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This is a key point. I once spent weeks going through old FT articles to get a feel for, what today we would call, investor sentiment around the UK A&D industry in 1950s/1960s and came up with exactly the above. I am left with the view that for the most part these companies were defence companies (by which I mean they were used to having most of their R&D funded by the taxpayer), not aircraft companies, and were ill-equipped financially (and perhaps intellectually) to make the transition from one to the other. Of course, that was compounded by the relative lack of demand for airliners in the UK compared with the US.

[QUOTE="JFC Fuller, post: 362154, member: 8918"] This is a key point. I once spent weeks going through old FT articles to get a feel for, what today we would call, investor sentiment around the UK A&D industry in 1950s/1960s and came up with exactly the above. I am left with the view that for the most part these companies were defence companies (by which I mean they were used to having most of their R&D funded by the taxpayer), not aircraft companies, and were ill-equipped financially (and perhaps intellectually) to make the transition from one to the other. Of course, that was compounded by the relative lack of demand for airliners in the UK compared with the US. [/QUOTE]

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