I think you'll have to get rid of Sandystorm as a minimum - the Lightning only survived because it was a "minor variant" of the P.1A, the P.1B. The fact that there were hardly any common parts was concealed, and it got through. Getting rid of Sandystorm is actually pretty tricky - the country was out of money, and the RAF (and indeed Army) policy was "we want this, so the government is going to pay for it".
I don't think they were quite out of money so much as they just spent what they had very inefficiently. It seems to be a British habit to start a development project, stretch things out to save money in the short term whilst pushing up overall costs, keep fiddling about with the requirements driving up times and costs some more, then cancel it about half/two thirds of the way through and then have to go buy a replacement. Avoiding the 1957 Defence White Paper is going to be difficult as it wasn't just Sandys, considering the short span of time between his becoming Minister and the report being published it does suggest that it reflected a fair amount of official thinking with him just being the front man to a certain extent. I'm currently looking into ways of mitigating it somewhat, there'll still be something of a move towards guided weapons but it won't lead to such a slash and burn operation on manned flight either.
The RN did rather better because Mountbatten - in what was IMO the greatest service he did the navy - decided that the RN could do two missions more cheaply than anyone else, colonial policing (carriers and marines) and keeping the North Atlantic open in wartime. He then told the government to scrap everything else, immediately or at their convenience, whichever came first. Net result is the RN more or less got what it asked for, and everyone else got screwed.
I wouldn't be
quite so generous with Mountbatten. He certainly fought the navy's corner as First Sea Lord and then later as Chief of the Defence Staff, even though it was meant to be a tri-service position, however what he achieved wasn't that great. Okay he managed to sabotage and help kill off TSR-2 and see a fair amount of funding go towards the navy but at the end of the day he also didn't get any carriers he was after either and was a bit too partisan for my tastes.
As mentioned above the 57 white paper has to go or be replaced by something a little less far-fetched for the time. Why not go for the Hawker P1103/P1116/P1121 or the Saro P177? Nothing wrong with the Lightning but which ever Hawker gets the green light and the SR177 have more development potential and the latter even had export orders lined up!
Hawker it going to be busy with their P.1050 model going forward as a naval design and developments of that. The 'fish head' admirals are going to be beaten around the heads with a clue by four until they accept the facts that paraffin/kerosene fuel was apparently no more dangerous or even
less dangerous than regular aircraft fuel and that swept wings are perfectly fine on naval aircraft, Sydney Camm apparently offered them a swept wing aircraft in 1945/46, so there's nothing to stop the introduction of jets on aircraft carriers. This should hopefully see the Supermarine Attacker introduced earlier as the straight winged traditional option and the Hawker Sea Hawk also turning up sooner but with swept wings, basically think the Hawker P.1052. It's shortly developed into the P.1081 with a swept tailplane and straight-through jet pipe, before finally evolving into an improved Hunter with reheat that's capable of supersonic flight. Expect the RAF to buy in at around the P.1081 stage when they see what it's achieving.
After that I'm not so sure. Might stay with the de Havilland DH.110 Sea Vixen, it did take a bloody age to get from first flight in into squadron service though, or push them into developing the DH.116 'Super Venom' instead. On the Supermarine front might see an earlier Scimitar or instead develop it into the Type 556 if possible, the Type 576 'Super Scimitar' as a British development similar to the F-4 Phantom is appealing but the benefits of a domestically produced aircraft versus the likely smaller production run and higher costs need to be carefully balanced. But that's enough about naval aviation for now.
... A great aircraft, not a great fighter.
Tallies with what I've read, thanks. It's just a shame that it was caught up in the tail end of the 1957 report and also saddled with being considered to be an interim model so never got any of the updates it deserved, some of them looked quite interesting.
The British also had a habit of generation leaping in their military equipment of the 1950s and 1960s. They didn't have enough money to keep up with everyone else and would often try to master the next best thing.
Yep, that's another habit that I forget to mention. I'm hoping to try and avoid this a bit by continuing research and development at a much lower but constant level after WW2 rather than decide that they won't be buying any new aircraft for the next 5 or 10 years and trying to avoid the massive panic buying spree when the Korean conflict hit. Famine and feast is never a good thing.
Only the Avro Arrow would meet all the requirements of
Operational Requirement F.155 in unmodified condition because it's the only two seater and the only one with a high enough ceiling.
Thankfully in this timeline OR.155T is either going to be cancelled outright or be seriously reduced in technical complexity, the 1957 paper apparently reflected official thinking so might as well put it to some good use even if it isn't quite as severe as our timeline's one. The English Electric Lightning still enters service but after a number of years once the Fairey-Dassault Mirage III has matured it'll probably start taking over. The only slight worry is the slower climb rate but that can be dealt with.
