BBC 4 right now: Jet! When Britain ruled the skies

[glum]

Enjoy the nostalgia...

[Courtney Mil]

Good call. Thank you.

[Burnt Fishtrousers]

Throughly enjoyable, last weeks was good too

I think a cursory nod at Concorde would have been a good conclusion to the series even though it was an Anglo French collaboaration ,this would have set the scene to the way the current aviation industry came to be..perhaps third episode highlighting this era would have rounded off a wonderful couple of programmes

[Courtney Mil]

Not my place to comment. I adore Concorde. I took the liberty a few years ago of making a tribute to her. It's at Courtney's Concorde Tribute (http://www.projectoceanvision.com/vox-12.htm#concorde) Then scroll down a bit for the video.

Maybe make up for her lack of billing there.

[Lyneham Lad]

A thoroughly enjoyable programme. Did I hear Ms Flynn right? At the end she stated only fifty four VC10's were built.

[Milo Minderbinder]

Sounds about right
Remember that BOAC had a "don't buy British" policy which put the dampers on any exports. They only got the ones they did buy because the Government issued a diktat.

[Dengue_Dude]

Shabby behaviour by BOAC, but I bet the chairman still got his knighthood.

Interesting footage nevertheless, lots of household names I grew up with.

Ah . . . nostalgia's not what it used to be.

Well done BBC - thank you

[Libertine Winno]

I was interested to hear that the UK's aerospace industry was still the largest in Europe, and second only to the US...can't be right, surely?!

Obviously there are the engines made by Rolls, and I know we make the wings for most Airbus at Filton, but still seems like an overestimation. Unless of course the satellite/space industry is grouped in with 'aerospace'?

[Chugalug2]

Remember that BOAC had a "don't buy British" policy
Shabby behaviour by BOAC
Far be it from me to defend BOAC, or BEA, or BA, as their employees often kept their jobs at the expense of those that didn't in the Independent sector but, as Norman Tebbit mentioned, they were wont to follow the bottom line. Why? Because they were supposedly running a business and therefore looking for kit that moved the most bums at the least cost. As the VC10 was designed with the need in mind of getting in and out of then existing runways that were hot and high (mainly in Africa) and the 707 wasn't, the latter had the weight advantage. In that respect it was the better design and more cost effective. That is why BOAC chose it, not because it wasn't British, but because it would earn more money for them. The solution for the runways of course was to lengthen them and then you could operate 707s from them anyway.
I too enjoyed these two programmes, but like others regretted rather what was not included. In my case that was the BAC 1-11, which shared with the Viscount the accolade of being bought by the US airlines. It could have gone on to being stretched and re-engined (ie per the 3-11). Instead, being British, we stopped all production and development and gave the jigs to the Romanians. They either produced 10 in 9 years or 9 in 10 years thereafter (I can never remember which).

[Milo Minderbinder]

History & BOAC (http://www.vc10.net/History/historyBOAC.html)

The problem is, that the VC10 was designed for hot and high at BOAC's request. Once that was done, BOAC did their best to reject it

[glum]

I suspect it was the same management mentality that did for our car industry too.

I do agree that our aerospace sector is huge. I work for an American company, but in the UK along with a few thousand others. If you consider BAE oop North, and all the small scale firms and sub-contractors, there is an awful lot of good aerospace engineering going on in the UK.

[Chugalug2]

From your link M&M:
The specification BOAC called for was very restricted, and its a tribute to the Vickers design team that they came up with an aircraft that could live up to it. The price for this performance was an increase in operating costs, which was inevitable given the specification,
And therein lies the rub. The incestuous link between the nationalised airlines, the aircraft industry and HMG (that subbed both) could not be better illustrated. If a manufacturer lays down a design that is tailor made to one airline's spec (that it can and will change at a whim) then the only customer for the type that it can hope for (hope being the operative word) is that one airline.
The only reliable customer to design for is the world market. That is the one US manufacturers go for (granted via their enormous domestic one). That is the one the British rarely if ever went for, hence their demise. The tragedy is that we had (and still have) the best designers in the world but they were invariably tasked to design non-commercial aircraft (Concorde anyone?).

[Economics101]

Just to follow up on Chugalug 2's first post, another omission was the Vanguard, surely another case of an airliner designed for one airline (BEA) and not getting very may orders from elsewhere. It seemed quite advanced and capable for its day.

[glum]

I guess its easy to judge the companies based on todays world, but back then there was no global airline. Nothing to base your operating requirements on except the limited military / empire status, and there certainly wasn't a large holiday-maker market to tap into.

Perhaps the British simply lacked the visionary management who could have seen how important air travel would soon become?

[bvcu]

Trident was another , ahead of the 727 at the start but strangled by BEA requirements. No mention on the film of the Vickers airliner cancelled just before completion. Most of it comes down to government , being simplistic, they owned the airlines BOAC/BEA , they controlled the manufacturers with contracts for MOD etc . When you read the history of this era its amazing we did as well as we did. Sad thing on last nights programme was no mention on the comet disasters how all the lessons learned were freely shared with the americans etc to enable them to incorporate the lessons learned.

[Chugalug2]

glum:
Perhaps the British simply lacked the visionary management who could have seen how important air travel would soon become?
Hammer, nail, head! Not only management but perhaps more pertinently the bureaucrats that controlled the purse-strings (Brabazon et sec).
We continued building Flying Boats when the answer was to build runways (though even that was often not required given the profusion of them post WW2. Wrong!
We built aircraft to overcome the performance limitations of jet aircraft when the answer was simply to pour more concrete and or fell more trees to ease those limitations. Wrong!
We built aircraft that seemed to have no commercial viability at all but rather showed how clever we were. Wrong!
As you say hind sight is all very well, but we made those wrong decisions and lost. Others didn't and won. It's called Commercial Aviation for a reason!

[scotbill]

Seem to remember reading years ago that if BOAC had stuck with the VC10s it would have actually saved them money in the long run. Being built in the traditional British brick outhouse mode, they required much less maintenance than the 707s
Anybody able to confirm?

[Shack37]

Far be it from me to defend BOAC, or BEA, or BA, as their employees often
kept their jobs at the expense of those that didn't in the Independent sector
but, as Norman Tebbit mentioned, they were wont to follow the bottom line. Why?
Because they were supposedly running a business and therefore looking for kit
that moved the most bums at the least cost.


Tebbit also mentioned, as did others, lack of capacity where potentially large contracts had to be rejected due to the inability of Britain's relatively small individual companies to fulfill them.

[Rosevidney1]

There were so many types that simply didn't get a mention that the program only rates as an 'also ran'. It focused on only a very few types. Hardly balanced but then I do not expect miracles from the BBC, over-funded and over staffed Kafkaesque empire that it unfortunately is. :sad:

[Wander00]

Having watched the programme last night was walking along the flight line at Duxfordthis morning - really quite nostalgic.