Empire of the Clouds: When Britain's Aircraft Ruled the World

[highcirrus]

Just read a very good Independent book review (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/empire-of-the-clouds-when-britains-aircraft-ruled-the-world-by-james-hamiltonpaterson-2106641.html) in which the post-war history of the aircraft industry is used as a metaphor for Britain’s steady decline to its present sorry state. Does any of this stuff sound as wearisomely familiar to everyone else as it does to me?

Empire of the Clouds: When Britain's Aircraft Ruled the World, By James Hamilton-Paterson. Review by Michael Bywater. Friday, 15 October 2010

Empire of the Clouds isn't about aviation. Or it's about aviation in the same way a red rash is about meningitis………………………. (But) the real question, all along, is: what the hell happened?

It's a question which bubbles to the surface when anyone contemplates Britain in the last hundred years. And it's as relevant now as it's ever been. We've got no manufacturing industry to talk of. We're fished out, mined out and sold out. Our bankers are a busted flush. Our service industries have nobody to serve. Our politicians are entwined in a pointless rhetorical homogeneity. All we have left to take to the world's table is our astonishing intellectual fertility. In the world of ideas, Britain has, since the Enlightenment, punched wildly above its weight; yet in the last century it has almost ritualistically done itself down. And now that ideas and intellectual property are almost all we have left – look at the recent crop of Nobel science laureates from British universities – our politicians are planning to cut back education. Good thinking, chaps.

(Author) Hamilton-Paterson's particular genius in this case is to pick the right example – the aircraft industry – to make the general case.

Yet all along, we are thinking: this is the story of Britain. Time and again, we have it; and time and again, we throw it away. It's not just the jet engine which powered the transport which in turn shaped the modern world; it's not just the radar or the ill-fated Comet, the car industry, coal-mining, the railways, education; it's everything. More and more, you come to realise that the old saw is true. Come to a Briton with an idea and he'll give you ten reasons why it won't work; take the same idea to an American and he'll give you ten reasons why it will.

There was, in the aftermath of the Second World War, what Hamilton-Paterson calls "prodigious talent, skill and inventive energy" in the British aero industry. "Maybe," he adds, "we could start by wondering whatever had become of all those national high spirits, the dash and verve and daring."

But if the ghostly influence (of the post-war test pilots remains), the aeroplanes they tested are long gone. A typically British mess of complacent businessmen (one test pilot had to abort his careful schedule when the company man in the right-hand seat demanded they return for the four-course management lunch), political fannying-about, loss of nerve, obstructive and gutless civil servants with jobs for life, and a general incompetence unimagineable anywhere else: aeroplanes being built in one place, dismantled, tracked by road to the nearest manageable (grass, sodden) runway, reassembled, then taking off in a thick furrow of splashing mud. Aeroplanes being specified by the Ministry, then the specifications being changed, then the project withdrawn, the jigs and tools destroyed, the drawings incinerated. The remarkable Fairey FD2 had to be tested at Dassault's base in Cazaux, south of Bordeaux, because of British rules prohibiting supersonic flight. UK insurers quoted impossible premiums until Marcel Dassault found a French company that would insure the whole programme for £40. Meanwhile, Dassault was taking notes, and his own internationally-successful Mirage III eventually bore a remarkable resemblance to the Fairey FD.

In the end, it was the preposterous Duncan Sandys who decapitated the British aero industry; oddly symmetrical since it was Sandys himself who was said to have been decapitated in the famous "headless man" photographs with the Duchess of Argyll. It all came to nothing.

You'll look in vain for Gloster or De Havilland, English Electric, Avro, Supermarine or Vickers. The Valiant, the Hunter, the "lovely little Fairey Delta" and the DH110 which killed De Havilland's second son: they are mere memories. Britain's advantage in transatlantic jet travel was lost with the Comet.

In short, as in long, we blew it. Empire of the Clouds is a splendid, meticulous and stylish story of wonderful machines and the men who made them. It is also a tale of fudging, incompetence, malice, complacency and ignorance. It is a story of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. It is a very British tale indeed.

Bloody heartbreaking.

[pontifex]

Interesting but inaccurate, Geofrey DeHavilland was killed in a DH108 (Swallow). It was John Derry who was killed in the 110, along with a number of spectators, at Farnborough.

[Agaricus bisporus]

Oh for God's sake Get A life!!!

[PA-28-180]

.....and was it not the same British government that gave the jet engine of Frank Whittle to the Soviet Union (and the U.S. - Pratt and Whitney??)? The same engine, without which, the MiG 15 would probably never have existed?? :ugh:

If memory serves, after the war, Frank Whittle was paid 100,000 pounds for all his research and development work by a government commission and then went to live out the rest of his days in America after being forcibly retired from the RAF. :=

[protectthehornet]

free enterprise is really the only way to go. radar, jet engine and the like are incredible achievements...but you still have to make money....imagine if brits were in the habit of eating hershey bars...they would have come up with the microwave oven.

[stepwilk]

Thank you, highcirrus. Just bought it for my Kindle.

[highcirrus]

TwoOneFour

I think that the author probably meant that, whilst there were and still are hugely imaginative and inventive minds in Britain, it does not follow that these admirable traits are necessarily possessed by the majority of decision making or fund providing minds in Industry, Banking, Whitehall or Westminster, who would, if the post-war history of British aviation is any indicator, be the possessors of fudging, incompetent, malicious, complacent and ignorant ones: ie it's not all "Britons who are having the (bright) ideas in the first place".

[clunckdriver]

There is an oft quoted saying on this side of the pond, "The Brits invent it, the Americans develop it and produce it, the Japs then do it better". More than a grain of truth in this methinks. I think the problems are more profound than just piss poor managers at the top, one only has to look at the totally stupid fourteen exams one has to write to drive an aircraft around the sky in the UK, I wrote them way back, what a total load of bollocks, the only thing it does it keep a bunch of laid-off navigators in a job, in the mean time the USA understands that flying an aircraft is not an academic exercise. The result of all the red tape in the UK has been the collapse of GA aircraft builders, who at one time led the world{DH Heston,Auster,Avro,Beagle,Blackburn} and God knows how many more. The bad news is that we in Canada, under the dead hand of Transport Canada, are headed down the same path.

[Capetonian]

In fact, the jet engine was not invented by Sir Frank Whittle. It is documented that Henri Coanda, a Romanian, invented the jet engine a good 20 years before Whittle. At least those who renamed Bucharest's Otopeni airport 'Henri Coanda' claim this to be the case.

[clunckdriver]

Cap, I think you will find that Caondas engine was more of a ducted fan with ignition introduced at the aft end, however he was certainly on the right track.

[dogle]

if brits were in the habit of eating hershey bars...they would have come up with the microwave oven.... I'll bite. It was James Lovelock, in the mid fifties (for his research, he might not have fancied warming his pies in it afterwards).

Of course our celebrated predecessor, Sir George Cayley's coachman, was another Brit who failed to grasp the commercial opportunities out there ...

[siftydog]

The wastage of British talent and innovation continues unabated right before your eyes.....

What of the Islander? A Utility plane that achieved world wide sales in the '60's, (is still produced to my knowledge), but has failed to evolve as a type - save abortive dalliance with 3 engines and turbine bolt ons......

Was it 'The Log' where there was an interesting article about that slight weird MP promoting the potential of the Optica? He was a bit of a lone voice pedalling something that IMHO could have a large slice a huge world wide market.

Why are these opportunities pissed up against the wall too readily?

[stepwilk]

By the way, what's quoted at the start of this thread actually seems to be about half of the published review.

[frontlefthamster]

If you go to Bembridge you won't be allowed to see the Islanders being built there because they're a bit special. Fact is, though, that the production line is healthy, and the company appears profitable.

Notwithstanding that, one variant in particular of the turbine Islander is the worst handling aircraft it's been my sorry displeasure to take around the sky, and all variants are much more difficult to pilot than they need to be. A great design which missed out on the possible benefits of a good flight test programme.

[clunckdriver]

Frontleft, , I have it on good authority that the Islander is the most perfect aircraft ever built, on one ocasion they made a mistake and put one in the wind tunnel backwawds, and got the same readings as when the nose pointed the other way! It that aint perfect I dont know what is!

[Albert Driver]

I have it on good authority that the Islander is the most perfect aircraft ever built

I was a humble AEO on the Low Speed Wind Tunnel at Farnborough when BN came over to have the nacelles on the prototype re-shaped to reduce the drag.
They were offered a top aerodynamicist - but all they could afford were a few sticks of plasticine and some tufts of wool.


There's the real reason for the industry decline: failure to understand you have to make enough money from the first project to properly finance the next.




......and I swear I can still see my fingerprints in those nacelles....

[FlightlessParrot]

I'm wondering just when Britain's aircraft ruled the world?

And the jet engine is one of those things that was invented by lots of people, but it's perhaps significant that von Ohain started late, but the first jet-engined aircraft to fly was German.

Lots of good aircraft, but ruling the world is the sort of thing that has been done by Junkers transports, or Douglas and then Boeing.

The history of Britain's industrial decline is pretty sad, but some people put it as starting in about the middle of the 19th century. Maybe one reason is the dissipation of effort producing more projects than the size of the economy could support.

[tornadoken]

PA-28 (#4): June,1943: Halford H.1 (to be DH Goblin) licenced to Allis-Chalmers as J36 (to be a failure); during 1943/44: Power Jets W.2B/23 and W.2/500 licenced to Allison and GE, built by them and Chevolet as J33 and J35; W.2.B/37 (to be RR Derwent I) and W.2/700 also sent over the pond. All for a licence fee of $800K, which was included in the Reverse Lend/Lease computations that were part of Keynes' settlement of Lend/Lease within US' July,1946 Reconstruction Loan. US was UK's valiant Ally.

October,1946: UK, very broke and hungry, did not care to spend all Keynes' Loan in the prairies, and made a barter deal for Ukraine grain. 10 (later,30) Derwents and 10 (later 25) Nenes. Derwent had been declassified (removed from the "Secret List") and Nene was now made so. We hoped for friendship with our other valiant Ally and co-victor.

May,1947: Nene (the "needle engine") licenced (for money) to Pratt as J42 (in 1948, its derivative, Tay (the First) licenced as J48).

November,1947: at US urging (with intelligence of La-15, MiG-15 and Il-28, all with Nene-derivatives), Nene was re-classified (put back on the "Secret List"). (Horse; bolt).

Frank Whittle did his work whilst drawing the King's shilling and spending a Venture House's money. Other inventors on the public payroll got/still today get zilch. He lobbied Minister of Aircraft Production Cripps to keep his gyre away from aero-engine pistoneers and/or to nationalise them all. Only his Power Jets was so nationalised 28 April,1944 (1 July,1946 becoming NGTE/Pyestock), because it made no economic sense in War to render moribund the vast piston-engine industry, so as to start over afresh.

You may see Sir Frank as having been shafted, but maybe like many genius/creatives he found teamwork to be trying (see Barnes Wallis, W.E.W.Petter).

[DozyWannabe]

Far be it for me to get all nationalistic, however it does need to be said that the UK was punching well above its weight - in aviation engineering terms, anyway - coming off the back of WWII. Nazi Germany did put a jet-powered fighter in the air first, but the engineers were still clearly ironing out the bugs by 1945, and only a select group of pilots were allowed near them.

"Free Enterprise" may be something of a boon for innovation to an extent, but it must be said that the development costs of Boeing's first civilian jet transport design were largely funded by its alternative role as a tanker for the military.

A while back I found an interesting link - apropos of nothing:

British Airliners 'Nearly Get It Right' Shock! - Aircraft of World War II - Warbird Forums (http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/post-war/british-airliners-nearly-get-right-shock-17298.html)

[pasir]

... It might be worth mentioning that some years after the US introduced the DOUGLAS DC3 airliner in 1933 - the DH Heron Bi-plane 'airliner' made its appearance in 1936.

...

[pasir]

should have read RAPIDE

[Jig Peter]

The Coanda machine seems also to have been followed by a similar effort by Caproni/Campini which had a piston engine driving a compressor, with combustion chambers downstream ...
But none of these was anything like a practical proposition like Sir Frank Whittle's, which was surely the first Jet Engine both to run and fly ...

Sorry, all, I completely forgot the He 138 and the German work, especially on axial-flow engines, which really pointed out the way to go. Whittle's centrifugal compressor, with its base in superchargers for piston engines, was a very good start for the first few years of military jets (and the Comet's engines), but my statement was W R O N GGGG ...

[FlightlessParrot]

I think the Heinkel engine flew in the He 178 in 1939. I don't know when the first Whittle flight in a test-bed (Wellington?) was, but the Gloster E.28/39 was later.

Edit: I also was wrong: it seems the first Whittle engine to fly wasn't flown in a test-bed first. It continues to astonish me that for the first flight of a new engine, and especially a revolutionary engine, they decided to use a completely new aircraft, and a single-engined one, too.

[pasir]

... The He178 in 1939 was almost certainly the first jet powered aircraft to
fly - although there is a vague reference to an Italian achievement a year or so earlier. However it was the Me262 that was first to enter WW2 in operational role - being faster and better armed than the Glos. Meteor which arrived in operational role several months later. However fortunatly for the Allies the Me262 was not available in anywhere near sufficient numbers to make any great impact to retard the USAAF and RAF -together with problems over shortages of jet fuel.
...

[stepwilk]

By the way, for any followers of this thread who may still be interested in whether the book is any good, I've just started reading it--first couple of chapters--and I find it outstanding, so far.

[Double Zero]

The Lock-Speiser pallet loading small cargo aircraft always struck me as a good idea never given a chance ( a few reasons not to do with the a/c ) ; a real Nevil Shute* type project.

* I know Nevil Shute Norway's aviation career as well as writing, was lucky enough to know someone who grew up with him; interestingly judging by the former comments, he said 'stuff the UK' and moved to Australia in the 1960's.

After reading the 'spending cuts' but seeing the mega-bucks doshed out to bankers on £1 million a year + bonuses, but defence, welfare & NHS under attack from Nazi's the like of which even Thatcher could never have dreamed of, I never thought I'd say it but my patriotism is wafer thin too !

[Warmtoast]

There was another recent review of this book. The quote below is from the Sunday Times:


If you had to pick a day in the past 60 years “to reveal a country that was most unlike today’s Britain” writes James Hamilton-Paterson, then September 6, 1952 would be a perfect candidate. It was a cool Saturday, and at the Farnborough air show a staggering 120,000 people were pottering about among the various aircraft on display and looking forward to the afternoon’s acrobatics. Many of the larger planes were open so that visitors could climb inside and poke around, but what excited most spectators was the prospect of seeing the intrepid test pilot John Derry breaking the sound barrier in one of the new de Havilland DH 110s. They were not disappointed, and there were gasps and cheers as Derry screamed over the airfield, followed by the characteristic triple boom that marked a plane going supersonic, the “violent music of a new technological era”. And then the announcer shouted: “Oh my God, this was never meant to happen!” and they realised something had gone horribly wrong.

The horrific scenes that afternoon at Farnborough, where Derry’s plane broke up in mid-air, its engines spinning into the crowd and killing 29 people, now feel like memories of a bygone age. Almost unbelievably, not only did the air show go on after the bodies had been cleared away, but a further 140,000 people turned up to watch the show the next day, undeterred by the headlines. This was a time, as Hamilton-Paterson remarks, when the excitement of risk-taking trumped the strictures of health and safety, and when the conquest of the skies seemed to mark a new chapter in Britain’s glorious history. The reaction of Derry’s wife, watching in horror from the pilots’ enclosure, speaks volumes about the reticence and courage that contemporaries prized so highly. “There’s no hope, is there?” was all she said as the disaster unfolded. “No,” the pilot next to her said quietly. “None.”

No doubt Hamilton-Paterson’s book will surprise those who know him only as a reclusive travel writer and novelist. But even readers like me, with absolutely no interest in aeroplanes, will find it a beautifully written re-creation of a vanished cultural and technological landscape. His achievement is to capture perfectly the mood of the 10 years after the Second World War when British heroes seemed to rule the skies, and when, as the New York Times put it, “the British jet plane industry appears to be assuming the lead in the western World... and it is a comfort that it is on our side”.

Those words ring hollow now, with our aircraft industry merely a pathetic shadow of its old self. Yet for a brief shining moment, as Hamilton-Paterson recalls, “through children’s periodicals such as Eagle and Boy’s Own we were proclaimed the inheritors of a new order: a post-war Britain of amazing technological energy”, ready to lead the world into the jet age.
This was a Britain in which schoolboys such as the young Hamilton-Paterson worshipped test pilots as well as footballers, in which RAF veterans such as Derry, Neville Duke and Bill Waterton were feted as daredevils of the skies. Paid a mere £40 a week, they risked their lives on a daily basis, even though they often knew that their experimental planes were barely airworthy. Some of this book’s most compelling passages describe their almost incredible feats of derring-do, such as when, in September 1948, Derry took his DH108 into a record- breaking supersonic dive from 45,000ft above Windsor, heading towards the ground so quickly that, almost blinded by the -3 g-force, he had just seconds to pull up before his plane smashed into the town. Then there was Waterton’s skin-of-the-teeth escape from death in 1952, when his experimental Javelin suffered “two explosive cracks” and lost its elevators in mid-air, yet he somehow managed to get it down on Salisbury plain, suffering only scorched arms and singed eyebrows. “This was really flying,” he recalled later, “a joyous thrill... that made you feel clean and young and exuberantly detached.”

Perhaps it was hardly surprising that the designer and entrepreneur Geoffrey de Havilland lost both his sons to accidents, as though making ritual sacrifices to the quest for speed, while in the last seven months of 1956 the RAF lost a staggering 42 airmen to accidents, roughly one every six days. Yet hundreds of thousands of people descended on air shows every year, ready to applaud the feats of their patriotic heroes. “We went home” Hamilton-Paterson writes, “knowing that Britain was still a world leader and feeling in our bones our place in the international order.”
The cruel irony, of course, was that this was merely an illusion. In its understated, elegant way, Hamilton-Paterson’s book smoulders with anger at the arrogance and folly of the aircraft companies, the indecision and sloth of successive governments, and the litany of cock-ups and failures that condemned the dream of a British jet age to oblivion. While Britain produced some great aircraft, notably the Avro Vulcan bomber and the Harrier jump jet, it was too slow, too unresponsive and too complacent to compete with the Americans, and by the end of the 1950s the domestic industry was doomed. Those brave souls, who dared to point this out, such as Hamilton-Paterson’s test-pilot hero Waterton, were ostracised. Aircraft production became a microcosm of a nation in palpable competitive decline, and within a few years the innocent patriotism and childish hopes had turned sour.

In a way, then, this wonderful book is a study in failure, the story of swashbuckling heroes tilting at windmills while their masters frittered away Britain’s technological inheritance. And yet when I put it down, what lingered in the mind were the memories of the “golden men and golden machines that unquestionably blazed amid the dispiriting muddle” — the heroes of a lost world that now seems like ancient history.

[FlightlessParrot]

I remember that post war time; as a schoolboy, I was probably the ideal audience.

Looking back, I remember all those wonderful prototypes: too many, of course, for a smallish and bankrupt economy.

I also remember the PR hype we were fed (though it wasn't called that, then). The jet engine, a British invention: no, though Whittle was a very important pioneer. Though A.A. Griffith was an earlier pioneer, and knew that axial flow was the way of the future. But he was denigrated as a mere bumbling civil servant because he didn't think much of Whittle's design, which was a mistake, but not a stupid one.

Not to mention radar, a British invention, we were told. Even at the time, I was a little puzzled about how the USA got to have a radar set at Pearl Harbour, which we did know about because the story of its being turned off, but we were never told how it existed in the first place. Admittedly, this wasn't all conscious misinformation. I believe the naval officers who inspected the Graf Spee were truly surprised to see radar antennae.

This is not to denigrate the courage or ingenuity of the time. But the sense Brits of my and older generations have that once Britain Ruled The Skies is a misleading myth. Lots of ingenious prototypes: too many, and too ingenious. An economy that wasn't big enough to develop that much diversity, and that was bankrupt as a result of Churchill's courageous and correct decision to fight on in 1940, in the certain knowledge that bankruptcy was a consequence.

[Double Zero]

" I haven't been this relaxed since I was on Watch Duty at Pearl Harbour ! "

- Grandpa Simpson on vacation...

[aviate1138]

Another myth was that Watson Watt invented Radar. The Germans had a ship detector [Telemobiloskop] demonstrated in Hamburg harbour back in 1904. Rang a bell when a ship was detected in thick fog. Used a rotating parabolic dish.

"In Germany, the development of the first technologies of sonar and radar were interrelated. Following Christian Hülsmeyer's forgotten invention of the "Telemobiloskop" in 1904, two Berlin engineers, Paul Günther Erbslöh and Hans-Karl von Willisen, developed and built devices to locate targets accurately by reflections with underwater sound and radio waves. In 1934, they found their own company for this work, called Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische und Mechanische Apparate (GEMA), which became the birthplace of their famous Freya air-warning and Seetakt ocean-surveillance radars."

[FlightlessParrot]

Len Deighton, in Fighter, claims that the Brits left a portable radar set behind at Dunkirk, and there was much consternation that it hadn't been destroyed. When the Germans discovered it, they were not at all interested, it was so far behind their stuff.

Len Deighton does a lot of research, but he's also a professional story-teller. Does anybody know what, if any, actuality lies behind this anecdote?

[DHfan]

... It might be worth mentioning that some years after the US introduced the DOUGLAS DC3 airliner in 1933 - the DH Heron Bi-plane 'airliner' made its appearance in 1936.

Admittedly there was a huge difference in technology but it's hardly a fair comparison. One was designed as a high speed transcontinental sleeper, and the other for a Romford bus operator to do cheap flights from London to Paris.

BTW, the Dragon Rapide flew in 1934 and the DC3 in 1935.

[blue up]

....and the DC1 flew in mid 1933.

[Jig Peter]

Mr. Hamilton-Pätterson's book really is excellent reading - although some years older than he, I could almost see my young self - and as I grew older (note, I don't say "matured"), I felt much of what he describes.
Having read it right through, it leaves me with much the same regret that so much that "should" have been done, wasn't, but confirms my decision years ago now, at the "16-year point", to move to other spheres - and eventually to move back into aviation (non-flying), in a country and a company where the future was for the making, both for myself and my family.
By the Lord Harry, we worked effin' 'ard, despite the sneers from across the Channel - and the result is there for all to see. Pity, it could (???) have happened North of the White Cliffs, but Mr. H-P tells us a lot about why it didn't, and I'm grateful for his work.

Later:
And yes, it still hurts, somewhere deep down, even though life's pretty good where I am ...

[pasir]

... the reason for making references to the DC3 and the DH Rapide in relation to the decline of the British a/c industry was to point out that
while the US had seen the way forward for civil airliners (small or large) was to be monoplane construction - GB were still involved in producing
new models of Bi-plane vintage - Hence delightful as the DH Rapide may have been - it was already dated before its first flight.

This could not have been more embarrasingly made obvious when our
Jersey Airlines coach collected passengers from E. Croydon station
and on arrival at Croydon Airport the passengers upon being led out to their DH Rapide lined up on Croydons apron - REFUSED to board it !

...

[Jig Peter]

Apart from the fragile "Albatross" (passenger door weakened the fuselage), I seem to remember photos of a rather elegant twin-engined, high wing design from Hatfield called the Flamingo. Now that would have been a good (re-)start after WW2, but deH's were thinking of bigger boys' toys, apart from the Dove and Heron, perhaps.

[pasir]

...
By coincidence - happened to pass by the DH Heron on display at
Croydon Airport Gates - and what a sorry sight ! In its present state
being more worthy advertising a scrap yard - with several large rust spots or metal decay showing through the unwashed faded Moreton Airways livery. Capt Moreton would be in despair if still around.

...

[DHfan]

The DH.95 Flamingo seemed promising to me and was a leap in technology for DH as their first all-metal aircraft. Possibly if war hadn't intervened it may have been successful.
Post-war, being only a little bigger than the Heron it was presumably considered not worth building.

[Flash2001]

See also the British motorcycle industry. R I P

After an excellent landing etc...

[Tankertrashnav]

Don't forget, though, that Rolls Royce are still making aero engines which are a byeword for safety and reliability throughout the world of aviation....


.... erm.... ;)

[stepwilk]

I take it your "erm..." means, "Well, maybe not today, exactly..."

[A30yoyo]

Pasir....I think Jersey Airlines were using originally the DH84 Dragon then the 4 engine DH86 Express which seated about 16....where does the 'refusal to board ' story come from?
JE409 Aircraft maximum card De Havilland DH86 (http://www.norphil.co.uk/catalog/popup_image.php?pID=2563)
I think the lack of a decent 1000-1200 hp commercial engine and the realisation that it was needed crippled British Airliner development pre-war...the decision to concentrate on the Empire flying boats around 1934 was also a fundamental error, lovely though they were.

[pasir]

During my time with Jersey Airlines Operations at Croydon we used
Herons and Doves on the Croydon Jersey routes - other than when heavily booked or overbooked then the twin-engined Rapide would
be sent over. I cannot recall that the four-engined version
DH86 Express was ever in use during that period - although others may be
able to confirm otherwise. The information regarding passengers refusing to board the twin-engined DH Rapide came from a colleague on duty
at the time. Hope this helps.

It was around this time that a Moreton Airways Dove (or Heron) had
undercarriage trouble and circled the field for ages to burn away excess
fuel. By the time it was ready to land with but two wheels
lowered (nosewheel being one) - a very large crowd had assembled
on the field - also two Police cars. As the a/c came in
to make a near perfect landing -the crowd surged forward including the police cars - who in their haste (and embarressment) backed into
each other - compared to the superb landing of the pilot - who I
beleive was Capt Moreton himself of Moreton Airways.

...

[A30yoyo]

Aah!....you're talking about post-war!...that figures....they might well have laid on a Rapide to replace a Dove or Heron (and the 4 engined DH-86 was out of service by the fifties)...and passengers might be forgiven for turning up their noses at a wooden biplane. There's an active Croydon Airport Society... but I expect you already know.

[Mechta]

Not having a clue what to get the parents for Christmas, and having read the generally high opinions of 'Empire of the Clouds' in this thread, I invested in a hardback copy for my father from Amazon.

My mother collared it first and says it is very interesting. She was at RAE Farnborough in the 50s & 60s so can relate to a lot of the aircraft it covers. She did comment though that there is a list of illustrations at the front of the book, but none inside.

Has anyone else noticed a lack of illustrations, or does your copy have them?

[treadigraph]

I got a hard back copy from Amazon just before Christmas Mechta - haven't read it yet, but there are certainly six glossy leaves of b/w photos in the centre of the book. Without testing to destruction it seems to be well bound.

[stepwilk]

My Kindle edition has half a dozen or so pages of photos at the back of the book. You must have a defective copy, and I'd ask Amazon for a replacement. They are enormously good at making such amends. I once griped that one of the pair of computer speakers I'd bought from them didn't work, and they instantly sent me a replacement without even asking for the old ones back...and I later discovered that I had misadjusted my Mac's audio balance. Ended up, embarrassed, with four good speakers.

[Hipper]

On the subject of WW2 radar, I believe it was a question of priorities.

The British priority was concerned with bomber attacks on the UK so we spent most of our effort on the Chain Home system, which worked.

On naval radar the German panzership Deutschland seems to have had a mattress antenna in the autumn of 1937 and Graf Spee had a larger version in 1939 pre war. This must have been known before the River Plate battle as photographs of the ship were taken as she passed through the Channel. These were search radars but the Germans do not seem to have progressed much after that. This system played no part in Graf Spee's demise.

The RN is thought to have had an experimental naval radar at sea just before the war, a good search system by the time of the Bismarck episode in May 1941, and a good gunnery system when the Scharnhorst was lost in December 1943 which was much superior to the German radar of the time.

As far as the radar war is concerned, we did pretty well.

[Warmtoast]

Earl of Rochester


~ WarmToast!
Do you have the name of the writer of the Sunday Times article you posted?
Earl


Sorry for not getting back earlier, but I didn't keep a copy.
The article in question almost certainly appeared in the 'Culture' section among the book reviews.

WT

[Cornish Jack]

About halfway through my (Xmas pressie) copy (H/B and it DOES have photos). As with Jig Peter, there are echoes of my childhood/teens late 40s/early 50s. The next 35+ plus years in light blue gave me the close-up reality/quality of our aviation products -Anson, Prentice,Varsity,Marathon, Valetta, Beverley, Hastings, Devon, Sycamore, Whirlwind, Wessex, Gazelle, Puma, Sea King, VC10 and the experience was just as mixed. Some good, some bad, some indifferent, some quite beautiful to look at. After the RAF, two of our airlines provided another 12 years of 'heavy metal' experience in the form of Boeing's 747s (Classic and 400) and the 'best of the best', 411a's 'light of his life'. Were we (the Brits) leading players in the aviation world? ... Probably in individual enthisiasm of designers et al. But a total lack of cohesion and what is nowadays described as 'joined up thinking' meant that opportunities were wasted.
'T'was ever thus:(

[Mechta]

Hi Treadigraph, Stepwilk & Cornish Jack,

Thanks for the confirmation re the pictures. There are definitely no picures in my parents' book, so as you suggest, an email to Amazon is in order.

Mechta

[Penny Washers]

I dont want to sound too much like a grumpy old git (not much!) but I must say that I do not share the generally favourable opinions of this book. As one who has lived through that era, I found little in the book apart from well known and even well worn facts and opinions, and a singular lack of analysis or of suggestions on how the situations could have been avoided at the time.

O level stuff. Given that there had to be a choice between TSR 2 and Concorde, what should have been done? How could the Swift been made to fly well? And so on.

[His dudeness]

On the subject of WW2 radar, I believe it was a question of priorities.

The British priority was concerned with bomber attacks on the UK so we spent most of our effort on the Chain Home system, which worked.

On naval radar the German panzership Deutschland seems to have had a mattress antenna in the autumn of 1937 and Graf Spee had a larger version in 1939 pre war. This must have been known before the River Plate battle as photographs of the ship were taken as she passed through the Channel. These were search radars but the Germans do not seem to have progressed much after that. This system played no part in Graf Spee's demise.

The RN is thought to have had an experimental naval radar at sea just before the war, a good search system by the time of the Bismarck episode in May 1941, and a good gunnery system when the Scharnhorst was lost in December 1943 which was much superior to the German radar of the time.

As far as the radar war is concerned, we did pretty well.

I´d say Watson-Watt was the first to truly understand what Radar could and would do for the defenders and also attackers in the air. German fighter generals in 1941 still thought it would be not 'hunterlike' to be guided from the ground. On the eastern front, fightercontrol from the ground was nearly non existant.
The main issue the german electronic industry had in the early time of the war was Hitlers stop to development that MIGHT take longer than a year to get to the front. After it was realized that this was a mistake, all the momentum and the technical advancement the german radar held in the first 2-3 years of the war was lost and only in late 1942 all men ever having involved in radio technique were called back from the front. By that time the 'Mericans had developed the magnetron, which allowed for pretty high power outputs at low wavelengths...from then one, british and american radar was far superior to anything Germany came up with.

BTT, the book is a nice read, however I doubt that Britains aviation industry really was 'ruling the world'. The Comet was a true first, but what else was?
Just look at what the 'Mericans came up with between 1943 and 1960ish...compare that to british aircarft of the era...

Anyhow, there is still NOTHING that could beat a Spitfire flyby...a Merlin at full throttle and the beautyful lines...

[stepwilk]

One of the things that's too often forgotten when people talk about who "ruled the air" is general aviation. The U. S. had Bonanzas and Cessna 170s, and for better or worse Navions and Seabees, when the UK was still building pretty much nothing but Prewar rag-and-tube designs. Certainly from 1946 (Bonanza) on, the U. S. ruled the lightplane air...

[Shaggy Sheep Driver]

Well 3 superpowers tried to build a supersonic airliner. Only the Europeans (UK and France) succeeded. Mach 2.02 for up to 4.5 hours unrefuelled, 100 passengers in superb comfort.

Nothing comes close!

[CNH]

Concorde - an economic disaster. The Americans at least realised that if you wanted to carry on building aircraft, it helped if they paid for themselves.

[Shaggy Sheep Driver]

The Americans, CNH, never got as far as making an economic evaluation of their SST. At least not until they'd spent as much on it as UK and France individually spent on Concorde; we got that superb aeroplane for 27 years of profitable airline service, they got a wooden mock-up of a swing-wing mach 3 impossibility. ;)

[stepwilk]

"... profitable airline service..."

Well, yes, if the airplanes are free.

[Shaggy Sheep Driver]

Stepwilk.... Yes, if you call £200,000,000 'free'!

From the 'Concorde SST' site:

How much does a Concorde cost?

In 1977, the airlines bought their initial complement of 9 aircraft for around £23 million each ($46 million US dollars). This would equate to around £200 million ($350 million) at todays prices. its was decided in 1979 that 5 unsold aircraft were to be placed with the state airlines if no further byers were found.. BA bought a/c 214 and 216 for a nominal costs of around of a few thousand pounds, but did pay the going rate of over a million pounds to fit out the 'white tail' aircraft to their standard.

In 1984, BA bought to government out of the Concorde programme for £16.5M, they gained title to the remaining spares tooling and aircraft 202, a primary part of the deal was that BA bought its way out of the 80/20 profit split, that was in favour of the governemnt. The airline took on the full Concorde program running costs at this stage too, which were around £50 million PA, and many hundreds of millions over the next 20 years.

The development costs of Concorde were around £1.134 billion, which was funded by the UK and French governments. The cost to build the 16 production Concordes was £654 million of which £278 million was recovered through sales returns (this included spares, technical support, etc.). This debt was also funded by the 2 governments.

Airbus, would simply not have existed or have been as successful a company that it is today, have concorde never made it off the drawing board. the initial high outlays by the respective governments was the foundation of the European aviation industry that we have today, and this is all thanks to Concorde, and the skills and knowledge that this brought.

Did Concorde make a profit for the airlines?

Because of the premium rate that passengers would pay to fly on Concorde (First Class +20%), the aircraft only needed to be around half full to break even and turn an operating profit. The airlines spent many millions on the modifications to return the aircraft to service, based on flights returning to the same levels that they were pre-accident and pre-Sept 11th 2001. The normally higher loads (around the 75% mark) and a 2nd daily flight, along with a large charter operation, allowed the airlines to invest in the aircraft and keep it flying.

Another very important role of Concorde has been as a PR and marketing tool. Regular First Class and Business Class passengers will be given free Concorde upgrades to tempt them to continue to fly with the two airlines.

[A30yoyo]

I haven't read the book (but I will).....meantime any opinions on what could have been done with the money poured into the Nimrod projects?

[Tankertrashnav]

I never flew in Concorde (notice, nobody ever says a Concorde) but just to stand in my Cornish garden 30 years ago and hear the sonic boom as she decelerated inbound near the Scillies, or to stand in my brother's garden near Reading and watch her climbing out from Heathrow was worth every tax £1 I contributed to her. Nobody can seriously argue that Concorde was ever an economic proposition, but that misses the point entirely.

[tornadoken]

Minister of Supply A.Jones visited Paris,6/59 and “suggested we jointly develop (an SST). I had become weary of Treasury’s cancellation of most aircraft projects (They) might find it difficult to cancel a (joint) project (I) believed we had made a mistake holding ourselves aloof from (EEC. PM Macmillan) was so, still, so Cabinet “laughed with derision” at this contact. (Later) attempts were made to involve (US in it: ) I would have been opposed for I attached importance to the construction of (Euro-Aero) to compete more effectively with (US)” K.Owen: Concorde & the Americans, Airlife, 1997, P18, and (Ed),P.54, ICBH Concorde Witness Seminar 19/11/98, pub.2002.

So, this Minister endorsed SSD's extract from the SST site: "the foundation of (today's) European aviation industry (is) all thanks to Concorde, and the skills and knowledge that this brought."

TTN says: "Nobody can seriously argue that Concorde was ever an economic proposition, but that misses the point entirely": his "point" being (I take it) that UK (& France) did Concorde for the climber's Everest reason - because it is there (i.e: it had become technologically feasible, so we should do it before some other guy does). That is the thrust of Empire of the Clouds as a whole: Just do it...because you can.

Aero exists despite, not because of business investment norms. Chairman T.Wilson: by 1972 Boeing had “sold c.$20Bn. of commercial airplanes and hadn’t made any money (an) absolute basket case on 737 (great early) difficulties on 747” R.J.Serling,Legend & Legacy,St.Martin’s Press, 1992, P.385. As for the Operators: R.Branson (et al): "How to make a small fortune in the airline business? Start with a large one."

[diddy1234]

Although I can not contribute regarding the book (I will try and purchase it however) or the demise of UK Aviation (I am only a mere fledgling at 37) , I have one of the few advantages that I work at the edge of Melbourn village within a couple of miles of Duxford Museum and within half a mile of Fowlmere aerodrome.

From spring to autumn there is always something in the sky and there is nothing like the sound of a Merlin engine at full chat on a hot summers day with the office windows open !

Had to imagine at this time of the year I know but my point is that seeing so many types of UK and US aircraft 'practising' in the sky still puts a smile on my face.

I guess I am enjoying it while we all can.
Sorry for the thread drift.

[CNH]

I too believe Concorde is wonderful, but it is the latter day equivalent of the Pyramids. Some may think it's worth every tax £ spent on it; others may disagree. My heart says it was worth it - my head doesn't.

[twochai]

I too believe Concorde is wonderful, but it is the latter day equivalent of the Pyramids. Some may think it's worth every tax £ spent on it; others may disagree. My heart says it was worth it - my head doesn't.

Come on, think big! Look what the pyramids (and the Valley of the Kings) have done for Egyptian tourism.

[brian murray]

just finished reading empire of the clouds, i thought it a superb read, but then i'm so old i was at farnborough the day john derry blew up in the dh 110

[stepwilk]

Hey, I'm 74 and loved it. My Farnborough equivalent is that I was at the air show when "Idlewild" (today KJFK) opened, when a low pass by an F-80 blew off Harry Truman's hat.

[WHBM]

During my time with Jersey Airlines Operations at Croydon we used Herons and Doves on the Croydon Jersey routes - other than when heavily booked or overbooked then the twin-engined Rapide would be sent over. I cannot recall that the four-engined version
DH86 Express was ever in use during that period - although others may be
able to confirm otherwise.
This is the 1950s-early 60s period you are doubtless writing about. Jersey had the Rapide and 4-engined Express in the pre-war period, but the Express didn't last long after the war, with anybody. The Rapide was unusually in significant light airline service both pre-war, and for a long time afterwards, well into the 1960s, and indeed there are a few still airworthy, more than can be said for the Express which seems to have been a real dog of a design, despite its four engines.

[brian murray]

re. DH86, were they used after the crash of G-ACZN in 1938? They were also using the DH 95 in May 39, I have an interesting book Jersey Airport the first 50 years 1937-1987 about the types used on channel Island routes.

[merv32249213]

have just finished the book and what it mentions is just a small snapshot of how we just could not make some aircraft production
I worked on the Comet 4 production at Hatfield and it was a bit like Steptoe's junkyard .
When the fuse was brought in to be united with its wings, it sat on two wheels that looked as though they were pinched off a barrow boy.
To prevent the tail from roof damage it was tied down by rope to a large concrete block and the result was an aircraft fuse nose pointing skywards .
Ground equipment to work on the aircraft was mostly WW2 ladders.
They used to say that final assembly was a rush to get the plane out of the hanger ASAP to beat the numerous mods that appeared every day to be incorporated .
One day all our drawings were whisked away and returned with the
Copyright sign stamped on them, suggesting that up to that time anyone could have copied them .

I also worked on the Handley Page Victor B2 wings at Radlett and have to confess that for thirteen months I was lucky if I did about 2 hrs work a day. (one of the reasons I left ) it was so disorganised and I lost count of how many Toolboxes I was told to make, so I looked to be doing something .
Interchangability in both camps was useless, a file and tinsnips were a must, to make things fit.

Other things that did not help our industry at that time was we were trying to produce aircraft in WW2 sheds for that was about all they were.
Such a pity because we did have the brains and skills but alas we gave them away for other countries to benefit.
Aircraft maintainence however was well respected but wages were rubbish

Merv

[kluge]

Received the book as a Xmas present.
Thoroughly good read and I recommend it.

Incredible what was accomplished post war and sad that this cannot be repeated in modern England. An irrevocable loss of industry, wealth creation and national pride. :(


.....and now no more Harriers. :sad:

[alisoncc]

I have a DVD in my collection, Farnborough the Golden Years 1949-1959. It's a compilation of the Pathe Newreels of the time relating to the latest and greatest on show at Farnborough for each year. Apparently the actual newreel films is held in the archives of the Imperial War Museum. Amazon have it at Farnborough - The Golden Years 1949 To 1959 [DVD]: Amazon.co.uk: Farnborough - the Golden Years: DVD (http://tinyurl.com/39us9e2) . For anyone with an interest in such things well worth buying.

[brian murray]

Thanks alisoncc, for the DVD tip. I've ordered a copy today. I note there are some others that look interesting.

[DHfan]

"By that time the 'Mericans had developed the magnetron, which allowed for pretty high power outputs at low wavelengths..."

The cavity magnetron was invented in America, but it was a couple of scientists in Birmingham that got it to work. Have you invented something if it doesn't work?

I received the book for Christmas too and am thoroughly enjoying it. It possibly puts a rose tint on certain things but I do too.

[pasir]

Further to the Cavity Magtron as used in RADAR - and the American
connection - Would this be the same C M for which the British staged
a daring raid on Bruneval early in WW2 in order to seize it - If so
were the British unaware the C M was available in the US ?


...

[DHfan]

I've a book about the Bruneval raid somewhere but it's years since I've read it. The raid was to find out German radar capabilities as I recall.

A quick Google says the Wurzburg radar used a Klystron. The cavity magnetron was needed for centimetric radar.

[India Four Two]

Re the Bruneval raid, the Würzburg had been spotted by a PR Spitfire in a very vulnerable position on the cliff top and the raid was organized to recover as much of the radar as possible. An excellent write-up is in RV Jones wonderful book "Most Secret War".

One of the outcomes of the raid was that the radar boffins at TRE Worth Matravers on the Dorset coast realized they were vulnerable too and made a hasty retreat to Malvern College.

German radar researchers didn't have any cavity magnetrons until H2S units were recovered from crashed Lancasters

[His dudeness]

Acc. to a german book I have read on the subject, the main thing the brits found out from the raid was a) the rotating dipol, that apparently allowed for a more focussed radar beam and was new to them and that b) the german radar system had fixed frequencies, which made the 'windows' [stanniol strips] (or in german 'düppel') very bad news for the german radar defense system.
Thats one other irony actually, the germans had the knowledge about windows first, but Göring himself forbid any scientific work on them in order to keep it secret from the brits. Apparently the nazis thought the brits were all third or forthclass scientists...until they taught us differently.

German radar researchers didn't have any cavity magnetrons until H2S units were recovered from crashed Lancasters correct, thats why the germans called it "Rotterdamgerät"
It was discovered after shortly after being introduced, IIRC something like 3 weeks after it entered service with the RAF. But the allied luck held, the parts from the Rotterdam crash had been almost put together in a lab, then the lab was bombed (pure coinsidence) and the german scientist need another 5-6 months to really know what the magnetron was capable off.

[DHfan]

Microsoft on the brain - window, not windows. :)

[WHBM]

I'm trying hard to think of which types actually "ruled the world".

Long-haul types, apart from in penny numbers, never seemed to sell beyond British carriers.

Short-haul, the Viscount, the One-Eleven and the 146/RJ made some sales, but were always outnumbered anywhere you looked (apart from in Britain) by US types, and as their periods didn't really overlap there were plenty of times when nothing British was around.

It would take a little while to count up, but I suspect that Fokker alone made more overseas sales of new aircraft than the entire post-war UK aircraft industry.

[DHfan]

Ruled the world is certainly a rose-tinted view.

I've no idea about Fokker production figures but the Viscount, Dove and DH125 were all pretty spectacular by UK standards, approaching 2,000 between them I believe although not all exported. Not much else comes to mind for the civil market.

Military, Vampire/Venom, Canberra, Hunter must add up to quite a few.

[Jig Peter]

You're right in that any civil aircraft production numbers didn't get all that big anywhere until the 727 passed the 1,000 mark (with Douglas not far behind), so British figures till then were (sort of) respectable. But then, for the military at least, the "tide of opinion" turned and ladies such as the one in the introduction to "Empire of the Clouds" who, in the Lake District, was horrified by a Vulcan flying past low and fast and its war-making implications, became an influential part of public opinion.
My cynical mind had long felt that there's an undercurrent in British thought that really, really wants to put the clock back to a mythical Golden Age, perhaps in the '30s, or earlier in the "Wordsworth lives" case.
The book traces part of that "refusal of the future" which I think I'm not alone in deeply regretting. Government pusillanimity as far as aircraft projects go is only part of the story: industry itself -and not only in the aircraft world - never seemed to be able to "move on" after WW2.
And that's a story way off thread !:ugh::ugh::ugh:

[brakedwell]

793 F27/FH27 were built by Fokker and Fairchild.. Considerably more than the Britannia, Comet, HP Herald, BAC111, Argosy, Belfast, VC10, Vanguard, Trident and Concorde put together.

[DHfan]

DH125, HS125, BAe125, 1000+.

Funny thing, statistics - especially when choosing to include the Belfast and Concorde.

[brakedwell]

I was under the impression the DH125 in all it's guises was an executive/private jet, not a commercial airliner/freighter. However, I omitted arguably the most successful British airliner of the lot, the Vickers Viscount of which 436 were built.

[Self Loading Freight]

On the subject of the magnetron, there's a PDF of a fascinating paper (http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/58/3/283.full.pdf) by Bernard Lovell (who worked, as they say, in radar during the war) where he goes through the history of its rediscovery by Randall and Boot and subsequent progress through the Allied establishment. The Germans knew of the magnetron - it had been patented by the Russians well before the war - but had abandoned centrimetric research. It took them a while to work out what to make of the Rotterdamgerät not because they didn't know about the magnetron - which was recognised, and I believe the Germans even made magnetrons for test equipment before then - but because they couldn't work out the antenna switching between TX and RX.

The thrust of Lovell's paper is that magnetron deployment was held back for a while because the Allies were terrified it might fall into the hands of the Germans - secrecy that proved unnecessary, and very possibly counterproductive.

R