USN decides to buy The Blackburn Buccaneer....

[zen]

For two seater EW and SEAD/DEAD systems the Buccaneer would be ok.....though in need of a lot of changes in wiring, cockpit layout, avionics etc.
No worse than other two seater aircraft configured for those roles.

There also were AEW studies for using sidescan radar pods and a datalink to the carrier or other suitably equipped warship.

 

[zen]

What could significantly change everything is funding the BE.33 turbojet, albeit accepting a delay because of that.
Being slightly larger, but delivering 11,400lb of thrust with better s.f.c figures than Gyron Junior.
Essentially Spey levels of thrust, but with only very slightly worse s.f.c and a potential to operate at slightly higher altitudes....and definitely higher speeds.
Funding this engine utterly changes everything, well beyond Buccaneer.
As this would likely be installed into Scimitar and Sea Vixen as well as any successor aircraft such as Saro's P.177.
The probabilities are high that BE.33 is a scaled BE.30 Zeus development and BE.30 Zeus was a rival to RB.106 Thames and these are very high performance turbojets.

Weight to power ratios favour these, especially for naval aircraft and certain factions in UK saw such 30" next generation turbojets as the way forward. In fact had called for these designs.
Armstrong produced the P.151, RR I think the RB.123(?) and DeHaviland the Gyron Junior and Bristol the BE.33.
But lack of funds meant the cheapest and quickest option was DH's scaled down Gyron design.

 

[Deleted member 2278]

@zen if you search this site for "BE.33" with the quotation marks, you come up an awful lot. It's getting into hobby-horse territory! No bad thing but perhaps it isn't terribly applicable here. Leaving aside my thoughts on a US Buccaneer - which have not changed - the US adopting yet another in-production British engine is exceedingly unlikely. To get a paper design adopted is simply impossible.

Who will be biting the hand off the British for turbojets in the US c1958? The latter had simply left the former behind (for the time being). P&W, GE and Allison(ish) have superior products without needing to pay for licences. Westinghouse and Curtiss-Wright both had significant issues adapting British engines to US measurements well within even corporate memory - the J65, J67, TJ38 & XJ54 chiefly. If you must force a British engine into this... irrational timeline, the J65-W-7 is superior to the DH Gyron Jnr and the TJ38 on offer in 1958 has 12,500lb thrust available to it. In excess of that I believe to be stated for the BE.33. "American-ized", in production, flight rated.

A dose of realism and rationality in an althis? Madness!

BTW, the J57 had flown supersonic 2 years before the Gyron Junior first ran on a bench. JFYI.

 

[Hood]

Funding this engine utterly changes everything, well beyond Buccaneer.
As this would likely be installed into Scimitar and Sea Vixen as well as any successor aircraft such as Saro's P.177.
The probabilities are high that BE.33 is a scaled BE.30 Zeus development and BE.30 Zeus was a rival to RB.106 Thames and these are very high performance turbojets.

A lot of maybes.
Why would Supermarine bother to put BE.33 into Scimitar? By the time a BE.33/Scimitar combo is ready it's pushing 1961-62 and by then you might as well design a new aircraft rather than hoping a new wing, new fuselage and new engines will make the Scimitar supersonic.
For Sea Vixen Mk.2 maybe.... but acoustic shock on the booms is always a limit and you're still only tarting up a late 1940s airframe....
Saro P.177 is dead in '57 so no show there.
I suppose it might end up in the Type 188.

Would it ultimately be better than a Spey for civil use or be as adaptable for future upgrade like the Spey was? Who can say, its all hypothetical.

In fact as we've discussed before, all these mid-50s high-end engines from AS, Bristol, DH and RR died for one reason - lack of aircraft to put them in. A bespoke BE.33 for the Bucc is no better for the industry than a bespoke Gyron Junior - still a low-number production run engine at the end of the day.

 

[zen]

@zen if you search this site for "BE.33" with the quotation marks, you come up an awful lot. It's getting into hobby-horse territory!

Yeah you're probably right on that front. I'm a bit off colour at the moment.
In my defence, this seems to be a significant factor in why things didn't go so well and how to alter the outcome.
Whether it would is obviously debatable.

When I twiddle about with raw numbers, the size/weight/power/s.f.c of the Avon and even the Gyron Junior is just not quite right.
Which is likely why such engines were called for in the first place. As designs tend to be a bit too big and heavy otherwise.

On the Spey. Timing.
What I'm talking about is in 1954-1960 territory and the Spey is a bit later in origin and later to arrive as a option for designs. NA.39 is '54-55 in decisions.

It's a solid point on the translation issues for adoption by US licensing. Arguably It's in their interests to fund a J52 (memory failure on the precise designation) version.

 

[zen]

A lot of maybes

Yes.

Why would Supermarine bother to put BE.33 into Scimitar?

From decision in 1954? Because it cuts weight, increases available volume for other things and delivers near Avon levels of power.
Supermarine were (rather sadly) pushing Scimitar variants upto 1960.

For Sea Vixen Mk.2 maybe.... but acoustic shock on the booms is always a limit and you're still only tarting up a late 1940s airframe....

What acoustic shock would a dry thrust BE.33 produce that is worse than a dry thrust Avon?

Saro P.177 is dead in '57 so no show there.
I suppose it might end up in the Type 188.

1958 strictly the final death.
Certainly it would be highly probable if it was the chosen powerplant for F.177 and one of the options say for AWA and DH submissions to F155. Decisions being too embedded by '57 as per OTL.

 

[CV12Hornet]

In terms of the engine issue, the solution may be a military version of General Electric's CJ805 engine. It was essentially a non-afterburning J79, and provides only marginally less thrust than the Spey, at the cost of somewhat higher fuel consumption. The timing works - the engine was flying on the Convair 880 in 1959 - and while the airliner version was longer than both the Spey and Gyron Junior removing the thrust reverser would probably solve that problem. Even better, being a J79 derivative means it shares engine components with the Phantom, which would make for easier logistics on the carrier.

 

[zen]

The main wing spars had 'o' ring holes sized to Gyron Junior. Originally Blackburn had tried to keep the option of larger holes for BE.33, but with time pressing, costs rising they had focus on a solution for the prototype and it stuck for production mkI.
The Spey was chosen in part because it could just about be fitted into them and it was a very tight installation.
Although J79 is slightly less diameter overall, it's longer and long at larger diameters over greater length compared to a dry Spey. So it might not be achievable.
Besides Gyron Junior was available earlier and the Spey's lower s.f.c figures deliver greater range.

Similarly J57 is if memory serves larger than Gyron Junior in all dimensions and weighs more.

 

[zen]

If you must force a British engine into this... irrational timeline, the J65-W-7 is superior to the DH Gyron Jnr and the TJ38 on offer in 1958 has 12,500lb thrust available to it.

Look I'm not forcing anything, just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing if anything sticks.
The reason Sapphire or Avon wasn't chosen for final submissions to M.148/NA.39 is because of thrust to weight ratios resulting in heavier aircraft than requirements.
Firms opted for the 'new' smaller higher thrust to weight ratio engines instead to get down weight.
Cannot blame them for all the other applications for such engines being pulled years later. Leaving them with just a limited number of MkI Buccaneers and a pair of Bristol T.188s.

Spey wins later, after civil applications, because it keeps to weight limitations, fits just about in existing wing spars snd delivers yet more thrust and substantially improves s.f.c figures resulting in greater range/endurance.

Anyway J52 is more logical, at the time and likely is the result.....
With a curious possibility that fitting J52 might actually turn into yet another translation problem/saga and the US drops it for another tendering competition.
Which raises another curious question. What happens if the USN has to run that competition later?
Would it remain the same requirements or improved?

 

[MadRat]

J52-powered Buccaneer certainly impacts F-4 and F-111 developments. Not a chance that something good enough gets in the way of either program. The USN could have just as easily looked at an F-101A, rather than the NIH Buccaneer, to check all the boxes. I liked the Buccaneer but the competition was about shiny new toys, not efficiency.

Hmmm, an F-101 carrier aircraft rather than an F3H-2 made sense.

 

[uk 75]

This is an interesting thread which treads the fine line between "fantasy football team* and *paths that were nearly taken."
Unlike the US Marines and the USAF the US Navy has not purchased any postwar British combat aircraft. The Harrier and the Canberra were chosen in the absence of a suitable US aircraft.
The Buccaneer was only bought by South Africa. German interest may or may not have been turned into orders if the UK had been serious about exporting the plane.
The well publicised RAF rejection of the Buccaneer until 1968 would not help matters.
There is one possible way for Buccaneers to get on US carriers. The Vietnam War took a heavy toll on US aircraft carriers on the Yankee Station. While the Wilson government was not going to help in S E Asia, aircraft for US carriers assigned to NATO in the Atlantic and Mediterranean might have been loaned from the RN complete with crews.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

After skimming through the thread the consensus seems to be that the American Buccaneers & their engines would be built in the USA under licence and that the aircraft built before about 1965 wouldn't have Speys.

We've discussed the possibility of fitting Speys to the surviving RN Buccaneer S.1s and concluded that it's feasible because it was studied in the "Real World" (the P.148 of 1967) and the 2 Spey-Buccaneer prototypes were conversions of S.1 prototypes. So the USN & USMC could have had their non-Spey Buccaneers converted to Spey-Buccaneers and as they'd have several hundred of them it might have been a lot more cost effective for them to do so than it would have been to convert the survivors of the 40 British Buccaneer S.1 aircraft.

Consensus also seems to be that Allison would build the Speys for the American Buccaneers because they built the TF41s for the A-7E. The service deliver of the A-7E was in July 1970, but the service delivery of the A-7A was in October 1966 and the A-7s first flight was in September 1965. Therefore, wouldn't one of the knock on effects of the USN buying the Buccaneer be that the A-7 prototypes and the 470-odd A-7A to A-7C would have Spey engines instead of the TF30 too?

Could another knock on effect be that the USN & USAF adopt the Spey-Phantom too? Therefore would USN & USMC models from the F-4J onwards and USAF models from the F-4D onwards have Speys instead of J79s? If they did that's likely to have saved the British taxpayer hundreds of millions of Pounds (when hundreds of millions of Pounds was a lot of money) because the R&D cost of the Spey-Phantom which were in the region of £100 million would have been slashed because they would have been shared with the USA and the production costs would have been considerably less too because there would have been fewer differences between the British Phantoms and the standard Phantoms.

 

[Yellow Palace]

Could another knock on effect be that the USN & USAF adopt the Spey-Phantom too?

I'm not entirely sure why they'd want to. McDonnell Douglas do appear to have tried to sell it to them, but it doesn't really offer any advantages over the J79.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

I'm not entirely sure why they'd want to. McDonnell Douglas do appear to have tried to sell it to them, but it doesn't really offer any advantages over the J79.

Standardisation. Most of the aircraft on the super carriers would be using the same engine. When did it offer the Spey-Phantom to the USN? I have vague recollection that it was offered as an alternative engine for the F-4B, but that's too good to be true for my purposes and is probably a false memory.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

More wishful thinking about the knock on effects of the USN buying the Buccaneer.

• The RF-8 Crusader remained in service with the USN until the 1980s and the F-8 Crusader remained in service with the NRF for as long.
  • According to Norman Polmar in "World Combat Aircraft Directory" 1,261 Crusaders were produced 1954-65 of which 448 were remanufactured 1965-70.
  • In this "Version of History" the remanufactured Crusaders may have received Spey engines and I think they would have if the USA buying the Buccaneer led to the USA buying the Spey-Phantom.
  • France would have bought new 42 Crusaders with Spey engines if the USN had fitted Speys to the 448 remanufactured Crusaders.
• Could the F-14A Tomcat have a pair of Speys instead of a pair of TF30s? However, as far as I know that's something that could have been done in the "Real World" but wasn't.
• Might the S-2 Vikings have had Speys instead of TF34s in the interests of standardisation? However, that's something else that could have done in the "Real World" but wasn't.

The Spey engines would have been built by Allison. How would the extra profits have altered its history from the 1960s onwards? How much money would Rolls Royce have earned in extra royalties? Said extra royalties would have been paid in Dollars, increasing the UK's invisible earnings, which would have pleased HM Treasury no end.

In this "Version of History" what happens to Pratt & Whitney?

The Company would have lost a lot of business due to Allison building the engines for the US-built Buccaneers. It's a dead cert that the 470-odd A-7A to C would have had Speys in this "Version of History" which meant that P&W would have sold at least 470 fewer TF30s.

It would have lost even more business if the Tomcat had Speys instead of TF30s and the Viking had Speys instead of TF34s.

One consequence of Allison building more TF41s might be that it re-fans the Spey in the late 1960s to produce an equivalent to the Tay which would have hurt P&W by reducing its JT8D sales.

In this "Version of History" what happens to General Electric?

The Company would have sold thousands fewer J79 engines if the majority (or even all) of the 5,000-odd Phantoms had been built with Speys. How bad would the financial damage have been?

 

[Yellow Palace]

Standardisation. Most of the aircraft on the super carriers would be using the same engine. When did it offer the Spey-Phantom to the USN? I have vague recollection that it was offered as an alternative engine for the F-4B, but that's too good to be true for my purposes and is probably a false memory.

It was offered a few times to the USN as early as 1964. It often seems to be associated with the F-4L designation - but not exclusively so, it looks like this was associated with an advanced F-4J successor with various engines (J79, TF30, Spey) studied. The variable-geometry F-4 derivatives also look to have preferred the Spey.

Would the F-14A Tomcat have a pair of Speys instead of a pair of TF30s?

It's certainly possible. Neither was a great fighter engine, and the TF30 was only ever meant to be an interim powerplant.

ight the S-2 Vikings have had TF41s instead of TF34s in the interests of standardisation? However, that's something that could have done in the "Real World" but wasn't.

The Spey was much bigger, heavier, and thirstier than the TF34. It's hard to see commonality being enough of an advantage to offset that.

The USN doesn't seem to view commonality as a universal benefit, though. If there's an issue with the Spey engine (say), then the entire carrier air wing is grounded. A mix of types and engines removes that single point of failure.

 

[SSgtC]

Standardisation. Most of the aircraft on the super carriers would be using the same engine. When did it offer the Spey-Phantom to the USN? I have vague recollection that it was offered as an alternative engine for the F-4B, but that's too good to be true for my purposes and is probably a false memory.

The USN was distinctly unimpressed with the Spey Phantom. The only advantages it offered were a slightly longer loiter time when flying CAP missions, and better takeoff performance. But in return, the Phantom saw a significant reduction in top speed, and I believe their climb performance was also reduced. Better takeoff performance was an absolute must for the RN with their shorter decks and weaker cats, but that just wasn't a problem for the USN.

 

[CV12Hornet]

Standardisation. Most of the aircraft on the super carriers would be using the same engine. When did it offer the Spey-Phantom to the USN? I have vague recollection that it was offered as an alternative engine for the F-4B, but that's too good to be true for my purposes and is probably a false memory.

The USN was self-evidently not interested in engine standardization for the entire Cold War. Arguably they still wouldn't be if it weren't for the Super Hornet replacing literally everything.

In this "Version of History" the remanufactured Crusaders may have received Spey engines and I think they would have if the USA buying the Buccaneer led to the USA buying the Spey-Phantom.

Nope. A Spey fit is beyond the scope of even the Crusader rebuilds, for a simple reason: engine diameter. The Spey 202 is a 42" engine, J57 is a 39" engine. What that means is the amount of work you'd have to do for a Spey Crusader is about on par for the Spey Phantom and that amounted to a new aircraft and screwed with the aerodynamics. If the Navy was buying new Crusaders they'd consider it but that ship had long since sailed.

Could the F-14A Tomcat have a pair of Speys instead of a pair of TF30s? However, as far as I know that's something that could have been done in the "Real World" but wasn't.

The TF41 was an Air Force engine, with the Navy preferring the TF30. The TF30 also had the advantage of being recycled from the F-111B project - the Tomcat was all about reusing systems developed for the F-111B.

The USN was distinctly unimpressed with the Spey Phantom. The only advantages it offered were a slightly longer loiter time when flying CAP missions, and better takeoff performance. But in return, the Phantom saw a significant reduction in top speed, and I believe their climb performance was also reduced. Better takeoff performance was an absolute must for the RN with their shorter decks and weaker cats, but that just wasn't a problem for the USN.

Airvectors states their climb performance improved, and given the higher thrust to weight I'm inclined to believe that.

IIRC isn't the Spey also not well suited for high-alt high-speed performance? I remember that being an issue.

 

[zen]

Spey 202 is not 42" diameter, that's the reheat chamber.
The engine is if I reccal something like 37".

 

[SSgtC]

Airvectors states their climb performance improved, and given the higher thrust to weight I'm inclined to believe that.

IIRC isn't the Spey also not well suited for high-alt high-speed performance? I remember that being an issue.

That's what it was. Thank you. I knew there was some kind of issue with the Spey Phantom and altitude, but couldn't remember exactly what it was and I thought it was climb rate

 

[BlackBat242]

More wishful thinking about the knock on effects of the USN buying the Buccaneer.

• Might the S-2 Vikings have had Speys instead of TF34s in the interests of standardisation? However, that's something else that could have done in the "Real World" but wasn't.

In this "Version of History" what happens to Pratt & Whitney?

The Company would have lost a lot of business due to Allison building the engines for the US-built Buccaneers.

It would have lost even more business if the Tomcat had Speys instead of TF30s and the Viking had Speys instead of TF34s.


In this "Version of History" what happens to General Electric?

The Spey was much bigger, heavier, and thirstier than the TF34. It's hard to see commonality being enough of an advantage to offset that.

The USN doesn't seem to view commonality as a universal benefit, though. If there's an issue with the Spey engine (say), then the entire carrier air wing is grounded. A mix of types and engines removes that single point of failure.

The TF34 was a GE engine, not a Pratt.

The Spey was just slightly longer than the TF34 (not an issue with the pylon-mounting) and smaller in diameter.
The Spey was 20% more powerful (11,030 lb vs 9,065 lb) but also weighed ~80% more (2,603 lb vs 1,440 lb).
The Spey also uses .63 lb fuel per lb thrust per hour - while the TF34 only used .37 lbf/lbt/hr!

So the S-3 would have a lower useful payload, and a much shorter range/mission endurance - but with a little better climb/acceleration.

 

[zen]

I wouldn't be looking at Soey for the Viking. Rather a Pegasus derivative.

 

[Yellow Palace]

I wouldn't be looking at Soey for the Viking. Rather a Pegasus derivative.

Any Pegasus derivative would be enormous compared to the TF34. I don't think the UK has ever produced a gas turbine engine appropriate for the S-3.

 

[zen]

Any Pegasus derivative would be enormous compared to the TF34. I don't think the UK has ever produced a gas turbine engine appropriate for the S-3.

Well I think RR sketched variants of the RB.153 with bigger fan sections.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

J52-powered Buccaneer certainly impacts F-4 and F-111 developments. Not a chance that something good enough gets in the way of either program. The USN could have just as easily looked at an F-101A, rather than the NIH Buccaneer, to check all the boxes. I liked the Buccaneer but the competition was about shiny new toys, not efficiency.

Hmmm, an F-101 carrier aircraft rather than an F3H-2 made sense.

No, the F-101 doesn't make sense for the USN. At the time it was still being developed and used as a fighter / interceptor, the USAF was having a number of issues with it and saw it as an interim design that would be replaced in the interceptor role by the F-106.

The design also used two weapons that the USN really didn't use in the air-to-air role, the FFAR and the AIM 4 Falcon. The F-101B's MA-3 fire control system was incompatible with AIM 7 Sparrow and AIM 9 Sidewinder, the USN's preferred missiles. MAC was also having issues with the ducting for the engines, among other issues.

I can't see the US Navy deciding to go with a design that would require new radar, new fire controls, new mountings for missiles, conversion to carrier capability, and ironing out issues with the design. On top of that, the F-101 didn't stay in the USAF inventory as a fighter aircraft all that long either, showing that it really wasn't what either service would have wanted.

See: McMullen History of Air Defense Weapons 1946 - 1962 (declassified).

 

[uk 75]

It is hard to see why the US Navy would move from a combination of F4 and A6 joined later by A7 to any alternatives.
Given the woeful state of the Fleet Air Arm's lineup of Sea Vixen, Scimitar and Buccaneer S1 the UK would not be their first place to look.
If they needed a fighter bomber for the Essex class the Dassault Etendard would have been a better place to look.

 

[CV12Hornet]

Spey 202 is not 42" diameter, that's the reheat chamber.
The engine is if I reccal something like 37".

Nonetheless, the point is that it's wider than both the J79 and J57, enough to cause pretty significant headaches in fitting it to planes designed around the turbojets.

 

[SSgtC]

If they needed a fighter bomber for the Essex class the Dassault Etendard would have been a better place to look.

If they needed a heavy fighter/bomber on the Essex class that badly, they would have just bit the bullet and stuck Phantoms on them. Or if there was some dire need for all weather bombing capability, they could have landed one of the A-4/A-7 squadrons and stuck a squadron of Intruders on board. The ships themselves were physically capable of operating both types, but it came with some pretty hefty tradeoffs in terms of how quickly they'd eat through fuel and ammo stocks. It would also have made already crowded ships even more so.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

An easier solution to the 'bomb truck' for the Essex class would have been to adopt the F5D Skylancer to the fighter-bomber role. Paired with the F8U, the two would have definitely increased the capability of an Essex class by having most or all of the airwing capable of the fighter role (the F5D could use Sparrow, something the F8U couldn't) and with several hard points on each wing would have made a decent bomb truck in the bomber role. On the other hand, the F8U has a higher top speed, and is a better energy fighter.

In terms of operations, the F5D's could have been bombed up--maybe a two-seat version too?-- and the F8U's used as fighter escort. Once the F5D's unload they are capable of air-to-air combat. In another role, the F8U's do the visual on enemy aircraft while the F5D's sit out further and use their Sparrows to pick them off at longer range.

Since the F5D still also had 4 x 20mm cannon, it could be used in a ground support / attack role along with its bombload or other ordinance.

 

[MadRat]

No, the F-101 doesn't make sense for the USN. At the time it was still being developed and used as a fighter / interceptor, the USAF was having a number of issues with it and saw it as an interim design that would be replaced in the interceptor role by the F-106.

The design also used two weapons that the USN really didn't use in the air-to-air role, the FFAR and the AIM 4 Falcon. The F-101B's MA-3 fire control system was incompatible with AIM 7 Sparrow and AIM 9 Sidewinder, the USN's preferred missiles. MAC was also having issues with the ducting for the engines, among other issues.

F-101A was an attack plane. It stayed around as RF-101A. So if we are looking for high speed, low altitude with a bombbay - essentially the calling cards for the Buccaneers - the F-101 could do that. But, yes, F-106 was a better fighter than F-101. It was also pretty much gold plated so it ran out of steam during production very quickly relatively speaking. Obviously the J75 used in F-106 would be better off in F-105 for the attack roles.

The Buccaneer was surprisingly fortunate to operate so long in prestine environments. The aircraft was essentially designed to lose in its role. If the UK had the budget they certainly would not have spent it on buying more (OR BETTER) Buccaneer aircraft. The role was about pound for pound cost efficiency for their niche. They were not interested in better aircraft when they ultimately saw them as likely to get shot down within a sustainable attrition rate.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

F-101A was an attack plane. It stayed around as RF-101A. So if we are looking for high speed, low altitude with a bombbay - essentially the calling cards for the Buccaneers - the F-101 could do that. But, yes, F-106 was a better fighter than F-101. It was also pretty much gold plated so it ran out of steam during production very quickly relatively speaking. Obviously the J75 used in F-106 would be better off in F-105 for the attack roles.

The Buccaneer was surprisingly fortunate to operate so long in prestine environments. The aircraft was essentially designed to lose in its role. If the UK had the budget they certainly would not have spent it on buying more (OR BETTER) Buccaneer aircraft. The role was about pound for pound cost efficiency for their niche. They were not interested in better aircraft when they ultimately saw them as likely to get shot down within a sustainable attrition rate.

The F-101A as a bomber was intended for penetration bombing of targets using a nuclear weapon. In terms of carrying conventional weapons and AAM's it wasn't there. There were still major issues with the plane's design such as the engine inlets having severe issues above Mach 1.4, and a angle of attack issue that would never fully be resolved. This latter would cause the F-101 in a pitch up maneuver to lose flight control due to blanking of the tailplane and it would enter a difficult to impossible to recover from stall and spin.

MAC worked for years on this problem and was never able to fully resolve it.

The F-106 was specifically designed as an all-weather interceptor. It was intended from the outset to be used with SAGE in defense of the North American continent. The F-101 in this role (the F-101B) was merely an interim solution until the 106 became available, and a solution the USAF was not happy with.

What the USN wanted in their carrier mix were aircraft with very different mission capacities.

First, they wanted a missile armed fighter that could attack and shoot down enemy aircraft, particularly long-range bombers, well before they could reach striking range from a carrier. That required, at the time using the AIM-7 Sparrow with longer range than the AIM 4 Falcon radar homing version could reach. For shorter range defense, a plane like the F4D or F-11 Tiger with a high rate of climb and cannons and AIM 9 Sidewinder was preferred.

Attack and bombardment aircraft had the dual roles of ground support for amphibious assaults and ship attack as their primary roles. Nuclear delivery was a secondary mission for the Navy. Thus, the Navy wanted bomb trucks not a supersonic nuclear bomb delivery system using (generally) over-the-shoulder toss bombing. Yes, later the Navy did procure the A5 Vigilante for this role, but it's use in it was very short-lived.

 

[BlackBat242]

Nonetheless, the point is that it's wider than both the J79 and J57, enough to cause pretty significant headaches in fitting it to planes designed around the turbojets.

The J57 had a consistent diameter of 40.02" for both the main body and the afterburner (reheat module).

The Spey 202 had a main body diameter of 37.5", and only the afterburner had a larger diameter - 44".

So only at the very end of the installed Spey 202 would need to have the fuselage adjusted to fit.

The J79 in the early F-4s had a main body diameter of 30.4" and an afterburner diameter of 38.3" - the J79s in the later F-4s had a main body diameter of 31.6" and an afterburner diameter of 39.1".

 

[isayyo2]

Might the S-2 Vikings have had Speys instead of TF34s in the interests of standardisation? However, that's something else that could have done in the "Real World" but wasn't.

The Spey was much bigger, heavier, and thirstier than the TF34. It's hard to see commonality being enough of an advantage to offset that.

The USN doesn't seem to view commonality as a universal benefit, though. If there's an issue with the Spey engine (say), then the entire carrier air wing is grounded. A mix of types and engines removes that single point of failure.

A TF41 mixed with RB.183 Tay bits as a medium-bypass turbofan could be attractive for a VSX candidate. Though such an engine would be more fitting for an A-3 sized Patrol Bomber rather than the S-3 as we know it. The thought of long-legged "SA-3" Patrol Bombers launched from CVN's should give pause to anyone operating from Murmansk, Vladivostok, or Sevastopol...

For the "ultimate" Spey commonality you'd have Tomcats, Vikings, Buccaneers, and Corsairs all running some variation of TF41 + you could replace the LM2500 with Marine Spey as well!

 

[alertken]

We are letting AH fantasy run wild. Spey was reheated for F-4K, so increasing its cost/prolonging R&D, because Phantom was to bridge on 3 RN CVs until CVAs could appear: assessments were that J79 would not do that job. When UK Ministers chose F-4D for RAF they also chose to swallow the higher cost of Spey, unneeded by RAF, to increase UK employment content of the C-130K/F-111K/F-4K/M package. That included a US commitment to help with the $ drain by placing some kind of Offset into UK. McNamara chose Spey (as Allison TF41) for some A-7s.

He had political problems enough in dealing with F-111A, F-111B issues: why would he add a limey engine to that?

If...RN had settled for J79 (tolerating risk of some a/c losses off-deck), to get USN-Spec/price aircraft NOW!, a whole new AH (Industrial/political) opens, because RR would have been in no better a financial position than BSEL after the 1965 cancellations.
Our imagination might embrace BSEL/SNECMA JT9D so a BSEL-led Big Engine UK monopoly.

 

[zen]

alertken
Start a thread on it if you want, I'm sure others will contribute.

 

[Yellow Palace]

McNamara chose Spey (as Allison TF41) for some A-7s.

Not so, Ken - the USAF had chosen TF41 Spey for it's A-7s before the issue of offsetting the UK purchases came up. This was something of a political issue in the UK, with questions asked in the Commons about whether it really counted as an offset since the US would be licencing the Spey anyway!

 

[BlackBat242]

Not so, Ken - the USAF had chosen TF41 Spey for it's A-7s before the issue of offsetting the UK purchases came up. This was something of a political issue in the UK, with questions asked in the Commons about whether it really counted as an offset since the US would be licencing the Spey anyway!

That could be considered to have been influenced by MacNamara... as the USAF purchase of the A-7 had been pushed by MacN in the name of commonality (although the USAF insisted on its own version {A-7D} with a more-powerful engine {enhanced Spey, the TF41}, M61 cannon, etc) and lower cost than a bespoke USAF replacement for the A-1s and the F-series fighters the USAF was using for the ground-attack job.

The USN then decided they liked what the USAF had done with the SLUF, and ordered the A-7E with the same engine and gun.

 

[alertken]

buy anyway: the same point would arise in 1987 when US had an Offset obligation for 7xRAF E-3D and set against it RB211-535s for US carriers' 757s. Foul! we claimed, done deal. No, they said, we refrained from interfering. Same point arose over first Saudi deal,, Lightnings, 12/65, Offset to F-111K. Foul! we said, we won fair and square; no you didn't said US, we reined back on pitching Lockheed, Northrop.

Recent deals, by UK and others, have been without Offset: just do the best at the best price.

 

[Yellow Palace]

One thing struck me about this post by H_K over on the Centaur class carrier thread: the Buccaneer was incredibly compact compared to the A-6 - folded, it's actually slightly smaller than an F-8.

When the USN experimented with the all-Grumman air wing in the 1980s, it wound up replacing two squadrons of A-7s with one of A-6s. With Buccaneers replacing both, it would probably be possible to do two squadrons of fighters and three of all-weather strike aircraft, replicating what had been done with F-8s and A-4s on the smaller ESSEX class.

That wouldn't be enough to get the USN to buy Buccaneers. But it's an interesting prospect all the same.

 

[BlackBat242]

One thing struck me about this post by H_K over on the Centaur class carrier thread: the Buccaneer was incredibly compact compared to the A-6 - folded, it's actually slightly smaller than an F-8.

When the USN experimented with the all-Grumman air wing in the 1980s, it wound up replacing two squadrons of A-7s with one of A-6s. With Buccaneers replacing both, it would probably be possible to do two squadrons of fighters and three of all-weather strike aircraft, replicating what had been done with F-8s and A-4s on the smaller ESSEX class.

That wouldn't be enough to get the USN to buy Buccaneers. But it's an interesting prospect all the same.

It wasn't really an "experiment".

It was forced on the USN by the not-quite-meshing plans for:
1. retiring the A-7
2. Standing up the F/A-18 in the A-7's place
3. refitting the carriers with the appropriate support equipment for the F/A-18s (mostly avionics & engines, but also for airframe maintenance on the composite horizontal stabilizers etc)

# 1 & #2 were proceeding pretty much on-schedule, but #3 was falling behind - to the point where the USN was faced with the choice of either deploying CV-61 Ranger and CV-67 JFK with 2 F-14 squadrons, 2 A-6 squadrons, and the normal support aircraft - or deploying them with 2 F-14 squadrons, 1 A-6 squadrons, and the normal support aircraft!

There simply weren't enough A-7 squadrons still operational to fill all of the required deployed CVW slots, so the USN decided to double-up on the Intruder squadrons... hence my deploying aboard CV-61 in 1985-87 in support of VMA(AW)-121 (-121 also made the 1988-89 deployment cycle) alongside VA-145. VA-155 and their A-6s then made the 1990-91 and 1992-93 deployments alongside VA-145.


Ranger was chosen because she had just come out of a major refit in 1985, and wasn't scheduled for another for several more years.
As things turned out, she never did get fitted for F/A-18s because she was decommissioned early (in 1993, after 36 years of service), due to the collapse of the Soviet Union.


JFK was also not due for another refit for several years, and she carried 2 A-6 squadrons for the 1986-87 and 1988-89 deployments, She reverted to a 1xA-6 & 2xA-7 complement for the 1990-91 Desert Storm deployment, after which she was fitted for F/A-18s. She was the only carrier with A-7s after 1990.


All other carriers operated A-7s until they were fitted for F/A-18s. and yes, they operated 2 F-14 squadrons, 2 F/A-18 squadrons, and 1 A-6 squadron - until the A-6s were retired in 1993-97, when the carriers then shipped a 3rd F/A-18 squadron (F/A-18E/Fs) to replace them (the USMC retired theirs from 1990-93, replacing them with F/A-18Ds).