Really, really dumb decisions

[tigercat2]

All,

In the course of designing and producing aircraft, some really, really dumb decisions have been made.  Since I am most familiar with the USAF, I'll list a few of the major ones (IMHO) here.  Of course there are many factors that go into such decisions, but some really stand out as being incredibly stupid.

For me, tops on the list was the decision in 1968 (by the US DoD, I believe) to order Lockheed to scrap all the SR-71/A-12 tooling.  Kelly Johnson in his book said this was really, really dumb, but they did it and sold the tooling for 10 cents on the dollar.  The US went out of their way to destroy any chance of building more Blackbirds, and destroyed a large part of the collective expertise in developing this technology.

Close to this was the decision to retire the SR fleet in 1990.  

Next was the decision to cancel the B-1 in 1977 -fortunately this was reversed in 1981 by Reagan.

Also, the decision not to proceed with the B-70 was pretty dumb.  I know the usual arguments about survivability, but it seems that the lessons learned in building and operating such a fleet would have been invaluable.

What about similar decisions from other countries.  Two that come to mind are the Avro Arrow and the TSR-2.  



Wes W.

[Captain Canada]

Well, the Arrow is our biggie, that's for sure......

But the assholes that ran the country in the 50s should have bought a few Avro Jetliners. But, they bought the DH Comet instead ! How fecked up is that........

Buying the Voodoo, 104 and CF-5 was another cock-up.......we could have had Phantoms !

I'm sure there's more.......but in more recent years, we spent millions to upgrade our Chinook fleet, and then sold them for less than the cost of the upgrades.......

Not re-engining out Tracker fleet w/turbines, and keeping them for fisheries patrols etc.

poo-poo-canning all our Challenger and T-33 EW fleet.

Spending millions on upgrades ( mostly glass cockpits ) on the T-33 and CF-5 fleet, only to retire them upon completion.......

And a good replacement for our SAR Buffalos ? How about more Buffalos ! And we could build an estra few to support our waaaay overworked Hercules fleet.

And the latest, was buying S-92 for the Navy. We already fly the Cormorant, and the RN has already footed the bill for the Merlin sea-going variant, so let's buy a glorified school bus in the S-92.

Bah......

Maybe, if I was on the bottle, I could think of a million more !

Oh, scrapping the Bonnie......condemning the runways at CFB Borden, the birthplace of the RCAF......buying Griffon choppers for the CAF. To big for recon/liason, to small for tac.hel work.......

and on and on !

 

[elmayerle]

The decision to scrap the SR-71/A-12 tooling was earlier than 1968, 1966 if I remeber correctly and was at McNamara's specific order so that no F-12B's could be produced.

They at least could've built a few more B-70 prototypes so that the loss of one would not kill the program (at least the loss of any other than the first one, the second and all future ones would've incorporated the lessons learned in building the first one - but they didn't and then they lost the second one).  I'm not totally certain it would've made production, I've heard some stories about some of the problems it had that aren't generally discussed but which would've required lots of effort to fix.

The most really, really, exceedingly dumb decision for Great Britain is obviously Duncan Sandys move in 1957 to stop all combat aircraft development because missiles would take over.  Not agressively pursuing aeronautical developement right after WW II and giving engines to the Soviets rank up there, too.  As does 'most anything the Wilson government did.

One, in retrospect, really dumb commerical decision was in the late 50's when Rolls refused to build proper repair and support facilities for a new engine in the US.  This engine was intended for the launch of a new airliner and Rolls attitude was about to kill the program; so the manufacturer went to another engine company who took an existing two-spool turbojet and, following  a path they'd used before, swapped on the low-pressure compressor for a fan and put in a more powerful low-pressure turbine.  Thus was born the JT8D to save Boeing's 727 program when Rolls refused Eastern Airline's request that major servicing work and spares be done in this country on the Spey variant that Boeing had originally specified for the tri-jet.  Considering how many JT8D's P&W has sold, the decisiosn by Rolls qualifies as an "own goal".

[Hobbes]

There's a whole book full of Britain's blunders ('Project Cancelled' by Derek Wood). The Sandys White Paper is one of the biggest, but the problems start earlier than that. By the end of WW2, Britain had far too many aircraft design groups for its own good. The government completely botched the consolidation of all that talent, with the result that lots of money was wasted on underfunded (ie going nowhere) studies and competing designs.
The decision to end the Miles M.52 supersonic research project was one early disaster. The Brits had a chance to beat the American X-1 project to Mach 1, but blew it (and lost all the know-how that would have resulted from the project).
Had all this been handled better, the British aircraft industry would have been a lot stronger now, with European countries more likely to buy British rather than American aircraft designs. Britain could have won the massive contracts that now went to the F-104 and F-16, for instance.

This, BTW, is remarkably similar to what happened in the British car industry, where dozens of companies were shoveled into one behemoth of a company called British Leyland, which instead of profiting from the economies of scale this made possible, kept creating cars that used unique components, and worse, kept designing their own competition (Austin vs Morris and Triumph vs MG, for instance).  

[Swamphen]

IIRC there was actually an order placed for 80 or 90 F-12s, but MacNinny sliced the item out of the budget.  


The funny/sad thing is, we ooh and ahh about the performance of the Blackbird, but the only reason it's exceptional is because it's the only survivor of that generation of aircraft - SR-71, F-12, F-108, B-70, all of which were Mach 3+/super-high-altitude performers.

And the SAM threat was way overrated...

[tigercat2]

Regarding the Blackbird, IIRC the USAF wanted 93 F-12Bs and had the money set aside for these - this would have provided coverage for both the East and West Coasts of the US.  For 2 or 3 years in a row, McNamara saw to it that this request was not funded, and then went out of his way to destroy all the tooling.

The SAM threat was over-rated, I agree.  The SR-71 overflew NVN, N Korea and probably China with impunity - hundreds of SAMs were fired but there was only one case, I believe, of a bit of shrapnel from one of the SAMS ever hitting an SR.

As far as performing the intercept mission, I have always thought that the F-108 would probably have been better than the F-12, since it was designed from the start as a quick-reaction interceptor that could launch within a few minutes of the scramble order.  The F-12 was a modification of the A-12, and while it probably could have been modified to be a quick reaction aircraft, this may have been expensive.  Of course by the time the USAF wanted to develop the F-12B, it was the only game in town, the F-108 having been cancelled during mock up in Sept 1959.  


Wes W

[Hobbes]

That the SR-71 was never downed is IMO no proof that 'the SAM threat was overrated'. It's just proof that the SR-71 was an adequate answer to the SAM threat, when other aircraft weren't. The V-75 (SA-2), deployed in 1958,  was "intended for defeat of manned and pilotless air attack weapons at the heights from 100 m to 30 km, which fly with speeds of up to 3000 km/h, at the distances to 58 km." Gary Powers was downed by a V-75, which showed that flying at high altitude wasn't sufficent to counter the V-75.  

[Davey B]

Crap decisions? ohh, loads...

Never building the Hawker P.1121, cancelling the TSR.2, not building a long-range Spitfire, ordering the Tornado ADV over the F-14, F-15 (or even the Mirage 4000), never building a decent high-speed recce bird...

And that's just us! As for the US, the SR-71 thing is paramount.  

[Gary]

The guys behind the canning of the Avro Jetliner was that moron in charge of Avro at the time. Like everyone, he fell into lockstep over the Arrow and shoved the Jetliner to a remote part of the airstrip to fall apart in the rain and snow. The production minister at the time was specific at the time about Avro working on Arrow, but at the exact same time Avro found the resources to produce CF100's at and looking into flying saucers and so on. Had that guy whose name escapes me right now, been on the ball in any way shape or form, he'd have pursued the less glamous Jetstar with a seperate staff, the same as a seperate staff were responsable for Avro's other projects, instead of only going after the silver bullet military projects. ( I think the idiot was Crawford Gorden)

[retro_seventies]

ordering the Tornado ADV

I HATE MYSELF for liking the mediocre skyflash carrying, blue circle concrete nosed. second rate, poor substitute for an interceptor that we bought, but i can't help it...

i like the tornado adv.

lots.

there - flay me alive....  

[Ollie]

Here what we should have had.

F-4s.

Cormorant naval variant.

Blackhawks and Kiowas for the army.

Chinooks.

What about V-22s to replace the Buffalos?

And we could replace the Buffalos and help the Hercs with a few C-27Js.

[Swamphen]

There was a big discussion over on the History, Politics and Current Affiairs Fiction Board during "Crusade" about the SAM threat deal. When you get into the Mach 3/70,000-foot range, the SAMs don't have sufficent reaction time, and that's just the start of it...

Don't remember all the details, but there's a few screwy bits about that U-2 dowing as well.

[noxioux]

Right off the bat, it's completely and unforgiveably stupid to destroy the tooling for any military aircraft, especially aircraft like the A-12/SR-71 and the Arrow.  I would say the more advanced and the more expensive the aircraft was to develop and produce, the more reason we have for saving that stuff.  The historical value alone is worth more to the public than the pittance they'd get for scrapping it.

And I think that at least up to a certain point, the strategic value of being able to retool and restart production on a certain type of aircraft would be worth something.  You never know.  The SR-71 is a good example--it's still way ahead of anything any other country can fly against it.  It still has a good tactical and strategic value.  It would be nice to have the capacity to build more of them, if necessary.

I don't want to rub salt in you Canadian's wounds, but the Arrow is a perfect example of that kind of stupidity.  I wouldn't put the SR-71 up at that level of dumbness, but it's close.

One of the medim-sized aircraft stupidities was the missile thing.  First, that unmanned missiles, however guided, were all that you'd need to intercept inbound enemy aircraft.  That spawned a whole bunch of dumness.  Second, the idea that fighters no longer needed guns because the speed and distance of modern air-to-air warfare would make missiles the only practical weaponry.  Thank heavens both ideas were debunked before more serious damage could be done.

I think I would have to put the B-2 in there somewhere.  I won't put it in the completely stupid category by any means, but there are a lot of things that make it impractical, not matter how technologically wicked it is.  You can still make a case for the B-1, but I think that the world is at a point where big strategic bombers are of a very limited value.  Even virtually invisible ones.

I also have to put the space shuttle in here, too.  Sure, it's cool, but it has not made getting into orbit cheaper or easier, which was it's main purpose.  And NASA's dogged support of the shuttle program is getting more than a little tiresome.  Case in point:  The cancellation of the X-33, 34 and 38.  Money was the issue, but the shuttle soaks up so much of it, no wonder it's an issue.  Of course all hope is not lost, there is the X-43, after all.

How about Hitler & Co.'s dogged fascination with dive bombers.  I've read in several places that's one of the things that caused major delays in the production of the Me-262--shifting it from air-superiority platform to a dive bomber.  That may or may not have been one of the all-time stupidest airplane decisions.  That is, depending on which historians you talk to.  Whether or not the 262 would've affected the outcome of the war when it was first 'ready' is one of the all time great what-if questions ever.  It probably wouldn't have won them the war, but it may have drastically changed things.  Consider the possible course of the invasion of Europe, and Germany, without Allied air superiority.

I would also say the Germans' almost strange refusal to produce a 4-engine long-range bomber was a major stupid decision.

[Captain Canada]

I don't want to rub salt in you Canadian's wounds, but the Arrow is a perfect example of that kind of stupidity.

That's just the thing that really pisses me off about the whole affair.....the Arrow was getting near ready to go. The first 5 were flying, with the Iroqouis engined bird about to fly, and there were dozens of mk.2s on the production line.........so poo-poo-canning it when they did was ridiculous ! The money was already spent !

Sure, the weapons systems might not have been up to snuff, but 35 years later, we were still firing 'dumb' rockets from our Voodoos !

[Jschmus]

Deciding in the early Sixties that the US Army couldn't operate its own fixed-wing aircraft.  Granted, it forced the Army to develop helicopter tactics and doctrines which would influence other countries for years, but leaving FAC and CAS in the hands of other forces that weren't primarily concerned with those capabilities wasn't smart.  

Canceling the AH-56 Cheyenne because it was too much like a fixed-wing aircraft.

Not pursuing the development of the DynaSoar in parallel with the other manned space programs.

Canceling development of the two-seat A-10.