aircraft that never flew.

there was an intresting programme on 'discovery wings' the other night about the Boeing 706 supersonic ,swing wing passenger plane that never made it into production.....huge weight problems from the drawing board to production twinned with problems with heat at supersonic speeds seemed to be the main cause of its reasons for never getting in the air,not to mention the publics outcrys off the noise caused by the 'sonic boom'.
What other aircraft does any one here know off that didnt make it into production and what were the reasons?

regards.

You only need to look around or ask and you will get lots of answers for this but I will add in the TSR2. I may be horribly wrong on the following (not much time to look around atm), feel free to correct me. All of the following is paraphrased or plain copied from here



So to start off there were issues of management:

Design and manufacture proceeded despite these problems and despite poor cooperation between the constituents of BAC. One example of this was that when the engines were ready to be placed in the airframe it was found that they simply did not fit in the supplied tunnels! In addition, some sub-contractors were not working for BAC, but were working for the Ministry instead, with communication problems being a result. The Ministry's interference extended into the design and manufacture of the aircraft itself; they took charge of the cockpit layout, and often had three hour meetings to decide the location of a single switch (and often got it wrong). At the same time the Americans' TFX programme had begun, and much pressure was placed on the UK to buy the TFX (later to become the F-111) instead of the 'more expensive' TSR.2

Issues with export orders:

A BAC delegation had visited Australia and left with high expectations of an export order for the TSR.2; the Australians were very interested in the new wonder-plane. By this time Lord Louis Mountbatten had became famous within the industry for slapping ten photographs of a Buccaneer on a desk followed by a single picture of a TSR.2, and then stating that he could buy that many Buccaneers for the price of a single TSR.2. Then when an Australian delegation visited the UK, Mountbatten joined them to discuss the TSR.2. Afterwards the Australians had lost interest in the TSR.2; we shall never know what Mountbatten actually said, but it had obviously had a big effect, and the TSR.2's export prospects had suddenly disappeared. The Australians chose to buy the F-111 shortly afterward. That this would cost 10 times more than they had been told and would be 10 years late into service was not something they expected.

Major problems with the engines and their development:

Engine development problems had also surfaced. The Bristol-Siddely Olympus engines were an all-new development and suffered various problems, which resulted in the destruction of a Vulcan testbed aircraft on the ground. With the first prototype now complete, it was transported in sections to Boscombe Down. Vickers had wanted test flying to begin at their airfield at Wisley, but the chief test pilot, Roland Beamont, objected to this because of the short runway there. English Electric's airfield at Warton would have been ideal, but tas a compromise Boscombe Down was chosen. This meant more delays; neither company had a base of operations there, and the prototype had to be reassembled at Boscombe over a period of three months. On the 6th of May 1964 the fully assembled prototype, XR219, was removed from its hangar at Boscombe Down to begin testing, including taxi trials. Various minor problems occurred, including the failure of the braking parachute to deploy on one fast taxi run (where the long runway came in useful, vindicating Beamont's objection to the shorter airfield at Wisley), but most were overcome.

But!:

The cause of the engine problems was finally identified only days before the TSR.2 was due to fly. However, with pressure on the project increasing all the time, it was decided to go ahead with the first flight. The then-Conservative government was in serious trouble; a general election was looming for the end of the year and Labour were widely expected to win. Obviously BAC hoped that presenting the new government with a flying prototype would put some firmer foundations under the troubled project. The final decision was down to BAC's chief test pilot; Roland Beamont. Despite the engine problems (the manufacturers would not guarantee them lasting beyond five hours of use at a maximum of 97% power), despite many items of equipment not being ready and despite expected problems with the undercarriage and braking parachute, he decided the flight should go ahead; he was prepared to accept the risk for a single flight.

However:

Other problems continued, however. Serious vibration problems related to the undercarriage meant that at the instant of landing, the crew became momentarily blinded - the frequency of the vibration matched the natural frequency of the human eyeball. A further serious vibration problem was traced to a faulty pump near the cockpit.

Undercarriage problems were not limited to vibration; there were also sustained problems with hydraulics and sequencing. Malfunctions varied from doors refusing to close to more serious problems like one leg staying extended while the others had retracted correctly. On one occasion the undercarriage came down but the main bogies did not lock into the correct position. Nothing could be done to get the gear down correctly, so Beamont told his navigator that it could be time to leave by Martin Baker (i.e. eject). Beamont, with typical bravery, elected to stay with the aircraft and try to land it, and his navigator stayed with him. In the event, the landing was successful, the bogies rotating into the correct position as the aircraft settled onto the extended gear.

However:

The TSR.2 programme was, however...causing spiralling costs and rumours abounded of impending cancellation...were rife.


The second prototype would never fly; the government, in the Budget Day announcement on the 6th of April 1965, announced that the TSR.2 programme was to be terminated immediately. The aircrew were at the time having lunch in a pub near Boscombe Down; on hearing the shocking announcement they rushed back to the airfield in an attempt to get XR220 into the air and to at least present the government with a second flying prototype. This was not to be; permission was denied. While the management of BAC were informed before the budget speech was made, they were forbidden to tell their employees, who then had to hear the news on the radio. The House of Commons was in uproar over the cancellation; but no debate could take place during the budget speech so not only had the government treated BAC's workforce with contempt, they had tried to slip a major defence project cancellation past the opposition. A debate one week later in the house was a rough ride for Dennis Healey (the new Defence Minister), who tried to justify the cancellation on the basis that the F-111 could be bought more cheaply, though he could not state a cost or exact timescale for the buy. Healey has since stated that getting American backing for an International Monetary Fund loan was not a reason behind the British order for the F-111 instead of continuing the TSR.2 programme. However, the TSR.2 was certainly a serious worry to the Americans, being vastly more capable than the F-111 and could have made a serious dent in the F-111's export prospects. A denial from a politician, as the TSR.2 programme showed on numerous individual occasions, is not worth the paper they refuse to write it on.

XR222 was initially to be scrapped but was instead sent to the College of Aeronautics at Cranfield and later saved for restoration and moved to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford. All other airframes were scrapped. All tooling was destroyed; on the production line, as workers completed assembly of some airframes prior to their transport to the scrap yard, the tooling was being destroyed with cutting torches behind them. A wooden mockup of the TSR.2 was dragged out of the Warton factory and burned while the workers looked on. All technical publications were ordered to be destroyed; even photographs of the aircraft were destroyed. Boscombe Down's official records of test flights were 'lost'.

The TFX programme continued in the US; but when it too became massively expensive and development ran into major problems, the UK (and the US Navy) cancelled their orders. Britain was to pay hugely for the TSR.2 cancellation; not only in the waste of the TSR.2 development, but now in cancellation fees to General Dynamics. Instead it was decided to buy the F-4 Phantom II. But the government could not be seen to be buying an inferior American aircraft after this fiasco, so specified that British engines were to be used. The UK Phantoms were to use Speys, an engine generally thought to be unsuitable for a fighter. Problems with the Spey and Phantom marriage meant that not only were British Phantoms the most expensive of all, but they also performed nowhere near as well as the original US models. TSR.2 was long gone, and all we had in its place was an aircraft of nowhere near the capability. Not only did the Phantom not come close to fulfilling the TSR.2's role, it could not adequately fulfil narrower roles such as air defence. The aging Lightning continued to outfly Phantoms until its retirement in 1988.

Despite all of the negative items above there was a test flight that really shows how a,mazing this aircraft woudl have been:

Flight 14 was XR219's trip to Warton, during which it went supersonic for the first and only time. TSR.2's performance was shown to good effect on this flight; when Beamont engaged reheat on a single engine, the chase aircraft (a Lightning T.5, a mach 2 aircraft and certainly no slouch) was left behind despite engaging reheat on both of its engines!

So what ever became of all that experience and what ever happened to BAC?

The SEPECAT Jaguar, near enough a 'baby TSR.2', gave them (BAC) even more experience of this kind of cooperation, and produced a useful strike aircraft, though it did not compare with the TSR.2.

As it turned out, the Tornado became more or less what the TSR.2 was to have been. That it was still slightly less capable than the TSR.2 had been projected to be a full fifteen years earlier says a great deal about how far advanced the TSR.2 project really was. That the TSR.2 was all-British (bar some electronics) and the Tornado required the cooperation of three countries also says a great deal about just how good the British aircraft industry was.

Perhaps one of the biggest foul-ups of all time, the cancellation of the TSR2.
More politics than common sense, especially when taking into account the amount of development time and costs already spent.

An amazing and beautiful aircraft and way ahead of anything else at the time, which may have had something to do with it's sudden cancellation in favour of the proposed F-111. Seeing how politics works, there were probably other anglo-American factors at play behind the scenes

Originally posted by Britguy
Perhaps one of the biggest foul-ups of all time, the cancellation of the TSR2.
More politics than common sense, especially when taking into account the amount of development time and costs already spent.

An amazing and beautiful aircraft and way ahead of anything else at the time, which may have had something to do with it's sudden cancellation in favour of the proposed F-111. Seeing how politics works, there were probably other anglo-American factors at play behind the scenes

There was a Discovery Wings program about the TSR-2 a while back (you will probably catch it several times this week on repeat), that said some interesting things about the TSR-2s cancellation.

Theres plenty of sites out there via google that will corroborate this, but bear in mind that I dont know if its true or not.

The UK wanted an IMF (International Monetory Fund) loan, and at the time, the US was 'in control of' the IMF due to being one of its largest donor countries. Basically, the US said 'No IMF loan while the TSR-2 project is live. Buy F-111s or else no loan.'

So, we scrapped the TSR-2 program, signed onto the F-111 program, wasted moeny there while we got nothing back for our investment, and then after tiring of waiting for the F-111 to appear (it was by that time well overdue) and bought Phantoms with Rolls Royce engines in (which basically shafted them because the British engines were never designed for the Phantom, and thus were overweight, underpowered, awkward to service and thirsty) to save face.

All of that is more or less spot on, the passages about the destruction of almost everything to do with the TSR.2 are also quite telling, someone was determined to make sure there would never be a change of heart and revive it!

One of the main reasons that the Spey Phantom was inferior to the J-79 Phantom was actually to do with aerodynamics, the Spey was a much fatter engine which meant that the fuselage cross section had to be increased to accomodate it. So although the Spey Phantom did have a lot more power to hand than the US version any benefit of this was lost through the highrer induced drag that the conversion brought with it. When the RAF later acquired J-79 powered F-4J Phantoms for 74 Sqn as a stopgap they were reported to be appreciably faster and more fuel efficient that the FG.1 and FGR.2.

Too tight to have sat or cable Richard

Maybe once I get working again, very soon, I may get cable as the line is already in place. Then I'll be able to pick maybe a couple of good channels out of the mundane and downright mind numbing ones

Probably about right though on the TSR2 / IMF deal... always strings attached to these things

If i catch it again, Ill grab it, rip it, encode it and shove it up somewhere for those interested. Beware that this would be blatant copyright infringement tho

There seems to be a 50/50 split on the F-111/IMF loan thing, with people saying there was a link, and people saying there isnt a link. Theres evidence both ways, and Im mindful to say that there IS a link.

I think the UK is probably the world leader in 'planes that never flew' thanks to the attitudes of various governments since the end of WW2.

Without doing any research at all I can post off the top off my head about the;

1 Miles M.52 Supersonic Jet, started in 1943 and axed in 1946, ahead of America's X-1 and well covered on this site.

2 Hawker P.1083 - Supersonic development of Hunter, in same performance class as F-100, axed 1955.

3. Supermarine 545 - Supersonic development of Swift, parallel with Hawker P.1083, cancelled at around same time.

4. Hawker P.1121 - Mach 2 multirole fighter in performance class of F-4, cancelled in 1957 with prototype almost complete, Hawker request to fly prototype for demonstration purposes refused.

5. Avro 720 - Mach 2.5 high altitude interceptor, cancelled 1957 ditto with P.1121 re prototype and request to fly.

6. Avro 730 - Mach 2 strategic bomber intended to replace Vulcan and Victor from 1962 on, cancelled 1957 to be replaced by ICBM project, also later canned.

7. Saro SR.177, same as Avro 720 for RAF, RN and Germany, finally killed politically when Germany "opted" to buy F-104G.

8. TSR 2 cancelled 1965 with three prototypes built and FORTY production aircraft at various stages of construction, a point often forgotten.

9. Hawker Siddeley HS.681 - V/STOL tactical transport, cancelled at same time as TSR 2 but in fairness probably unattainable.

10. Hawker Siddeley P.1154 - Mach 1.8+ V/STOL strike and fleet defence fighter for RAF and RN, twin jet development of P.1127, also cancelled in 1965 with previous two named programmes, replaced by P.1127RAF (Harrier).

11 Hawker Siddeley HS.800 - Maritime patrol & ASW jet based on Trident (similar looking to Boeing 727 if you haven't heard of it). Cancelled to be replaced by cheaper HS.801 (Nimrod) which was effectively the same conversion but based on the Comet.

12. BAC/Dassault AFVG - strike aircraft similar to todays Tornado, intended to fill void left by TSR 2 but killed off itself when France withdrew following Govt statement that there would never again be an all-British combat aircraft programme.

12 may not be that many but it is literally the tip of the iceberg and they all represent genuine intended programmes for service not experimental types (M.52 excluded).

My god we blew it!

So, we scrapped the TSR-2 program, signed onto the F-111 program, wasted moeny there while we got nothing back for our investment, and then after tiring of waiting for the F-111 to appear (it was by that time well overdue) and bought Phantoms with Rolls Royce engines in (which basically shafted them because the British engines were never designed for the Phantom, and thus were overweight, underpowered, awkward to service and thirsty) to save face.

That is exactly what happend when Holland helped produce the F-16 and probably history will repeat it self with the F-35 project...for all the time and money that went into it, we'll probably get nothing back...we'll end up buying the F-35s WE HELPED WORK ON!

well thanks guys and especially waynos.....you really know your stuff!
TSR-2 is very intresting and probably the most intresting one of all due to its capabilities and political problems you all mentioned......for me personally(and i know it did actually fly!) was HH's 'spruce goose'....i just think its a great tribute to a man who's imagination and ingenuity knew no bounds!

thanks,regards.

Optimus:

You meant the 2707-200 SST not the 706 (later the 2707-300 and so on).

www.unrealaircraft.com...

*VERY COOL LOOKING PLANE WARNING*




Also in the running was:



Lockheed L2000.

Later on we had:


Lockheed SCV


There was also an MD - SST concept that I can't find a decent picture of (it to is a delta, but 3 distinct angles on the delta leading edge)

Osiris

sorry otlg27 your right,nice pics...strange i couldnt find any?

thanks,regards

During WWII there was this extream Nazi Plane, I think it was the Daimler Chrysler C but all i can find is cars, if you can get some info on this it's much apreciated.

Optimus:

try this:

images.google.com...



Osiris

I found this rare photo of a Canadian prototype fighter that never flew. It was called the "Bi Ramjet Intercept Concept" or B.R.I.C. for short.

After countless hours in the windtunnel however with less than stellar performance, the project was scraped. The lead designer Eh'u Hosier was quoted as saying "Eh, screw it, lets go play some hockey instead"

originally posted by: otlg27
Optimus:

You meant the 2707-200 SST not the 706 (later the 2707-300 and so on).

www.unrealaircraft.com...

*VERY COOL LOOKING PLANE WARNING*




Also in the running was:



Lockheed L2000.

Later on we had:


Lockheed SCV


There was also an MD - SST concept that I can't find a decent picture of (it to is a delta, but 3 distinct angles on the delta leading edge)

Osiris

Douglas had a proposal for an SST in the early 1960s, the Model 2229, which had the layout of the B-70 Valkyrie but with a single vertical stabilizer. However, Douglas decided that the Model 2229 was too uneconomical to be submitted for the National Supersonic Transport (NST) program initiated by the FAA in 1963. A few years after the Boeing 2707-300 was canceled in early 1971, McDonnell Douglas envisaged the AST proposal for a supersonic airliner similar in design philosophy to the 2707-300, and in the mid-1990s it proposed a Mach 2.4 SST design for NASA's High Speed Civil Transport (HSCT) program, but neither design progressed beyond the design phase.

Links:
aviationarchives.blogspot.com...
aviationarchives.blogspot.com...
www.secretprojects.co.uk...-26448
www.secretprojects.co.uk...-105469
www.secretprojects.co.uk...-236241

Not strictly a plane that never flew, since it did, but the XB70 Valkyrie totally mind blowing.
You make that now and the whole world is just gonna go wow...back then though? Like something out of Thunderbirds.

Interesting stuff. I was always fascinated by the Convair Hustler and then the Super Hustler and various Cold War era designs for supersonic parasite delivery stuff, the GEBO, too.

Bonkers!

Enjoy:


www.b-58.com...

a reply to: Oldcarpy2
Good find that mate!


My eldest lad got me into ace combat ion the PC so I am relearning the love of the starfighter and the Tomcat from when I was a kid

Something about old jets was just so right

originally posted by: optimus fett

What other aircraft does any one here know off that didnt make it into production and what were the reasons?

regards.

About 80% of all homebuilt/ certified aircraft projects, the owners quickly realize that they are in over their head, loose interest, or financially can’t finish.

Kinda parallels new start up companies in aviation.