Blue Steel Developments

GTX

GTX

All hail the God of Frustration!!!
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Hi folks,

Couldn't find a thread appropriate so here goes:

Blue Steel MkII full-scale mock up fitted with wing-tip-mounted Bristol Siddeley ramjets:

Source

Blue Steel Viper variant full-scale mock up:

Source
 
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Interesting. I assume the boosters are for ground based testing, rather than air-launch?
 
I've read somewhere about a 'scaled-down' Blue Steel, but I just can't find where I had read that. I thought that was to be the Blue Steel II and that I had read it in an Air-Britain AeroMilitaria quarterly. Could anyone direct me in the right direction please.
 
Err, right --- I've got Vulcan's Hammer :rolleyes: from you too IIRC

Thanks Chris
 
Excellent, with a memory like that, I can thoroughly recommend you buy it again.

Check out the the W.130 and the 19/15

Chris
 
Well what I thought I had read about a smaller Blue Steel, doesn't appear in Vulcan's Hammer Chris. The attached picture had been in an old RAF Year Book and later I had read something about the missiles being a smaller variant of the Blue Steel. Having started to build a 1/72 model of this, I had quickly found that the regular size Blue Steels are just too big for this load-out.
 

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Complete and utter impractical whatiffery on the part of the artist. Only reason Blue Steel was so big was the Green Grass Warhead. Red Snow and subsequent warheads could fit in the W.130/140/170. By that time we had Polaris.

Chris
 
Yup! I agree with you there on the what-if angle. When I started the project I had talked to Phil Butler about what sort of serial number it might have had, he gave me something to look at and then told me he used to work in the procurement office for Concorde when it was still in the planning stage. He mentioned about the undersize Blue Steels but then told me there was a plan to make a smaller version of it. Then later I read something about it too, but I can't find where ---
 
That was W.120, W.130 or even the Z.122.

I assume you've seen this?

Military Concorde

Curious to know if Concorde was ever considered in a military role, maybe as a recce aircraft or cruise missile platform? Would this have been feasible?
www.secretprojects.co.uk www.secretprojects.co.uk

Chris
 
LOL! I had forgotten about that one Chris, seems I made the same Phil Butler comments about 12 years ago -----

Anyway, thanks for the type numbers to look at, I'll go and re-read Vulcan's Hammer again.
 
Blue Steel was obsolete by 1957. It began entering service in 1963 ...
 
Not on the point but could someone post the Gibson swing wing TSR2 from the same article. I cant find mine. John Taylor authed article as a polemic I think
 
Does anyone still have online reference pics for the assorted proposed variants? Links above seem to be broken now

I’d like to print out some of these for the new Airfix Vulcan at 1/72 but my reference books are all stuck in storage for a little while
 

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