Joint RN-MN carrier fighter in the 60s?

Couldn't the requirement be written for a work exchange? Say the Atlantic is licensed to the British instead of them developing the Nimrod, with the British redoing the avionics, with the carrier fighter being a British show? Admitedly they would need to build to the 35k figure but... between the money saved on the Nimrod program and a 25% buy in from the French that might make the project viable.
 

Riain

Banned
Yeah, I'm noticing that as well. Probably the best way would be to get the Armee de l'air on board, but they're not looking to replace the Mirage IIIC as an interceptor until the mid-60s. And frankly with 256 Mirage F1s bought IOTL they'd end up dominating the conversation anyway to the detriment of the project.

Yep, oh well, I thought it was a pretty good idea yesterday! :hushedface:

Looks like the RN will go the Spey Phantom, but without the P1154 debacle so will perhaps find the money to fit Phantoms with Red Tops.

As for the French, there was a proposal for a Spey powered Twosader with a RIO in the back seat, perhaps France cold take this up or perhaps just the Spey as it was much newer and more fuel efficient than the old J57 of early 50s F100 vintage.
 
Yep, oh well, I thought it was a pretty good idea yesterday! :hushedface:

Looks like the RN will go the Spey Phantom, but without the P1154 debacle so will perhaps find the money to fit Phantoms with Red Tops.

As for the French, there was a proposal for a Spey powered Twosader with a RIO in the back seat, perhaps France cold take this up or perhaps just the Spey as it was much newer and more fuel efficient than the old J57 of early 50s F100 vintage.

Yes, yes, and YES - the Spey Twosader. I think it's the only viable option. From the British side it was a Short Brothers proposal.

From the French side, it is even better...
- Vought LOVED the French Navy since 1939 and the V-156F Vibrator / Wind Indicator / Cheesecake. Later F-4U and AU-1 in Algeria.
- Vought flirted with both Dassault and Aerospatiale in the 60's - they didn't cared, so why not Breguet ?
- OTL SNECMA took a TF30 licence from Pratt for all these Mirage prototypes (1962- 1969)
- ITTL, get them into RR arms and give them a Spey licence (they need to learn turbofans for the coming M53)
- As for Breguet, get them involved through BLC. The Breguet 941, Buccaneer, and French OTL Crusader all had BLC, one way or another

End result: A Vought - Breguet - Short Twosader, with a RR-SNECMA Spey.

Icing on the cake:
- the A-7D and A-7E are coming... with a licence-build Spey, this time by Allison.
- the French Navy OTL was interested in the A-7 by 1972 to replace the Etendard IV

There is some huge potential here, to build two potent coalitions
- the Vought coalition
- the Spey coalition

With these two, post 1965 aviation history can see massive changes.

Some words about SNECMA - in 1959 unable to get themselves out of the Atar ghetto, they flirted with RR, Pratt, Bristol and Orenda to take a licence of a big turbojet, to power a French B-58: the (aborted) Mirage IV-B. SNECMA would trade 15% of its shares... and the winner was Pratt J75. Later (1962) this was re-activated for the TF30.
Now, had SNECMA sold his soul to RR to get the RB.141 Medway for the Mirage IV-B in 1959... in 1963, it might have been Spey, not TF30.
(this did not prevented OTL the 1963 Olympus agreement for Concorde, although that was civilian aviation... SNECMA also slept with General Electric later, CFM56, cough).
 
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Riain

Banned
The Twosader , even with the Spey, doesn't meet RN requirements. It only carries 2 Red Tops for starters and the radar is very small and therefore short ranged.
 
The Twosader , even with the Spey, doesn't meet RN requirements. It only carries 2 Red Tops for starters and the radar is very small and therefore short ranged.
The trouble with the RN requirements is that aircraft that could meet them couldn't really be accommodated on existing RN carriers without heavy modifications and in reasonable numbers.
 
At the end of the day... France and GB OR here are polar opposites.

French Navy "we need a naval supersonic fighter because the Etendard IVM is only worth for strike, nor air defense of the fleet.
- the only games in town are Phantom or Crusader
- whatever fits on Foch and Clemenceau, and goes past Mach 1.5
- well, Crusaders then.
Ok, let's go for Crusaders, fine, thank you."

Royal Navy "AW406" "what's that ? " - STOL VG naval supersonic long range interceptor with extra loiter time and large radar dish and advanced missiles..."
 

Riain

Banned
The trouble with the RN requirements is that aircraft that could meet them couldn't really be accommodated on existing RN carriers without heavy modifications and in reasonable numbers.

When the Phantom order was announced on 1 July 1964 the Government policy was that there were 2 carriers on station East of Suez and1 available in Home waters assigned to Strike Group 2 within NATO Strike Fleet Atlantic. This policy meant the RN needed 4.5 fleet carriers (Centaur was the .5) on strength so 1 could be in the yard for major refit on in the builder's hands. To this end some 3.5 million pounds (~5% of the total ship cost) of long lead items for CVA01 had been ordered by January 1966 some 18 months after the Phantom order to maintain these 3 carriers on the line into the early 70s.

So while a lot of attention is paid the the Hermes and Victorious the main ships for the P1154/Phantom fleet from the date of the order until the new carriers were cancelled were really to be Eagle, CVA01 and CVA01. Even after CVA01 & 02 were cancelled in Feb 1966 the Labour Government decided to refit the Ark Royal for Phantoms so between Feb 1966 and Jan 1968 the ships for the already ordered Phantom fleet were to the the Eagle and Ark Royal.

As for the modifications, the long nosewheel oleo extension and the increased flap deflection were being offered as options on F4Bs from 1963, long before the RN was seriously looking at the aircraft. The rest have as much to do with RN policy on return weights for bringing back unused ordnance as they did about the small size of the Eagle/Ark, and we know the F4K operated quite comfortably on the Ark for 8 years and would have been even better suited to Eagle and CVA01&02.
 
Notably, when it came time to design a mach 2 fighter for CVA-01, before the Phantom purchase was put up as an option, most of the tenders were variable geometry aircraft in the same weight class as the Phantom, i.e. with better takeoff and landing characteristics.
 

Riain

Banned
Twosader carried no Red Top missiles IIRC.

No, it was never a real contender for the RN, the same way the MN looked at the Phantom as a way to apply some due diligence to strike it off the list.

However we know the F8E had fuselage pylons which the French used for a single R530, and a single underwing pylon that was mainly used for drop tanks and not very often at that. If the Twosader was loaded with 4 Red Tops weighting 1,300lbs it would be a bit of a slug, even with the Spey giving it extra power over the J57.
 

Riain

Banned
Royal Navy "AW406" "what's that ? " - STOL VG naval supersonic long range interceptor with extra loiter time and large radar dish and advanced missiles..."

Get rid of the VTOL part and the rest is perfectly feasible, the VG being one way to make it so, the other as we saw with the F4K was extensive use of blown flaps and other high lift devices.

In short, they wanted a Tomcat for the size and prize of a Crusader

They never wanted an aircraft the size of a Crusader, 50,000lbs was pretty much standard, as for price, even the Crusader was far more expensive than they wanted. Ideally they would have gotten an aircraft performed like a Tomcat that cost the same as a Sopwith Camel, although I suspect the tightarse British Treasury would still whinge and try to chisel down the cost!
 

Riain

Banned
The problem is that Ark Royal is not materially viable past 1972 in the minds of the Royal Navy of 1963, so she'd be the one to be paid off alongside victorious when CVA-01 commissions, and CVA-02 was already dead on arrival by then. Hermes is desperately needed to keep up three carriers; the Brits were very much crossing their fingers and hoping a proper replacement materialized by 1980.

I've been thinking about this again.

How much was the 1963 plan to keep Hermes predicated on the assumption that the P1154 was VTOL/STOVL and could operate from the small but in good condition Hermes?

Upon cancellation of CVA01, with CATOBAR planes that couldn't practically operate from Hermes ordered and in production, the Government decided to refit Ark Royal to handle them and planned the same for the Eagle.

Surely this option had been looked at and offered to the Government prior to Feb 1966? If VTOL/STOVL wasn't on the cards in 1961-64 would the Hermes still be front and centre of future plans, or would the bigger Ark be reappraised despite her looming costs?
 
I've been thinking about this again.

How much was the 1963 plan to keep Hermes predicated on the assumption that the P1154 was VTOL/STOVL and could operate from the small but in good condition Hermes?

Upon cancellation of CVA01, with CATOBAR planes that couldn't practically operate from Hermes ordered and in production, the Government decided to refit Ark Royal to handle them and planned the same for the Eagle.

Surely this option had been looked at and offered to the Government prior to Feb 1966? If VTOL/STOVL wasn't on the cards in 1961-64 would the Hermes still be front and centre of future plans, or would the bigger Ark be reappraised despite her looming costs?
I've done some research - thank you, Secret Projects forums - and while I'm sure that was at least partially the case prior to the Phantom decision once the decision had been made the Royal Navy expected the F-4K, with its better takeoff and landing characteristics, to be able to operate Phantoms. Then they actually tested the F-4K and they found they'd been overly optimistic with the plane's characteristics and that it could not, in fact, fly off of Hermes. By then it was 1966 and the carrier fleet was contracting.
 

Riain

Banned
I've done some research - thank you, Secret Projects forums - and while I'm sure that was at least partially the case prior to the Phantom decision once the decision had been made the Royal Navy expected the F-4K, with its better takeoff and landing characteristics, to be able to operate Phantoms. Then they actually tested the F-4K and they found they'd been overly optimistic with the plane's characteristics and that it could not, in fact, fly off of Hermes. By then it was 1966 and the carrier fleet was contracting.

Thanks for that.

I think one of the hardest things with these sorts of topics, which is why I started this thread in the first place, is that we see stuff like plans and considerations written down 65 years ago but struggle to place them as a snapshot in time and how much weight was given to this or that investigation. Things like the RN was going to build 5 CVAs, which was true enough in 1960 planning but not by 1964, similarly the RN looked at the Twosader, which they surely did but not nearly as hard as they looked at the P1154 and F4B. If the RAF gets it's shit together the Navy has to go its own way which will affect which carriers will and won't make it.
 
No, it was never a real contender for the RN, the same way the MN looked at the Phantom as a way to apply some due diligence to strike it off the list.

My head juggles a bit now - 1st it carried two, now it carried no missiles?

However we know the F8E had fuselage pylons which the French used for a single R530, and a single underwing pylon that was mainly used for drop tanks and not very often at that. If the Twosader was loaded with 4 Red Tops weighting 1,300lbs it would be a bit of a slug, even with the Spey giving it extra power over the J57.

With Spey, it will be no more a slug than MiG-23 carrying two R-23s and 4 R-60s, let alone more of a slug than Mirage F1 with it's missile arsenal.
 
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