Originally Posted by
Chris Scott
It's a truism that the Brits have been better at coming up with new ideas than they are at producing something that sells in large numbers.
Well, to be fair in civil terms the US had the edge in terms of airframe tech in the inter-war years. Lessons learned during the war meant that the UK held an edge in R&D by the early 1940s, which was shared with and bequeathed to the Airbus project in the 1970s - in part via the Concorde project.
While it's true that the R&D "sharing" with the US in the postwar years skewed decidedly one way - it's also true that due to political and business machinations it was as much the fault of the parties on this side of the Atlantic as anyone. Of course the main issue with the mass-production side of things was difference in size of the potential civil airliner market following the war. A populace undergoing an austerity drive was never going to be able to afford airline travel easily, whereas the postwar growth of the US economy - along with the sheer size of the country - meant that air travel was not only within the reach of more of the population, but became a practical necessity for many.
Anyways - an interesting subject, but off-topic. So I'll leave it there for now.