A., R.A.F., 617 Sqn, RAF Lossiemouth, Moray.

Leseprobe

To my five children, Anthony, Lance, Yolande, Wendy and Sandra, who have never failed to support me.

KEY TO USING ENDNOTE REFERENCES

Works cited in this publication are listed here.

Each entry in the list is numbered and references within the text correspond to this list.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In the process of researching this book and filling out my own recollections, many ex-colleagues and others have made helpful comments and supplied photographs which have served well to enhance the authenticity and completeness of the Vickers Guided Weapons Dept work to create the TSR2 Navigation and Attack System. Without being certain of mentioning everybody (and apologising for any I may omit), I would like to thank the following helpful friends and colleagues.

Perhaps firstly I should thank Julian Temple, curator of Aviation at the Brooklands Museum, for suggesting I write this history in the first place. Also Museum Director Allan Winn, for his support. I would also like to thank various people from the aviation industry, as well as author Steve Skinner, who supplied a highly informative CD produced by the British Aircraft Corporation, depicting flight-testing and manufacture of TSR2 prior to its cancellation.

Finally, among other colleagues from my time at Vickers, I wish to thank Brigadier John Clemow, who (well into his nineties) has given encouragement and help. I also wish to thank those who moved from Vickers to EASAMS to develop aircraft systems for Jaguar, Nimrod and the Tornado – largely based on the systems techniques developed for TSR2 – for their helpful reminiscences and comments, particularly Jim Cole, John Goodwin, John Lattey, Richard Williams and any others I may have omitted.

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Key to Using Endnote References

Acknowledgements

Prelude

Foreword

Prologue

CHAPTER 1

The RAF’s Mission Requirements and Basic System Elements

CHAPTER 2

All-Weather Blind Navigation with Doppler/Inertial Mixing and Radar Fixes

CHAPTER 3

Theory and Hardware for Inertial Navigation

CHAPTER 4

Dead Reckoning and Sideways Radar Fixes

CHAPTER 5

Accurate Fixes under Vibration in Turbulent Flight

CHAPTER 6

‘Hands Off’ Automatic Flight Control

CHAPTER 7

Terrain Following and Vulnerability

CHAPTER 8

Testing and Simulation

CHAPTER 9

The Central Computing System

CHAPTER 10

Weapon Delivery

CHAPTER 11

Communications, Antennae and System Locations

CHAPTER 12

Reconnaissance System

CHAPTER 13

Flight Readiness and Automatic Checkout

CHAPTER 14

Politics and the Cancellation of TSR2

CHAPTER 15

Single-Seat ‘TSR2’ Navigation Fixing for NATO V/STOL Fighter

CHAPTER 16

Vickers Guided Weapons Dept – Missile Projects for the Future

Epilogue

References

Ministry Personalities

List of Figures

Copyright

PRELUDE

This fascinating personal account of the behind-the-scenes action at Vickers during the heyday of British aviation and weaponry invention in the 1950s and 1960s is both authoritative and very, very readable. A researcher’s goldmine, this detailed book is crammed with facts, personal anecdotes, previously classified material and comprehensive explanations which, in a very real way, chart the evolution of today’s generation of breathtakingly advanced front line aircraft and their associated weapon systems. All of the hallmarks of modern aviation: accuracy, reliability and technical sophistication, which we take so much for granted nowadays, were then largely unheard of, and today’s successful front line jets are now the product of what were at the time seemingly improbable specifications, long hours of detailed analysis, complex trials and sheer inventive genius.

There is, however, a much more human side to the story and this book openly acknowledges the human failings, errors and financial battles – as well as the strong characters, leaders, and men of vision – which together combined to dictate the course of events. It is this honest mix of success and failure, trial and error, genius and prevarication, boffins and budgets, which makes this book so appealing. As recently the officer commanding 617 ‘Dambusters’ Squadron and, having so far flown 3,500 hours in fast jets from Tornado GR4s with the RAF to F-117A Stealth Fighters with the USAF, this story of the dynamic linkages between industry and military rings very true to me. The pedigree and genetic make-up of today’s famous aircraft are well described herein and most front line aircraft now contain some element of the developments orchestrated at Vickers over this period. Precision is one of today’s modern Air Force mantras – this book describes how advances in technology turned any warrior’s dream into an aviation reality and a real military capability.

January 2006

Gp Capt Al Monkman DFC MA BA RAF

Permanent Joint Headquarters (UK), Northwood, Middlesex

FOREWORD

Dictionaries of quotations record Confucius, Thucidides, Sir Walter Raleigh, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and George Santanaya (an American philosopher in the nineteenth century) all as saying that, if you do not study the past, you are condemned to repeat it.

A notable example recently was that of the politician who had not read about the happenings in AD 1381, when the imposition of a poll tax resulted in the Peasants’ Revolt.

I have heard many say that they value their own experiences way above those of others. However, those that rely only on their own experiences are likely to die young. To live longer (and happier) you need to have learnt the experiences of others also.

We are all descended from ancestors who survived at least until puberty. They survived by listening to bad news; and then by NOT eating poisonous berries, by NOT drinking stagnant water, nor by putting their hands in the fire, falling over cliffs, swimming too rapid rivers, fighting wild animals with no weapon, etc. Thus we are, almost certainly, descendants who are genetically programmed to want to listen to bad news and to take note of it. That is why we buy newspapers full of disasters; and why we listen to radio or watch television programmes of the same nature. The desire to survive may be even stronger than the desire to reproduce.

To get that bad news, or, indeed, any news of the past, one reads histories, biographies and especially autobiographies. Those autobiographies are the most compelling. Their authors tell what happened to themselves. Whether they tell of successes, failures or a mixture of both, their tales can be of great value to us all, but especially to those concerned with similar lines of personal life or of business.

TSR2 Precision Attack to Tornado by John E. Forbat tells of his work and experience in an area of high technology. It describes in detail the design and development of a variety of aircraft and missile systems during the 1950s and 1960s, with which the author was directly concerned. The systems include airframes, aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, navigation, guidance, control, gyroscopes, computers, warheads and their fuzes, power supplies, communications and launchers, as well as the ministries, armed services, companies and personnel involved. Of particular interest may be the early development of Head Up Displays, and the techniques for weapon delivery from fast low-level attacks.

For those less inclined towards the technical aspects, yet interested in the historical ones, some of the interactions between the private and public sectors may be eye-openers.

I met John at RAF Hastings in late 1955. I, too, had been on a year’s Guided Weapons course at the RMC, Shrivenham, in 1952/53. I was, from 1953 to 1957, working at the Royal Aircraft Establishment as the Ministry’s project engineer on the ‘Red Shoes’ (later to be renamed Thunderbird) surface-to-air weapon system, being developed by English Electric and Napiers at Luton and then at Stevenage. He was working for Vickers on the ‘Red Dean’ air-to-air weapon. We were both flying out on a visit to Woomera, South Australia, to deal with tests of our weapons there, as he describes in his previous book The ‘Secret’ World of Vickers Guided Weapons. The flight took eight days each way, so we did see quite a lot of each other.

Whilst at Woomera, I was shown round the test range by an Australian Artillery Major, who had been on the same guided weapons course with me three years earlier. After taking me all round, he said, ‘You can try out anything you like on this range, as long as the risks for the range staff and for the farmers up-country are no greater than those for pedestrians in Sydney.’ That was a quantifiable risk, which was eminently acceptable to those concerned. I have used that same principle on many occasions since then.

Later, from 1958 to 1960, I was the Liaison Officer with the USAF’s Ballistic Missile Division in Los Angeles, after which (1960/62) I was the Commanding Officer at the Central Servicing Development Establishment, RAF Swanton Morley, where I had teams looking at the reliability and maintainability problems of the TSR2 as well as of Bloodhound, the other surface-to-air missile system. However, I was in Singapore from 1964 to 1966, where there was a minor war (‘confrontation’) with Indonesia, when I heard about the cancellation of the TSR2. From 1967 to 1969, I was the Ministry’s project director for the Harrier aircraft, immediately before its introduction into RAF service on time and within budget. Not all projects are over time and budget! I do, though, remember John Fozard, the Harrier designer, telling me ‘you don’t design these things unless you are an optimist’, when I was chiding him for being late with one of the prototype aircraft.

I met John Forbat again in 1978, after I had left the RAF and moved to Shepperton. He had patented devices for detecting potential intruders to properties, and we needed to safeguard our home. We used them again on our present home. So far we have not been burgled successfully!

This book should help all those who get involved in any way with high technology projects, especially ones with government funding. It is no simple matter to get maximum support from a mixture of government officials, service personnel and private industry colleagues, each of whom are likely to use their own objectives and past experience to guide them. This book offers considerable insight into the problems for industry, when politics get in the way of projects, whose successful completion depends both on consistent policies, and on overcoming the problems of developing new technologies.

Air Marshal Sir Reginald E.W. Harland

KBE, CB, AE, MA, CEng, CCMI, FIMechE, FIET,

FRAeS, Hon. FAPM, FSEE, RAF(Retired)

49 Crown Street, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk IP33 1QX

PROLOGUE

Concurrently with The ‘Secret’ World of Vickers Guided Weapons, also published by Tempus Publishing, this book is intended to provide as accurately as possible, after an interval of fifty years, a historical account of the TSR2 aircraft’s groundbreaking avionics developments by Vickers Armstrongs (Aircraft) Ltd in Weybridge, Surrey, including some of the political aspects of Government contracting. TSR2’s trials and tribulations before it was cancelled by the Government are chronicled in some detail, relying on original Government records in the Public Records Office of the National Archive. A list of references is provided, detailing the sources of my information.

The Navigation and Attack System is described in considerable detail, but it is not intended to be a technical treatise. It is written largely from the perspective of my time as a young trials engineer, who then graduated to senior designer level, working on all of Vickers’ missile projects over a ten-year period, as well as on various aspects of the TSR2 avionics. Thus, although there was a considerable depth of technical information and discussion needed to paint a representative picture, I have attempted to err on the side of making the story readable and interesting to a technically untrained lay audience. Starting at the bottom of the organisation and maturing to senior designer level – short of management status – I tried to keep myself abreast of the ‘big picture’ and, in this account, factual, though sometimes rather technical, data is admixed with my own personal anecdotal experiences. I hope that these may help add life to a tale of technical development at the forefront of engineering of the day, in a large and developing organisation.

The Tactical Strike and Reconnaissance aircraft, TSR2, was built to meet Operational Requirement GOR339, upgraded to OR339. The Air Staff first promulgated this in 1957, at the height of the Cold War build-up. Few aircraft have been more contentious or more written about; the TSR2 attracted attention before and after its successful flights, was a focus of interest at the time of the highly political cancellation by a Labour Government in 1965, and still invites debate today. In its time, it represented the most advanced aircraft and weapon system so far created anywhere and, even in 1978, thirteen years after its demise, no other aircraft purchased for the Royal Air Force matched its performance and overall Weapon Systems capability9. The Tornado GR4, still at the RAF’s front line in 2006, and for some years to come, accomplishes similar operations – with the advantage of more recent technology.

The Navigation and Attack System design and development was commenced within the Guided Weapons Department of Vickers Armstrongs (Aircraft) Ltd, under the overall guidance of Brigadier John Clemow, its chief engineer. Sir George Edwards had recruited Clemow in April 1957, from his post as director of Guided Weapon Projects in the Ministry of Supply. In that capacity, he had ‘sorted out’ several aircraft contractors’ ineffective missile development efforts and was already familiar with the situation at Vickers. Following pre-war and wartime service as a ‘gunner’, he became an acknowledged expert in matters of rocketry, guidance and control and, using the expertise of his Guided Weapons team, it was natural that he would lead the TSR2 avionics work. However, before agreeing to proceed with any contract for development of TSR2, the Government dictated a ‘shotgun marriage’ between Vickers, English Electric and Bristol Aircraft to form the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC), which finally received the contract, naming Vickers as the prime.

By late 1961, much of the TSR2 avionics design was well established and development was proceeding. However, the Guided Weapons work was now to be moved to the English Electric’s GW division at Stevenage. Following my own abortive attempts together with colleagues John Lattey and Arthur Carter to dissuade Sir George Edwards from closing down the GW work at Weybridge, most of the team declined the move. Many left the company altogether but, since the TSR2 work could continue in Weybridge, others remained with what became the Aircraft Systems/E organisation. John Clemow quite openly declared that had he been, say sixty years old, he might have thought of his continuity in employment – but he was only fifty and would therefore look to newer pastures. It was 9 October before we received a memorandum from top management, setting out the responsibilities relating to the TSR2 Navigation and Attack System. This quoted a press report of the Guided Weapons work at Weybridge having now been transferred to the English Electric Guided Weapons division, and that ‘further to this, Mr J. Clemow has left the Company’.

To ensure continuity for TSR2, the aircraft division’s chief of electrical design, Harry Zeffert, was appointed chief systems engineer/E at Weybridge, responsible ‘for the co-ordination and progress of the TSR2 Navigation/Attack System and its associated equipment’. A veteran from the starting of Guided Weapons at Weybridge, Mike Still, was appointed deputy chief systems engineer/E – effectively running the day-to-day TSR2 ‘Nav/Attack’ work. John Lambie would continue his existing responsibilities as chief project officer on TSR2 weapon systems. The following chapter covers the many system issues, design principles and operational characteristics developed to meet the Royal Air Force’s exacting operational requirements, up to the time of the infamous cancellation in 1965.

Another chapter describes project designs for a number of ‘Missiles and Systems for the Future’, including my own design project for the Navigation and Attack System of a single-seat aircraft, to navigate as effectively as TSR2 (which could only navigate accurately with a two-man crew). The lower cost implications of using a single-seat, as opposed to a two-seat, solution for TSR2 could well have changed the political landscape and prevented the eventual cancellation. But, what made me get into this business in the first place?

The magic of airplanes and flying first inspired me as a small boy before the Second World War when, occasionally, a plane would drop advertising leaflets over Kensington Gardens. There we used to fish for ‘tiddlers’ and watch the old men (some aged at least thirty-five), sail their big model yachts. Sometimes the planes came so low that we could see the pilot’s head in the cockpit – and we wondered what it was like to fly. Being lifted up to look through the door of a corrugated-skinned Handley Page air liner at Croydon Airport was the next best thing. Then came the war and evacuation.

Newsreels of the Blitz on London and shots of diving Stukas over Poland, then Heinkels and Messerschmitts being shot down by RAF fighters, imprinted themselves on our minds and imaginations. Finding an old wingless biplane in a farm shed outside Melksham, Wiltshire, where we were billeted away from London and family, was a major coup. Safe from prying eyes, a friend and I would climb into the tandem cockpits and waggle the joystick, making engine and machine gun noises, till we were hoarse. By mid-war in late 1942, at fourteen, I was living back in London and soon got my fire guard’s armband and steel helmet, for fire-watching duty – whenever we could arrange it, this was on the roof of our West Kensington block of flats. The sirens wailed, bombers roared, searchlights stabbed around in the night sky and ack-ack guns sent flak among the bombers evading the barrage balloons – then there was hot shrapnel tinkling down on to the pavement, for us kids to collect as trophies. Air-raid shelters were for grown-ups who knew the dangers. For us, they were for ping-pong during the day time when they were otherwise empty. We were trained to crawl through smoke-filled rooms, to extinguish incendiary bombs by squirting water from a hose, fed by another fire guard using a stirrup pump in a bucket of water. When bombs fell really close, it was ‘you young lad’ who was sent on his bike to ride the half mile over streets covered with broken glass to fetch the fire brigade – which turned out to be on fire itself.

If only we could be old enough for the RAF and fly those beautiful, magnificent Spitfires and shoot Jerries down. I was green with envy, knowing that my older brother’s friends were Spitfire pilots and Mosquito train-busters. The nearest thing for me was to join the Air Training Corps – where we wore a poor imitation of RAF uniform, with high collars instead of shirt and tie, but also where we practiced rapid aircraft recognition, learned about the theory of flight and navigation by dead reckoning, practised Morse code signalling and, of course, lots of ‘square bashing’. The major annual event was the two-week ‘camp’ at an RAF station, where we lived in Nissen huts, slept on ‘biscuit’ mattresses and lined up with our tin plates for our victuals in the airmen’s mess, then washed them up in the trough outside, in steam boiling water, whence it was impossible to retrieve a dropped knife. Then after inspection, we would get runs in the bombing simulator, rifle and machine gun experience – and above all – the flying. Never mind that the Short Stirling bomber finished its operational training bombing runs and target shooting over the sea on my first flight with a mock attack by an American Thunderbolt fighter and took corkscrew evasive action – until I threw up. The four-hour flight entitled us to a ‘flying meal’ of fried eggs and bacon – my favourite, and almost totally unavailable due to food rationing in ‘Civvy Street’ – and I was so sick, I could not eat any of it.

Fig.P1. The ‘Dagling’ glider on Hounslow Heath, first ‘ground slides’ for entirely solo flying lessons.

But we flew as often as we could and the RAF let us feel we were part of the crew, with a trip to the flight deck, wearing our parachute harnesses and helmets with earphones. There were also days out to an airfield, where we could fly in a Tiger Moth trainer and experience the wind and the bumps and even a loop-the-loop, or an Auster side-by-side-seater, where we could actually hold the ‘stick’ and do a little ‘dual’. The epitome of this was for the luckier ones, who were able to go on a gliding course. On Hounslow Heath (now Heathrow Airport), where barrage balloon winches would pull us across several hundred yards of bumpy grass, in a single-seat Dagling glider – there were no two-seat gliders at the school, so we learned by flying solo from the first flight. At sixteen, this is not a bit frightening – just the excitement we craved. When we had become used to handling this almost Wright Flyer-level craft up to only about 10ft over the heath, we transferred to the much higher performance Kirby Cadet. Now instead of sitting in the open on a ‘keel’ with wings and tail attached, we were in an open cockpit without instruments, just a stick and rudder bar and the plug (to release the cable). The instruction was somewhat primitive – ‘Just hold the stick about there, off you go’ was the gist of it, perhaps adding a few shouted instructions from mid-field, while I flew over the instructor’s head. In the Cadet, we could climb to ten storeys high – 100ft – and, after pulling the plug to release the cable, glide down to a good landing. This was real flying and we were really in Seventh Heaven.

And soon, we were also under the virtually twenty-four-hour rain of ‘Doodlebug’ flying bombs pitching down as their fuel ran out, to crash and explode on London’s houses, causing much destruction and many casualties. I may have seen the first ones while cycling into Kent for camping one weekend. With its throaty pulse-jet roar, it flew quite low right overhead, with AA bursting all around it. The usual rain of hot shrapnel had us dodge into a doorway, before picking up more souvenirs. Far from being guided, these V-1 flying bombs landed indiscriminately, and we had all too real opportunities to practise the drill: when you hear one approaching, get off your bike, lie in the gutter with hands over the back of your head – and wait. If you hear an explosion, some other poor bastard got his chips. The later V-2 missiles that shot up into space before coming down at supersonic speed were equally uncontrolled in where they hit. Unlike with the V-1s, no air-raid sirens announced their impending silent arrival. Once you heard the explosion – always followed by the scream of its falling trajectory – you knew that you were all right this time.

The depth of aviation’s penetration into my psyche naturally led to taking an Aeronautical Engineering degree but, after passing ‘Inter BSc’ at school, it was virtually impossible for me to get on to a course in London. Eventually, in the face of floods of ex-servicemen returning from the war, I was offered a course for only two days a week – as a temporary measure until a full-time course became available. At our commencing lecture, the Aerodynamics lecturer was emphatic that if we had any hopes of passing an Aeronautical degree at the first attempt, along with full-time students, ‘forget it’. When the year had passed, there was still no full-time place for me, so now, having lost any opportunities for aircraft apprenticeships, I had to continue at two days per week and do private study at home on the other days. Out of a dozen or so in the aeronautical class at Northampton Polytechnic, just two of us made it and now, in 1950, I was able to look to trying for that aircraft design career, to which I had nailed my flag. It took a few months before I was naturalised from my wartime ‘stateless’ designation as a pre-war Hungarian immigrant, and it was March 1951 before my ‘Secret’ clearance came through. That is when Vickers Armstrongs (Aircraft) Ltd accepted me as a graduate apprentice.

Arriving for an 8 a.m. start on my first day in my Dad’s Morris 8, borrowed for the day, the big car park outside the design office was quite empty. It was only when I backed into the first parking space near the main entrance that, through the rear window, I saw the nameplate coming into view. The name was G.R. Edwards – fortunately, I had done enough homework to realise that this was our already famous chief designer’s parking spot. Quickly, I found another parking space. The first year at Weybridge was spent riveting, fitting, hammering, and gaining other factory experience with Valettas, Varsities and Viscounts in the factory, at the grand starting salary of £6 9s 8¼d for a forty-eight-hour week, while I also got a first-hand view of the Valiant V-bomber prototype being tested. To my great surprise, the wing spars I was assembling closely resembled the design I had calculated and drawn for my recent college coursework – our lecturer must have known more about practical aircraft than we had credited. I also witnessed the immediate aftermath of a test pilot’s arrival that would herald an important part of my future work. ‘Spud’ Murphy arrived for his job interview with Chief Test Pilot Jock Bryce in his RAF Meteor fighter, which he flew like the aerobatic champion he was. Unfortunately, instead of landing at Wisley, he landed at Brooklands, where we could all see it - and suffered a brake failure that led to his Meteor being wrapped round a tree at the bottom of somebody’s garden. Unhurt, afterwards he pleaded: ‘Jock, you have to hire me – I’ll be cashiered.’ He got the job nevertheless, and later, as The ‘Secret’ World of Vickers Guided Weapons documents, we shared many flights. On most of these flights our navigator was Don Bowen, who flew in the navigator/systems officer back seat on most TSR2 test flights.

On commencing my second apprenticeship year I was interviewed by Assistant Chief Designer H.H. Gardner. A large man with a hawk-like countenance, he looked over his desk and said: ‘I am picking people for our Special Projects Section. It is working on Guided Weapons. Would you like me to put you there?’ This was not exactly the aircraft design which I had so long craved. Yet it was clearly something new, with supersonics and all that, and still very much within the scope of my degree studies. ‘I want to put you into our Trials Section, with Barry MacGowan – Mac.’ This sounded interesting enough – and I quickly accepted. Very soon, I entered the design office as a very junior trials engineer. I was into Guided Weapons – and later into TSR2.

Half a century later, I am back at the site of those early developments – as a volunteer at the Brooklands Museum. On the site of the famous Brooklands motor racing track, which opened in 1907 and which is also the cradle of British aviation, exhibiting the many historic aircraft, engines, racing cars and associated equipment and memorabilia, I am gathering the missiles and TSR2 material for a third ‘GW and TSR2 Avionics’ arm of Brooklands Museum.

CHAPTER 1

THE RAF’S MISSION REQUIREMENTS AND BASIC SYSTEM ELEMENTS

The Tactical Strike and Reconnaissance aircraft, TSR2, was built to meet Operational Requirement GOR339, upgraded to OR339. The Air Staff first promulgated this in 1957, at the height of the Cold War build-up. Few aircraft have been more contentious or more written about; the TSR2 attracted attention before and after its successful flights, was a focus of interest at the time of the highly political cancellation by a Labour Government in 1965, and still invites debate today. In its time, it represented the most advanced aircraft and weapon system so far created anywhere and, even in 1978, thirteen years after its demise, no other aircraft purchased for the Royal Air Force matched its performance and overall Weapon Systems capability.10 The Tornado GR4, still at the RAF’s front line in 2006, and for some years to come, accomplishes similar operations – with the advantage of more recent technology.

Several major aircraft companies of the time including Hawker, English Electric and Vickers-Supermarine bid for the project and, after the Government chose the Vickers-Supermarine design, it used TSR2 as the club with which to beat Vickers and English Electric into merging – eventually also with Bristol Aircraft Ltd – into the British Aircraft Corporation. The BAC was formally incorporated in July 1961 but, in the intervening period, the Vickers design team, led by Supermarine’s well-informed, highly energetic and articulate assistant chief designer, George Henson, under the chief designer, Alan Clifton, proceeded with the design at South Marston near Bournemouth. They both moved to Weybridge in the summer of 1958, where the design work was thereafter mostly concentrated, in cooperation with the English Electric part of BAC, located at Warton. The team at Warton was not overly happy with design being controlled from the Vickers, Weybridge, location as the Ministry wanted, but in the end cooperated well, with much of the design and later also the manufacture being done there. Later, George Henson moved up to Warton – until he later fell out with its top management and transferred his considerable energies to Vickers shipbuilding.

Fig.1. TSR2 taking off from Boscombe Down, piloted by Wg Cdr ‘Roly’ Beamont.53

A complete account of this enormous project, with all its technical requirements, could easily fill a whole book, so I will only try to give a sufficiently comprehensive – if necessarily truncated – account, to do reasonable justice to the efforts made by Vickers GW engineers. TSR2 was required to strike targets with great accuracy, after flying at Mach 0.9 or even transonically at 200ft altitude over the last 200nm of a 600–1,000nm sortie. After climbing to nearly 50,000ft for a supersonic Mach 1.7 ‘dash’, it would descend to remain below the Radar Horizon for minimum vulnerability to all anticipated defences. The aircraft and its systems also had to be capable of over Mach 2, for high-level attacks at ranges up to 550nm. Strikes against ground targets were to be made with nuclear and conventional bombs, as well as with rockets, while day and night reconnaissance was another major role. All this had to be accomplished in blind-flying or night-time conditions, without relying on any external aids from Radar or other techniques that could be vulnerable to enemy jamming. In order to minimise its vulnerability, TSR2 had to follow ground contours at down to 200ft altitude while flying at speeds close to Mach 1, and this Terrain Following capability required automatic as well as pilot-controlled flight using its Forward Looking Radar (FLR) and the Automatic Flight Control System (AFCS), supported by a Manoeuvre Computer employing information supplied by the Inertial Reference System (IRS) and other sensors. It was also required to give the aircrew a tolerable quality of ‘ride’, which allowed the pilot and navigator to concentrate on their intensive tasks.

In the twenty-first century, with the advent of Satellite Ground Positioning Systems (GPS), which can pinpoint a military aircraft’s position within a few yards regardless of cloud cover, navigation would be relatively easier. Considered in ‘broad brush’ terms, in 1957 and into the 1960s, navigation independent of ground-based assistance had to rely on the relatively new technology of Inertial Navigation for ‘dead reckoning’ employing high-quality gyroscopes and accelerometers to sense aircraft movements and travel. In order to minimise the effects of natural drift errors accumulated by gyroscopes and accelerometers, the aircraft’s velocity, also measured by the IRS, needed constant updating. This was achieved by comparison with independently measured ground speed from a Doppler Radar looking down on the ground beneath. Even this combination could not totally eliminate navigation errors, so they had to be further reduced by over-flying accurately known ‘fix’ points, to update the aircraft’s position. To identify these fix points in blind conditions, TSR2 employed a Sideways Looking Radar (SLR) system, with which fix points could be identified. The Radar picture was built up from ground returns illuminated by the narrow beam emitted on each side of the aircraft as it moved forward. This picture appeared as a sufficiently high-resolution map, on a continually developing roll of photographic paper. Photographs from reconnaissance would provide the navigator with the means to identify the fix points (typically 100nm apart), providing a fix of where the aircraft had been a few seconds before (allowing for the Radar map developing time). With the aid of crosshairs moved over the moving picture display it was possible to compare the computed fix point with the ‘actual’ and so provide an accurate update at each fix point.

Approaching the target with considerable accuracy, TSR2 had to release its weapons to fall as close as possible to the target, employing inputs from the navigation system, flight instruments and Radar (FLR) equipments, controlled by a Central Computing System (CCS) that sat in the middle of the ‘spider’s web’ of systems and subsystems comprising the Navigation/Attack System. Particularly when delivering a nuclear weapon, the bombing manoeuvre also had to incorporate a safe means of escaping from the large nuclear blast area before detonation. Thus, the bombing run had to be completed with one of a number of possible aerobatic manoeuvres, to get away from a nuclear burst in time – preferably without spending too much time at a height, where the aircraft would become vulnerable to ground-based guided weapon defences.

The foregoing broad description of the Navigation/Attack problem is already complicated enough – and not only were there a lot more equipments than I have already mentioned, as always, ‘the Devil is in the details’. Following initial studies by George Henson and his team up to August 1958 (when it moved to Weybridge), taking advantage of the skills of weapons systems development honed over eight years of GW projects and of its top flight technical and managerial leadership, the Guided Weapons Department at Vickers in Weybridge was tasked with the overall design and coordination of the system’s development. Although the formal ministry contract was not received until 1 January 1959, the Weybridge team had become increasingly involved, starting while George Henson was leading the effort at Supermarine. Earlier, Henson had commuted between South Marston and Weybridge, dealing with his paperwork entirely during his journeys in the back of a van!

The Ministry of Aviation (MOA) generally retained overall approving authority, policy authority and R&D authority, while design authority would mostly be delegated to contractors such as Vickers and its subcontractors. However this could lead to excessive centralisation and bureaucracy – something well known to Brig. John Clemow, a past director of Guided Weapons Projects at the Ministry of Supply (since changed to MOA) – who was now CE/W, the Vickers GW Department’s chief engineer. Clemow’s 11 December 1958 ‘Notes on Equipment for OR339’ to the Controller of Aircraft at MOA1 summarised the system’s operational functions and the equipments and following receipt of the formal contract on 1 January 1959, his further ‘CE/W’s Plan for System Engineering’ of 11 February 19591 dealt with management aspects. For such a major and advanced project, the plan would be commensurately thorough. Such ‘revolutionary’ principles had already been discussed at a meeting chaired by A/Cdre A.G.P. Brightmore, when Vickers Chief Engineer (Military Aircraft) Henry Gardner lent his support. The ministry tried to cling on to as much as possible, but agreed that Vickers control a number of equipment items, leaving decisions on others to be fought another day.4

John Clemow’s plan1 specified that: ‘a Systems Design Group responsible for the correct integration of the various sub-systems into the overall system… must have the necessary ability to command the respect in technical and administrative matters… To ensure the attention and willing cooperation of contractors… The Group must therefore comprise engineers of broad outlook and experience…’ He continued, expounding an interesting principle: ‘It is sometimes said by theorists that nobody can know better than the specialist expert and that it is ridiculous, if not downright insulting, to have a group of “generalists” who monitor and check his work. This is simply not true, and anyone who has tried to engineer a system must know this.’ In an appendix, Clemow listed half a dozen examples in the electronics field, among which perhaps the most stark example of ‘experts’ getting it wrong was during the development of the Fairey Aviation Fireflash missile (which Clemow had sorted out on behalf of the Ministry of Supply, after many problems and delays). The ‘problem’ related to Radar specialists’ fears of flame attenuation from rocket motor exhausts affecting guidance signals. In trials, there was an initial loss of signal for one second and this was blamed by ‘experts’ on flame attenuation. ‘A lot of unnecessary work at Westcott (Rocket Propulsion Establishment) was stopped, when a non-electronics engineer pointed out that… it took the missile approximately one second to leave the aircraft wing and get into the guidance beam at all.’1

He continued:

My intention is therefore that the Guided Weapons Department of Vickers-Armstrongs (Aircraft) Limited should provide a Systems Group for the TSR2 equipment. We wish to have systems responsibilities for the aircraft control system, the autopilot, the sideways-looking navigation radar and terrain clearance, the navigational computing and bombing computing, as well as the same responsibility for any weapons for TSR2.

He then listed the members of management for this task as: himself (CE/W), Mr H. Surtees, BSc(Eng) MSc (Chief Designer (Weapons)), Mr B.A. Hunn, BSc (Deputy Chief Designer (Weapon Systems)), and Mr J.B. Lambie, MEng (Chief Project Officer (Weapons)). In anticipation of the contract, John Lambie was already actively coordinating work and progress meetings, while under Bernard Hunn, Arthur Carter and John Lattey had started working, respectively, on Radar and microwave and on AFCS and Terrain Following system studies.

Clemow listed the main tasks of the Systems Design Group:

(a) to formulate the problems to be solved by each of the sub-systems;

(b) To build up a mathematical model… of the sub-systems and integrate these into the overall system;

(c) …to find out all that is known… both from Establishments and firms;

(d) To carry out mathematical simulator studies of the difficult areas…

(e) To draw up functional specifications in conjunction with the Ministry of Supply for each sub-system…

(f) In conjunction with the Ministry of Supply to choose suitable sub-contractors…

(g) In conjunction with the team managing the aircraft development to draw up… detailed programme for each of the equipments;

(h) The equipment manufacturers then produce very detailed programmes… equipments to the specification… and time scale required. These programmes will be approved by the Systems Design Group;

(i) The sub-contractors… submit technical reports supporting each stage of their development work… their main design parameters… block diagrams… to the Systems Design Group… will be regularly progressed.

In certain areas like antennae and Radio Frequency (RF) heads for all the radio and radar equipment, the pilot’s control system including stability augmentation and the aircraft autopilot, the Vickers team would carry out the detailed design and development of parts of the systems themselves. Conceding that Ministry of Supply Establishments, RAE and RRE had a vital role as expert advisers and consultants, Clemow envisaged needing their inputs when specifications were formulated, firms were selected and the main lines of solutions were decided. However he made his principles clear:

To sum up, what we wish to do is to set up a system that will work smoothly and quickly without too much indecision at any point as to what the right course of action is or who should do it. We wish to avoid any system where actions depend upon the meeting of numbers of committees, or even of one committee… The Ministry of Supply will then have the right to countermand this action if it thought it to be the wrong one. Little would be lost by this procedure and much would be gained… To sum up, we are proposing a procedure where, in mathematical language, Vickers-Armstrongs (Aircraft) Limited together with the Ministry of Supply settle the boundary conditions to the problem (in the form of specifications and the firms to be used etc.) and then Vickers-Armstrongs Limited get on with the job of solving the problem…1

John Clemow instituted a format of monthly system progress meetings to be attended by key members of Vickers’ Systems Group and by each of the equipment contractors. It is interesting to note that forty years later, in a seminar looking back at ‘TSR2 with Hindsight’,44 Peter Hearne (at the time in question Elliott Bros manager for the CCS and AFCS contracts and later to rise to top positions in the aircraft industry) rejected a suggestion by Wg Cdr George Wilson that TSR2 had not been a complete weapon system. He cited:

…work of Brigadier John Clemow who had been appointed Chief Systems Engineer at Weybridge, charged with the systems integration of TSR2. He had run a systems integration panel which met monthly at Weybridge attended by all the relevant contractors (including Elliotts). Vickers engineers working for Clemow had provided systems integration. It had been one of the first examples of a good main contractor-sub contractor integration method with very little contractual squabbling.

He also referred to ‘harmonious relationships’, while Tony (ATF) Simmonds of English Electric added that: ‘John Clemow managed to build a very effective team which nevertheless heard and acted on advice and ideas from outside. I remember particularly John Lambie, John Lattey and Dennis Harris – respectively for diplomacy, for well-placed enthusiasm and J-band Radar and for solid results.’

From June 1958, there had already been a plethora of studies and meetings at Supermarine and at Weybridge concerning most aspects of the Nav/Attack System, coming to a crescendo in August. Looking at each major system component in turn, Clemow’s December 1958 notes1 had listed the main technical issues.