The Quick & The Dead.

[VC10]

Lief,

Thanks for giving us the background behind your opinion.

I don't think anybody is having a pop at Gloster's per se but it is more of a general comment about the UK industry as a whole. We came out of WW2 with second biggest aircraft manufacturing industry in the world and in the space of 30 years it was virtually destroyed, admittedly with the help of politicians. On the other hand France's industry was wrecked by WW2 and now the UK industry is subservient to Toulouse. I seriously doubt Warton will be around in another 20 years.

I would like to pick up a couple of points though.

You say Waterton had a 'told you so' attitude. If he had 'told them so' and the powers that be had decided to ignore his observations and Waterton's view was proved to be correct, he had every right to have that attitude.

Dicky Martin rolling the Javelin after T.O. - Martin wasn't flying the first prototypes.

To quote from the Warpaint booklet on the Javelin

"There were weaknesses that were far too restrictive. Above 20,000ft and M.95, pilots were limited to 3g maneuvers if the ventral tank had any fuel in it and only 4g if empty, hardly enough in a combat situation. The power controls were such that it was easy to overcook thinks with the result much time was spent staying within the limits rather than concentrating on the opposition........

Javelin plus marks were two engines and good single engine performance, fully powered, well balanced controls with duplicated hydraulics, a good armament of guns and 4 missiles.

Negatives were a lack of thrust with reheat only useable when fuel pump output exceeded normal engine demands, a complex fuel system where it was possible to cross transfer in such a way as to starve both engines , restricted flight envelope with looping, stalling and spinning prohibited (unreal for a fighter), low level speed restricted to 535 knots, 'g' limits too low (5.5 to as little a 3 in some flight conditions, no spin recovery chute, and an inverted flight time limited to 15 secs.

Air-to-air combat between different types of a/c is very much horses for courses; fighters that dominate at low level can be found wanting against the same opponent at medium to high level. But the Javelins great navel rival, the Sea Vixen, could usually come out best at most heights since the RAF machine was minimum speed limited and the Sea Vixen could scissor around at slow speed; the Javelins big advantage here was its cannon where the Vixen had none. The Javelin could match the Hunter above 20,000ft because at high level it could out-turn it.

Source - Brian Carrol who accrued over 1,000 hrs on Mk 5 & Mk 9 aircraft.

Many modifications were needed to clear the Javelin for service; a total of 9 marks spread over just 430 production aeroplanes tells its own story".


Waterton said during the design stage that the a/c didn't have enough internal fuel capacity and this and some other perceived deficiencies were ignored until a USAF pilot flew the a/c and confirmed Waterton's opinion.