sw (and linked to yr Beaufighter thread) Production delivery “promises”.

Don’t use a lot of ink on that issue. WW2 Aero firms were in no position to make production “promises”, whether on timescale or cost…because none was a Prime Contractor. Indeed the first UK Aero Prime Contractor able to make any such commitment was HSAL on Hawk, 21/3/72: “all up”, R&D+Production, airframe, engine and (most) equipment. Before that, difficult lumps, like engines, were managed by and free-issued to assembly sites, by the Customer, on “Embodiment Loan”. A Design Parent might make “promises” regarding in-house matters, such as Drawing Office capacity…but even there, the Ministry of Labour could rescind a man’s Reserved Occupation status and assign him to Timbuctu. The Munitions Industries were effectively Nationalised 3/9/39 under DORA, the Defence of the Realm Act.

In February,1938 AM Sir Wilfrid Freeman, Air Ministry Board, Air Member for Development and Production became enthused with an unarmed Speed Bomber, neither DH nor wood were foremost in his mind. Nor did he see this project as instead of “Heavies”. Nor, at the 1/1/40 Launch Meeting, R&D+ production of 50xPR as Freeman’s Folly, was a precise, still less Private Venture scheme on the table….because DH, in common with all other Munitions firms, was in no position to do such a thing. It was the Customer who determined what would be funded where. It was he that shifted Tiger Moth out of DH to Morris; it was he that decided what to do with the failed Don woodworker -which was to build Oxfords. It was he that decided how to bring the furniture industry into the War Effort. Because he was paying and had Powers which, historians have surmised, Hitler envied.

See A.Furse, W.Freeman,Spellmount,2000.