Brabazon Committee raison d'etre

[stepwilk]

For an article I'm writing for Air & Space Smithsonian on the Bristol Brabazon:

It seems to be an article of faith perpetuated by Wikipedia and other doubtful sources that there was some kind of wartime agreement between the US and UK that Britain would concentrate on developing and building bombers and the US would do the same for transports. Therefore the Brabazon Committee was established to help the British aviation industry re-establish itself in the commercial-transport field rather than ceding it to US wartime designs that would easily be civilianized.

Can this be true? Certainly the US developed the C-54 and C-87 (at least I think that's the designator for the Constellation), but the B-29 and even the B-36 were underway as well, and it hardly seems we'd left bomber development to the English. Nor did Britain come up with anything advanced beyond the Lancaster if the assumption is that they'd been tasked to develop bombers.

I'm suspicious of the oft-quoted "US did transports, UK did bombers" theory. Does anybody out there agree--or disagree?

[A30yoyo]

Brabazon Committee

I think the aviation writer Bill Gunston dismissed the US-Transports UK-Combat Types notion as a myth. The C-87 was the transport version of the B-24 Liberator, the first military Constellations were designated C-69
The first DC-4/C-54 was almost complete when Pearl Harbour was attacked and flew 2months later in February 1942, the first Constellation flew in January 1943 (so the design was pretty firm by Pearl harbour)...making them pre-war designs from the US point of view

[stepwilk]

Excellent! I can go with Bill Gunston. That's what I thought.

[A30yoyo]

Now I'll have to go through all my books to check it was Bill Gunston!!

It has always puzzled me that the lend-lease C-54s which the RAF had (about a dozen) were returned after WWII when BOAC sorely needed transoceanic types....they had to make do with Lancastrians. KLM's Plesman persuaded President Truman to loan KLM ex military C-54s which enabled them to restart their longhaul services

Edit....I've just noticed our addresses...ha-ha!

[stepwilk]

Hey, don't worry, I'm not going to name Gunston, just say that it's a myth that has been amply disproved.

My ex-wife (and still good friend) and her husband, Micheline and John Gunter, have a house in your Cornwall...I was last there when I was in the merchant marine, 50+ years ago.

[A30yoyo]

I'll write some more tomorrow...got to walk the dog,now!

[tornadoken]

"No UK civil production": the myth arises from misreading of priorities allocation, 1942, by Joint US/UK Committees that assigned raw materials: UK to deploy asap the Heavies which politically were to be the Second Front; US priority output to include (C-46 and) C-47 (to become the only Air item in Ike's list of 5 war-winner utensils). UK War Cabinet Minutes W.M.(43).35, 25/2/43, SecState for Air approving funding for Brabazon Committee Recommendations: “We will not accept a (Civil Air Transport) solution on the basis that we won’t build any aircraft and we want authority (to) plan some production”.

"Brabazon raison d'etre": 1942/43 Cabinet Committee on Reconstruction Problems attended to civil conversion of UK economy: "export or die". US as the emerging "arsenal of democracy" would be able to build civil marine, auto, agro-kit, taking former UK world markets. Air offered a high value-added sector where UK could compete: in early-1943 Halifax/Lancaster, turbines, high-volume output, seemed to put UK ahead of any future civil US product except C-47. So 5 "Types", with numerous Interim iterations, were funded.

A30yy "(March,1946) Return of RAF C-54": from Nov.44 RAF embraced 1/10 C-54B/D under Lend/Lease and its Mutual Aid Agreement. That carried, quite properly, (attempted) constraints on recipients extracting commercial advantage from US taxpayers' gifts. Brabazon's Type III (Empire) was to be head-on with C-54/C-69 Connie, initially with Interims from Halifax/Lancaster: to free Hermes/Tudor from scope for US objection of "influence by" C-54, UK's were not bought for RAF or BSAAC/BOAC. US chose not so to object to Brabazon Type II (Continental), the first "DC-3 replacement", because the original needed no Protection. So RAF and BEAC long retained many C-47, transferred at a notional scrap unit price, and outlasting Interim Type II Viking/Valetta.

[WHBM]

Regardless of whether it was a myth or not, how it was done was the right thing to do. The US manufacturing industry was way ahead of the UK in civil transport aircraft; setting aside the big flying boats the UK immediate pre-war landplane airliner production was completely outclassed. This was a combination of little demand, poor designs, and especially bad production standards.

You'll notice that these attributes continued in many of the Brabazon Committee's designs postwar. It wasn't until the Viscount that British industry appeared to produce a sensible airliner.

Military aircraft were different, even before September 1939.

[stepwilk]

I agree with you that it was the right way to do it, but there are so many aviation myths floating around---"The Zero was just a copy of the Hughes Racer...the BMW engine in the FW-190 was just a copy of a Pratt & Whitney...etc."--that I enjoy pointing them out when I find them, Otherwise, Wikipedia will continue to lead us down the garden path as long as they have "a citation," no matter how wrong it is.

[A30yoyo]

I think the only practical all-metal landplane airliners in production in Britain in 1939 were the rather small DH Flamingo and the very underpowered AW Ensign, the latter given lower priority even in peacetime when production was moved to AST Hamble because of military commitments at the parent factory. The orders for both types for BOAC were completed in 1940/1941.Perhaps the Ensign (re-engined) might have made a decent military freighter but there were no other suitable designs available and by 1941 Britain's situation was so perilous only combat aircraft production could be contemplated Many secondhand DC-2s and DC-3s were purchased by Britain in the US that year