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There
MoS efforts in the early 1950s seem to have been more geared to stifling new entrants, especially in the lower levels (trainers, general aviation etc.) but its also remarkable how the older firms ditched the low-end sector. So much so Masefield brought Beagle into being - only to promptly attempt another shotgun marriage of Miles and Auster, which ended badly.
DH had huge success with Vampire but it stifled further developments, Venom came along as a big-wing Vampire when other air forces were looking at next-gen swept wing jets like F-86 - though it too sold well. Sea Vixen was simply a beefed up Vampire in design. The DH.116 Super Venom was swept-wing and very 1950s but still a Venom front end grafted onto new wings and a rear end.
Also the Vampire and Venom retained the wooden experience that had served DH so well. They had never really done anything in full-metal other than Flamingo before the Comet. Did they place too much faith in Redux bonding methods? They did bounce back pretty quickly on Comet though and did perhaps as well as they could have.
I will agree the GOR.339 submission was good (after they ditched notions of Sea Vixen lash-ups), though perhaps lacking on systems details. The DH.117 F.155 submission was perhaps too pedestrian and safe, maybe they took simple robust structures too far? Maybe the lack of previous high-speed swept wing experience after the early start by DH.108 hampered them and had done no other fighter design work at all. DH.127 was a bit later, the final throw of the dice for what by then was mainly a civil-oriented firm and not a bad design, just a pity OR.346 was a vapourware spec. I don't lay much blame at DH's door for Trident though, perhaps a little more backbone to tell BEA to stop fretting over graphs would have helped (and maybe not letting Boeing look over the plans!).
So I'd say by 1958-59 DH were back on track but the 1950s was something of a dip I think in terms of what they could have achieved and they seem to have concentrated on civil work post-1955 barring three military projects.
There were some losers, Hunting Percival at Luton being disbanded and absorbed into Warton, arguably BAC eventually made better progress at rationalising its design teams, HSA seems to have stuck to its original Hawker Siddeley design locations and BAe just added more (Prestwick ex-Scottish Aviation).Did the reorganisations reduce the number of companies or just redcue the number of names?
MoS efforts in the early 1950s seem to have been more geared to stifling new entrants, especially in the lower levels (trainers, general aviation etc.) but its also remarkable how the older firms ditched the low-end sector. So much so Masefield brought Beagle into being - only to promptly attempt another shotgun marriage of Miles and Auster, which ended badly.
They had a lot of bad luck, all three DH.108s killed their pilots, DH.110 Farnborough and Comet. But that's a lot of bad luck and lot of structural issues too, coincidence or a deeper undiagnosed problem?But for a series of bad luck events.......
DH could have stormed through the lot.
DH had huge success with Vampire but it stifled further developments, Venom came along as a big-wing Vampire when other air forces were looking at next-gen swept wing jets like F-86 - though it too sold well. Sea Vixen was simply a beefed up Vampire in design. The DH.116 Super Venom was swept-wing and very 1950s but still a Venom front end grafted onto new wings and a rear end.
Also the Vampire and Venom retained the wooden experience that had served DH so well. They had never really done anything in full-metal other than Flamingo before the Comet. Did they place too much faith in Redux bonding methods? They did bounce back pretty quickly on Comet though and did perhaps as well as they could have.
I will agree the GOR.339 submission was good (after they ditched notions of Sea Vixen lash-ups), though perhaps lacking on systems details. The DH.117 F.155 submission was perhaps too pedestrian and safe, maybe they took simple robust structures too far? Maybe the lack of previous high-speed swept wing experience after the early start by DH.108 hampered them and had done no other fighter design work at all. DH.127 was a bit later, the final throw of the dice for what by then was mainly a civil-oriented firm and not a bad design, just a pity OR.346 was a vapourware spec. I don't lay much blame at DH's door for Trident though, perhaps a little more backbone to tell BEA to stop fretting over graphs would have helped (and maybe not letting Boeing look over the plans!).
So I'd say by 1958-59 DH were back on track but the 1950s was something of a dip I think in terms of what they could have achieved and they seem to have concentrated on civil work post-1955 barring three military projects.