Harland & Wolff's “sturdy and ardent men”
(Churchill, The Great War) had built 300xD.H.6, 600xAvro 504J/K/N, 1xHP 0/400 and 17xV/1500. Air Ministry appointed them 6/1936 to run an Agency Factory, and put Short Bros. in bed with them to teach and supervise (on Bristol Bombay and HP (Hampden) Hereford?! They soon moved to Sunderlands and Stirlings). Short & Harland was 60% Short Bros., 40% H&W. Modest local design capability. On 23/3/43 UK nationalised Short Bros, closed down Rochester Airport Works in 1946, Seaplane Works 7/48, inviting designers to move to Ulster. Short Bros. & Harland was then 18% H&W, 82% us.
Sydenham was greatly exhanced/modernised in Korean War expansion: it was not SB&H's fault that MoS' intentions for second sourcing were frustrated - Swift, Comet 2. They were one of 3 Canberra second-sources (sole source on
PR.9), and, earlier, one of many erectors of aluminium pre-fab homes. Britannia was nominated, so Bristol bought 15.25% (H&W then 15.25%, we, 69.5%) to ensure oversight: 12xcivil, 18xRAF were built there, plus structure chunks for 5xRAF assembled at Filton.
In 1958 UK thought it needed to move
Blue Streak (maybe Thor) around. Bristol came up with T.179B, a cube on Britannia wings. MoS invented a wholly-spurious key Requirement for Blind Landing as the excuse not to do the sensible thing - to lease USAF's Atlas-mover, C-133A. (now SC.5 Britannic, soon Belfast) was ordered 1960 with Smith's Cat.IIIA Autoland, to be design-led at Filton, who would ship wings to Sydenham. Saro was also empty so to encourage Westland to buy them, they were given rear fuselage and ramp. A run of 30 had been envisaged, but
Blue Streak was chopped, 13/4/60, so 10 was a minimum to give some purpose introducing an oddity. SB&H bid it in 1960 with blown flaps, and again in 1964
as Britannic 6 with RB178 (RB211 precursor) on Lockheed C-141 wing.
A to
Q is that the type was blatent
make-work: better buying something than putting folk on the dole - Harland's aero and marine site was near-unique in staffing across Ulster's sectarian schism. All was politics, employment in a divided island. Just like assigning there 13 of the 14 RAF VC10 fuselages. Vickers-Armstrongs' MD
Geo.Edwards saw the Minister and offered to pay the wages (not overheads) of everybody who would be occupied making them in Sydenham, and to make them at Weybridge...for less than the price MoA contemplated paying Shorts.