For several years in the mid-1960s, the US-built F-111K strike/reconnaissance aircraft was the RAF’s future “spearhead”. It was intended to replace the TSR.2, an equivalent all-British aircraft beloved of test pilots and aircraft industry executives, notoriously cancelled by the Labour government in 1965 and now the focus of much nostalgia.

Following a bitter political battle, the F-111K also saw off a new generation of Royal Navy aircraft carriers.

This paper explores the technical, military and political history of the F-111K up to and including its own dramatic cancellation in 1968. It also sheds a little light on the RAF’s jaundiced view of the TSR.2.

About the speaker

Dr Richard Moore is a visiting senior research fellow at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, working mainly on the history of the British nuclear weapons programme.

His second book Nuclear Illusion, Nuclear Reality: Britain, the United States and Nuclear Weapons 1958-64 was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2010 and his journal articles include ‘We are a modern Navy: abolishing the Royal Navy’s rum ration‘ in the Mariner’s Mirror and ‘The British government, nuclear testing, and the arms race 1961-62‘ in the Historical Journal.