Unmanned,
You have it completely wrong. The reason for a lack of commercial success is a combination of......
Pioneering and getting it wrong - The Comet 1 which was nobody's fault.
Government Interference - The Trident 1 which was reduced in size by the demands of Whitehall however by the time the 2C, 3 and 3B were ready, the 727 was streets ahead in numbers. The final models met the spec of the original design. Don't forget that this aircraft led the world in triplex systems and autoland
Having lost the lead to the States, we were always going to play catch-up however by the early 70's, we were a banana republic.
Now let's look at the positive side......
The 1-11 pioneered deep-stall avoidance and was hardly a commercial failure. The Trident was just about the fastest airliner ever that didn't need re-heat. The VC-10.....drooooool .....copied by the Sovs with their IL-62. Today it is the tanker of choice by the USAF (see other threads) when there is an alternative close by to their KC-10. The Vanguard, Viscount and the Britannia were wonderful in their day but the allure of the pure jet was too strong for the airlines.
The French got burned with their Dassault Mercure, the Germans with their overwing jet thingumybob, the cousins with Convair so in hindsight, we did rather well for a country going to the wall with the unions pulling the strings. Today, we make the wings and only decent engines for Airbus while the Europeans make the tube that holds them apart.
Just ask any lady pilot which country's aircraft snaps her knicker elastic
as a footnote, if this country is so bad at engineering.... why do almost all of the F1 teams choose the UK as their manufacturing base ? You'd be amazed at how much of the Ferrari is made in Guildford
