TSR-2 ~ Phoenix, or Folly?

Signed by the author on the title page
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4 TSR-2 crew on the facing page

Jimmy Dell ~ Pilot 
Don Knight ~ Pilot
Brian McCann ~ Navigator
Len Dean ~ Groundcrew
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Bookplate signed by
Roland Beamont ~ TSR-2 Chief Test Pilot

GMS Enterprises First Edition 1994.  256 pages and well-illustrated with photographs

Fine condition hardback book in green boards. Clean, bright and tight. In a Fine condition unclipped dustjacket with a little sun fade to the spine. The book comes with a collection of period newspaper cuttings relating to the TSR-2.

A comprehensive overview of the TSR-2 programme which was supposed to be the major initiative of the RAF and the British aircraft industry. It was a weapons platform designed to penetrate enemy airspace at high speed and very low level. A highly complex, technically advanced aircraft which was one of the few to survive the 1957 Defence White Paper. This book describes the genesis of the TSR 2 and traces the scope creep and MoD interference which delayed the development, along with the technical trials and tribulations which beset the aircraft.  Later chapters cover the aircrew, the personalities and the politics which eventually led to the aircraft’s controversial cancellation, ostensibly on cost grounds, or possibly something else, hinted at by rapid destruction of all the unfinished airframes and jigs. 

This very collectable book, enhanced by the signatures of many of the aircrew, examines the tragedy of the TSR-2. With the benefit of hindsight, it forecasts only too clearly, the decline of the British Aerospace industry during the ’70s and ’80s.