£3,000,000 PLANE ABANDONED

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27912, 8 March 1956, Page 14

£3,000,000 PLANE ABANDONED

Britons Told Of Project AUDITOR GENERAL'S REPORT (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, March 6. Britain spent £3.000.000 on a bomber that never reached the Air Force, a Government report said today. The taxpayer also footed a bill of £246.545 for removal of a warship sunk in British coastal waters —a job estimated at first to cost only £70,000. These expenses were recorded in the report by Britain’s watchdog on public spending, the Auditor-General (Sir Frank Tribe). The abandoned bomber was the four-jet Sperrin. designed about 1947 as an insurance that Britain would have a bomber ready to go into production quickly in emergency. But such good progress was made 4>n a more advanced bomber, the Valiant, that the project was abandoned. Two Sperrin prototypes were completed, however, and used as flying test-beds. The wrecked ship—the French destroyer, Maille Breze <2441 tons), caught fire and blew up off Greenock in 1940. A firm of salvage contractors had offered to remove it in 1952 for £70.000, but later withdrew. It ultimately cost the Admiralty . £246,545 to do the job itself. The Treasury was annoyed when faced with the bill and felt there had been “inadequate and misleading information’’ in estimating the cost. Sir Frank Tribe’s report said. The report also recorded that investigations of the disastrous Comet jet-liner crashes cost the Government £432.307. The Government was negotiating for a contribution from De Havillands, the manufacturers. The report also disclosed that the Ministry of Supply had placed a £3.200.000 order for a new kind of gas mask for civilians.