Political 'skullduggery'?

Yes. Denmark (butter and bacon) was happy with £.

Thanks, alertken….I wasn’t suggesting skullduggery re the Strats from the SAS order but are you saying they were paid for in Sterling by BOAC?

Longshot: the Irish angle: AP.Dobson,Peaceful Air Warfare,Clarendon,91,P192 has Congress tying UK’s application for a Reconstruction Loan to liberalisation of Trade generally, and Air Transport particularly. The Agreement Relating to Air Services Between {UK/US’} Respective Territories (“Bermuda”) was signed 11/2/1946; 5x(undelivered C-69)L-049 were sold to BOAC 6/2/46, in service 13/7/46. Congress approved the Loan 15/7/46, though “less on the need to revive liberal world trade…more on the need to build a strong front against communism” F.J.Harbutt,The Iron Curtain,OUP,86,P278 .

Dobson then introduces skullduggery in/over the Emerald Isle. Bermuda became template for everybody else. New SAS, embracing ex-neutral Sweden, and new Aerlinte, parastatal in ex-neutral Eire, ordered Strat (in 1948)/L-749 (in 1946) for 5th. Freedom, Prestwick/Shannon to lift revenue, US-UK. At 1947/48 ticket prices 4 Strats/5 Connies could not be sustained Transatlantic by such modest home markets; UK stymied any 5th.Freedom concession; the idle assets were bought for £ for BOAC.

Protectionism always appeals to simple souls. Japan kept Louisiana rice out for years on cod-medical grounds of their distinctive digestive systems! Your precise enquiry is whether US and/or UK misused Certification process, to be a Protectionist tool.

I am aware of none such. Noise and Concorde, A300B weight on La Guardia’s tracts overwater, were used to delay those type’s operation into US ports…but that was not, strictly, misuse of Certification. FAA and ARB/CAA were strenuous in their independence: 707 ventral fin, imposed by CAA, rejected by FAA; 727 for Dan Air required (IIRC) 50-odd UK-peculiar Certification mods: some must then be removed to re-admit them onto FAA jurisdiction. But such things were Airworthiness-professionally-driven, not business-political.

Objections to Connie/Strat for BOAC were when UK was trying, failing, to preserve £1=$4. 24/10/56 order for 15 BOAC 707-420 was conditional upon their early rollover for a British-built type, but no linkage was made to cause ARB to invent cod-problems of Certification.

When UK’s turbine types attracted US carriers’ interest in 1953, US disqualified UK from MSP and tried to impede Comet 3 sales, citing “national security” and asserting Avon utilised US-funded data: J.A.Engel,The Surly Bonds – American Cold War Constraints on Br.Aviation,Enterprise&Society,2005/6(I),OUP,P28.. Though WSC feared antagonising Ike into a “peripheral strategy, quitting Europe”, he agreed on 11/11/53 to ignore US’ sales objection. P29. Sad that metal fatigue did the job for them,10/1/54.

UK was not averse to skullduggery. US believed we misused the Korean “Super-Priority” system of joint allocation of strategic materials, to create early delivery positions on Viscount/Comet 3. Engel,P36 has BEA complicity in a deception to fit STC (ITT) nav/(“pressurisation” – he meant Garrett) equipment to 6 Viscounts, to surmount US Export Licence ban on sales to CAAC/Peking. Items were ordered as BEA spares.

But not, I think by either side, massaging of Certification process.

Thank you folks for your comments so far!

I, like you, were well aware of the ‘restrictions’ on the UK buying dollar items just after the war, but what surprised me was that the Congressman was directly quoted as blaming the ARB for it. As someone suggested, this could may have been through some research assistant mis-interpreting something, but it does seen very specific.

By the way, according to the biographic directory of the US Congress and some other sources, Lester Lionel Wolff (born 4 January 1919) was a Democratic member of the House of Representatives for New York.
He was born in NYC and after studying at New York University he lectured there from 1939 until 1941. Wolff served in the Civil Air from 1945 until 1950 and from 1968 until 1980. He was elected to Congress in 1964 and served from 3 January 1965 until 3 January 1981. Through redistricting he initially represented the 3rd District from 1965-1973 and the 6th District from 1973-1981. He lost his bid for re-election to John Le Boutiller in the 1980 election. LeBoutillier was later defeated in a bid for re-election and served only one term. Former Chairman of the Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control in the Congress, Wolff then became advisor to the Burmese embassy in the US.

The DH Comet aspect I am sure relates to the Comet 4, not Comet 1s. Again, to put things into better context, this forms part of a series of items in Presidental and CIA papers where Robert McNamara and others such as John McCone, the Director of the CIA were discussing ways of using the airworthiness certification process within the FAA to greatly delay or even halt granting such documentation to Concorde to allow the American SST to ‘catch up or even overtake’ – to paraphrase things ‘…in a manner similar to what was done with the Comet for the 707’.

For those that know the reference, learning to understand how Sir Humphrey Appleton’s mind – and verbal athletic abilities – works I find most useful!

Congressman Lester Wolff of the Sixth District of New York?

I’ve lived in New York nearly all the years of my 74-year life and I’ve never heard of him. I doubt he even knew what a Constellation or a Stratocruiser looked like.

And I’ll remind daveg4otu what any student of UK aviation should know (but usually forget) in a protectionist fury…

You misunderstood my intent – if anything I admire the way the US generally tried it’s best to protect it’s industries.

This is where the UK has , over the years , dismally failed and has instead given away most of our industry to others.

I’m only too well aware of things such as the Viscount sales – I lived most of my life within a few miles of Hurn where the majority were built.

However , I ‘d make a guess that the overall balance of trade over the 50s and 60s was probably in favour of the US when everything(not just aircraft) was taken in to account.

BOAC’s post-war needs ….a twisted story

At the end of WWII the RAF had a squadron of Skymasters….these were lamely sent back at the end of lease-lend….they could have been retained for BOAC for a modest payment to our ally, instead BOAC had to use the Lancastrian…..at the end of WWII KLM’s Plesman got his foot in Truman’s door and obtained a fleet of C-54s which operated as the Netherlands Government Air Transport service initially….when KLM DC-4s purchased from the Douglas factory arrived some of the stop-gap C-54s were sold off to Skyways who proceeded to operate them for BOAC under charter!
BOAC were permitted by the UK Govt to buy only 5 L-049 Connies (from the batch of C-69s), these arrived in 1946. My opinion is that the Aer Lingus purchase of 5 L-749s in 1947 was always intended for BOAC (that was the skullduggery!) and after a few months of modest use by Aer Lingus to London and Rome they were sold to BOAC (at a nice profit). BOAC bought 3 more L-049s secondhand by 1953 from TWA and Pan Am.
BOAC’s new Strats started arriving in 1949, 6 (‘KGH-KGM) direct from Boeing and 4(‘LSA-LSD) fom a SAS order cancelled before delivery, I think.

Further secondhand Connies and Strats arrived in the aftermath of the Comet I disasters around 1954 partly through the close links forged with Capital Airlines re. the Viscount purchase.

Of the British types BOAC received I am always puzzled by their indifference to their 24(?) HP Hermes…..if you add on the 146 Hastings built for the RAF the Hermes/Hastings was a one of the better post-war aircraft programmes in the UK
More later, no doubt! 🙂

I thought the first item is widely known.
The UK economy was tight, they didn’t want to spend any more money overseas than they had to. Look at the UK car industry’s “export or die” program where they exported more cars than they kept in country…many went to America.
Witness the Canadian-built DC-4s powered by Merlins, that considerably reduced the amount of dollars they had to spend abroad.
Nothing wrong with that..though the Merlin powered examples appearently left a lot to be desired. I’m sure the desire to keep money at home was a major reason to have Boeing re-engineer 707s to accept Rolls engines (and in a military program, Phantoms too…though Bill Gunston wrote were appearently slower than GE-powered Phantoms).

As far as the second…it would be interesting to see if its true.
But Scouse’s comment about a back bencher is correct. We have some nutty guys in Congress, what they said isn’t necessarily gospel…or even in the realm of reality.

If the FAA (then CAA) had issues with Comets, it wouldn’t be too surprising given the new nature of jets. In a comparable situation, the CAA asked Vickers to make 26 special requirements to be met before certification.
Nineteen of those requirements were already met to certify the plane in Canada.

And I’ll remind daveg4otu what any student of UK aviation should know (but usually forget) in a protectionist fury…
US airlines were major customers of UK products in the 50s-60s…
Several airlines considered Comets…but we know how that turned out.
Comparing pre-jet airliners, do you really expect US airlines to chose Tudors over DC-6s and Connies?
U.S. airlines bought a lot of Viscounts…Capitol Airlines bought 60, the largest production run for one operator…overall 147 were sold in North America.
Dnd don’t forget BAC 1-11s, and hundreds DH Doves, Herons, and 125s for corporate use and the military 125s…C-29s.
Even a few AW Argosys…used by DoD contract freight carriers…as a very young child I saw them fly into the base where I lived.
Kaman bought a license to build Fairy Rotodynes…

No, the U.S. isn’t perfect when it comes to trade, but it isn’t the bad guy often portrayed by some.

I don’t know how much clout Congressman Wolff had in the 1950s, but if an American researcher based his conclusions on the spouting of one of the loopier backbenchers in the Commons, they’d get a picture of the UK that some of us would find hard to recognise.
I see, btw, that Mr Wolff appears to be still alive. Someone could always ask him:D

From memory, and I may be wrong, the first BOAC Constellations were ex-Aer Lingus and therefore were bought within the Stirling Zone.

In those days, and for a long time afterwards, there were Dollar and Stirling Zones where either of the two currencies were the primary means of exchange. Because of this, and the problems there were with the amount of dollars the Bank of England held, there were difficulties in importing goods direct from the USA. BOAC imported some 707s during the 60s and the cost actually raised the import/export imbalance to such a degree that Labour lost an election because of it!

The problem disappeared when Stirling stopped being a reserve currency in the 80s(?).

All of this is from memory so the details might be wrong.

Regards

Can’t comment on the truth of the matter – but where the Yanks are concerned it would never surprise me….they are and always have been fanatical about protecting their own industries…..something that in many circumstances we would have done well to emulate.

Maybe 40 years ago, now they’ve exported it all to China & India etc..

Graham,
In the same way that the “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister” UK TV programmes should have been regarded as Documentaries, and not Comedies, it must become obvious that the USA see the “Special Relationship” as being a one-way process. From us to them!
Graham, do not be surprised! Just be satisfied that what we, in the UK, invent the Americans take commercial advantage of. If you are surprised then you are being just a very tiny bit naive!
A well-educated American rellie was gobsmacked, on his first visit to “Europe”, to learn that the Tower of London had been in existence for c. 500 yrs before America was discovered!! It’s not that I decry that – just that the bit of the planet they inhabit, and the way they think, is not the same bit of the planet that we, in UK, inhabit. Or the way that we think – or, more correctly, how our politicians and Ministries think!!!!!!!!!!
HTH
Resmoroh

The second ‘claim’ is a kind of reverse side of the coin: that in an attempt to get Boeing more time to get the 707 into service, the US Government deliberately drew out and delayed the certification process for the DH Comet. It was also done in order to dissuade US airlines from purchasing it and any other airline from operating the Comet into and out of the USA. This is the same tactic that was later tried on Concorde.

And no, I have not tried looking on WikiLeaks!

Can anyone shed any further light on either aspect?

Can’t comment on the truth of the matter – but where the Yanks are concerned it would never surprise me….they are and always have been fanatical about protecting their own industries…..something that in many circumstances we would have done well to emulate.