Re: BAe P.1216: Supersonic ASTOVL fighter by Michael Pryce
When I spoke with Ralph Hooper he intimated to me that the cancellation of the P.1154 had probably been a good thing in hindsight, as the Harrier was challenging enough without adding in supersonic performance. However, he believed the P.1216 was a sensible, achievable design which could have met its goals.
The P.1216 is a very interesting project, as it represented a serious attempt to build a supersonic STOVL fighter built on the rich experience of the Harrier design team. It was effectively the "last hurrah" from the justly famous Kingston team. Its unconventional appearance was the result of long experience with day-to-day STOVL operation, and would certainly have stood out from the pack in a way the Eurofighter Typhoon doesn't. In the early 1980s these two very different projects were competing for funding and had things gone differently, it might have been British (or British-American) P.1216's flying missions over Libya.
In this latest ProjectTech volume Michael Pryce has done an excellent job of documenting the evolution of the P.1216 design and the various alternatives to it which were proposed by Kingston and the other BAe team at Warton, alongside the political and economic realities that resulted in it not being built. Making extensive use of primary documents and interviews with the various engineers involved, this is an authoritative account and contains lots of interesting new illustrations. These include many different revisions of the P.1216 plus other designs.
P.1205 (+ derivatives)
P.1212-1
P.1212-2C
P.1214-4 (FSW design)
P.1216-1
P.1216-2
P.1216-6
P.1216-7
P.1216-8
P.1216-9 (VG version)
P.1216-13
P.1216-15
P.1216-16
P.1216-17
P.1216-20
P.1216-21
P.1216-30
P.1216 (AEW)
P.1216-41
P.1216-43
P.1216-46
P.1216-50
P.1218-1 (twin engined design with McDonnell-Douglas, P.1216/Model 279 hybrid)
P.1219
P.1220
P.1221
P.1226-1 (subsonic twin boom fighter)
P.1226-8
P.1230-6
Warton Designs
P.103
P.109
P.109-6
P.112 (RALS, canard delta)
P.115N-1 (twin tandem fans, canard delta)
P.115C-4
P.116-N1
The production of the book is largely very good. layout is clear and attractive. There are lots of images, mostly well-reproduced. There are however a few typos and a couple of minor problems with images. Specifically, on page 45, three of the 3 views are cropped to the left so you lose part of the front view (P.1218-1, P.1219, P.1220). Also, the inside back cover has a full page 3 view of the P1216-41 which is too low resolution for the size it is printed and has come out with visible "jaggies".
These minor problems don't spoil the book, which I heartily recommend, but better layout proofing will be desirable for future ProjectTech volumes.