Classic Lecture - TSR-2: Building the industrial coalition by Prof Keith Hayward FRAeS

Keith Hayward explores the politics and personalities behind the TSR-2 project, which, at its heart, was a tension between two separate design teams in two different companies, with the young pretenders at English Electric headed by Frederick Page and the shrewd Sir George Edwards heading the team at Vickers. Pressure was added to the relationship as the TSR-2 contract was used to encourage the rationalisation of the UK aerospace industry, with the Vickers and English Electric on to form the core of the British Aircraft Corporation. Though the TSR-2 team found common cause in meeting the increasingly string-net requirements of Whitehall, Keith Hayward asks the question, ‘Did those from Warton and Weybridge finally find romance?’