Accounting practices for UK WW2 Aircraft

Production Unit Costs

ISBN 0714643432, S.Ritchie, Industry & Air Power, F.Cass,1997 will guide you to relevant PRO files.

Thank you gentlemen!

Excellent stuff, and a bit rich for my blood, but I’d just add a couple of comments –

Cost per aircraft was a figure never, as discussed, fully realised, however much an accountant might want. Tracking the construction of Canadian built Stranraers and Lysanders, with engines to be shipped from the UK (and who pays what?) wasn’t clear to start off. When the engines weren’t delivered (needed in the UK) the figures were messed up even further. Costs ‘per aircraft’ of Lysanders have been banded about, but again, I’d be wary of how much of a ‘war-ready’ Lysander they paid for.

Secondly, a book called “The Paladins” by John James (Pub Macdonald) is an excellent financial and socio-politically driven history of inter-war RAF; and would give a lot of background to these funding questions, and the ‘stalking horse’ expansion schemes proposed by the ministry to dummy the treasury and so forth. Sounds dull, actually it puts a lot of the RAF’s management into context and shows how it was a one use tool for 1940. Recommended.

HTH

Treasury files: The key body to which the Air Ministry had to go cap in hand was the Treasury Inter-Services Committee. Treasury records relating to the RAF during immediate pre-war and early wartime years are dotted around T161. If you perform a a search using the online catalogue within that class and using “Fighting Services” as a keyword you’ll get the full (and long) listing. These records are most useful on experimental programmes and funding for the Shadow Programme. As war approached Treasury influence seems to have declined somewhat (or at least its paper trail thins out).

Contract Ledgers: These are in SUPP 4. They cover not just airframes but also equipment, modifications and experimental work. In addition to listing and briefly describing each contract they frequently include some brief notes on the outcome (usually in wonderfully illegible writing) . You’ll appreciate that these are often somewhat confused where, for example, a contract might be placed for Sptifire Is, but later modified for some part of the order to built to a different modification state or even a different Mark or Marks.

The three bodies/committees to which I referred are:
1.The Air Council Committee on Supply (minutes/decisions/memoranda in AVIA 10. e.g 1939 ones in AVIA 10/161 through 10/164)
2. The Secretary of States Expansion Progress Meetings (AIR 6)
3. The elegantly-titled Meetings of the Directors of the Department of the Director General of Production

These are all useful for policy issues, but 1. is by far the most useful for hard detail. (Some of these bodies disappeared or were renamed when MAP was formed)

I think that from the Contract Ledgers you could quite easily arrive at a representative cost for airframe, engine, prop and armament. The difficult bit would be knowing which other bits of Embodiment Loan equipment were fitted and knowing whether a particular instrument or whatever was made by Cossor or British Thomson Houston etc. Each ledger is fundamentally indexed by contractor. And, of course you are still left with the issue of how to treat jigging and tooling costs which were always funded on a separate contract from the airframe.

Hope this helps

NiallC

“Thanks for the replys, at some stage though, someone must have put a figure on the cost of each aircraft, “

I have spent twenty years working on aircraft contracts with MoD and I can tell you that they would still be hard pressed to figure the cost per aircraft due to issues such as ELS, set up costs paid separately etc etc.

Thanks for the replys, at some stage though, someone must have put a figure on the cost of each aircraft, the accountants wouldn’t be happy if they didn’t!

RAFM Hendon has the two aircraft delivery ledgers and also the Aircraft Movement Cards. It does not (to my knowledge – but I’d welcome being corrected) have any material contractual records.

Hendon does or did have some contract records back in 1999 but its possible that they’ve been moved. I live in Canada but was planning a visit to the UK to research aircraft costs and emailed back and forth with them about it. (When I finally got to the UK chasing around after my family ate up all my time and I never got to do it… 🙁

The primary contract ledgers are held at the National Archives in the SUPP (for Ministry of Supply) class.

That is very helpful information, thank you.

There is also useful information on contracts in Treasury files and in the records of the 3 main executive bodies responsible for RAF procurement.

I don’t mean to be a pest but you wouldn’t happen to know which treasury files? Also – who were the executive bodies responsible for RAF procurement?

The archives that cover the contracts and costs of UK WW2 aircraft are held at Hendon. I have read both that they represent the entire money cost of the aircraft and also that they represent only the cost of airframe and assembly, that some costs -such as engines, gun turrets, radios, Oboe H2S etc were accounted for separately.

RAFM Hendon has the two aircraft delivery ledgers and also the Aircraft Movement Cards. It does not (to my knowledge – but I’d welcome being corrected) have any material contractual records.

The primary contract ledgers are held at the National Archives in the SUPP (for Ministry of Supply) class. I suspect that because they are not in the AIR or AVIA classes they are often missed by aviation history researchers. There is also useful information on contracts in Treasury files and in the records of the 3 main executive bodies responsible for RAF procurement.

Contracts for airframes do not include what was referred to as Embodiment Loan equipment. This includes engines, guns, radio and most instruments. These were purchased by Air Min/MAP and their successors on separate contracts and then “loaned” to the manufacturer for incorporation into the aircraft (or for incorporation at an MU). As you might appreciate these elements might account for a substantial part of the total cost of say a fully equipped Spitfire.

A further complexity is introduced by the fact that money for jigs and tooling to take a new aircraft into production might be allotted long before the aircraft was ordered. For example money was allotted to Westland for Whirlwind jigs and tools long before the first prototype had even flown, let alone a production order placed. In an ideal world you would also want to assign these costs to a given programme or production run if you want to find the true, total cost of an aircraft.

NiallC

Probably both.

There would be an overall cost that could possibly be calculated but that would not be what was paid to the manufacturer. They would supply an aeroplane to a known mod state that included some items of equipment that would have been supplied by the Air Ministry.

The aeroplane would then go to a Maintenence Unit where it would be brought up to the latest front-line mod state and other equipment fitted.

Additionally, some items on a contract to a manufacturer from the Ministry would be supplied as spare parts so let’s say a batch of 100 aircraft costs 1 million pounds but there was a supply of spares then you cannot say that each aircraft cost £10,000.

After all, they were not exactly ‘off the shelf’ at any point in the war.

I know that doesn’t answer your question but I doubt you could accurately get to a set figure ‘per Mark VIII Spitfire’ for example, there are too many variables.