British 'virtuous circle' 1957 onwards?

I think Britain in the postwar era right up to the present day is pulled in too many different directions. On any issue you care to name, opinions both for and against seemed finely balanced. Brexit is the latest in a long line of issues which divided the UK almost evenly.
The ubiquity of the English language ought to be a major asset but in many ways it is also a curse. For years British companies produced publicity material in English only. Brits are second only to US Americans in their unwillingness and inability to speak foreign languages. At the same time they are lazy and poorly educated in their own language.
This stands in marked contrast to France and Germany and even more to Scandinavia and the Netherlands.
 
I don't think the wider economy is really that much of an issue given the somewhat modest changes I envisage. After all the VC10 was stretched, just not be enough to make it a world beater able to generate much greater sales, as was the Trident but without the comfortable power that the Medway would have given it from the start. Same with the Chieftain tank, think of how much money was spent remediating the L60 engine's lack of power and reliability that might have been avoided with RR V8.

I think it's well known that an increase in unit volumes mean unit prices go down, but it also makes for efficiencies in fleet ownership costs such as training, maintenance, spares holdings etc etc etc. By 1974 the RAF was managing small fleets of Lightnings, Phantoms, Buccaneers, Jaguars, Harriers and Vulcans, when it could have been managing Lightning FGRs, Harriers and TSR2s far more efficiently. Further, bigger fleets lead to different value for money calculations for various things, it might not be worth developing a missile if it's carried by 6 fighter sqns with the other 6 carrying a different set and other sqns not able to carry missiles at all. But if the RAF has ~16 sqns of the same fighter-bomber and a large number of TSR2 then the missile types shrink down as well but the numbers at least stay the same meaning it might be worthwhile developing the home-grown product and keep the money at home.

If any big money is going to be created it will be on the export market, the airliners sell better is one obvious example but if the RAF supported the Lightning as much as the AdLA supported the Mirage III and the British ;looked to be not shrinking away from Great Power more generally I could see it and the Buccaneer getting a few sales at the expense of F104s, Mirage IIIs and maybe even some Phantoms. Interestingly enough in the correspondence that got me to restart this tread the dude said that the Europeans (which seemed to mean the French and Germans) weren't making the right kind of weapons for Israel which was forcing the US' hand, but I wonder if if Britain was in the game the US would still be in such a bind.
 
The only British aircraft type I have seen an actual document re sales to Israel was the Folland Gnat, with an appendice re. possible licence build, circa mid.50's!
(let's not forget the UK. was once the main provider of military training and equipment to most if not all of the Arab states)
later both Chieftan and Scorpion were offered for sale by HMG. to Israel during the 70's after pitches to both Iran and Egypt
 
Last edited:
When wasthe Gnat proposed to Israel? It was a fancied contender to replace the Venoms in 1958, Hawker had to lobby to get the Hunter included in the trials.

Israel trialled Chieftain tanks in the mid 60s, but word got out and there were riots at British embassies in the Arab world. Did the French have riots?
 
Rule of cool said:
Because in the event the Trident made it to production, not the Bristol 200. In addition Bristol merged into BAC and BAC had the VC10 and BAC 1-11 so isn't short on airliners.
Click to expand...
FWIW having the Bristol 200 make it into production instead of Trident may be better for your timeline as the long-haul (VC.10) medium-haul (Bristol 200) and short-haul (BAC.111) would all be made by BAC so one British firm has an across-the-board set of jet airliners before British Aerospace is created. Which after re-reading your post for the third time seems to be the point that you were making.
 
Last edited:
red admiral said:
It's all very complex and impossible to really say how things would have changed. More spillover effects into the general economy from Science and Technology spending, but that's quite different from simply building more of the same stuff. And who knows how things pan out e.g. the marine Avon example - there was already the marine MetroVick turbines but this then didn't go anywhere.

David Edgerton has a few books on UK economy and the military/aviation that gives further detail and I'd recommend simply for a different viewpoint on these issues.
Click to expand...
FWIW I think a marine Sapphire is more likely than a marine Avon because it was made by a firm that became part of BSE and so were the two aviation gas turbines that were actually developed into marine gas turbines before the 1970s. That is Olympus & Proteus which were Bristol engines. That being written maybe we could have had marine versions of the Tyne & Spey much sooner considering that the Tyne first ran in 1955 and the Civil Spey first ran in 1960.
 
Rule of cool said:
Link to the Opening Post.
Click to expand...
Skimming through the thread reminded me that someone on Alternatehistory.com had a similar idea to you. ;)

A series of assumptions: a Britwank on a budget?

“All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics………..” – Sir Sydney Camm. Objectives - Prevention of Global War Winning the Cold War Maintenance of Britain's ability to fight limited war Chief of Staff guidelines for military policy 1956 UK war plans of the...
www.alternatehistory.com
 
red admiral said:
So the additional government spending on this vs other priorities from this scenario could easily be argued to make the UK economy smaller.
Click to expand...
If you want (a) a better UK economy, and (b) a stronger UK military, you really need to make (a) happen first, and use it to fund (b). If you try to make (b) fund (a), then you're engaging in either an economic fallacy, or following an extractive imperialist foreign policy. Both courses of action are best avoided.

FWIW, my view is that what the UK economy needed after WW2 was to take wartime Operations Research expertise and apply it to the civilian world. That's basically what happened in Japan, and it was transformative
 
My thinking on this isn't to make Britain's economy bigger by using defence spending, it's to get better results from the same or similar defence budget. Good decisions lead to good results which open up opportunities for more good decisions and results.

That said the virtuous circle would lead to a larger economy, but only marginally so, maybe the bigger impact would be on the balance of trade due to more money being spent in Britain rather than abroad with foreign currency.
 
Rule of cool said:
What about Army equipment?

While I think the Chieftain Tank should have stayed with the Rolls Royce diesel V8 it was intended to have rather than follow the 1957 NATO multi fuel directive and switch to the Leyland L60 I'm not really seeing how that spins out into much greater things down the line as a result. Sure the Army wouldn't have had to spend a decade on constant 'get well' programmes, and might have won the Dutch order but I can't see it meaning the Army will get an AA tank or a home grown 155mm SP artillery or anything like that.
Click to expand...
I have yet to find the complete article from Bill Pitcher in the Leyland's society journal on engine designs prior to the L60 (and the choice of the L60), or any other archive, but The Tank's Museum book on Chieftain rather says:
- Rover worked on a gasoline V8 and Leyland on a diesel derivative. Rover shows a concept in 1956 but abandons the military market in 1957.
- Leyland finds out the V8 will (apparently) not deliver enough power and works on a V12, which is then deemed too large.
- Rootes shows the TS3 two-stroke opposed piston engine to the FVRDE which finds the project promising. It is found such a design could achieve the necessary power density, on top of being quite suitable for multifuel use (but even conventional diesels were, so that was not a necessary design for that).

Now, in practice the Chieftain's powertrain was so inefficiently designed that you could have fitted a conventional military diesel of 700hp or more even at that time, as demonstrated decades later with the Iranians fitting a Soviet V-84 engine of 36L and 840hp or Germany fitting a MTU 837 of 1000hp with fairly modest structural changes, both of these engines form factors existing in the late 50's (MTU 837 existed, but for the V-84 it was older prototypes of similar shape and size which existed). I doubt Leyland's V8 or V12 would have been suitable as designed given their comments, but another conventional engine design could have.

Even a better engine wouldn't have saved the Chieftain in the Dutch trials however. There were too many other unrelated problems, the tank was too immature and the documentation was deemed rather unprofessional by the Dutch.

Honestly, it's quite difficult to get a virtous cycle with the tank (I would even say ground equipment, bar PT428) designs the British worked on from the end of WW2 until the 90's. Some of the ills date back to the late 40s and 50s IMO.

I'd say naval and air equipment remains the part where the British could have reasonably hoped to do better.
Hood said:
Snag was, Hawkswing wasn't that good as it descended following launch and risked impacting the ground so the helicopter had to be higher and therefore less able to use terrain masking and potentially ending up as Shilka bait.
Would have needed some element of redesign to work as well as TOW.
To reduce supply chains, you could equally argue buy HOT instead as most of the Lynx are in West Germany anyway and could share Germany Army stocks.
Click to expand...
Swingfire was also quite a bit slower, which was deemed an issue IIRC.

I'd say in general that the British as they were had fairly little odds of achieving much more export success than historically with their ATGMs, even with more investment. IMO the point of divergence for that would have had to be in the late 40s/early 50s by focusing on HEAT rather than HESH warheads to work on relatively smaller missiles than the Malkara (I believe Australia suggested that work be done on a small infantry ATGM too), in the hopes of nipping the French SS-10, ENTAC and SS-11 in the bud.

Naturally, this means it's hard to genuinely improve these areas within the scope of this thread (post '57).
 
Last edited:
Hood said:
Snag was, Hawkswing wasn't that good as it descended following launch and risked impacting the ground so the helicopter had to be higher and therefore less able to use terrain masking and potentially ending up as Shilka bait.
Would have needed some element of redesign to work as well as TOW.
To reduce supply chains, you could equally argue buy HOT instead as most of the Lynx are in West Germany anyway and could share Germany Army stocks.
Click to expand...
What made Hawkswing descend when TOW and presumably HOT didn't.....apart from gravity.
 
Elan Vital said:
Honestly, it's quite difficult to get a virtous cycle with the tank
Click to expand...

At the very least it's hopeful that the RR V8 wouldn't need over a decade of 'get well' programmes costing who knows how much.

That said Israel was interested in the Chieftain before riots at British embassies in the Arab world gave the Brits cold feet. Iran bought almost 800, fostered the development of what became the Khalid and the Challenger, in fact I'd cut out the Anglo-German MBT and the MBT 80 projects and go straight to the Challenger.
 
The MBT-80 was a far superior design to the original Challenger though. Not to mention way more cost effective. The corner cutting approach that the Treasury took with the latter was justly infamous. Penny wise, pound foolish doesn't even begin to describe it.
 
Grey Havoc said:
The MBT-80 was a far superior design to the original Challenger though. Not to mention way more cost effective. The corner cutting approach that the Treasury took with the latter was justly infamous. Penny wise, pound foolish doesn't even begin to describe it.
Click to expand...

What sort of virtuous circle would be needed to get the MBT 80 into service and working properly before the British government started to worry that it would be too late?

My reasoning is that given the British got the Challenger the most efficient path would be to not waste effort on the Anglo-German FMBT and MBT 80 and just focus on the Challenger.
 
Rule of cool said:
At the very least it's hopeful that the RR V8 wouldn't need over a decade of 'get well' programmes costing who knows how much.

That said Israel was interested in the Chieftain before riots at British embassies in the Arab world gave the Brits cold feet. Iran bought almost 800, fostered the development of what became the Khalid and the Challenger, in fact I'd cut out the Anglo-German MBT and the MBT 80 projects and go straight to the Challenger.
Click to expand...
It would at least not face the thermal issues of two-stroke engines nor the narrow rpm range needed for opposed-piston two-strokes (the L60 would have worked better if combined with a hydromechanical transmission which allows the engine to operate more often in the optimal rpm range for scavenging).

I think in hindsight Leyland would have been better off committing to either the V8 or V12 diesel. They could then either improve the power output of the V8, or reduce the complete powertrain size of the V12. Leyland certainly had the time to do that instead of starting from scratch with the L60. For all we know, the extra hull size required for the V12 may have been what was needed historically for the L60 anyway. At least either Vee would have been suitable for commercial use or improved developments in much the same way as contemporary diesels for use in future designs.
Rule of cool said:
What sort of virtuous circle would be needed to get the MBT 80 into service and working properly before the British government started to worry that it would be too late?

My reasoning is that given the British got the Challenger the most efficient path would be to not waste effort on the Anglo-German FMBT and MBT 80 and just focus on the Challenger.
Click to expand...
The  MBT-80 program was plagued with management issues which delayed its introduction date from 1985 to 1994. It didn't help that nobody could agree on the components and materials it would use, and that the various services (RARDE, FVRDE, ROF) were not working well together. There was excessive involvement from the Minister of Defense, and it appears that the requirement were based more on what the study thought was technically possible rather than what the Army wanted (which assumes that the latter had less ambitious reqs).

On top of that the personnel was split between work on FV 4030 Shir 2 and MBT-80, which even caused issues with test rigs which tested features from both tanks.

Even then, MBT-80 as is or perhaps even some of the successor programs (MBT 95 and Challenger MLI) would have been better than Challenger 2 itself so that could have been worthwhile even if Challenger had been adopted, but I feel we have to go back well before that.

I do not have such a positive view of the Iranian orders. The Shir program was putting all the eggs of the British tank production capacity (and expanded at that) in a single basket until at least 1985, neglecting the other interested parties (India, Egypt). The Iranian revolution might have been unexpected, but this move was still very risky.


But IMO, the time we need to go back to to obtain a genuine virtuous cycle was 1969-71. The British wasted a very long time reflecting on how much they should technically stray from Chieftain, incrementing from FV 4211 to 4211 Mk 2 to 4222 (Shir 2 with aluminium hull and 110mm gun) to FMBTs (the latest inching close to MBT-80 in design).
If the budget structure over the 1970s allows that, they should have gone all in a future domestic tank program starting in 69-71 with no direct foreign involvement (no Germany, no Iran) and with a genuinely new design (of a complexity to decide on). This could notably leverage MVEE's 1969 study on engines (which recommended either a RR or Leyland V12 turbodiesel with commercial roots, so probably the origin of CV12), or the Leyland V8/12 of the Chieftain if this had been chosen, work on the 110mm gun (to be oriented towards a 120mm rifled gun with better ergonomics and construction than the L11, and with no need to use the same cartridge which crippled the historical L30. It's probably too early for thd UK to read the room about smoothbores), and Burlington armor.

This is the best way they have to achieve a somewhat competitive design available in time for the export cycle in the 80s, which doesn't need a supplementary program like CR2, and to have somewhat mature components to use in multinational negociations in the 70s.
 
I like the idea of a wholly domestic tank from 1969-71, would a decent engine in the Cheiftain and lack of ongoing, costly get well programs give the impetus for it?
 
Rule of cool said:
I like the idea of a wholly domestic tank from 1969-71, would a decent engine in the Cheiftain and lack of ongoing, costly get well programs give the impetus for it?
Click to expand...
Maybe, because the get well programs could be replaced with development programs for uprated versions of the engine, and the easier uprating would facilitate development of a mobile but heavy MBT in this period (instead of being reliant on L60) and would warrant further development of transmissions and suspensions to exploit the extra power. Basically most of what is needed for a new tank.
 
Out of interest was the L60 engine built by the British or the Leyland part of British Leyland?

AFAIK the Leyland part (formerly Leyland Motors) built buses & trucks (and also owned Rover & Standard-Triumph) had half-decent labour relations, built reasonable quality products & was profitable. Meanwhile, the British part (formerly the British Motor Corporation) which mainly built passenger cars had atrocious labour relations, had awful quality control & made a loss. Therefore, British was subsidized by Leyland and the latter's sales of buses & trucks (plus the premium cars built by Rover & Standard-Triumph) kept British Leyland from collapsing for as long as it did.

Which is a long-winded way of asking . . . were the shortcomings of the L60 engine inevitable? It's been pointed out elsewhere on this forum that the FV430 series has a multi-fuel engine that seems to have worked for the last 60-odd years. Although it was made by Rolls-Royce and not British Leyland.

As an off-the-wall idea (and in case it hasn't already been suggested) how about a gas turbine engine (which AFAIK could have been multi-fuel) for the Chieftain based on the work done by Rover? IOTL Standard-Triumph was purchased by Leyland in 1960 and Rover was purchased by Leyland in 1967, but IIRC Rover had merger talks with Standard-Triumph in the late 1950s. Therefore, what if Rover & Standard-Triumph did merge in the late 1950s and were taken over by Leyland in 1960? That way Leyland would have got access to Rover's gas turbine work early enough for them to develop a gas turbine engine for the Chieftain.

It's probably a laughable idea, but if I don't ask, I don't find out.
 
Last edited:
NOMISYRRUC said:
Out of interest was the L60 engine built by the British or the Leyland part of British Leyland?

AFAIK the Leyland part (formerly Leyland Motors) built buses & trucks (and also owned Rover & Standard-Triumph) had half-decent labour relations, built reasonable quality products & was profitable. Meanwhile, the British part (formerly the British Motor Corporation) which mainly built passenger cars had atrocious labour relations, had awful quality control & made a loss. Therefore, British was subsidized by Leyland and the latter's sales of buses & trucks (plus the premium cars built by Rover & Standard-Triumph) kept British Leyland from collapsing for as long as it did.

Which is a long-winded way of asking . . . were the shortcomings of the L60 engine inevitable? It's been pointed out elsewhere on this forum that the FV430 series has a multi-fuel engine that seems to have worked for the last 60-odd years. Although it was made by Rolls-Royce and not British Leyland.

As an off-the-wall idea (and in case it hasn't already been suggested) how about a gas turbine engine (which AFAIK could have been multi-fuel) for the Chieftain based on the work done by Rover? IOTL Standard-Triumph was purchased by Leyland in 1960 and Rover was purchased by Leyland in 1967, but IIRC Rover had merger talks with Standard-Triumph in the late 1950s. Therefore, what if Rover & Standard-Triumph did merge in the late 1950s and were taken over by Leyland in 1960? That way Leyland would have got access to Rover's gas turbine work early enough for them to develop a gas turbine engine for the Chieftain.

It's probably a laughable idea, but if I don't ask, I don't find out.
Click to expand...
From my info, it is the Leyland part. But B-L did suffer from the merger still, but more as part of the general issue of the 50's nationalized mergers and transport reforms having been seriously mismanaged, with Leyland having too much on its plate with both their work and having to carry the mess that was British, plus the complete shitshow that was the destruction of the railway sector to favor road logistics instead. The complete industrial/logistics upheaval plays a big role in Britain doing so poorly in the defense sector, or at least the defense sector was affected by the same governmental actors as the logistics.

As for L60...yes and no. The engine itself definitely had design faults by the standards of other 2-stroke opposed-piston diesels (and the Soviet 5TD is an example of an engine which got more effort going into it), but there are at least two ways it could have worked better:
- use a transmission type which brings the operating rpm range as close as possible to the optimum rpm range for scavenging, which would ensure that the engine does not face issues caused by poor combustion (soot depots and such). At the time that would be a hydromechanical transmission with a torque converter like CD-850 or the German 4HP250. Incidentally one transmission offered for FV 4211 Mk 2 with its more powerful CV12 engine was the TN19, which is a TN12 derivative with a torque converter. Other examples would be hydrostatic-mechanical (XHM-1500 on MBT-70), CVT (Type 10) or fully hydrostatic transmissions.
The side bonus of this is that such a transmission could obtain a good torque characteristic with fewer mechanical gears and could improve overall low-speed performance of the Chieftain.

- Complement/replace the Roots blower with a proper super/turbocharging setup to increase power through the boost while also ensuring possibly better scavenging characteristics. This was allegedly deemed too complicated in 1963, but it was a known solution at the time, and the Soviets also did it on their 5TD series. This would have the bonus of obtaining greater power than the normal L60 either in the 60s or down the line. A 1969 proposal by Armstrong Whitworth was for a 900hp uprate with exhaust turbine-driven fans, or 1000hp if the fans are driven by the engine itself. Later on the late 70s Sundance L60 also had a turbocharged option for 1000hp.

This doesn't change the fact that the L60+TN12 powertrain in Chieftain was rather space and weight inefficient and didn't surpass a powertrain made around a conventional diesel, but these are the options. It could certainly have been done better in terms of volume, namely by making the L60 horizontal (as in Sundance, 5TD and 6TD) instead of vertical. But overall even the Soviet 6TD family which was better than the L60 series and had a lighter tank to move had issues and proved no better than competently designed conventional turbodiesel powerpacks. I'd describe both as "Second-order clever solutions".
 
Were labour relations that bad in the late 50s and 60s? I thought they turned unworkable from the late 60s through the 70s.
 
Hood said:
The Rootes Group has such a problem with strikes at British Light Steel Pressings from 1961 that they actually shut the plant in 1966.

British Light Steel Pressings - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
Click to expand...
Is that the one where even the union's leaders urged the workers to return to work?

It's probably my sense of humour, so does anyone else find that Wikipedia's comment that the strike was the root of Rootes eventual takeover by Chrysler amusing? If it had been me I would have written that the strike was the cause of Rootes eventual takeover by Chrysler.
 

Similar threads

Please donate to support the forum.

Back
Top Bottom