Foulness Island Ranges

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14 years

Posts: 4,996

There was a Harrier used as a test rig for the Plenium chamber
experiments that was hung from a gantry.
The latest Aero***** magazine has a photo of it.
mmitch.

Yes I remember seeing that.

I found some pictures and scanned them. I make no excuses on their quality.
I was only using an Instamatic type camera, and the weather was awful. Circa 1983

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr141/Deetektor/Scanned%20slides/f1.jpg
http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr141/Deetektor/Scanned%20slides/f2.jpg
http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr141/Deetektor/Scanned%20slides/f3.jpg

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14 years

Posts: 4,996

Nice set of pictures. Have they all been disposed of now ?

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9 years 6 months

Posts: 1,613

I'm bumping an old thread.

Firstly, Bing maps appears to have the most up to date imagery of the area mentioned in the previous pages and there is nothing left at all. Even on Google maps there are unidentified piles of junk;

http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=sm22fnh2bk95&lvl=19&sty=b&eo=0&q=shoeburyness&form=LMLTCC

Following on from previous posts, am I right in thinking there was TSR-2 remains on the island until the '90s? If so, were any of these recovered and saved? It would be a shame if such material made it all the way through the '90s and then ended up scrapped after all. Also, this thread highlights the fact that the chap from Foulness on the TSR-2 documentary downplayed the quantity of TSR-2 material left on site. I recall he says words to the effect of 'only having a few small bits left', whereas the images in this thread from 1993 suggest quite a lot of the airframe(s) remained on site.

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11 years 5 months

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I think was a general conspiracy to down play anything TSR2 for decades! All very sad.

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24 years 2 months

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I remember that when we re-assembled XR222 at Duxford in 1978 after it arrived from Cranfield, we were told that quite a bit of the first prototype, XR219, still survived at Foulness.

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17 years 10 months

Posts: 3,778

At one point I was told that parts of the TSR2 on Foulness were going to the museum at Tilbury Fort but were destroyed before they could be removed, back in the early 90s I think, sure I was shown a photo of a wing tip sitting on the Island too

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9 years 6 months

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These images apparently show the wing tips;

http://www.abpic.co.uk/images/images/1054935M.jpg

http://www.abpic.co.uk/images/images/1046234M.jpg

If the wings never reached Tilbury Fort, were they destroyed intentionally or were they too structurally unsound to survive the journey?

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17 years 10 months

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Aha !, brilliant, shame, I am sure the museum could of displayed them perfectly.

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9 years 6 months

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I guess the silly/obvious question is, where are they now?

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17 years 10 months

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BLOWN UP !

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13 years

Posts: 520

BLOWN UP !

As far as I'm aware all the remaining TSR2 items on Foulness and Pendine were scrapped by Hanningfield Metals and they shredded the lot. They refused point blank to let anyone have any bits which to me points to an order from MoD. Hanningfields were normally very helpful to museums and collectors.

There was a rumour that when the contents of Quedgely were sold that the parts to make a complete TSR2 were bought by a very wealthy collector

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14 years

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As far as I'm aware all the remaining TSR2 items on Foulness and Pendine were scrapped by Hanningfield Metals and they shredded the lot. They refused point blank to let anyone have any bits which to me points to an order from MoD. Hanningfields were normally very helpful to museums and collectors.

There was a rumour that when the contents of Quedgely were sold that the parts to make a complete TSR2 were bought by a very wealthy collector

TIGHAR. I expect a press release shortly.

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9 years 6 months

Posts: 1,613

There was a rumour that when the contents of Quedgely were sold that the parts to make a complete TSR2 were bought by a very wealthy collector

To quote an earlier thread;

In the mid 90's I picked up two small TSR 2 items from an Aerojumble (Shoreham). In about 1997-8-9 I noticed in Aeroplane Monthly Hangers stores section, a wanted advert requesting TSR 2 bits. Noting that the bits I had were not really in my line of collecting but keen to see them go to a good home I phoned the number. The guy on the other end of the phone told my the following story;-
He run a company which was aviation related and sometimes touched on the warbird scene. During one of these warbird scene moments he had recently (within a month or so of that time) come across a TSR 2 forward fuse in a scrap yard covered by a tarpaulin. I asked if this was the forward fuse which was at the time at Farnborough/Brooklands. He said no and he believed it was the forward fuse of XR219! He would not tell me the location but did let slip the yard specialised in handling stainless steel. His advert and attitude of not telling anybody the location was intended to see if enough bits were available so that he (and only he) could put together a reasonable display standard item. He took my name address and told me he would get back to me... but never did. I've since lost the phone number.

At the time I was working on Nimrod MRA4 and hence had regular contact with Warton. So I passed the story on to the BAe North West Heritage group. They phoned the number and got the same story and response. They were sufficiently interested to contact Shoeburyness to try to track down just who bought the remains of XR219 when it went up for disposal. Although I don't think they could do this, but Shoeburyness "confirmed" that XR219 was shredded by the scrapy in the late 70's.

Some time later I was reading a book on which I think was called "The history of British Aerospace A Proud Heritage" (or something like that), which was published in the mid/late 80's and hidden await in the text it makes the claim that the scrap yard that handled XR219 was quietly storing significant portions of the aircraft.

Now, there is never any smoke without fire....... (Has anyone got the back issue of Aeroplane Monthly from either 1997/8/9 with that phone number?)

As for other TSR 2 bits, I understand that the Brian Trubshaw horde which was once at Little Rissington consisting of bits from Shoeburyness/Pendine (engines mainly, bit possibly wings as well?) has been disposed of by Marine Salvage of Southampton.... with some bits going to collections and other going for scrap. When RAF Quedgeley/Henlow/Cardington were cleared in the 80's & 90's a significant number of TSR 2 bits were found, most if not all of which were passed to Cosford. The guys at Cosford noted that some of these bits were actually from their TSR2 XR220 (apparently the cropped wires still on the equipment matched perfectly those on the aircraft.... when the aircraft was stripped in the 60's why did they disconnect on the plugs!).

I would be surprised if anything TSR 2 was at Aston Down. I have been connected with Aston Down in one way or another from 1983 to the present day. Although large quantities of aircraft/engine jigs and tools were stored there, on both professional visits (both working for RR and BAe) to some of the hangers and my time connected with gliding, I saw very few aircraft parts and even then these were test parts such as the fatigue test Phantom. However it was the sort of place where stuff could get lost for years...... some Gloster Javelin wing and fuse jigs could still be found there up until the late 1980's! ...so I could be wrong.

http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?20465-Tsr2-XR219/page2

It would appear that some of XR-219 was saved and is in private hands, though nobody is talking!

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18 years 2 months

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Meddle, if you PM me an email address I’ll send you a NAM newsletter in a PDF format about the event last September mentioned in this thread http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?129995

NAM pulled together a variety of TSR2 items from around the UK to join the items that it already displays; the Brooklands cockpit is still on site – albeit covered over at the moment to protect it from the elements.

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11 years 5 months

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Thought it might be interesting to share this pic of a MiG-23 I shot at Hanningfield Metals back in April 2009. Having made numerous trips down there as a kid to see the Phantoms, Buccs, Canberras etc. I took a random trip there to see if there was anything of any interest still at the site. The answer was no, just random metal, until I walked around a corner and found this..

[ATTACH=CONFIG]234935[/ATTACH]

I believe it is 50 red, formerly of the Russian Air Force.

Attachments

Member for

14 years 5 months

Posts: 386

Thought it might be interesting to share this pic of a MiG-23 I shot at Hanningfield Metals back in April 2009. Having made numerous trips down there as a kid to see the Phantoms, Buccs, Canberras etc. I took a random trip there to see if there was anything of any interest still at the site. The answer was no, just random metal, until I walked around a corner and found this..

[ATTACH=CONFIG]234935[/ATTACH]

I believe it is 50 red, formerly of the Russian Air Force.

Blimey when i read it the first time I thought you said MIG-23 I shot down................................................

Member for

9 years 6 months

Posts: 1,613

Like all good stories, there appears to be an easy and a complicated solution, based upon what I've read. Is the cockpit section at Brooklands off of XR219, or another? It sounds like parts of XR219, once removed from Foulness, were heisted out of the scrappies contrary to the official story (be it that there was nothing left at Foulness to scrap or that Hanningfield metals got to it). Given the range of photos available from Hanningfield metals over the years, do any contain conclusive evidence of XR219?

I've noticed that a similar thread of rumour and conspiracy surrounds the Avro Arrow. Somebody's brother's flight instructor once saw half an Arrow in the back of a hangar in the '80s etc etc...

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18 years 2 months

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In Damien Burke’s excellent TSR2 book, the cockpit is described as: “Test forebody T5 …” and that it was “….Rescued from the Farnborough dump in 1992.”

I'll be emailing you the PDFs shortly.

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9 years 6 months

Posts: 1,613

This suggests that sections of XR219 may exist in private hands then?