Was this the ultimate nuclear strike aircraft?
In 1951, Britain introduced the English Electric Canberra. Designed to operate at high level, it would go onto become the RAF‘s longest serving machine. It was an incredibly efficient aircraft, but by the late 1950s everything changed. The Soviet Union brought into service brand new surface-to-air missiles and overnight the Canberra was vulnerable. Now the British government needed a new aircraft, one that could beat this threat and fly under the radar. It was a huge ask for the technology of the time, but had it been successful the aircraft itself would have been a world beater. In this episode of Duxford in Depth, Liam Shaw takes a detailed look at the aircraft that never was, the BAC TSR-2.