If you were Sandys or Mcnamara?

[Rule of cool]

Boeing unlike Hawker talked to its customers and designed planes for them. That is why 727 sold more than the UKcentric Trident.

Thus is exactly what HS and BAC did, and their launch customers (in the biggest contracts in Britain) told them to shrink their planes. If they had not listened to their customers HS and BAC would have built far more attractive big versions of the Trident and VC10.

 

[Rule of cool]

Secretary of State, why is making civil airliners a worthwhile national goal?

You have to imagine a puzzled Sir Humprey Appleby at this point.

British Aerospace no longer makes any civil airliners. Instead the UK makes a decent living from selling Rolls Royce engines, Airbus wings, various components both physical and virtual.

Brazil and Canada have built decent small airliners/biz jets and subsidise them for regional employment reasons.

Even the mighty US has seen Boeing as its last manufacturer of big airliners. Boeing these days is a far cry from the company which developed the 707 and B52 and seems to have lost its way.

Airbus gambled and lost on the Airbus 380 though like its 300 Airbus may find freight conversions a useful new market.

So Secretary of State do you really want to spend money on white elephants rather than schools and hospitals?

This is projecting a post 1990 Globalization=price stability & peace dividend mindset onto the late 60s Cold War self sufficient=full employment & national security economic and political model. At the time it was seen as natural that if a country could make stuff that was competitive within reason then it should. After all the sale of a batch of home built airliners provides the tax revenue and foreign exchange to pay for the hospital or school.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Secretary of State, why is making civil airliners a worthwhile national goal?

You have to imagine a puzzled Sir Humprey Appleby at this point.

British Aerospace no longer makes any civil airliners. Instead the UK makes a decent living from selling Rolls Royce engines, Airbus wings, various components both physical and virtual.

Brazil and Canada have built decent small airliners/biz jets and subsidise them for regional employment reasons.

Even the mighty US has seen Boeing as its last manufacturer of big airliners. Boeing these days is a far cry from the company which developed the 707 and B52 and seems to have lost its way.

Airbus gambled and lost on the Airbus 380 though like its 300 Airbus may find freight conversions a useful new market.

So Secretary of State do you really want to spend money on white elephants rather than schools and hospitals?

That's a 1990s or later outlook.

Building airplanes means people employed, generally making good money, too. Not unemployed people willing to listen to the Communists, Minister.

But I really think the big problem with the British jets was the lack of vision in the British air carriers. BOAC didn't see how they could fill an 80-passenger jet, when TWA and Boeing were planning on filling a 200-passenger plane.

 

[Rule of cool]

To be fair to those I would condemn there were slowings of passenger growth at the times BEA and BOAC recommendations to shrink the Trident and VC10 Super 200. However these recommendations should have been challenged more vigorously.

 

[uk 75]

The bloated size of the UK aerospce industry and its demands for public funding were very much on the minds of politicians from 1957 to 1967.
Listening just to BOAC/BEA was not much use if you were hoping to sell airliners to KLM or JAL. Boeing and Douglas did not just talk to Pan American and TWA they also talked and listrned to Lufthansa and BOAC (who chose 707 and 747 rather than VC10 for its Atlantic service).
It took a team effort (Airbus) to provide the products and Europe wide customer base that allowed us (yes we also benefit from Airbus) to compete with the US.
Perhaps if we had been less insular in the 60s and 70s there could have been more UK jobs from Airbus. Instead of the dead end rear engined BAC 311, the twin podded A300 was the key to a future. Even British Airways might have joined Lufthansa in deserting Boeing if Airbus had been more British.

 

[red admiral]

After all the sale of a batch of home built airliners provides the tax revenue and foreign exchange to pay for the hospital or school.

The late 60s white heat culminating in MinTech also rapidly led to the realisation that R&D doesn't correlate to economic growth. Better for the economy to not continue massive government funding of Aerospace sector and for those employed to find more productive employment elsewhere (and there were plenty of opportunities).

Best example - Concorde. Beautiful and great engineering achievement, but at what opportunity cost.

 

[Rule of cool]

Most of the problems mentioned stem from a lack of production numbers, the industry mightn't be bloated if it produced hundreds more units. Similarly the R&D bill wouldn't be so bad if hundreds of planes had been delivered.

 

[Hood]

Producing hundreds more units sounds good but you have to have buyers for them.

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 evolutions were likely. We still can't today (see A380) despite 60 years of hindsight but in the 1960s this was new territory. 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.

Dassault tried the Mercure and flopped badly.

Breaking into America like the Beatles? About 21% of Viscounts were sold to US airlines/corporate owners. Had Bristol been able to accommodate Hughes' Britannia order for TWA, that aircraft might have achieved 26% of sales to US airlines. It looks likely that 25% would be the upper practical limit of US market penetration in the late 50s/early 60s. The 1-11 and 146 did achieve sales in the US despite strong home-grown opposition in the late 60s/70s/80s (not done the maths to work out the % share yet).

Best example - Concorde. Beautiful and great engineering achievement, but at what opportunity cost.

Indeed, NOMISYRRUC ferreted out the ultimate R&D cost of £1,134 million (no recovery) and production costs of £654 million (£278 million recovered from the state owned airlines - so in reality still state-supplied cash from another pot). Given that these costs were shared, imagine what Britain and France could each have done with their £894 million share saved. BAC was quoting a measly £60 million to get the 2-11 off the ground....

 

[alertken]

We can discuss Civil on-thread as Sandys as Min of Aviation (employment sponsor) 14/10/59-27/7/60 arranged Treasury Launch Aid which endured into the Airbus era: Sovereign-class Loans repayable by Sales Levy, ceiling on State cost-liability, open-ended on Supplier liability for unrecovered cost. (A later term for this would be market-distorting subsidy). Like Lord Brabazon and 1944/45 Ministers, the intent was to convert an expensive Munitions resource into a civil, profitable employer of high skills/value-added, flying the flag. All...good. Other Nations tried ditto, even unto SST and Very Large (Russia+PRC had a Project until 2023). So, what Sandys tried to do: me too.

One purpose was to reward Industry Coalescence, which it did. So, why did it all go so wrong?​

Vt.Trenchard, Min of State for Defence Procurement, in P.Gummett, Civil & Military A/c in UK, P.211, History & Technology, 92/9: 1945-3/74, Aero Launch Aid, at '74 input prices: State Outlays: £1,505.4Mn.; receipts: £141.9Mn.

Well. it went wrong for others, too, inc for Boeing: Chairman T.Wilson: by ’72 “we had sold c.$20Bn.of commercial airplanes and hadn’t made any money (737) absolute basket case (early 747) difficulties” R.J.Serling,Legend & Legacy, St.Martin’s P, 1992, P385. DC-10/MD11 destroyed Douglas; CV990 took Convair out of civil; F-28/F-100 took Fokker out; Mercure shook AMD...While Dick Evans was boss at BAES he made no pitch for A380 or A350 Prime Contractor, even final assembly, happy to design wings and deliver them to the address on lawyers' Speed-dial. Even that was later sold.

737 got well, commercially when US pols broke Air Carrier Protection, Deregulated, so Herb Kelleher's Southwest's Peanuts Fares (and Hot Pants) disrupted a cosy cartel: only 737, especially with CFM56 (excess power de-rated for unprecedented TBO) offered reliability to sweat the assets to undercut fat incumbents. EEC then took the view that cosy revenue pooling was anti-consumer, so deregulated in Europe. Goodbye Swissair, Sabena...hello Ryanair, Whizz...Unpredictable. When 3 Nations' Govts decided to do A300 their captive fatsos each thought they might be able to use 6.

Douglas on DC-9/10-80, Boeing on 737-100-1000 sank risk-money into Product Devt and Customer Service/Product Support. HSAL/BAC/RR did not. NOM #261 is quite right: BAC's loss of Lufthansa, Viscount User choosing the pain of Launch Customer for Regional Jet entry No.5 (Caravelle, 1-11, DC-9, Tu-134) was devastating. 1-11/500 was not launched until Ministers imposed it on BEAC, who wanted 737.​

 

[Rule of cool]

Producing hundreds more units sounds good but you have to have buyers for them.

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 evolutions were likely. We still can't today (see A380) despite 60 years of hindsight but in the 1960s this was new territory. 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.

Dassault tried the Mercure and flopped badly.

Breaking into America like the Beatles? About 21% of Viscounts were sold to US airlines/corporate owners. Had Bristol been able to accommodate Hughes' Britannia order for TWA, that aircraft might have achieved 26% of sales to US airlines. It looks likely that 25% would be the upper practical limit of US market penetration in the late 50s/early 60s. The 1-11 and 146 did achieve sales in the US despite strong home-grown opposition in the late 60s/70s/80s (not done the maths to work out the % share yet).


Indeed, NOMISYRRUC ferreted out the ultimate R&D cost of £1,134 million (no recovery) and production costs of £654 million (£278 million recovered from the state owned airlines - so in reality still state-supplied cash from another pot). Given that these costs were shared, imagine what Britain and France could each have done with their £894 million share saved. BAC was quoting a measly £60 million to get the 2-11 off the ground....

As I've stated, I don't expect miracles for the Medway Trident and/or VC10 Super 200, just double and triple actual numbers;117-237 and 54-162. This is in line with the successful Europeans of the era, BAC111 and Fokker F28 at 244 and 241, but dwarfed by the Americans much like their warplane production dwarfed the successful Mirage III. However even these modest (on the world stage) numbers would bring in perhaps a billion pounds in sales, which is significant to Britain and her industry. My attitude to the Lightning is similar, I don't expect miracles like displacing the F104 sales to NATO but a much bigger RAF order and a couple more exports make the bottom line much better as well as getting a more powerful RAF than can take the next step in the 70s with confidence and from a position of strength.

One problem with alternative scenarios for British products is that despite it being well known that their troubles were political there is a suspicion that their problems were technical, that if the Lightning or VC10 had a different engine layout it would magically sell better. The fact of the matter is that the VC10s engine layout was the reason BAC could propose the 212 seat Super 200, with 23 more revenue generating seats than the B707 and DC8. Similarly rear mounted engines don't appear to ave been an impediment to the B727, DC9, BAC111, Fokker F28 and countless business jets yet people seem to think wing mounted engines would generate sales despite the Mystere and VFW 641 tanking.