TSR-2 - "Perfect example for unmasterable technology and mismanagement?"

[Graeme]

You could start a new thread on these machines- the list is almost endless. The BAC TSR-2 is certainly one of the most 'vocal' example of history not wanting to 'let it go'. You could change a ceiling light bulb with a pile of books/magazines lamenting the demise of the TSR-2. But there are others, and they can all argue that they deserved a 'chance'.

As mentioned, another loud member is the Avro CF-105.
Then there's the North American F-108 Rapier.
North American XB-70
Hawker P.1121 Hurricane
Saunders-Roe SR.177
Vought XF8U-3 Crusader III
Saunders-Roe SR-45 Princess
Republic XF-103
Avro Canada C-102
and the Vickers Valiant B Mk 2, just to complete a random ten.

 

[pbfoot]

Be a bit hard for the Bucc to be used as a fighter as it didn't carry any air to air weapons until very late in its life.

On a more objective point, in its element i.e. at very low level, almost nothing could catch the Bucc. On a regular basis the only plane that could catch it on the deck was the F111.

I do believe all the Bucc would see of a 104 would be the black smoke outta that J79.

 

[Glider]

Not on the deck. The first Red Flag sorties were a revalation to the US forces facing the Bucc for the first time. F4's and F5's couldn't normally catch them and the A4 didn't have a chance. In Europe the Mirage and F104G normally failed as well.

The Bucc was flown 'clean' having an internal bomb bay and the opposing aircraft hampered by Drop tanks, external missiles ect had a hard time catching them.

 

[pbfoot]

Not on the deck. The first Red Flag sorties were a revalation to the US forces facing the Bucc for the first time. F4's and F5's couldn't normally catch them and the A4 didn't have a chance. In Europe the Mirage and F104G normally failed as well.

The Bucc was flown 'clean' having an internal bomb bay and the opposing aircraft hampered by Drop tanks, external missiles ect had a hard time catching them.

During RED Flag they never got any of our 104's in fact during the last sortie of the 104 at Red Flag they actually told the the defending force direction and time over target and still managed to get in and out

 

[The Basket]

Not on the deck. The first Red Flag sorties were a revalation to the US forces facing the Bucc for the first time. F4's and F5's couldn't normally catch them and the A4 didn't have a chance. In Europe the Mirage and F104G normally failed as well.

The Bucc was flown 'clean' having an internal bomb bay and the opposing aircraft hampered by Drop tanks, external missiles ect had a hard time catching them.

Absolutely. Fly 20ft at 645mph and the only Starfighter is going to be behind you, in afterburner running out of fuel! Range was just excellent too.

 

[SoD Stitch]

Not on the deck. The first Red Flag sorties were a revalation to the US forces facing the Bucc for the first time. F4's and F5's couldn't normally catch them and the A4 didn't have a chance. In Europe the Mirage and F104G normally failed as well.

The Bucc was flown 'clean' having an internal bomb bay and the opposing aircraft hampered by Drop tanks, external missiles ect had a hard time catching them.

Actually, I read that the then brand-new F-15's couldn't even score a kill on a Bucc! I'll do some more reserach on that, but I don't think the vaunted F-15A even picked them up on radar during the whole excercise.

 

[lesofprimus]

That I find extremely hard to believe..

 

[pbfoot]

I'll include this little blurb and then you can comment on the range etc

Unhke most fighters, the 104's range didn't suffer greatly at low altitude. Carrying one bomb, a strike pilot could fly 400 miles, littering the countryside with fuel tanks as they emptied. The photo pod slung under the belly of the recce aircraft looked rather lumpy but was nicely streamlined and caused little drag. The attack conversion was not as successful because external fuel tanks couldn't be carried, the pylons had bombs or rockets. We lost a little more fuel when the Vulcan cannon -was installed, replacing a small fuel cell.
Since its inception and particularly in Europe, the 104 had been unfairly tagged -with a bad reputation. A German joke of the 1960s went: "How does one acquire a Starfighter? One buys
a small piece of land and waits."
Touring journalists always got around to asking about crashes and how dangerous the aircraft was. I confess they were often misled at the mess bar. We would fake grim cheerfulness and drop such names as "wid-
owmaker" or, even more ridiculous, "aluminum death tube and, sure enough we d be quoted. The clippings were all gleefully passed around the squadrons. Most of us enjoyed the notoriety, at least a little, and felt squarer of jaw and steelier of eye. Only supermen could fly such a killer airplane; it said so right in the Elk Pasture Times Weekly.
In fact, our safety record was comparable to that of any other aircraft in the same role. Most 104 accidents were a product of that role. Low-level, high-speed flying allowed little margin for error, and errors were often catastrophic.
But the CF-104 wasn't a shady lady. She just worked in a tough neighborhood.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

But the CF-104 wasn't a shady lady. She just worked in a tough neighborhood.

Perfect!

 

[pbfoot]

Further to watching the 6 oclock of the 104 it was capanle of 940 knots at sea level the bucc could get up 562 at sea level or 600 at altitude and I can't help but add this little blurb from the 1978 RAF Yearbook

" The Aggressors were tasked against us more, and they pulled in the F-15 Eagle with its ultra-modern look-down radar to try to redress the balance; from day five onwards, the odd claims were verified against the Buccaneers."
.

 

[SoD Stitch]

That I find extremely hard to believe..

Okay, I did my research . . .

Quoted from An Illustrated Survey of the West's Modern Fighters, by Doug Richardson, copyright 1984, published by Salamander Books, Ltd., under the heading for the British Aerospace (nee Blackburn) Buccaneer:

"When the USAF F-15 crews first set eyes on the portly lines of the RAF Buccaneer on the flight line at Nellis AFB, Nevada, during a mid 1970's "Red Flag" air-combat excercise, they could not believe their luck. Were the "Limies" really going to take on the brand-new (italics added) F-15 Eagle in a plump, underpowered, subsonic bomber fitted with antediluvian avionics? Those Eagle crews just couldn't wait for the "turkey shoot" to begin. But the first few days of action soon showed that the Buccaneer was a tricky adversary indeed: the RAF aircraft were getting to their targets, but unobserved by the F-15's (italics added). Eventually, a disoriented Buccaneer crew were forced to risk a brief "pop-up" manoeuvre to relocate themselves, and a waiting Eagle obtained a radar lock-on and pounced. As the excercise continued, the Eagles did mange to "kill" more Buccaneers, but this veteran design had shown its capabilities in no uncertain terms."

The F-15 is one of my favorite aircraft ever, and you can't argue with a better than 100-to-0 kill ratio, but there is obviously a little hubris involved here when the cocky Americans thought the Bucc would be an "easy kill".

 

[pbfoot]

Any aircraft down low is a hard kill especially if he's really lo

 

[Glider]

Okay, I did my research . . .

Quoted from An Illustrated Survey of the West's Modern Fighters, by Doug Richardson, copyright 1984, published by Salamander Books, Ltd., under the heading for the British Aerospace (nee Blackburn) Buccaneer:

"When the USAF F-15 crews first set eyes on the portly lines of the RAF Buccaneer on the flight line at Nellis AFB, Nevada, during a mid 1970's "Red Flag" air-combat excercise, they could not believe their luck. Were the "Limies" really going to take on the brand-new (italics added) F-15 Eagle in a plump, underpowered, subsonic bomber fitted with antediluvian avionics? Those Eagle crews just couldn't wait for the "turkey shoot" to begin. But the first few days of action soon showed that the Buccaneer was a tricky adversary indeed: the RAF aircraft were getting to their targets, but unobserved by the F-15's (italics added). Eventually, a disoriented Buccaneer crew were forced to risk a brief "pop-up" manoeuvre to relocate themselves, and a waiting Eagle obtained a radar lock-on and pounced. As the excercise continued, the Eagles did mange to "kill" more Buccaneers, but this veteran design had shown its capabilities in no uncertain terms."

The F-15 is one of my favorite aircraft ever, and you can't argue with a better than 100-to-0 kill ratio, but there is obviously a little hubris involved here when the cocky Americans thought the Bucc would be an "easy kill".

Thanks for this I appreciate the effort.

 

[Glider]

I'll include this little blurb and then you can comment on the range etc

Unhke most fighters, the 104's range didn't suffer greatly at low altitude. Carrying one bomb, a strike pilot could fly 400 miles, littering the countryside with fuel tanks as they emptied. The photo pod slung under the belly of the recce aircraft looked rather lumpy but was nicely streamlined and caused little drag. The attack conversion was not as successful because external fuel tanks couldn't be carried, the pylons had bombs or rockets. We lost a little more fuel when the Vulcan cannon -was installed, replacing a small fuel cell.

In May 1966 during exercises a Buc was launched from the Victorious in the Irish Sea, carried out a low level simulated toss bomb attack on Gibraltar and flew back to the ship unrefuelled. A round distance of 2,300 miles.

 

[pbfoot]

I thought I would give the rest of that statement from RAF 1978 I 'm looking through a 1 meter high pile of mags for cf104's red flag to counter some of the claims that the USAF was unused to hi speed lo level unless they didn't know the 104's were there
How did we fare in this environment, operating against many combat veterans of the Vietnam war? The Red Flag staff do not evaluate performance; their mission is merely to provide the threats and thearena in which the Blue Forces can learn for themselves. Nevertheless they did concede that our dedicated low-level tactics, backed by realistic training at our home stations, achieved results better than they had seen before. We watched the claims being listed at the first mass debriefing with apprehension; "Buccaneer" did not appear. Our confidence then rose on each successive day that we all returned without any "kills" being registered against us. We knew that their ground threats had never faced an aircraft flown so consistently low and fast. We knew their strike/attack aircraft were more exposed to the defences because they bombed from greater heights in both laydown and dive attacks. Nevertheless we had not expected to pass through unscathed. The pressures of success quickly mounted. The Aggressors were tasked against us more, and they pulled in the F-15 Eagle with its ultra-modern look-down radar to try to redress the balance; from day five onwards, the odd claims were verified against the Buccaneers.
The Aggressors found the Buccaneer hard to acquire visually and, at our high speeds, found it even harder to catch. They received no assistance from their Soviet-styled GCI network. With Buccaneers flying at 100 ft (30 m), it never even knew of our presence. The Aggressors also found it virtually impossible to "shoot down" an aircraft flown aggressively at this height. As the exercise progressed, we felt the full weight of the F-5 and F-1 5 patrols being thrown against us and we felt sorry for the RAF Germany Buccaneer crews from Nos 15 and 16 Squadrons who had to fly in the second half of the exercise. They faced a "MiG Alley" hornet's nest from their very first missions, but by all reports, they more than met this challenge.

When we returned to Nellis in Septemoer to collect our Buccaneers, the confidence exuded by these Laarorucn crews expressed, without words, what Red Flag is all about.
Red flag was a memorable detachrnent in the minds of all the 90 aircrew and 150 groundcrew who represented the Royal Air Force. Whilst there, we were able to fight with an operational realism unsurpassed eisewnere in peacetime. For this, we offer our heartfelt thanks to General Dixon and his Tactical Air Command.
Throughout this article, stress has been laid on the realism of the training facilities given to us at Red Flag. In giving this praise, there is no intention of decrying the excellent facilities we use in our day-today training in Europe. Daily, our Buccaneers operate against fighter patrols, against electronic threats and against a wide variety of weapons ranges. That training which we cannot achieve from Honmgton, we make good through the medium of detachments abroad. These deployments, which have become an integral part of RAF squadron life in the 1970s, usually mean that No 208 Squadron has aircraft abroad for 100 days per year. In 1978 we plan to visit Bodo in Arctic Norway on a NATO Squadron exchange, to deploy to Aalborg (Denmark), Laarbruch (West Germany) and Goose Bay (Canada) for varied low flying training, and to Sardinia for an Armament Practice Camp. From the sum total of all this training, we believe that we are ready and capable of fulfilling our war roles.
Red Flag gave us the chance to test the effectiveness of both our doctrine and our training. In 1977 we survived with flying colours. We are working now to improve and disseminate these tactics, so that no RAF front-line units need be found wanting in future. D

 

[The Basket]

940 knots at sea level?

With bombs?

The Starfighter?

 

[pbfoot]

940 knots at sea level?

With bombs?

The Starfighter?

The thing was fast at 940k you'd probably have about 5 minutes fuel I believe it held the lo level speed record at around 1200knots. Now for my article on the 104 at Red Flag

"It was the morning of Nov 18th 1977 when we realized something had to be done about never having been shot down during Exercise Red Flag 78-1.
Born of lessons learned from the Vietnam War, each two-week Red Flag serial was designed to improve the survivabili-ty and combat effectiveness of U.S. fighter pilots in realistic simulated combat situations. The idea was to expose each pilot to 10 flying missions which included complex planning for, and leading of large force packages, typically of some 100 aircraft. The most valuable lessons were learned by flying the full range of combat fighter and bomber missions; delivering live weapons on scored tactical ranges; and, being tracked and "fired upon" by highly realistic electronic surface-to-air missile (SAM) simulators.
Each 10 mission series was held several times a year at Nellis Air Force Base, just north of Las Vegas, Nevada. Owning to the very close relationship the Canadian Forces enjoyed with all branches of the U.S. forces, and does to this day, we were invited to participate.
Typically, Canadian fighter pilots from both Cold Lake, Alta, and Bagotville, Que, were very successful during these exercises because of the tried and very true Canadian flying training system. In Red Flag, we learned, but also contributed.
So. we had this little problem. There were even cheeky suggestions we weren't actually flying in the exercise because hardly anyone saw us and we never appeared under anyone's cross hairs or on video. No small wonder! We had practiced high speed, ultra low-level flying at.
home on CYR 205, the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range just north of CFB Cold Lake, for a full month before flying on the sophisticated, instrumented desert ranges of the U.S. southwest.
From their higher altitudes, the odd F-15 Eagle pilot had picked us up with their look-down radars as fast movers down in the weeds. We flew at 540 knots ground speed (900 feet per second) at 100 feet above ground level (AGL) - often

lower, and without a radar altimeter. We even camouflaged our silver CF-104s with buckets of carefully blended water paints purchased locally in Las Vegas. Rain dances were not encouraged. The highly successful but decidedly ugly poor-man's Stealth was the brainchild of Capt John Bagshaw, a widely respected Canadian fighter pilot on 417 Tactical Fighter (Operational Training) Sqn based at Cold Lake.
Some Eagle drivers had fired a radar or heat-seeking missile at us, but we could easily outrun them. Rarely had SAM sites even seen, let alone fired at us! The bottom line: CF-104s had never been shot down nor captured on video during Red Flag exercises.
So, in his inimitable style, Capt Laurie Hawn, on whose wing I would fly for the last launch of the day, indeed, the exercise, suggested we "give 'em a fighting chance." The plan was to slow down to gear and flap speed as we approached a north-south mountain range up in the north-west corner of the Tonopah weapons range complex, smoke around the southern corner (there was lots of it coming out of a J-79 turbojet if it wasn't in afterburner), hang everything out (gear, flaps, speed brakes), turn on our landing lights and head straight into site 57's lethal envelope, a SAM 3 simulator just to the west of the mountains. We even had the temerity to call them up and tell them precisely to the second when we'd be there and from what direction. Simple. Sitting, benevolent ducks! We'd finally get on somebody's video for the last mass debrief.We took off, headed north to the range, hit our targets with characteristic accuracy and designated time on target (TOT) then slowed for "the plan." Turning north from Cedar Pass, we climbed up to two or three hundred feet AGL and flew straight and level at Site 57 all slow and dirty. Just about overhead the missile site, we picked up two high-speed U.S. Marine F-4 "smokers," they each had two J-79s, at 10 o'clock, opposite direction all the way up at a nosebleed 1,000 foot or so altitude. Having made our point to the SAM site, Laurie called "gear, flaps, burners, hard left." After a two or three minute chase, we ran them down, closed to missile and gun range and shot down the two U.S. F-4s. Subsequent gun film analysis confirmed our kills.
Turns out they saw us but, because of our slow speed, they thought we were Harriers and, therefore, no threat. Also turns out the SAM site folks saw us, came to the same conclusion and claimed two Harrier kills. The strenuous objections of the Harrier folks and truthful claim that their closest aircraft was some 50 miles away from the site at the time were met with decidedly rude comments! Still no claims against Canadian CF-104s."

 

[Glider]

Excellent postings, many thanks

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Great stuff Pb. I did some F-104 work and I always thought of her as being an underrated scorned upon aircraft.

 

[Graeme]

From Bill Gunston's 'Fighters of the Fifties' re F-104;

"There was, however, one large drawback on the whole programme. Largely because pilots and ground crews were generally inexperienced, the Luftwaffe suffered unacceptable loss-rates, the figure in 1962 being 139 per 100,000 hours. Even in the mid-1960s a Starfighter crashed roughly every ten days, and in many cases the pilot was killed. There followed a political battle to fit the British Martin-Baker ejection seat. American (Lockheed/USAF) pressure prevented it until 1967 (by which time the Danes had quietly had British seats already fitted) when, with no publicity by the British company, they fitted the reliable GQ-7 seat to the Italian and then the German Starfighters".

Originally the seats fired downwards. Which way did the Canadian version 'fire'?