Replacing the Hunter

red admiral said:
Buy something lower performance but cheaper
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But if you're going to do that, you actually have to buy it. Follow through all the way to the end, with cash in hand and aircraft on bases. Not this garbage situation where you say "Thin wing Javelin is hopeless compared to Arrow/TSR.2 is unaffordable compared to F-111" then you turn around and dump the airplane you named to justify cancelling/replace the domestic product.

More importantly, you have to be honest about what you want and why you want it. P.17 built by EE with VIckers managerial oversight would have been the Canberra replacement it was touted as, but what the RAF was really angling for was basically an FB-111. Not quite a deep-penetration strategic bomber on the scale of the Vulcan, but by no means a tactical battlefield strike aircraft either.

The Hunter as a fighter-bomber is the apotheosis of the theory that the best fighter-bomber is yesterday's front-line fighter. The problem for Britain is that when it's time to replace the Hunter with "yesterday's front line fighter", the only candidate is still TODAY'S front-line fighter. In retrospect, perhaps the answer is to dust off the old P.1083 blueprints.
 
I am puzzled by the idea that a plane carrying ground attack weapons (cannon, rocket pods, bombs etc) is also going to ship a full load of AAMs and engage in dogfights with the enemy rather than hitting its targets on the ground.
I know that in the 80s RAF Jaguars and Buccaneers were given token Sidewinders in response to the arrival of Mig 29s. But noone seriously expected a Buccaneer to duke it out with a Mig.
 
uk 75 said:
But noone seriously expected a Buccaneer to duke it out with a Mig.
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I suspect the expectation there was to give the Bucc pilot something to fire back with if he could force an overshoot. Perhaps Red Flag and other exercises had demonstrated that this was occurring often enough to justify the load-out.

Remember: the RAF hard-wired its Nimrods to take AIM-9 in the event that they encountered an enemy maritime patrol aircraft, again motivated by IRL experience. I think Tom Clancy missed a wonderful opportunity to write a scene in which a Nimrod channels the spirits of its Sunderland ancestors and sees a bunch of Russians off.
 
Buccaneer pilots lamented the lack of guns or Short range AAMs in Red Flag exercises as they often were able to turn the tables on fighters when down low.
Where their smooth flight characteristics proved the ability to turn safely against fighters who's wingloading ought to have told against them. But such was the buffeting at low level and high speed, that theoretical superiority was just that.
Theory.

Several times they used bombs to score a defensive kills on pursuing fighters.

Legend goes they went 'hunting' when they got Sidewinders and became even more formidable.
 
zen said:
Buccaneer pilots lamented the lack of guns or Short range AAMs in Red Flag exercises as they often were able to turn the tables on fighters when down low.
Where their smooth flight characteristics proved the ability to turn safely against fighters who's wingloading ought to have told against them. But such was the buffeting at low level and high speed, that theoretical superiority was just that.
Theory.

Several times they used bombs to score a defensive kills on pursuing fighters.

Legend goes they went 'hunting' when they got Sidewinders and became even more formidable.
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Have you got an easily accessible written source for this? I would love to peruse it for myself.
 
uk 75 said:
I am puzzled by the idea that a plane carrying ground attack weapons (cannon, rocket pods, bombs etc) is also going to ship a full load of AAMs and engage in dogfights with the enemy rather than hitting its targets on the ground.
I know that in the 80s RAF Jaguars and Buccaneers were given token Sidewinders in response to the arrival of Mig 29s. But noone seriously expected a Buccaneer to duke it out with a Mig.
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It isn't, it was correctly considered impressive when a Hornet did it in 1991 and a Hornet is far more aircraft than anything available in the early 60s.

800NAS Sea Harriers gives an example of what a fighter-bomber sqn did in wartime.
  • 1 May armed with 3 bombs and guns all 12 SHars attacked Port Stanley and Goose Green airfields.
  • 16 May armed with 2 Sidewinders, 1 x 1000lb bomb and guns 2 Shars attacked and damaged the ships Rio Carcarna and ARA Bahia Buen Suceso
    • This loadout was used to drop bombs onto Port Stanley airfield on the way back from a CAP
  • 21-24 May armed with 2 Sidewinders and guns all 15 Shars fought the Battle of San Carlos, shooting down 13 enemy aircraft.
So while a 60s fighter-bomber won't carry a full load of bombs and AAMs and be expected to use all of them in a single mission, over the course of a campaign that fighter-bomber might use a full load of bombs for some missions, carry a full load of AAMs for other missions and a mixed load of both on other missions. The advantage being that it can do all of these things when needed.

Also in Vietnam F105s were forced to defend themselves, a lot, even when escorted by fighters. They managed to shoot down ~28 Mig 17s (25 to guns, the rest with sidewinder) with 2 losses but took 15 losses to for no kills against the Mig 21. Nobody expected the F105 to be a dogfighter, but in wartime the unexpected happens.
 
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pathology_doc said:
Have you got an easily accessible written source for this? I would love to peruse it for myself.
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Wish I could but it's bits and pieces from various sources.
One was a YouTube interview but I'm lost on that.
Another piece was in "Buccaneer" by Tim Lang, a book I have on it bought from the FAA museum at Yeovilton.
 
zen said:
Wish I could but it's bits and pieces from various sources.
One was a YouTube interview but I'm lost on that.
Another piece was in "Buccaneer" by Tim Lang, a book I have on it bought from the FAA museum at Yeovilton.
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Tim Laming AKA Tim McLelland (apparently)
 
Considering the reheat chamber.....
Getting the 33.8" chamber upto 1,950C might have offset the high fuel burn with a much improved thrust level.
Arguably the 38" or 42" or 44" chambers could have been used.....
 
overscan (PaulMM) said:
Roy Braybrook, who worked at Hawker in the relevant timeframe, said that a single engine supersonic aircraft like the Draken, powered by a developed Avon, was an obvious "missed opportunity".
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When designing the P.1103 there was a single-Sapphire-powered P.1103 design. However, it stood zero chance of meeting F155T and was not progressed.

Ultimately, the timely introduction of a Mirage or Draken competitor is blocked by the existence of Lightning.
 
But AS had substantial development for higher performance versions of Sapphire so I dimly reccal reading.

So Hawkers wasn't wrong to consider such.
 
overscan (PaulMM) said:
Ultimately, the timely introduction of a Mirage or Draken competitor is blocked by the existence of Lightning.
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Hence the recent, contentious, thread in which the alternative timeline of ER103C or some other Fairey delta design that isn't a monster interceptor is contemplated. Assuming a Sandys-lite future in which F.155T and probably also the SR.177 is killed but manned fighter development is allowed to continue, one might postulate a BAC-like conglomerate of Gloster, Fairey and DeHavilland being created which will create the airplane that takes over from the Lightning after the F.2.

Why these three? DeHavilland has the engine (Gyron), the others the delta airframe experience, and both Fairey and DeHavilland have in-house weapon shops; DH for the existing Firestreak and follow-on Red Top, Fairey for a hypothetical SARH outgrowth of Fireflash. They are thus in a position to perform airframe, engine and weapon integration in-house, calling in a radar firm as required.

Avro of course is also very experienced in deltas, but Avro is primarily a bomber firm and IMHO would likely be directed to get on with either building the 730 (if only as a very large research airframe) or tweaking the hell out of the Vulcan.
 

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