British Aircraft Industry

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27273, 13 February 1954, Page 6

British Aircraft Industry

In his address to the Institute of Transport in London, Sir Miles Thomas, chairman of the British Overseas Airways Corporation, spoke as a buyer and user of aircraft when he advised the British aircraft industry to grasp the substance of its present lead in jet flying rather than the shadow of possible supersonic civil aircraft and “ space ships ” of the future. Undoubtedly there is much wisdom in this advice and reason in his plea for “ fewer prototypes and more “production”; but the fact that the advice needs to be offered and the appeal made is eloquent testimony to the present mood of uncertainty in the British aircraft industry. The fact is that the development of the jet engine, which gave Britain a

great potential advantage in international aviation, also posed a racking dilemma for the British aircraft industry. Britain’s concentration on military aircraft during the war had left it at a serious I disadvantage in the development of civil transport aeroplanes; and it was recognised that sooner or later the hard decision would have to be made as to how and when its very advanced engines should be married to airframes which were either out of date or else experimental and comparatively untested. New aircraft can be produced very rapidly on the designer’s drawing-board, but only slowly and at enormous expense in the factories; and so aircraft are likely to be obsolete before they reach the prototype, let alone quantity production and operation on the world’s air services.

Lacking the resources to work simultaneously on the quantity production of proved aircraft and on the planning, construction, and prototype testing of machines destined to supplant them, the British aircraft industry has fallen between two stools. It is not producing enough Comets, Viscounts, and Britannias to take full advantage of the presently favourable, but probably fleeting, market for these aiT’oroft- and it is not snendine

enough on research to be reasonably assured that it will have in 10 or 20 years machines to match the revolutionary aircraft upon which other countries are known to be working. “ We as a nation should “now be spending vast sums on “ high-altitude and high-speed re- “ search, but we are not doing so ”, said Sir Thomas Sopwith, chairman of the Hawker Siddeley group, recently. “We should not be con-

‘ tent with breaking the sound “ barrier. We should probe far “ beyond it, and we should go higher “ and higher into the stratosphere “ with our research work, so that “ those things which are mysteries “today will be commonplace to- “ morrow ”.

Is this grasping at the shadow and ignoring the substance? Hard-headed industrialists will be inclined to think so; and there seems little likelihood of any British government—or the State-owned airlines—providing the vast sums that would be needed annually to support such a programme of pure research Perhaps, after all, the best hope of Britain maintaining her present technical lead lies in taking the utmost financial return from the advantages which it has now and should hold for the next few years But a tremendous expansion of the productive capacity of the industry will be needed if Britain is to produce, in the next three or four years, all the Comets, Viscounts, and Britannias which could be sold to world airlines and at the same time to work vigorously on the improved types referred to by Sir Miles Thomas and the aviation correspondent of the “Manchester “ Guardian ”. If these aircraft, which should be capable of winning supremacy on the Atlantic and other long-distance routes, can be produced soon enough and in sufficient numbers they will earn more than prestige and profits. They will bring within reach the kind of long-term research and development pro- ; gramme which Sir Thomas Sopwitb : believes, with many others, to be > Britain’s imperative need.