Empire of the Clouds: When Britain's Aircraft Ruled the World
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Empire of the Clouds: When Britain's Aircraft Ruled the World
Just read a very good Independent book review 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?
Bloody heartbreaking.
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.
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.
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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.
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.....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?? 
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.
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.
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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.
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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".
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".
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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.
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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.
if brits were in the habit of eating hershey bars...they would have come up with the microwave oven.
Of course our celebrated predecessor, Sir George Cayley's coachman, was another Brit who failed to grasp the commercial opportunities out there ...
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?
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?
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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.
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.
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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!
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I have it on good authority that the Islander is the most perfect aircraft ever built
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....
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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.
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.
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Whittle and his Engines
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).
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).
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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
"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
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... 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.
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