Farnborough 1966

I have a copy of the original airshow brochure which contains a few surprises in terms of the numbers of British only aircraft produced and demonstrated at the show and the number of British firms exhibiting. This brochure was on sale for 4/- or, twenty pence.

Aircraft on display
Hawker Kestrel/Harrier
Lightning
Buccaneer
Andover
Belfast
HS 801
Provost
Basset
Wessex
VC 10
Trident
BAC 111
Hawker 125
Jetstream
Skyvan
H.P Herald
Islander
SR-N6 Hovercraft
Dove
UK 3 satellite
Bloodhound
Vulcan
Sea Vixen

The Society of British Aircraft Constructors incorporated 540 companies. The following list is not exhaustive:

Rolls Royce
Westland
Normalair
Handley Page
Hawker Siddeley
Shorts
AEI
Automotive Products
Audex
British Oxy
Dowty
Dunlop
Electro Hydraulics
English Electric
Godfrey precision
Hobson
Lansing Bagnell
Lucas
MartinBaker
Newark group
Smith Industries
Unbrako
Avon
Ermeto
Canno
Engela Gibbs
Graseby
General precision
Mechanism Ltd.
Planair
Saunders Valves
Teleflex
Avica
Voltabloc
FPT Industries
M.L Aviation
Integral
Castrol
Delaney Galley
Jessop Saville
Zwicky
SkyHi
Aircraft Materials
Bakelite
Formica
Habershon

This list is just some of the firms exhibiting. There are another 25.

There is also a piece written about Britain’s space ideas. They include a mock up of a re-usable space vehicle looking very much like the U.S space shuttle – same shape. It is called ‘a recovery orbital transporter, the project is named Mustard.

Westland have a project in an advanced design stage which looks exactly like the American Osprey horizontal to vertical flight aircraft.

All of this, at a time in this nations fortunes when we were very much poorer than we are to-day. Now it appears that we cannot build a commercially successful all British military or civil design outside of the now superannuated BAe 146 and the Hawk.