Excellent update!:)

This baby shares the 300 part number series with the Spitfire.

Are sure about that?
I thought the 300 series ran out with the 398 Attacker, the Swift and its predecessors being in the 500 (510, 535, 541) series?

That’s what i was getting at with this para,

‘The one area that could have been managed better was the now seemingly ridiculous situation where may companies within one group fought with each other to submit designs to one Operational Requirement and specification, this seems to of usually happened with the fancy projects of the mid to late 1950s, but still used serious money and resources.
Maybe a more concerted effort to designate certain companies with certain tasks may have worked better, Vickers Supermarine seemed to manage this fairly well with the former known for large types such as bombers and airliners and the latter with fighters, though even they had overlaps into each others specialised areas.’

It was a very odd situation and must have led to some problems when you think of the money and effort involved with even coming up with designs for these requirements.

Great subject btw!

With de Havilland their design department seemed ahead of the stress department, the move from mixed wooden construction to , pressurised, high-performance, all metal stressed monocoque, wasn’t an easy one, the DH.106 Comet, DH.108, and DH.110 all suffering tragedy which tainted their huge and advanced promises, it now seems like a 2nd Icarus phase (if that isn’t an oxymoron!) of the British industry.
Perhaps the DTD and research establishments should have been more involved earlier on but in many cases they were fighting against insular attitudes by some of the companies.

Re Swifts & Hunters it is also worth remembering that America was putting a lot of money into our military projects, I dare say that they were only keen on funding one advanced day fighter, and the Hunter possibly did seem to have more development in it from the might of Hawker, while VS could concentrate on their naval project, the Scimitar.

My understanding is that the Gloster E.28/39 is in original colours, having passed straight to the Science Museum at the end of its flying programme just after the war, and not being restored/repainted since.
I would guess that some of the other aircraft will be the same, the S6B and ‘Jason’ certainly appear so.

Spitfire, Hurricane & S-6B Its fun looking at these three and seeing how “crude” the workmanship looks. No fast speeds here with all those open joints, rivets and blunt edges!
Great collection but as noticed by others very dark!

They must have got something right, the S.6B is described thus, ‘Not only did the plane win the 1931 Schneider Trophy, but also, two weeks later, became the fastest vehicle on earth, setting an absolute speed record of 407.5 mph.’

My thoughts,

Hawker Siddeley seems to be only associated these days with the major rationalisation of the British aero industry in the early 1960s, but as Jayce touches on the company was formed in 1935 when Hawker took over the companies of Armstrong Siddeley Motors (engines), and Armstrong Whitworth (Aircraft). A.V.Roe & Co, and the Gloster Aircraft Company also came under their unbrella at about the same time.
Vickers Armstrongs were formed in 1927, by Vickers merging with the non aviation business of Sir W.G.Armstrong Siddeley, before taking over Supermarine in the following year.
Between these two businesses they formed formidable aircraft building forces.

As it happens I think what actually happened post-war was about right and wouldn’t have been much different if the companies were formed differently.
The one area that could have been managed better was the now seemingly ridiculous situation where may companies within one group fought with each other to submit designs to one Operational Requirement and specification, this seems to of usually happened with the fancy projects of the mid to late 1950s, but still used serious money and resources.
Maybe a more concerted effort to designate certain companies with certain tasks may have worked better, Vickers Supermarine seemed to manage this fairly well with the former known for large types such as bombers and airliners and the latter with fighters, though even they had overlaps into each others specialised areas.

The Swift is an aircraft that interests me, personally I think it (and its 510, 535, 541 lineage) was a slightly better design at the beginning than the Hawker P.1067 Hunter, both designs had serious issues in development. Both types made it into ‘super-priority’ production but the Swift then seems to have been left to lapse instead of trying to iron out the problems in continued fighter development, a shame as it had reheat. It was employed in low-level reccon work quite successfully, but I suppose quite rightly that bt the late ’50s the RAF wished to operate only one of the two similar fighters and the Hunter was clearly becoming the better and more developable type.
I think the V Bombers would have worked out the same, with one earlier and safer design (two if we include the SA.4), and two more advanced designs in case of failure of any one of them. All three designs were obviously outstanding in the their own right and giving excellent service.

Fairey Co, could they have really built a supersonic fighter to match the Lightning? I don’t think so, this very independent (and non grouped) company were at their absolute limit with the FD.1 and FD.2 high performance deltas, not to mention heavy naval production work and experimental helicopter research. To produce the FD.3 to take on the P.1A/B which was already well advanced would have been very difficult. English electric were of a similar size and independence but were well and truely geared towards designing and building high performance aircraft.

I do think we lost a good potential airliner market, and this is probably one area where grouping of certain designers and know how may have resulted in more competitive exportable designs and higher production numbers.
Official interference, the constant cancellation and reissuing of new specifications didn’t help.