Rationalize the British Aircraft Industry
- Thread starter Just Leo
- Start date
OTL got the structure right in the end... One or two companies is about right.
What went wrong was timing and project selection. Better choice of what to back and how with OTL's structure is probably the most reasonable way to get a better outcome... I'm going to focus on commericial since that really seems to be where the most went wrong, but obviously mistakes were made on the military side as well. TSR.2 and CVA-01 in particular could change things, but as a paying business I'd argue that British Aerospace is made or broken on commercial.
Personally I'd look to the V.1000/VC7, Trident and HS.134 projects as the main candidates for turning things around. It's tempting to talk about avoiding the comet crashes, but I end up agreeing with the sentiment that if not De Havilland (which had a record of skimping on structure anyway) something similar would have happened to someone else. The BAC One Eleven has a lot of potential as well, but I don't see it being an easy candidate for turning the industry around; otoh if British Aerospace does better overall and early opportunities for stretches, Trident commonality and CFM-56 re-engining the airframe could sell in very large numbers.
As far as the dust settling, really it comes down to Britain's role in Airbus. It' very easy to imagine the A320 being a primarily British project, with final assembly by BAC or what's left of it. Under the right circumstances British Aerospace could even go head to head with Airbus, and while I have a hard time calling the end of the consortium as we know it likely, it would be reasonable to imagine the unified British Aerospace being by far the dominant partner, up to and including Airbus amounting to BA bringing European partners into their projects.
So as an idea of what I have in my head:
-BOAC outright refused permission to buy American while British options exist,
-VC.7 enters service contemporary with 707, offers similar economics and better hot/high performance. Probably more difficult to maintain given embedded engines, but not more limited in expansion options than OTL 707 (frankly given the similarities it would not be hard to justify a TL in which the VC7 hurts the 707 enough that Douglas dominates the American market - the DC-8 has a lot more in the way of obvious advantages over the VC7 than the 707).
-Trident is produced in it's original 6 abreast DH.121 form, government having recognized that Hunting/BAC 70 seater (One-Eleven) will fill smaller roles and that a large Trident supplement VC7s in Medium-Range-Empire services, particularly to Africa. Export sales seem likely, this is an aircraft with numbers much like the 727 with somewhat earlier launch date facing a Boeing which has sold fewer 707s. Worst case scenario I can see North American sales similar to OTL's limited One-Eleven operations.
-Trans Canada Airlines is an obvious big and early customer for most of these aircraft, having (OTL) operated the Viscount and Vanguard, expressed serious interest in the VC7 and VC11 (short range VC10 variant proposed to BEA for same role as Trident, but which was eventually was dropped in favor of funding the One-Eleven). Not the largest operator, or necessarily a game changer (as demonstrated by the Vanguard) but certainly a big step to North American acceptance, and big enough to improve the picture against OTL's production numbers.
-HS.134 (twin engine, 757 like Trident variant) emerges in late 60s alongside stretched and re-engined One-Elevens. BEA purchases both as fleet backbone.
-BOAC ends sixties committing to some sort of larger than VC7/707 but smaller than 747 aircraft. I'm imagining something along the lines of a double deck VC7, much as Vickers pitched with the Super Super VC-10 double decker, or Boeing considered in the early 747 work.
At this point we run into OTL's Airbus program and the BAC/HS merger. How this shakes out is open to question, and in a fully fleshed timeline could play out a a number of ways, but none of them are likely to wipe out British Aerospace. I'm inclined to believe that the Super V-1000 gets cancelled in favor of a "European", but very much British led, four engine wide body project. OTOH if OTL's politics are anything to go by, and I don't see why they wouldn't be we might see the UK walking away from the partners and pushing the three-eleven or even saying the HS.134 is big enough for European operations into the 70s. Either way something like OTL's airbus becomes very possible and even more tenuous. In any case, the industry will be shaken up, and something is going to break. The end result will almost certainly include at least one of these major projects being a commercial flop on at least the scale of the VC10, and I have a hard time seeing the single European survivor not being British led, but this is where details matter a lot. Suffice it to say this is a TL I'm interested in writing, but there are a lot of those and I have yet to come close to actually posting any of them... Frankly if I do write it up it will probably be as part of something bigger including Britain holding some colonies, a lot of Transport America inspiration across the Atlantic and a Cold War that plays out much more multi-polar.
What went wrong was timing and project selection. Better choice of what to back and how with OTL's structure is probably the most reasonable way to get a better outcome... I'm going to focus on commericial since that really seems to be where the most went wrong, but obviously mistakes were made on the military side as well. TSR.2 and CVA-01 in particular could change things, but as a paying business I'd argue that British Aerospace is made or broken on commercial.
Personally I'd look to the V.1000/VC7, Trident and HS.134 projects as the main candidates for turning things around. It's tempting to talk about avoiding the comet crashes, but I end up agreeing with the sentiment that if not De Havilland (which had a record of skimping on structure anyway) something similar would have happened to someone else. The BAC One Eleven has a lot of potential as well, but I don't see it being an easy candidate for turning the industry around; otoh if British Aerospace does better overall and early opportunities for stretches, Trident commonality and CFM-56 re-engining the airframe could sell in very large numbers.
As far as the dust settling, really it comes down to Britain's role in Airbus. It' very easy to imagine the A320 being a primarily British project, with final assembly by BAC or what's left of it. Under the right circumstances British Aerospace could even go head to head with Airbus, and while I have a hard time calling the end of the consortium as we know it likely, it would be reasonable to imagine the unified British Aerospace being by far the dominant partner, up to and including Airbus amounting to BA bringing European partners into their projects.
So as an idea of what I have in my head:
-BOAC outright refused permission to buy American while British options exist,
-VC.7 enters service contemporary with 707, offers similar economics and better hot/high performance. Probably more difficult to maintain given embedded engines, but not more limited in expansion options than OTL 707 (frankly given the similarities it would not be hard to justify a TL in which the VC7 hurts the 707 enough that Douglas dominates the American market - the DC-8 has a lot more in the way of obvious advantages over the VC7 than the 707).
-Trident is produced in it's original 6 abreast DH.121 form, government having recognized that Hunting/BAC 70 seater (One-Eleven) will fill smaller roles and that a large Trident supplement VC7s in Medium-Range-Empire services, particularly to Africa. Export sales seem likely, this is an aircraft with numbers much like the 727 with somewhat earlier launch date facing a Boeing which has sold fewer 707s. Worst case scenario I can see North American sales similar to OTL's limited One-Eleven operations.
-Trans Canada Airlines is an obvious big and early customer for most of these aircraft, having (OTL) operated the Viscount and Vanguard, expressed serious interest in the VC7 and VC11 (short range VC10 variant proposed to BEA for same role as Trident, but which was eventually was dropped in favor of funding the One-Eleven). Not the largest operator, or necessarily a game changer (as demonstrated by the Vanguard) but certainly a big step to North American acceptance, and big enough to improve the picture against OTL's production numbers.
-HS.134 (twin engine, 757 like Trident variant) emerges in late 60s alongside stretched and re-engined One-Elevens. BEA purchases both as fleet backbone.
-BOAC ends sixties committing to some sort of larger than VC7/707 but smaller than 747 aircraft. I'm imagining something along the lines of a double deck VC7, much as Vickers pitched with the Super Super VC-10 double decker, or Boeing considered in the early 747 work.
At this point we run into OTL's Airbus program and the BAC/HS merger. How this shakes out is open to question, and in a fully fleshed timeline could play out a a number of ways, but none of them are likely to wipe out British Aerospace. I'm inclined to believe that the Super V-1000 gets cancelled in favor of a "European", but very much British led, four engine wide body project. OTOH if OTL's politics are anything to go by, and I don't see why they wouldn't be we might see the UK walking away from the partners and pushing the three-eleven or even saying the HS.134 is big enough for European operations into the 70s. Either way something like OTL's airbus becomes very possible and even more tenuous. In any case, the industry will be shaken up, and something is going to break. The end result will almost certainly include at least one of these major projects being a commercial flop on at least the scale of the VC10, and I have a hard time seeing the single European survivor not being British led, but this is where details matter a lot. Suffice it to say this is a TL I'm interested in writing, but there are a lot of those and I have yet to come close to actually posting any of them... Frankly if I do write it up it will probably be as part of something bigger including Britain holding some colonies, a lot of Transport America inspiration across the Atlantic and a Cold War that plays out much more multi-polar.
I'd suggest starting during WW2 and the years immediately after - it was already partially done with Vickers and Hawker-Siddeley forming conglomerates. Instead of Shorts being taken over by the Government, for instance, give Vickers or H-S a loan to do so. Also encourage consolidation within the groups: in the postwar world it's notable how many half-arsed projects were put forward due to a lack of design staff, often by companies within the same group. I think that is somewhat of a pre-requisite for competing with the Americans: their companies had much bigger design groups and so could do a better job of the detailed engineering.
Riain
Banned
I've never understood why the aircraft industry needed to be pushed to rationalise rather than just doing it in a commercial process that occurs in businesses of all sizes all the time. Surely the government just needs to give contracts to the best companies and commercial realities will see aircraft companies survive/thrive, merge or die and have their people, gear and IP picked up in fire sales.
This sounds good, and in a utopian world,it would be fine. It does, however, require a wise and knowing government.
Indeed. Governments find it very hard to not meddle in industrial policy, especially with a defence component.
I'm not sure it isn't a bad thing always- would late 1930s corporate Australia have quickly and efficiently build a military aircraft industry without government assistance, by simple letting of contract?
Give the UK government a sensible pill and instead of pouring money into two vanishing empire vanity projects (Brabazon and Princess.) Invest in real world enterprise that advance Britain's technical lead (the Miles M52 comes to mind)
Then build sound aircraft for a world market.
Then build sound aircraft for a world market.
One of the problems is that before the war the British Government policy was against rationalisation of the aircraft industry - they preferred to have competition going on and to ensure that a wide variety of designs were tried out. Generally that worked pretty well - the government paid for a variety of designs to be tried and picked the winners. The problem is that as aircraft got more complex and required far more design effort the UK could no longer afford to have a large number of companies competing for the same orders, simply because the total cost of the design effort got too much.
The Government recognised this eventually (post-Sandystorm) and forced the amalgamation of all the companies into two and eventually one group. The only way to make this less traumatic is for it to happen earlier, and this in turn requires them to recognise the change in the complexity of aircraft requires fewer, bigger design teams much earlier than they did, and be willing to grasp the nettle and actually do something about it.
The Government recognised this eventually (post-Sandystorm) and forced the amalgamation of all the companies into two and eventually one group. The only way to make this less traumatic is for it to happen earlier, and this in turn requires them to recognise the change in the complexity of aircraft requires fewer, bigger design teams much earlier than they did, and be willing to grasp the nettle and actually do something about it.
There were only a handful of engineers capable of dealing with the problem of creating emergency military aircraft, and no investors willing to start a company with one client dealing with a war that won't last forever. Britain had many fledgling aircraft companies prior to WWI who invested vast sums to expand to meet the needs of war. They were some disappointed at war's end.
Starting in 1945 exert pressure on the various companies to merge into two competing concerns just as they did fifteen years later with Hawker Siddeley Aviation and British Aircraft Corporation to try and help gain the advantages of economies of scale. Hawker Siddeley's organisation seems like a decent compromise to begin with since it allows the various companies to retain a certain amount of independence and their names, over time you then centralise the companies more which should hopefully see people not kick up, or at least kick up less of, a fuss. Try and keep them from further amalgamating into just one company as long as it's possible to avoid a Westlands Aircraft and BAE Systems scenario but that's fairly inevitable I would expect. So the timeline is roughly 1945 companies start merging over a couple of years, say five to ten years of the Air Ministry issuing specifications and the two companies allowing competition between their internal companies to come up with a design but only one being chosen to be the official submission, then as the technology starts getting more advanced and complex they begin to centralise so that there's just one design created for each specification to compete against their competitor.
That a nice idea but it runs into several problems as others have already mentioned. Immediately after the war these were large companies that were household names that had helped win the war and crush Nazism so no-one would want to face the public backlash from seeing them disappear. You then run into the post-war consensus of whose tenets was full employment, not wholly surprising after the experiences of the 1920s, which would have made it difficult to see large numbers of workers being put out of work by allowing the companies to fail.
Also, the people who run these businesses, or their trade unions will all be connected up the whazoo, so politically it would not be easy just to cut them loose.
Derek Wood put it a lot better than I can in his book Project Cancelled, so here is his Scenario 1945 in full...
One thing I'd personally love to see is what the Britannia could have done if everything that went into the Tudor (a truly crap aircraft that gets none of the attentions the Brabazon did and ultimately served only to waste funds and reduce North Star sales), Brabazon and Princess were committed to it from day 1. Even to the extent that the Britannia is allowed to launch with an interim piston driven version...
Last edited:
If Rolls Royce hadn't terminated the Clyde it could have been fitted to the interim Britannia.
Does anybody know if the Clyde was advanced enough to have been substituted for the Merlin on the North Star?
Though I think the Americans would have retaliated with DC-6s, DC-7s, Stratocruisers and Super Constellations fitted with British turboprops, that were either built by Rolls Royce and Bristol-Siddeley or built by American firms under licence.
I'd have to dig into the details, but I have my doubts that a Turbo North Star would have been possible under the Canadair licensing agreement. I also suspect that the more likely scenario given what was talked about OTL would be a British licensed Constellation with turbines of some sort, which might be a more sensible program, but is almost certainly going to be the end of the Britannia.
As far as the Clyde goes, I don't see any particular reason it wouldn't be workable in the Britannia, but bear in mind that a Centaurus powered version was planned until BOAC declared they would only take the Proteus.
Last edited:
As far as the Clyde goes, it played the resonant harmonica, and played it bad enough to break things. The Centaurus was lacking in power and altitude capability. Centaurus shook too, but metalastic mounts took care of it, except on Brabazon, which used coupled Centaurus.
Slight diversion: Norton motorcycles used the same bushings to mount the engine on Commando motorcycles to isolate vibration. The government "urged" Norton to merge with BSA motorcycles, which was bankrupting, to rationalize the bike industry, so Norton became bankrupt too.
My assessment is no, not really. It would, however, be reasonable to have the actual design flaws be avoided entirely. Problem is, as I mentioned above, it was likely to happen to someone at some point, and DH was more likely than most to be the victim. That said, any version of modified windows, thicker skin or a factory following design specifications on riveting (drilling rather than punching) would have avoided the disasters.