Fairey Delta 2, not the English Electric Lightning

Good to discuss by order.
1 and 2. But there is no actual Fairey Delta 2 to discuss. Derek Wood has a lot to answer for.
3. Fairey Delta 3 and P1121 were actual projects not retrospective fan creations.
4. Yes but Tony does not suggest they were realistic options, he admits to wanting to see them fly as prototypes which is a fair point.
5. US missiles were not weird one offs. Sidewinder and Sparrow could be evolved and improved. Even Falcon was evolved.
All we had was the Fireflash (conveniently forgotten by Britfans) and Firestreak/Red Top. Unlike Sidewinder Firestreak could not be carried in decent quantities.
Skyflash was not that successful hence Amraam on Sea Harrier.
 
5) As opposed to the American missiles which, when taken into combat, proved to be the epitome of success? Excuse my sarcasm, but American AAM performance in the school of hard knocks was godawful, particularly the two more sophisticated types (Sparrow III and Falcon). Squadron Leader Poole's extensive criticisms as reported on page 39 of BSP Hypersonics... notwithstanding, all of this appears to have been said before the US missiles met their real-world test.
In defense of the American missiles, they were being used way, WAY outside their design envelopes in Vietnam. Sparrows and Falcons were intended as bomber-interceptors, being fired at a fairly non-maneuverable target at range. They'd never been intended to be fired at something with fighter maneuverability from close range.

IIRC, the UK naval SAMs had an issue with crossing targets because they'd been ordered as ship self-protection but then the ships that were supposed to carry the big group-defense missiles that were expected to deal with crossing targets didn't get ordered. Same issue, having to use the weapons you have way outside their design envelopes due to political decisions.


As things stand, the history of SARH AAMs in British industry is one of repeated cancellations before the problems could be worked out or failure to bring the design to a physical fruition for various reasons (sometimes related to the cancellation of a putative launch aircraft), again denying UK industry the opportunity to bring the weapons' issues to a successful conclusion... until finally GEC is given the opportunity to see it right through to the end as a replacement for Sparrow and produces Skyflash for the MRCA and the Phantom.
I still don't understand how the British didn't build a missile and then expect more or less all planes to be able to carry it, as opposed to what they did with designing the missile and an aircraft to carry it together. So that when either missile or aircraft ran into trouble, the whole project gets canceled.


Skyflash was not that successful hence Amraam on Sea Harrier.
Skyflash was better than Sparrow, but when you have the option to get a fire and forget ARH missile you take it. Especially when you're on a weight-limited VTOL and the ARH missile is 100lbs lighter than your SARH missile! That's light enough to carry a Sidewinder plus a pair of AMRAAMs for the same weight as a pair of Skyflash.

Active Skyflash needed to be developed in the 1980s, IMO. Still probably wouldn't have prevented AMRAAM from being developed (giving an ARH missile to F-16s pretty much guaranteed the creation of AMRAAM), but would have greatly increased the capabilities of F4s and Tornado. And anyone else using Skyflash, of course.
 
I can see a certain irony in uk 75 trying to rein in the alt-history topics, given how many he has started.

The purpose of the Alternative History and Future Speculation was to separate such posts from the real business of the forum, Unbuilt Projects, Military and Aerospace technologies. There was no intent for this to be a core part of the forum, but discussing projects inevitably leads to thoughts of how they might have ended up being built, which road not travelled could end up with a Rockwell F-15 rather than a McDonnell-Douglas one.

This is all well and good.

What I observe in this section is dwelling on specifically British projects and returning over and over again to the same basic topics.

Some of the discussions here are interesting and fruitful, but there comes a point where a topic is done to death.

How about Soviet Projects? US Projects? French or German projects?

Some interesting alt-history discussions can be had that don't focus on Britain, 1957.
 
I think the UK has some of the best "roads not taken".

Many of the other national decisions have a lot more evidence showing which design was chosen and why. (for example, the Rockwell F-15)
The UK projects tend to be more bizarre than the overseas ones. The F23 for example looked as sensible as the F22.
Even with the F35 the UK has managed to end up with the controversial version.
I would like to see more European and other non UK projects looked at. Germany particularly has some great VSTOL stuff.
 
In defense of the American missiles, they were being used way, WAY outside their design envelopes in Vietnam.
This is true, and I admit I'm actually a frequent defender of all three. But even when firing conditions were met, there were numerous examples of failure to fire, failure to guide and other unreliability issues which made people swear at their own weapons and made Phantom pilots grateful they had so many of them.
Active Skyflash needed to be developed in the 1980s
According to BSP4, open beside me, it came down to the weight of a four-missile load-out... and the fact that AMRAAM is a lot easier for Harriers to carry also probably helped to seal that deal. Follow-up Skyflash design evolution led eventually to the Meteor AAM, so it wasn't wasted.

I still don't understand how the British didn't build a missile and then expect more or less all planes to be able to carry it, as opposed to what they did with designing the missile and an aircraft to carry it together. So that when either missile or aircraft ran into trouble, the whole project gets canceled.

Funny you should say that. I've just started re-reading through BSP1 (revised edition), specifically the first chapter on the RN's search for a night fighter, and the number of projects that were expected to carry either Fireflash, Red Dean or both (and which were detailed in manufacturer brochures with options for either or both) is quite substantial, necessitating a change in the wing folding point on one design so that the bigger missile could be loaded up with the wings folded (and room for fuselage clearance). It seems it was even specified for the Sea Vixen at one point.

I'll have to go digging around on my bookshelf for John Forbat's Secret World of Vickers Guided Weapons and refresh my memory on what he says on the matter, seeing as he was intimately associated with the project. One of the reasons BSP4 gives for cancellation is that it was designed for subsonic aircraft and wasn't suitable for carriage and launch at high Mach numbers (p38). The irony is that those subsonic aircraft would remain in service into the early 1970s in one case (Sea Vixen), and really could have used a radar-homing weapon, even one subsequently degraded to SARH and especially once the size and weight had been reduced. As so often happened, the best (or the intended best) was the enemy of what might in the long run have been good enough (had it gone to firing trials and had the bugs ironed out).

Meanwhile, Firestreak was a multi-platform missile (Lightning, Javelin, Sea Vixen) and so too was Red Top (Lightning, Sea Vixen FAW.2), and both were expected to go on all sorts of aircraft - including P.1154, which was briefly ordered before being cancelled - if only they had actually been built.

That being said, there are certainly enough big missile projects which WERE designed with a particular aircraft in mind (BSP4, pp 42-44) and which died with their mounts.


What I observe in this section is dwelling on specifically British projects and returning over and over again to the same basic topics.

Some of the discussions here are interesting and fruitful, but there comes a point where a topic is done to death.

How about Soviet Projects? US Projects?

Perusal of the American and Soviet Secret Projects volumes gives the impression of a greater number of projects carried through to built-in-steel aircraft that flew with varying degrees of success, and far fewer that were aborted between the start of prototype construction and first flight, or first flight and production status (and of the latter, even some of those were shown in the harsh light of day to be flawed, or simply inferior to the aircraft they flew off against). This is why the desire for a rewrite of history isn't as strong as for the British projects. The unique British position taken in 1957, something neither the Americans nor the Soviets nor the French even considered, is also a turning point that many rightly feel was badly mishandled.
 
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Perusal of the American and Soviet Secret Projects volumes gives the impression of a greater number of projects carried through to built-in-steel aircraft that flew with varying degrees of success, and far fewer that were aborted between the start of prototype construction and first flight, or first flight and production status (and of the latter, even some of those were shown in the harsh light of day to be flawed, or simply inferior to the aircraft they flew off against). This is why the desire for a rewrite of history isn't as strong as for the British projects.

France is similar, I like the Mirage F2&3 but I can't get too upset that they didn't see service because the fallback F1 was a good plane.
 
France is similar, I like the Mirage F2&3 but I can't get too upset that they didn't see service because the fallback F1 was a good plane.
And the French also did actually fly their weird ramjets and other projects, so I'd imagine that's some comfort to the aerophile schoolboy who I'm sure still lives within many Frenchmen.

But imagine that those weird freaks had not flown, and that France had decided not to build anything after the Mirage IIIE and the R530 missile. No F1, no Mirage 2000, no Rafale... Maybe even no Jaguar. Then the French would have been having the same discussions that we have here, now, about the stillborn British developments.

Oddly enough, TSR2: Britain's Lost Bomber by Damien Burke has taken a lot of the gloss off the "stupidly cancelled on the brink of success" story I first read as a child, brutally detailing just how troubled and plagued by hidden agendas (the RAF to get a backdoor theatre nuclear bomber rather than the battlefield tactical aircraft they ostensibly wanted, the Government to force mergers in the industry while not being willing to rein the RAF in) the project was from the start.
 
Just a word on British AAMs and how few were carried compared to Aim9s. This is because the Firestreak and Red Top were twice the missile the Sidewinder was, more akin to a Sparrow and R530. Nobody seems to complain about the Mirage III carrying a single R530 or Crusader carrying two of them, yet a Lightning carrying a pair of Red Tops is seen as deficient.

I suppose this is another point of difference/interest for British as opposed to French or American kit, it gets criticized for things that get overlooked in other countries' kit.
 
Some non UK what-ifs;

The US decides to develop the B58 Hustler further rather than replacing with FB111

Germany and Italy build the VAK 191B as a Fiat G92 replacement.

France builds a VG Mirage for air and naval use.

The Soviet Union develops a podded B52 equivalent bomber in the 50s instead of the Tu95.
 
Just a word on British AAMs and how few were carried compared to Aim9s. This is because the Firestreak and Red Top were twice the missile the Sidewinder was, more akin to a Sparrow and R530. Nobody seems to complain about the Mirage III carrying a single R530 or Crusader carrying two of them, yet a Lightning carrying a pair of Red Tops is seen as deficient.

I suppose this is another point of difference/interest for British as opposed to French or American kit, it gets criticized for things that get overlooked in other countries' kit.
Trouble is Sidewinder could evolve into the NATO wide system it became. Even clones like Magic and Shafrir copy it.
UK tried to leap from Red Top to Taildog which was lighter but still needed special launchers.
The UK never really got the whole system approach like the US.
France was able to fit R530 to Crusader and Mirage. UK could not fit Red Top to Phantoms as well as Lightning.
 
The title of the sub-forum in which this thread lies is "Alternative History and Future Speculation."

If we can't talk about our dream futures here, then WHERE???
But the sub-title is "Discussions on how alterations in history might alter the outcomes for built and unbuilt projects",
so I think, that dreams about futures principally are ok here, but they still should be should be linked to an actual project,
in a way, not too far from what it was originally intended to be.
Otherwise we easily end up with the RAF as the "Roman Air Force", considering the Romans would still occupy Britain !
So I would ask for themes, not too far fetched here.

And I would again recommend to avoid addressing people personally in a thread, especially not, if disapproval shall
be expressed. Too easily this appears as know-all, lecturing, and in the end somehow annoying, or even offending.
 
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Trouble is Sidewinder could evolve into the NATO wide system it became. Even clones like Magic and Shafrir copy it.
UK tried to leap from Red Top to Taildog which was lighter but still needed special launchers.
The UK never really got the whole system approach like the US.
France was able to fit R530 to Crusader and Mirage. UK could not fit Red Top to Phantoms as well as Lightning.

IIUC the British could have fitted the Red Top to the Phantom, it was considered to be better in ECM conditions. However the RN had decided on the Sparrow as their primary weapon, so weren't willing to spend the money so the Red Top could be slaved to the Phantom radar. Without this capability the Red Top was a much more limited weapon, and cost 5 times more than the Sidewinder. Therefore the RN acquired the Sidewinder, pretty much as an outcome of the previous Sparrow decision.

Thinking about the RAFs AAM requirement that led to the Red Top I'm not surprised the RN went with the Sparrow, it would have allowed that much beloved at the time head-on shot at a nuclear or AShM bomber.

To link this back to the topic, the British AAMs were big and needed a big plane ro carry them and the AI23 radar. Hence the ER103C proposal.
 
Good points being made here.

On missiles the criticism of size and weight avoids the driving factors of why....
Firestreak would get a single stern chase opening for firing on a bomber armed with nuclear weapons on a flight profile showing it was intending to drop such bombs on the UK and specifically the V-Bomber airfields.
Successful operation was critical and time would be short the faster and higher the bomber flew.

The solution wasn't wrong.
________

I think pondering how things could have gone isn't a crime or a waste of time. It helps us understand the problems faced and the complexity of those problems.
Sometimes it allows us a chance to forgive the mistakes so easily made.
Sometimes we just have to learn the hard lessons that history conveys.

The US got things right, but it's not just lots of Government money that produced such results. It's an army of people churning through the information and weighing up the various factors.
Coupled with the relative security of the US from it's threats. They had time and space and scale to work up to the solutions.

UK didn't have time, didn't have space, didn't have entire sections of the country it could just accept the sacrifice of, and didn't have the money, or the army of people to process it all.fast enough.

The military and industry had maybe one (maybe two) real chance(s) to get this right with a domestic solution. At the moment when a good enough solution was arrived at, they made a critical error and failed to drive that forward.

Understandable though that may be, it's obvious that people would want to explore the alternatives.
 
Sidewinder had very different origins - it began life as a guided 5in Zuni rocket projectile and thus had compactness built in from the start and US electronics were able to fit into the available space and it was modular so could be easily upgraded.
Blue Jay was much larger (3in wider body, 112lb heavier) and complex (needing avionics cooling packs etc.) and yet did not offer great improvement over Sidewinder or Falcon - but it was a first generation weapon.
Red Top added another inch and 40lb weight but did have limited all-aspect capability - but unlike Sidewinder and Falcon neither was ever tested in real live combat so its pure conjecture how well they might have stood up to the task. Against bombers probably fine, but certainly not anti-fighter weapons.

Fireflash had a layout that was draggy and being a beam-rider was always going to be less than ideal. It was quickly surpassed as a weapon.


As for these threads; well I often find that a lot of interesting information and different ways of looking at things come out of the discussions, it often pays off mulling over some of the background details as to why things happened the way they did.
Admittedly this thread has offered less intellectual gold, but it has been an interesting thought exercise. For one thing, its convinced me that had the RAF ordered a different clean sheet Mach 2 fighter, that it wouldn't have been a single Avon-powered design, it probably would have been a delta. I think the performance the Air Staff/Fighter Command would have demanded would have exceeded what it could produce - which is why the rocket fighters seemed so attractive at the time.

I think that Derek Wood slipped into the same fallacy that a lot of people do "X looks like Y therefore X+Y = Y."
Just because something looks like a Mirage III, Hercules, Sopwith Camel, F-22 or whatever does not automatically mean that it is the said object or could replicate the original's success.
 
I think that Derek Wood slipped into the same fallacy that a lot of people do "X looks like Y therefore X+Y = Y."
Except for Dassault's "If not for the way you British do things..." quote.

Fireflash had a layout that was draggy and being a beam-rider was always going to be less than ideal. It was quickly surpassed as a weapon.
Fireflash was a baby step and everyone knew it, but even Sparrow started out as a beam rider. An enlarged and modified SARH version was the obvious logical progression, but discussion surrounding Britain's failure to do that has pretty much been done to death here.

I think the performance the Air Staff/Fighter Command would have demanded would have exceeded what it could produce - which is why the rocket fighters seemed so attractive at the time.
They were asking for more acceleration and height performance than the jet engines of the day could deliver, is the main problem. As engine power evolves, the need for the rocket recedes... but it does enable one to consider an alternative future in which a Delta 3 pulled out of retirement uses its rocket engines to get high enough to face-shoot a MiG-25 with Red Hebes.
 
Just a word on the much maligned Sparrow. it got 60 of the 195 air to air victories in Vietnam, 50 of those with the USAF who bashed them around much less than the USN. In contrast the beloved Sidewinder got 80 kills in Vietnam, 46 with the USN and 34 with the USAF.

So before we slag off at the big, bulky Firestreak and Red Top as 'bomber destroyer' weapons and therefore virtually useless we should remember the Sparrow's poor reputation was more a USN thing in comparison with the USAF. Would the USAF's Sparrow shot to kill ration approach that of the Sidewinder if we cut out the USN launches from the equation? Also, as a 'round of ammunition' is it unacceptable to fire Sparrows in pairs or even an entire barrage of 4 missiles to get a kill?
 
Sparrow in this era still used a silicon 'card' interface with the aircraft. This could crack, especially after repeated flights to the cold high altitudes or vibrations of low level flight.
Obviously carrier landings added to the problem.
I've read of USN maintainers swearing profusely over half card interfaces still stuck in the slot as they removed Sparrows from an F4. Said half of a card required great care to remove least they damage the female slot and have to replace it.
 
Leaving aside the array of technical vulnerabilities inherent in these early missiles that made them fail in combat with what must have been heartbreaking regularity the big, lumbering Sparrow did manage to shoot down a reasonable amount of fighters in Vietnam.

How this might translate to a Lightning or ER103C with Red Top is hard to say, however there are enough factors to pick apart that I think it is unfair to say it was unsuitable as a widely deployed fighter-bomber weapon because the Sparrow and R530 were no good.
 
Also, as a 'round of ammunition' is it unacceptable to fire Sparrows in pairs or even an entire barrage of 4 missiles to get a kill?
I know in the flight sim games I usually double-tap. But that's problematic to do with IR guided missiles like Red Top.

But reading the AWG10 thread, it sounds like the system generally didn't even allow a Sparrow launch if you were outside the kill zone of the missile. You had to specifically turn that off to launch at a target outside the kill zone. (And the poster mentioned that the usual time you'd want to do this was to scare off someone chasing your wingman)
 
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/red-top-missile-performance-all-aspect-capability.32917/

If you look at the performance charts for Red Top then front/side aspect engagements are limited to non-manoeuvring targets.

For "dogfighting" there is a performance chart Vs a non manoeuvring MiG 21 at low altitude. This shows that Red Top is near useless even against this non manoeuvring target. But it's definitely better against the designed targets of non manoeuvring bombers at high altitude, with radar slave mode to provide forwards sector shot opportunities.

It's also noteworthy just how low the Probability of Kill (i.e. fusing and warhead) is even when the weapon successfully reaches the endgame. Warhead weight isn't the only factor here, it's also highly dependent on the guidance and fusing. Forbat goes into this a bit for Red Dean; higher miss distances meant larger warheads needed and hence giant weapons.
 
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/red-top-missile-performance-all-aspect-capability.32917/

If you look at the performance charts for Red Top then front/side aspect engagements are limited to non-manoeuvring targets.

For "dogfighting" there is a performance chart Vs a non manoeuvring MiG 21 at low altitude. This shows that Red Top is near useless even against this non manoeuvring target. But it's definitely better against the designed targets of non manoeuvring bombers at high altitude, with radar slave mode to provide forwards sector shot opportunities.

It's also noteworthy just how low the Probability of Kill (i.e. fusing and warhead) is even when the weapon successfully reaches the endgame. Warhead weight isn't the only factor here, it's also highly dependent on the guidance and fusing. Forbat goes into this a bit for Red Dean; higher miss distances meant larger warheads needed and hence giant weapons.

I've seen those charts, but to draw any conclusions from them is impossible without comparing them to similar charts for the Aim9b/d, Aim7e and R530. Is the Red Top better or worse than these missiles?
 
They were asking for more acceleration and height performance than the jet engines of the day could deliver, is the main problem. As engine power evolves, the need for the rocket recedes..
I did state this earlier in the thread, but as you scale up the engines, the power-to-weight ratios so improve, rockets become unnecessary. Until we're talking zoom climbs over 100,000ft.
This is why I stated they should have been analysing the effects of scaling up in '54 and arriving at that conclusion then.
Not in 1957 just as Sandys Axe fell.

but it does enable one to consider an alternative future in which a Delta 3 pulled out of retirement uses its rocket engines to get high enough to face-shoot a MiG-25 with Red Hebes.
Likely in Iranian or Israeli hands to counter MiG25 overflights.

Frankly had Delta III gone ahead, it would carry the cost of next generation technologies for fighters.
 
I've seen those charts, but to draw any conclusions from them is impossible without comparing them to similar charts for the Aim9b/d, Aim7e and R530. Is the Red Top better or worse than these missiles?
You can look at the absolute performance numbers and draw conclusions. e.g. you need to be pretty much in effective range of the guns in order to get a Red Top shot that'll get to endgame (but then appears to have almost no chance of killing a fighter target - probably the fusing?).

I am comparing to other missiles, and Red Top is both better and worse. Its main strength is the frontal sector capability from being slaved to the radar. The kinematic performance is pretty poor, as would be expected from the relatively low propellant mass fraction.
 
I struggle to believe that, unique among the missiles entering service in 1965, the Red Top cannot shoot down a fighter.

Firstly, Vietnam reiterated the basic fact that a high proportion (80%? I don't know the exact number) of pilots shot down didn't know they were being attacked. This whole maneuvering thing is overblown, likely most missile shots were undertaken against targets not undertaking high g turns. so therefore the Red Tops ability to take beam shots and its otherwise big engagement envelope matter a lot.

Secondly, prior to the F15 'dogfights' could not continue for very long as the planes ran out of energy. Even Duke Cunninghams victory over the mythical Col Tomb wasn't during all the scissors, it 10-20 degrees directly behind at 1000m as the Mig 17 disengaged, the perfect position for an aim9 shot. Again the Rep Tops big engagement envelope would be what's important, as would the Lightning unbeatable power.

Thirdly, my expectations are low for the Red Top, its a 1965 era missile not an Aim9L or even a Shafrir2. If it got ~20% kill rate of the Aim9D, and better than the Aim7E2s 13% I'd consider that good enough to be getting in with.
 
Those are some very rose tinted glasses

Red Top was designed to target bombers at high speed and high altitude. It seems pretty reasonable at that.
 
Dogfighting in the post WW2 world is not a regular occurrence. Korea and Vietnam are the main instances followed by the Middle East wars and India Vs Pakistan.
The RAF was not a Sabre user in Korea. Its subsequent limited wars (Suez to the Gulf/Afghanistan)did not test its ability to dogfight.
The main role of RAF fighters was the defence of airbases and for that role the Lightning and its two Red Tops was adequate until the Soviets replaced Il28 with Mig 27 and Su24 in the 1970s.
Once the Soviets deploy SS4 and 5 IRBMs and thermonuclear warheads from 1958 V bomber bases are no longer defendable in a general war.
Most of the Bears and Bisons (and later Blinders and Backfires) would also have nuclear strike roles, mainly against US naval targets or in a strategic exchange against cities.
Conventional airstrikes against military targets in the UK becomes an issue in the 70s, especially when Su24s are based in Poland.
As an aside the UK abandoned air defence of its civilian populations even before 1957 and has no defence today (unlike Ukraine). This also applies to civil defence which was wound up in the 60s.
It has been assumed that any large scale attack on UK cities would be detered by our SSBNs.
 
The supersonic bomber threat that the UK feared in the late 1950s (developments of the Bounder or analogues of the Valkyrie/Avro 730) does not materialise as Soviet SLBM and IRBM are much more effective delivery systems.
An RAF saddled with high flying supersonic fighters and giant long range air to air missiles in the early 1960s would have looked irrelevant, especially when NATO moved to "flexible response" after the Cuban Missile crisis.
Where Sandys and the RAF failed was in drawing up separate requirements for TSR2 and P1154 rather than a supersonic aircraft in the Buccaneer size range with modern guided weapon armament.
Fortunately the US, with its greater resources but also better practical know-how, developed the F4, F105 and F111.
P1121 showed the UK could build the right sort of airframe but the RAF and industry lacked the skill to fuse it into a weapon system.
 
Those are some very rose tinted glasses

Red Top was designed to target bombers at high speed and high altitude. It seems pretty reasonable at that.

A missile doesn't know what it's locked onto is a bomber or not, it just sees a radar return or heat signature. This is why three Sparrows from a USAF F4 were able to lock onto and hit the Australian destroyer HMAS Hobart off Vietnam on 17 June 1968.

As long as the target doesn't exceed the missile's kinetic and seeker performance then the missile should effect a 'hit' regardless of target type. Of course lumbering bombers are less likely to be able to escape these missile parameters than a fighter which can use high G turns to exceed an IR seekers FoV and slew rate for example. However first generation 'bomber destroyer' missiles managed to get ~140 kills against fighters in Vietnam alone, because not every fighter is pulling high G turns at all times.
 
P1121 showed the UK could build the right sort of airframe but the RAF and industry lacked the skill to fuse it into a weapon system.
No the P1121 wasn't wanted and was considered "too much like a fighter" to win over the RAF for other roles.
 
Its subsequent limited wars (Suez to the Gulf/Afghanistan)did not test its ability to dogfight.
Falklands? Granted, that was more of an FAA show.

Where Sandys and the RAF failed
Where Sandys failed was in shutting down the most critical generation of high-speed fighter development, along with the development of the weapons it needed to carry. Yes, F.155T is a white elephant, but Sandys threw out the baby with the bathwater.
 
The problem with the idea that the RAF lost a high speed fighter is that it did not need one.
As I have tried to explain above, what the RAF needed was a supersonic multi-role aircraft.
P1121 was the closest design to this requirement and P1154 could have worked if it had been treated as STOL rather than VTOL.
Can anyone tell me the last time an RAF pilot has shot down an enemy fighter in a dogfight? And no the FAA Sea Harriers in the Falklands don't count (these duels were subsonic anyway).
 
The problem with the idea that the RAF lost a high speed fighter is that it did not need one.
As I have tried to explain above, what the RAF needed was a supersonic multi-role aircraft.
P1121 was the closest design to this requirement and P1154 could have worked if it had been treated as STOL rather than VTOL.
Right. After Sandys, the RAF bosses needed to say, "right, surface-to-air missiles replace the fast-climbing point defense interceptor. We still need an aircraft with long range and good speed to thin down the horde coming before the SAMs are in range."

That would be something fairly close to the F111B, ironically enough. Give it Speys, VG wings (hard not to use VG wings given the range/loiter and relatively STOL performance desired), maybe buy some AWG9 or AWG10 systems from the US for the interim electronics fit and then plan on refitting with UK-made electronics in 10 years or so.


Can anyone tell me the last time an RAF pilot has shot down an enemy fighter in a dogfight? And no the FAA Sea Harriers in the Falklands don't count (these duels were subsonic anyway).
I'm not sure there has been a single supersonic dogfight, ever. Definitely never been one that stayed supersonic past the first turn.
 
Right. After Sandys, the RAF bosses needed to say, "right, surface-to-air missiles replace the fast-climbing point defense interceptor. We still need an aircraft with long range and good speed to thin down the horde coming before the SAMs are in range."

That would be something fairly close to the F111B, ironically enough. Give it Speys, VG wings (hard not to use VG wings given the range/loiter and relatively STOL performance desired), maybe buy some AWG9 or AWG10 systems from the US for the interim electronics fit and then plan on refitting with UK-made electronics in 10 years or so.
Literally OR.346's Fighter elements.
CAP for 4 hours over 100nm from the carrier. With new AI radar and AAMs. Mach 2+ speed, ceilings over 60,000ft.

Driven by RN having DLI pulled out from under them with the cancellation of F.177 and the prohibition on manned fighters in ten years.

But had someone not so dogmatic held the ministry position......then.

Arguably RAF should have taken the Blackburn option for interim OR.339 and thrown their lot in with the RN on this for the future.

Ironically the cheapest to prototype option was DH.127, being essentially a delta winged design with substantial excess in fuel and range.
Not until the STOL elements of switch in thrust deflation and lift jets would this have any risk.
So irony of ironies, this could have killed RN ambitions (running off to the F4 at best) and left the RAF with twin Spey heavy fighter.......
 
And no the FAA Sea Harriers in the Falklands don't count (these duels were subsonic anyway).
What on earth has the speed of the digfight got to do with it? If it was a joke to say FAA not RAF then sure.

I don't think people understand just how rare supersonic flight is... It eats a huge amount of fuel ctitical to most missions. Ironically one of the Shar strengths especially in NATO exercises was it had no afterburner so consumed less fuel than its opponents so could stay around longer when head-to-head...

These days the heat from friction drag is an detection issue with supercruise. The weight savings going fro. M2.0+ to M1.6 alone shave off significant amounts of weight with more to be had as speed requirements lessen. Acceleration is what is really important especially in a dogfight, not pure top speed. Again, one of the Shar's strengths thanks to its VSTOL design giving it a lot of thrust especially in low speed stuff. Also an advantage the Lightning enjoyed.
 
What on earth has the speed of the digfight got to do with it? If it was a joke to say FAA not RAF then sure.

I don't think people understand just how rare supersonic flight is... It eats a huge amount of fuel ctitical to most missions. Ironically one of the Shar strengths especially in NATO exercises was it had no afterburner so consumed less fuel than its opponents so could stay around longer when head-to-head...

These days the heat from friction drag is an detection issue with supercruise. The weight savings going fro. M2.0+ to M1.6 alone shave off significant amounts of weight with more to be had as speed requirements lessen. Acceleration is what is really important especially in a dogfight, not pure top speed. Again, one of the Shar's strengths thanks to its VSTOL design giving it a lot of thrust especially in low speed stuff. Also an advantage the Lightning enjoyed.

Supersonic flight is much less rare than air to air engagements and evading SAMs, which is why Air Forces want it. Planes aren't shot down in the routine 90% of missions, they're shot down in the 10% of missions where they encounter fighters or SAMs directly.

As for the Sea Harrier's ability to stay in the air due to a lack of afterburner, that is not borne out by the experience of the Falklands. The Sea Harrier had a flight endurance of 75 minutes, which gave it an on station time of 10-15 minutes over San Carlos. On one occasion the Sea Harrier CAP had to land on Fearless and Intrepid because they ran low on fuel after an air to air engagement. Once Sids Strip became operational Sea Harriers would fly out from the carrier, do a long CAP over San Carlos then land a Sids Strip, refuel and then take off, so a long CAP again then fly back to the ship.

The permanent amelioration of the Sea Harrier's short range was the swapping of 100 gal wing tanks for 190 gal tanks, giving an extra 20 minutes flight time. Of course this is still only 95 minutes not the 2.5 hours of the Phantom.
 
I agree about RAF needed a multi role fighter after the 57 DWP. However I would add it needed it in sqn service by 1960 and had to biy it with 100 million pounds less than 1956 defence budget.

It has been said that Sandys wanted something like that but the RAF brass didn't, are they any more details about that?
 
My simple point (so far not refuted) is that the RAF has not done any dogfighting since? Korea? or even WW2.
Unlike the US we have not needed a single role fighter and even Typhoon is now very much multi-role.
So my point stands, we needed a decent supersonic tactical fighter-bomber-recce type for the RAF not a one trick large supersonic fighter.
 

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