We could discuss Whatever Happened to the British Aircraft Industry for ever and a day. The best way to find out is to read the published literature and start with PETER KING’S ‘KNIGHTS OF THE AIR’ published by Constable in 1989. It runs to 544 pages and has a brilliant set of notes and a comprehensive bibliography. After that you could try RICHARD WORCESTER’s ‘ ROOTS OF BRITISH AIR POLICY’ published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1966- Richard Worcester was an often outspoken critic of both the industry and Governments. KEITH HAYWARD’s ‘THE BRITISH AIRCRAFT INDUSTRY’ published by Manchester University Press in 1989 is a good single volume, easily digestible history with a nice selection of key statistics to back up the analysis. Other works tend to be concerned with the issue of our overall decline as the workshop of the world and our abysmal record for making bad decisions that affected the performance of the aircraft industry as well as the quality of the products e.g. Hermes and Tudor versus the Douglas DC-6.
Read CORRELLI BARNETT’s ‘THE LOST VICTORY’, paperback by Pan, 1996 and NICHOLAS COMFORT’s ‘SURRENDER’ Biteback Publishing, 2012 also in paperback as:’ THE SLOW DEATH OF BRITISH INDUSTRY- A SIXTY YEAR SUICIDE 1952-2012′
It all adds up to pretty depressing reading. Today after the Warton mafia took over what is now BAe Systems we are within sight of the end of airframing in the UK and the company is as the name change suggested at the time, a defence systems manufacturer with a strong presence in the USA. Warton never did rate civil aerospace and both British Aerospace and BAe lost money even on big production runs.
Sad, sad business. Today mostly sub-contracting and we won’t even assemble any F-35s in Lancashire.
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