Originally Posted by
A30yoyo
tornadoken...I do sometimes speculate on what might have happened if Rolls has built a CFM56 class engine in the early Seventies
They did, a bit later. They went in equally with P&W to do the IAE V2500, which although not as successful as the CFM56, nevertheless sold plenty of units on a good range of types.
Regarding the DC8, I always got the impression that Douglas couldn't design a good wing. The leading edge slots were an early variation, they redid the wingtips and later the leading edge to reduce drag, then they found it worked better cruising with 1 degree of flap, and with the -62/63 they did a substantial wing redesign. Meanwhile a number of the early long-haul purchasers like Pan Am and Northwest didn't care for this lack of performance, and sold them off prematurely (very prematurely in the case of Northwest, cancelling the balance of their order and sending the five delivered so far back to Douglas), to place big orders with Boeing instead.