The other UK

[zen]

Abraham makes a valid point on another thread about what the UK OrBat would look like if things had been different from the end of WWII. SO I think rather than hijacking an existing thread perhaps it would be better to start afresh.

Now Abe makes the case that the UK could have left the nuclear weapons to the USA and persued just power generation and what flows from that is a very different scenario for how things like the '57 review pan out.

But equaly one might say persuite of the bomb was fundamental to the UK and that trying to keep alive the aviation industry was the more flawed effort.

Each has their consequences.
If the RAF is fielding SR.177, Avro 730, and Fairey Delta III, its a very different world and the RN has more concerns with the replacement of the Buccaneer since it has Scimitar FAW, and SR.177 handling the fighter duties.

Alternatively we might see things like the Super Tiger, or Crusader, Phantom, Super Sabre, Thunderchief, even the Hustler in RAF and RN service, while the UK persues a completely UK sourced nuclear weapons arsenal.

 

[uk 75]

Follwing my look at the very detailed orbats produced in the early 60s for the RN and RAF
with the likes of CVA 01 and TSR 2, it would be interesting to know what was produced in the
50s in the run up to the dreaded Sandys White Paper.

Eg

How many Avro 730s were planned for Bomber Command and had any planning been
done on their deployment?

How many squadrons of 177 aircraft were planned and for what roles?

What was a missile equipped RN with big ships expected to look like?

 

[zen]

Only figure I have is 150 SR.177 for the RAF and a similar number for the RN.

I seem to reccal reading in BSP some sort of intial figure Fairey where quoting for the Delta III. But we could imagine its likely to be similar to a figure of 165 in total.

Not sure what the figure would be for the Avro 730, since it's OR started life as a recce platform that expanded to the bomber role. Presumably at least 60, but it maybe over twice that if it replaces the V-force.

Of course Sandys was right that the RAF was not going to be able to fight the Battle of Britain in WWIII and that the V-force had very little time to get clear of the first wave of a Soviet strike. This of course is why VTOL and STOVL become so important after '57 in their thinking, dispersal and avoidance of being too vulnerable to a first strike hence the P1127, and P1154.

So the alternative is perseverence with ABM to 'buy' time for the IRBM launches, until they themselves are replaced with faster launching missiles. Which suggests that Violent Friend and NIGS would recieve more effort in this scenario.
So take a look at the NIGS discussion here. But to which I would add that the all missile RN is more Soviet in outcome, yet still needs over the horizon targeting data.

 

[uk 75]

Zen

Thanks for these replies. This is an area I have not looked out too closely, perhaps
because the equipment involved always struck me as a bit "Dan Dare".

Saro 177

The Saro P53 test aircraft seems to have been quite difficult to operate, a bit like
wartime German rocket machines. How useful would the big 177 have been, especially
if it then had only to rely on conventional power.

Avro 730

Again, compared with the B70 and the F12A the models of this plane look very dated.
The Bristol 188, which did fly, does not seem to have been a great success. Except as
a 50s H-bomber or a 60s recce plane a la Blackbird the 730 seems a bit of a deadend.

RN missiles and ships

The ancient looking big cruiser shown in drawings and models, as a sort of Tiger class on
steroids, would have been a might sight to behold, but rather like the US Little Rock and Albany cruisers
not really offered more than shore bombardment and command capabilities over the smaller 60s DLG type ships

Whereas TSR 2 and 1154, and even the tubby 681, look realistic propositions even today.

Blue Streak, Blue Water, Yellow Dingbat, Purple Peopleeater etc

The British missiles of this period all have a sort of cottage industry homemade appearance
compared with the names of US equivalents. Talos sounds much better than Blue Envoy, Jupiter or Thor
better than Blue Streak (has a sort of Brocks firework feel). The appearance of Talos for example
looks business like, Seaslug looks like something that escaped from a builders yard.

Yep, the Hippo book of missiles (1962 edition) has a lot to answer for in my case.

UK 75

 

[zen]

Not sure you get the concept for that.

Which is that instead of trying to keep UK aircraft going they focus more effort on missiles.

The first likely product is Green Flax instead of SeaSlug, aka Thunderbird II for the Counties.

The 'all missile RN' is a 60's concept so why you think its going to be the 50's weapons is beyond me.

In the other alternative....

Saro 53 flew OK. There are concerns over the HTP side of things (still safer than LOx), but its reasonable to assume a shift to jet engine only with the increasing power of more potent engines becoming available.

Avro 730 sits somewhere between the B70 and the F12A. Longer legs than the Blackbird, and having a crew of three.

Chief concern is the IRBM's use of LOx. For speedier launches I suspect HTP would have been the better choice. But theres some fascenating threads on the subject of these sorts of missiles and more here.

 

[robunos]

...the Hippo book of missiles (1962 edition) has a lot to answer for in my case.

An aside...
I still have mine... ;D ...but it's the 1971 edition... :'(


cheers,
Robin.

 

[Hammer Birchgrove]

The English Electric Blue Water short range missile was better than the US-built Honest John, or so the Internetz says, anyway.

The nuclear-tipped Bristol Bloodhound Mk. III fascinates me (and so do all tactical nukes BTW). It was probably for the better (IMHO) that it wasn't built and deployed, but if it didn't need thorium like the US-built Bomarc, it could have been a cheaper alternative to it, given it was based on the already deployed Mk II. I wonder if it could be ready in time to interest Canada to buy it instead of the Bomarc.

The Bloodhound Mk. IV as a replacement for the British Army's Thunderbird seems to be a no-brainer to me; it was based on a Swedish modification of the Mk. II.

Since all comes down on whether the UK can afford it or not, I think the real point of divergence would be 1945-46. Why? Because that is when UK or the British car industry could have decided to take over the Volkswagen factory. Now that's a lost opportunity.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

Since all comes down on whether the UK can afford it or not, I think the real point of divergence would be 1945-46. Why? Because that is when UK or the British car industry could have decided to take over the Volkswagen factory. Now that's a lost opportunity.

Who’s to say the British wouldn’t screw up the VW as much as they did the Morris Minor arguably a better vehicle anyway? The problem wasn’t opportunity, innovation or markets – the British had plenty – the problem was bad, conservative and romantic management.

Besides the UK economy was terminal in 45 and not much could save it. A good economic history of this time is “Austerity Britain, 1945-1951” by David Kynaston. Has a nice picture inside of the unbuilt Ark Royal with the housing tenements in the foreground.

Well if you wind you PoD back to 1918-19 and have some reasoned economic policy in the UK to rebuild the economy after WWI and not to fall into the Empire Protectionism trap then the British economy could be as efficient as the American by the 1930s (it routinely took twice as many labour hours to build the same class of thing in the UK as in the USA). In such a case WW2 would be over by 1942 and with gradual development and integration of the Empire the UK should start to re-overtake the USA in 60s. Though of course in this case the Soviet Union would not suffer through the immense damage inflicted on it by the Germans so would be a much more powerful rival. Also it is unlikely a US-UK ‘special relationship’ would be formed leading to a tripod of world power balances.

 

[Hammer Birchgrove]

Since all comes down on whether the UK can afford it or not, I think the real point of divergence would be 1945-46. Why? Because that is when UK or the British car industry could have decided to take over the Volkswagen factory. Now that's a lost opportunity.

Who’s to say the British wouldn’t screw up the VW as much as they did the Morris Minor arguably a better vehicle anyway? The problem wasn’t opportunity, innovation or markets – the British had plenty – the problem was bad, conservative and romantic management.

Point taken, but I meant that Brits would own the factory while letting Germans run it. :-\

Besides the UK economy was terminal in 45 and not much could save it. A good economic history of this time is “Austerity Britain, 1945-1951” by David Kynaston. Has a nice picture inside of the unbuilt Ark Royal with the housing tenements in the foreground.

I'll try to look after the book some time.

Well if you wind you PoD back to 1918-19 and have some reasoned economic policy in the UK to rebuild the economy after WWI and not to fall into the Empire Protectionism trap then the British economy could be as efficient as the American by the 1930s (it routinely took twice as many labour hours to build the same class of thing in the UK as in the USA). In such a case WW2 would be over by 1942 and with gradual development and integration of the Empire the UK should start to re-overtake the USA in 60s. Though of course in this case the Soviet Union would not suffer through the immense damage inflicted on it by the Germans so would be a much more powerful rival. Also it is unlikely a US-UK ‘special relationship’ would be formed leading to a tripod of world power balances.

Yeah, I don't get Churchill's obsession with the gold standard during the 20's; surely it's more important having growth and low unemployment than to have a highly valued currency? No wonder the coal miners hated him. It's a pity that a solution like the Bretton Woods system didn't come up until after WWII.

Other possibilities would be that "Lloyd George's New Deal" had come to fruition starting 1935, and/or that UK never made the Anglo-German Naval Agreement the same year. The latter would not only have meant that Kriegsmarine would have far less ships (at least surface ships, though secretly built U-boats and commercial raiders are still possible), Italy/Mussolini would have kept confidence in UK, probably stay in the Stresa Front and not have invaded Ethiopia. This would make it harder for Hitler to annex Austria, Sudetenland, Bohemia, and Moravia-Silesia. Then again, Mussolini's imperialistic aspirations might have destroyed the deal anyway, sooner or later.

I'm not sure if it would have been good for the British Empire and Commonwealth economically, but India getting Dominion status during the 20's or 30's is appealing.

Now, if the war against Germany and possibly Italy ends early, wouldn't it be possible that there instead would be a war against the USSR, especially if UK and France had managed to send troops to aid Finland?

 

[zen]

Its certainly valid to say that the obsession with fixing the value of the Pound has done more damage than any other single element of economics. The issue neatly parallels the economic decline of the UK and the final release from this obsession (against the will of the PM of the day)pressaged a long periode of steady growth and much changed circumstances.

However mucking around with post WWI periode alters things so far we'd have no real basis for any scenario, just hypothosis ontop of hypothosis. Too far back and too many variables.

It is true to say that ROBOT was probably too far ahead of its time after the nationalisations of the '45 governement where the UK economy was still climbing out of 'full on war making mode' and its that which so hinders economics of the periode.

One can take a neat locus of branches for 1945, dependant on which decision is taken once the flow of US money suddenly cuts out. There was a good argument to say the US should indeed have gifted some monies instead of lent them, but Keynes was the wrong man to make that argument, especialy so considering his state of health.

At the time Keynes put forward two options, go to the US for money, or live within our means and of the US option there are several possible outcomes. Ranging from the full 6 billion as a gift to far harsher clauses of a loan at higher rates of interest.

 

[Hammer Birchgrove]

Who or what does ROBOT means in this context? ???

 

[zen]

The floating of the Pound free of any artificial constraint, essential what we now have, where it finds its own level against the other currencies of the world rather than by trying to fix it against some 'stable' marker, such as Gold, Silver, or the ERM.

 

[Hammer Birchgrove]

The floating of the Pound free of any artificial constraint, essential what we now have, where it finds its own level against the other currencies of the world rather than by trying to fix it against some 'stable' marker, such as Gold, Silver, or the ERM.

Thanks.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

Operation ROBOT from Sir Leslie ROwan, Sir George BOlton and OTto Clarke was the 1952 plan to float the Pound by HM Treasury. The RO-BO-OT gentelmen being the civil servants behind it.

 

[Hammer Birchgrove]

Operation ROBOT from Sir Leslie ROwan, Sir George BOlton and OTto Clarke was the 1952 plan to float the Pound by HM Treasury. The RO-BO-OT gentelmen being the civil servants behind it.

I see now, thanks.

 

[Anderman]

Interesting on economics on a board for secrets project ;D

The problem with going back to the gold standard in the uk was that the british politicos wanted and went back to exchange ratio of gold/pound of the pre world war 1 era, which of course didn´t work because the goverment printed more pound notes to pay for WW1.

It is not possible to solve economic problems by printing money, money is only a medium of exchange. But welfare is based on things like food steel etc...

 

[Hammer Birchgrove]

Did it ever occur to UK politicians and/or business owners to build iron and steel industries in India in the 1920's/30's similar to how US companies built steel industries in China? I'm not saying that UK:s own steel industry should have been out-competed, but the extra capacity would have been nice during the military build-up after 1934 and during (and after) WWII.

 

[zen]

It bugs me that this thread is sidetracked and left fallow.

So many times we hear this trope that somehow all the UK had to do was buy foreign for its every need and somehow magicaly all would be well. The reality is such an option was not fully available nor politicaly rational or indeed as econmicaly feasable as they would like to believe.
So hard choices would have to be made that permit the purchase of foreign equipment, and the heart of that is the continuation, expansion, and deepening of some remaining UK efforts.

And that means some, who constantly and snidely quip that all UK efforts are rubbish, have not the wit or the courage to choose and put those choices forward. Fearing their sacred totem of "foreign is best, UK is not" might fall under scrutiny.

At heart this is either because they cannot follow the path of their own logic or they fear the exposure of the contradiction at its core. That either the UK remains an independant state as best it can or else subsume itself completely. For complete reliance on others is to be utterly in their power.
The peoples of the UK have not chosen this end, nor by any measure do they seem to wish it.

 

[mz]

Did it ever occur to UK politicians and/or business owners to build iron and steel industries in India in the 1920's/30's similar to how US companies built steel industries in China? I'm not saying that UK:s own steel industry should have been out-competed, but the extra capacity would have been nice during the military build-up after 1934 and during (and after) WWII.

India has little coal.

 

[geeshockbloke]

India has loads of coal, but so has Britain. Ever heard the expression "Coals to Newcastle". We didn't need to import coal until the 90s and not because we ran out.

Maybe you should talk to Chris Gibson, he's into all this economics stuff.

Mark

 

[mz]

India has loads of coal, but so has Britain. Ever heard the expression "Coals to Newcastle". We didn't need to import coal until the 90s and not because we ran out.

Maybe you should talk to Chris Gibson, he's into all this economics stuff.
Mark

Oh, it turns out I was very wrong indeed. I guess I had that impression because it has so much less than China, but that's like saying something is small if it looks like that next to a mammoth.

 

[uk 75]

It bugs me that this thread is sidetracked and left fallow.

So many times we hear this trope that somehow all the UK had to do was buy foreign for its every need and somehow magicaly all would be well. The reality is such an option was not fully available nor politicaly rational or indeed as econmicaly feasable as they would like to believe.
So hard choices would have to be made that permit the purchase of foreign equipment, and the heart of that is the continuation, expansion, and deepening of some remaining UK efforts.

And that means some, who constantly and snidely quip that all UK efforts are rubbish, have not the wit or the courage to choose and put those choices forward. Fearing their sacred totem of "foreign is best, UK is not" might fall under scrutiny.

At heart this is either because they cannot follow the path of their own logic or they fear the exposure of the contradiction at its core. That either the UK remains an independant state as best it can or else subsume itself completely. For complete reliance on others is to be utterly in their power.
The peoples of the UK have not chosen this end, nor by any measure do they seem to wish it.

This discussion is relevant to some current threads and sums up the dilemma of creating alt-history threads.
I admit to putting contrary views to auggestions to resurrect British programmes that did not make it into service.
However, I deny doing this to de-rail the suggested UK alternatives. My aim is to stress-test the suggestions and tease out the interesting real-world facts and arguments that prompted them.
Often (but not always) this involves using US equipment that the UK or other countries selected as the performance measures. I do this because often a lot more data is available than about UK proposals.
I would cite as an example of where a UK project has been the subject of romantic myth (my nick comes from my fictional 1975 RAF) is the TSR2. Sadly (for me at least) we know much more in 2024 than I did back in 2004 when I first started blogging.

 

[Rule of cool]

This discussion is relevant to some current threads and sums up the dilemma of creating alt-history threads.
I admit to putting contrary views to auggestions to resurrect British programmes that did not make it into service.
However, I deny doing this to de-rail the suggested UK alternatives. My aim is to stress-test the suggestions and tease out the interesting real-world facts and arguments that prompted them.
Often (but not always) this involves using US equipment that the UK or other countries selected as the performance measures. I do this because often a lot more data is available than about UK proposals.
I would cite as an example of where a UK project has been the subject of romantic myth (my nick comes from my fictional 1975 RAF) is the TSR2. Sadly (for me at least) we know much more in 2024 than I did back in 2004 when I first started blogging.

By what criteria do you stress test alternative proposals? I ask because 15 years in Defence procurement slapped the romanticism right outta me.

These days when someone says X should have bought Y I think about the cost of development, Life of Type, place in the force structure, cost of ownership/sustainment and other boring stuff before I think of how fast it goes and the other cool stuff. This puts me at odds with crowd favourites like the Super Tiger, Super Crusader, P1121 and Thin Wing Javelin in favour of things the crowd hates like the EE Lightning. For all that the TSR2 would be a winner in my book, although I've learned far more that I ever suspected about the first ruggedised digital computers, the 'fail operational' concept, gallium integrated circuits, computer memory limits and the importance of data buses than I ever would have suspected in order to reach this conclusion.

 

[southwestforests]

These days when someone says X should have bought Y I think about the cost of development, Life of Type, place in the force structure, cost of ownership/sustainment and other boring stuff before I think of how fast it goes and the other cool stuff. This puts me at odds with crowd favourites

Though I've not myself been in the defense/defence industry, or even the military, plenty of relatives have; and there's my own experience in retail with, "That's a neat product but how many can we afford to order, how much display space will they occupy, and at what rate will they sell and free up shelf space?", which although different experiences are close enough to aid in grasping the general concept.

I also say that what happened historically was the effect of the causes, and to get a different effect would have required different causes, which themselves were effects of causes, and on down the chain ...

 

[Rule of cool]

Though I've not myself been in the defense/defence industry, or even the military, plenty of relatives have; and there's my own experience in retail with, "That's a neat product but how many can we afford to order, how much display space will they occupy, and at what rate will they sell and free up shelf space?", which although different experiences are close enough to aid in grasping the general concept.

I also say that what happened historically was the effect of the causes, and to get a different effect would have required different causes, which themselves were effects of causes, and on down the chain ...

You're making these trade-offs with an aim in mind; making money or deterring WW3 and fighting Limited Wars.

The knock-on effects can be staggering, Britain went from being an aviation industry powerhouse to a paltry 42% partner in Tornado development in the space of a decade.

 

[southwestforests]

The knock-on effects can be staggering, Britain went from being an aviation industry powerhouse to a paltry 42% partner in Tornado development in the space of a decade.

Right this moment with a headache and muscle spasms I can't recall whether there was a direct connection, but I'm going to say that those effects also did no good for Britain's spaceflight efforts.