Royal Navy Requirement NA.47 but earlier and different.

CVA 01 is killed off because the RN were not able to get NATO support for it and bet everything on East of Suez.
The RAF cheats and persuades the Defence Secretary that the RAF can do the job cheaper.
The 1967 financial crash in the UK persuades the government to abandon East of Suez.
The RN focuses on its key NATO role of ASW in the N Atlantic but also the new C and S class hunter killer submarines.
Carriers get a reprieve after 1970 but by then there is just Ark Royal.
The RN played its hand badly by demanding CVA01 rather than using the relatively new Hermes and Eagle with F8 and Buccaneers.
 
Let me stay on the theme.
Zen has always hankered after SR177 in some form or another.
We can never know whether it and its related British missiles would have worked.
However in the spirit of the thread the F177 gets into service alongside the Buccaneer.
Zen will want it replaced by the wonderful swing wing fighter/attackers proposed in the early 60s for service in the 70s.
There you are, thread back on track and I get to date Olivia Newton-John in 1974 and take her to Farnborough to watch Simon's Circus demonstrate their new Cormorants.
 
Not grasping that if there are changes to the understanding of what can be achieved for the RN. In this time...

That your beloved F4 can emerge as the answer at the very time it gets ordered for trials and evaluation by the USN.
That equally the conclusions that collision course weapons, primarily radar guided missiles need become priority from '55.

And you can have Olivia if I get Diana Rig ;)
 
Just a thought....but how close does the F8U-III come to NA.47?
 
zen said:
Just a thought....but how close does the F8U-III come to NA.47?
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I think it meets most of the requirements from the opening post. It'd need a folding nose cone, however, the F8U3 is almost 60ft long.

And in general I'd want a 2-seat version, for the back seater to run the radar while the pilot flew the plane.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I think it meets most of the requirements from the opening post. It'd need a folding nose cone, however, the F8U3 is almost 60ft long.

And in general I'd want a 2-seat version, for the back seater to run the radar while the pilot flew the plane.
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If it folds to 52ft it will fit most lifts.
If it folds to 54ft life gets interesting.
If it folds to 57ft only one lift on Victorious is 58ft long.....

Two seater could be side-by-side, which fits then RN practice and avoids length increase.

Starting to appreciate why Vought was asked to look at fitting UK engines to the F8U-III.
This does look like a superior solution for the RN from their perspective.

If anything UK developments in datalink and auto-interception seem highly relevent for this.
 
fishpond said:
I think the real question is whether and how the RN tried to sell its program to the British Government. It didn't do very well. The crunch came when the RN tried to pay for both the new carrier and SSBNs at the same time. I don't know what an SSBN cost at the time, but I'd bet it was not all that much less than a carrier. I think, from what has been written, that the crunch was why 'East of Suez' was abandoned. You then have the RAF attack on the carrier program, because without the nuclear deterrent, tis only important role was tactical air in Europe. CVA 01 was a direct threat to that. By the way, the Admiralty Secretary told the Board that the Government might well buy a 40,000 tonner but not the 50,000 plus CVA 01. Sometimes the best really does kill what is good enough at the time.
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It’s a bit more complex. The RN had the SSBN thrust upon them on the cancellation of Skybolt. This not only added costs to the Navy, but overstressed the Navy’s designers. As for the 40,000 tonner - it may have been politically more acceptable, but as the old technical adage goes, steel is cheap and air is free.
 
zen said:
If it folds to 52ft it will fit most lifts.
If it folds to 54ft life gets interesting.
If it folds to 57ft only one lift on Victorious is 58ft long.....
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Base F8U-1 and -2 were 56ft long. The F8U-3 is "only" 59ft long. Surprising, the -3 looks a lot longer than that!


zen said:
Two seater could be side-by-side, which fits then RN practice and avoids length increase.

Starting to appreciate why Vought was asked to look at fitting UK engines to the F8U-III.
This does look like a superior solution for the RN from their perspective.

If anything UK developments in datalink and auto-interception seem highly relevent for this.
Click to expand...
I believe the Twosader was not any longer than the single seater, they chopped space out of a fuselage fuel tank for the GIB. Not an issue, fly with up to 4x external fuel tanks under the wings since all the missiles attach to the fuselage.

Despite work on auto-interception, I don't believe that a single seater would prove viable with SARH missiles. I mean, there's a reason the USN ditched the SARH AIM-9s.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I believe the Twosader was not any longer than the single seater, they chopped space out of a fuselage fuel tank for the GIB. Not an issue, fly with up to 4x external fuel tanks under the wings since all the missiles attach to the fuselage.
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In context the RN would prefer to keep the range/endurance without drop tanks.
Scott Kenny said:
Despite work on auto-interception, I don't believe that a single seater would prove viable with SARH missiles. I mean, there's a reason the USN ditched the SARH AIM-9s.
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In context the Fighter for the RN would obviously prefer a two seater.
But RAF might well consider the single seater in place of Lightning.
 
zen said:
In context the RN would prefer to keep the range/endurance without drop tanks.
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Not like those places on the wings are wired for additional missiles, so if you're flying CAP there's no aircraft reason not to carry drop tanks. Obviously, a deck-launched interception wouldn't have them. The only reason I can think of for the plane not to regularly fly with drop tanks is if the plane is too close to the catapult weight limit, as in French Crusaders.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I believe the Twosader was not any longer than the single seater, they chopped space out of a fuselage fuel tank for the GIB. Not an issue, fly with up to 4x external fuel tanks under the wings since all the missiles attach to the fuselage.
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Actually I'm not even sure the Twosader had less fuel tankage than the regular F-8.

There's not a lot of info out there, but here's a mash-up to show how that 2nd seat may have fit inside the F-8... (based on an outline of the NTF-8A used for various NASA wing experiments). Being raised so high, the 2nd cockpit didn't take up that much existing volume, and most of that lost space was allocated to the 20mm ammo cans, which was solved by eliminating 2 of the 4 guns.

Perhaps some avionics boxes had to be relocated either to the raised hump behind the second seat or into the old rocket pack space in the belly (which I believe was empty and available? unclear). The only fuel tank that may have been impacted is the 75 gallon tank forward of the wing... but would need more info to be sure.

F-8E_vs_TF-8A_100_px_=_1m.png


Anyway it's fun to speculate about NA.47 and what not, but I'd take an airwing of F-8 Twosaders and Buccaneers any day well into the 1980s over almost any alternative. With a Spey engine the Twosaders would have plenty of endurance and wouldn't need drop tanks for most missions. They could also probably be made to carry 2x AIM-7E SARH missiles under the wings (and later Skyflash).
 
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Twosaders and Bucs make the three 1970s UK carriers (Hermes, Eagle and a simpler version of CVA01 (fitted with Victorious's 3D radar and only 4 Seacat launchers)) a reasonable counterpart to France's fleet.
 

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