Or instead of 583 and TSR2 and indeed pretty much almost anything else save perhaps VG twin seat Lightning, go for Buccaneer the potential F18 of its day (as in does everything). Go for the souped up supersonic version and heck there is even an ADV type toting up to a half dozen (usually just 4) AAM variants of Sea Dart aka CF299. The p139 concept was based on Buccaneer. So imagine you might even end up with CVA01 because you have made savings on no silly projects a la TSR2 and HS1154...and now you have an all Buccy wing through to the 1990s at least.
Fairey FD2/Mirage Replacing the Lightning?
- Thread starter Simon
- Start date
Well that and the Supermarine Type 576 do seem to be the two main options. The 576 would however require stretching a little and a bit of a rejig if you wanted to add a second seat. I'm somewhat leery of variable geometry, especially on naval aircraft, since wasn't the F-14 somewhat maintenance heavy? You also have to be careful that the extra weight involved doesn't cancel out much of the benefits of it. Tornado seems to have done okay but that was a decade and half or more later.Supermarine Type 583, proposed in the early 60's as a Sea Vixen replacement, probably the only serious indigenous alternative to the Phantom.
Yes the Speys were crucial, putting them into the Phantom was (despite it's cost) the cheapest high performance alternative available to Britain. The 2 seat Spey Crusader is a medium performance alternative and to develop a plane from scratch will cost at least 100 million pounds, probably closer to the 200 million that the British govt decided was too much when developing the TSR2.
Having a rethink on this and either a Gnat that develops into something similar to the A-4 Skyhawk entering service at roughly the same time or just buying it from the US has possibilities. Granted it would require enlarging the Gnat by roughly 40% length-wise, 20% on the wingspan, almost doubling the height and re-doing the wings though. The attraction would be that with an earlier in-service date for the Sea Vixen it gives you a decent pairing of attack aircraft and all-weather fighter until the Buccaneer and F-4 or alternative show up in the early 60s. It would also mean that the Scimitar isn't pressed into the attack role, something which is was fairly unsuited for IIRC, whilst still possibly allowing for it to continue to be developed.
Delta Force
Banned
Here is some information on planned development of the Gnat, including the navalized version. I actually posted in that thread a few days ago and am thinking of having the Gnat as a Commonwealth F-5 in my timeline. Apparently it could have done more than that, later variants were capable of being a supersonic replacement for the Hawker Hunter. I think Mosquito II would have been a fitting name for the later marks in keeping with the pattern of naming aircraft of the series after insects belonging to the suborder nematocera (the Gnat's predecessor was the Molland). The only other alternative in keeping with the pattern would be to call it the Folland Fly, but I think that would be a more fitting name for a supersonic trainer variant.
Continuing to think on this occasionally. Several factors though that people can hopefully help with are likely to affect how things play out. The three main questions I have are
- When did the Royal Navy switch from deck launch interception (DLI) to combat air patrol (CAP)?
- When did NATO switch over from their nuclear 'tripwire' policy to one of flexible response?
- And when did we start to see hybrid computers, the mid-step between analogue and digital ones, first appearing in aircraft?
That's a very good question. The most logical explanation I can come up with is that need to consider the dates - the navy started looking towards a new aircraft in 1946, the specification was issued in 1947, it first flew in 1951 and considering how short development periods were then and for the aircraft of the period that had just preceded it they must have been expecting it to enter service a couple of years after that at most in say 1953. This was all, especially the initial work and specification, well before aircraft like the Canberra or B-52 had entered the picture so they probably weren't expecting opposition that could later fly so fast or so high. When the Soviets start test flying and then introducing aircraft like the Tupolev Tu-16 Badger and Tu-95 Bear in their naval aviation units whose increased speed and service ceilings starts drastically cutting into the time defending aircraft have to get up to height and out to meet them far enough away from the carrier and accompanying ships they've got a problem. Same goes for aircraft stationed in a country that shares a border with an unfriendly neighbour such as West Germany where you can have limited response time from when enemy aircraft can be picked up on radar and crossing the border.
This then prompts people to start looking at combined jet- and rocket-powered interceptors like the SR.53 and later SR.177 since we're still in the early to mid stages of jet development and afterburner/reheat equipped engines weren't really there yet. In the meantime the Sea Vixen takes an age and a day to finally enter service by which time it's already starting to become obsolete, but because of all the money sunk into it and that it's the only real domestically built option just have to take it. Reheat by this point has been perfected, jet engines have become more powerful and fuel efficient, and aircraft such as the F-4 were taking their first flight only a year after the SR.177s. This allows you to do things like mount a standing CAP with aircraft that have a very good turn of speed, will already be at height and have a much more developed radar. On the RAF side of things they've already buggered off with the English Electric Lightning. It all seems to hang together and in the typical slightly screwed-up British military procurement mysteries manner, whether it's correct or not sue to unseen variables I can't say for sure.