JP/TTN: elegant, handsome: it's all in the pedigree.
DH's Chief Designer
A.E.Hagg (lovely, though wooden, D.H.91 Albatross) fell out with
Geo.DH and left in March,1937 to do Heston Type 5 Racer. In 1942 he returned to the DH fold: at Portsmouth Airspeed (1934) Ltd had been formed with Swan Hunter equity and a licence for DC-2, later DC-3. DH bought in 27 May,1940 for production capacity at its new MAP Agency Factory at Christchurch - it would deliver 422 Mosquitoes.
Sir Geo.DH joined the
Second Brabazon Committee, May,1943 and was, ah, helpful in securing in February,1944 design funding for
Brabazon Type IV (to be) Comet I, Type
VB D.H.104 Dove, and Type II Airspeed AS.57.
Hagg, Chief Designer, set to, aiming to leap-frog (to be) Lockheed L-75 Saturn and Convair CV110 with a Mark II, with MetroVick Mamba or DH(Halford) H.3 propellor-turbines. Work was perceived to drift. Vickers-Armstrongs pitched VC2/Centaurus, Hawker Siddeley bid A.W.55 Apollo/ASM Mamba, receiving design ITPs in April/May,1945 as Types IIB/C. In 1948 DH took effective charge; in 1949
Hagg was replaced by
George Miles, having launched M.60 (to be HP Marathon). BEAC ordered 20 AS.57 23/9/48, because VC2 (changed 27/8/47 by
Geo.Edwards to Darts) was: “too risky
(AS.57 was) best suited
(to) its requirements”, Centaurus sooner/more reliable than turbines.
C.F Andrews/ E.B Morgan, Vickers A/c, Putnam,1988,P.424. V-A chose not to take no for an answer, pestered, added a Co-funded 3rd. to 2 MoS-funded prototypes... and on 2/8/50 won a BEAC order for 20.
Elizabethan (Ambassador) entered BEAC service 13/3/52,
Discovery (Viscount), 17/4/53.
DH under-resourced AS.57, using its Airspeed Division (so named, 6/51) as offload site for Vampire/Venom, and declining the obvious step of funding a turboprop Mark 2 (such things flew only as MoS Flying Test Beds). Lockheed abandoned the sector; Convair surmounted CV110 failure and captured the piston market with CV240/340/440. Hatfield's mind was on Comets.