A European Boeing 707?

[uk 75]

The Boeing 707 came to define long range jet air travel in the 1960s. It beat its Convair and Douglas competitors.
Britain tried to build planes for the same role starting with the Comet via the cancelled Vickers V1000 to the VC10. France built the Caravelle.
Given the later success of Airbus could Europe have made a better job of beating Boeing at the end of the 1950s if politics had allowed the cooperation on Concorde to start earlier.

 

[Archibald]

Vickers VC-7 indeed could have been a champion. Note that the Caravelle borrowed the nose and cockpit of the Comet IV.

Have France and great Britain seal an alliance over an improved VC-7 rather than a supersonic folly, and there you go. A high-end to the Caravelle called... Super Caravelle. Which, incidentally, was Concorde early name - "super" for "super-sonic" rather than "super capability".

On the French side we went the Caravelle (737 size) rather than 707 / VC-7 / VC-10 / DC-8 way because of a resounding string of failures with very large aircraft in the late 40's. first, the SNCAC Cormoran (crashed and burned 1948, all dead) Breguet Deux Ponts & SNCASE Armagnac (good aircraft but Air France went with Constellations, and they ended as AdA heavy cargoes) and of course the Late 631 and SE-200, our very own SARO Princess - obsolete follies.

 

[uk 75]

The Boeing 707 started life as a military aircraft as did its predecessor the Stratoliner. The advantage Boeing gained in World War 2 from building wide bodied aircraft in modern way has given a lead which lasts to this day. Despite its problems with the 737 Max, Boeing's 777 and 787 dominate the long range wide body market as the 747 unlike the 380 is still around. In contrast UK and French industry was trying to catch up until Airbus. It is fair to say that Airbus is a French success story (Hawker Siddeley's wings are still a vital component-brexit or no) and Toulouse is Europe's civil aviation counterpart to Seattle rather than Weybridge

 

[Archibald]

The 747-8 is as dead as the A380.

 

[Michel Van]

The 747-8 is as dead as the A380.

The production runs out, around 12 are to finish and no new orders, in mean time there USAF Tanker and Starliner join the club of Boeing problem Childs...

Back to Topic
There were proposal to build bigger Airliner, but there governments in Britain and France show no interest
One would gave us low cost answer was Vickers VC-10 multi body or Double Deck version.

While the Super Caravelle proposal ended up a Super-Sonic Concorde...

While in France start Project on Very good Airliner the Dassault Mercure, with one little problem it range and fuel tank design for use in France
What limits it range so much that Airlines declined to buy it...

However in 1965 started something what became Airbus, as Europeans Airlines wanted low cost Airliner around 100 passengers
it became three nation project UK, France, West Germany, but again Politic strike again
During the project both France and UK expressed doubts of usefulness, while France remain, UK new Tory Government pulled out.
This would have been the End of project, had not Franz Joseph Strauß act and West Germany took over the UK program share.
The german gave Hawker Siddeley GB£35 million loan ! to continue on project and 1974 the first Airbus A300 flew.

What if the Super Caravelle was a enlarge Caravelle program not Super sonic ?
Let assume that UK and France not goes for Mach 2, but consider for more realistic lager airliner for British Airways and Air France.
it would let in France to issues with Dassault who work on Mercure, consider the S-Caravelle as threat to his project
on other side the UK politicians would pull out on program with much lower cost as Concorde ?
certain is that labour government was replaced by Tory, they would have stop the program because it was sign by Labour...

Politic is so a ugly dimension in the world of Aircraft building

 

[Hood]

I think we have to understand that today's mass market for flights did not exist then. Most airlines outside the USA were state owned enterprises or very much leaning towards their national flag carrier duties. So the number of buying airlines was quite small to make large profitable production runs. Also the market was more volatile and nobody could accurately predict what market evolution were likely. We still can't today (see A380). We have 60 years of hindsight but they did not, plenty of bean counters felt supersonic airliners would be the main market, they were proved wrong, others felt VTOL airlines would replace intercity rail and road traffic, they too got it wrong. BEA got spooked by a blimp in passenger numbers and wrecked the Trident, the 737 was a massive gamble that Lufthansa took on to launch it.

There was nothing predetermined about the dominance of Boeing, indeed the UK government much about the 707 needing the RR Conway to be a viable transatlantic airliner and weighed the risks of not selling the Americans Conways against the lure of lovely dollars in the bank. So much about British airliner development in this era was about money, sure they wanted to keep the aircraft industries in business and keep people employed and designers busy until the next big military project came along and national prestige, but what counted most was exports and bringing it the cash.
The BAC 2-11 and BAC 3-11 could have been the ideal projects for a national industry but by then it was too late and the 3-11 was treading on A300 toes.

Also, the 707 proved so big largely because Boeing's US competitors blew it, the DC-8 came it closer but the Tristar and DC-10 never really rivaled the 747 either. For all the huff and puff about the VC-7 (and the VC-10 too), BOAC simply wasn't interested and without that it was a non-starter. Too much government committee time clouded what the airlines actually wanted and as I mentioned at the start, they didn't really have a solid grasp of an ever changing market that was still being born.

 

[Apophenia]

Following Michel's diversion, the Dassault Mercure proved that being early is the same as being wrong. But that didn't make it a bad Caravelle replacement. Here's a thought, what if Dassault had joined forces with Hawker Siddeley for a redesigned, export Mercure?

Here I'm imagining a Hatfield-designed wing with larger fuel tanks to extend range for use outside of France. Follow the RW Mercure 200 approach with CFM56 engines. Also as proposed for the Mercure 200, SNIAS/Aérospatiale takes over French production. But instead of partnering with Douglas (who bailed anyway) and Lockheed, the partenaire à l'étranger was HSA. In effect, HSA would be setting itself up with a BAC 1-11/Trident replacement (akin to the already cancelled BAC 2-11?).

From there, HSA/BAe might also develop a stretched 'Mercury 400' powered by twin 27,000 lbf Rolls-Royce RB.220 (à la the abandoned HS.141)?