Danny:-
Was the Spey really all that loud ?
Well not from where I was sitting, or indeed anywhere else inside it, thanks to it being rear engined, but outside and near the runway, if one was taking off, was a different story. The Spey was an excellent engine, very reliable as one made by RR would be expected to be, but it was primarily a military engine and noise was not the issue that it later became back then.
The sad thing about the 1-11 was that from a triumphal start (we sold it, like the Viscount, to the US airlines), Douglas quickly caught it up with the later DC-9, which was developed into the successful MD-80 and -90 series by stretching and re-engining.; Despite plans to do exactly the same with the 1-11 (the -800 with CFM-56 engines, the two and three eleven proposals) nothing came of it. Instead the production stopped with the 500 series, and the production line and jigs were shipped to Romania where ROMBAC either produced 9 aircraft in 10 years or 10 aircraft in 9 years, I forget which.
BAE wanted to put all their eggs into the 146/RJ basket, and HMG into the bottomless Concorde one. The 1-11 became yet another ingredient of the demise of the UK aircraft industry. Lions led by donkeys?