Which aircraft did the RAF have to buy, at Government insistence?
 

Reading the current thread about the Hermes, where the Hastings was mentioned, reminded me of a question I've been meaning to ask.

Post WWII, which aircraft did the Government require the RAF to buy, to support British industry? I wondered about the Hastings but I see that was built to an Air Staff specification.

Here is my list of potential candidates:

Pioneer
Twin Pioneer
Belvedere
Basset
Andover
Argosy
Jetstream
Bulldog

Super VC10s
Belfast

Britannia...………………..


Bulldog was not bought by the RAF, but by the Department for Trade & Industry (or whatever it was called that week) using their funds, to prop up Scottish Aviation.

Comet C2
Tucano
Swift

There is surely a difference between the RAF being made to accept an aircraft (regardless of which govt dept actually paid) to support industry, and the RAF being made to accept a particular aircraft in preference to any other (usually to support British industry, but sometimes due to UK politics). So the first category includes the Basset, but others are definitely in the second category such as Bulldog, Andover and even the Jetstream - the RAF did need transports, a primary trainer and a multi-engine trainer. The Argosy was in fact not forced upon the RAF but was derived from the civil version in response to the Air Ministry.

The other important point is that the existence of a Specification does not necessarily mean that it wasn't forced on them - Specifications were often written after the design was proposed, in order to make the Specification into a contractual document.

Another post above mentions Tucano - this was a political choice (in preference to the Pilatus/BAe offering) but both proposals were presented in response to an Operational Requirement which became an Air Staff Requirement (ASR412 in this case, IIRC). The Brittania was also ordered to fulfil a need (replacement of Hastings etc) rather than being forced upon them.

I would suggest that the forcing was done in the 1940s and 50s, and involved the state airlines as well - Avro Tudor was a major example for instance, and the Brittania and VC10 were forced upon BOAC - they were quite disgraceful in some of their actions and showed continued antipathy for the British types even when they were in service and proving themselves. Then the govt forced Trident 3 on BEA who wanted the 727 - however, it was BEA who had insisted on downsizing the originally proposed Trident which was why they subsequently wanted the larger 727!

Marathon would be one of the more notorious!

possel,

BOAC/BEA were not "quite disgraceful in their actions" in their choice of aircraft types, they simply didn't want the totally uneconomic British types, which makes sense as they had a commitment to turn a profit. They had to be either subsidised or compensated by the Government to buy Super VC10's, Tridents and BAC111's when they would have preferred to have bought Boeing 707's, 727 and 737's.
The VC10 was a delightful looking aircraft but was an economic disaster built for a requirement that didn't exist.

But who wrote that non-existant requirement? From what I've read, BOAC asked for an aeroplane which could cope with runways that were short, hot and high; and that's what Vickers built them. The fact that those runways which were short were subsequently extended to accommodate the more economic American designs, was hardly the fault of Vickers.

Precisely.

Thank you Mechta and old,not bold for your greement!

I stand by my "disgraceful" comment, and take issue with your comments about economies. Giles Guthrie was chairman of BOAC in the early 60s, and seemed to take delight in rubbishing the VC-10 publicly, whereas in fact it was profitable on the North Atlantic routes because it achieved a higher load factor than 707s - remember BOAC's "VC-10derness" adverts? Guthrie ignored the fact that the VC-10 was designed specifically for BOAC's African routes at BOAC's specific request. The fact that life moved on was hardly Vickers' fault! Guthrie seemed to take his cue from his predecessor Gerard d'Elanger (who had found extra fault with the Brittania, delaying it by another 18-24 months after a very long development). All this was well-publicized at the time and has been well documented.

As I posted earlier, BEA mucked up the Trident by insisting on a smaller aircraft that the one DH proposed, and which then proved to be too small (as DH knew well it would). This also is well documented. So between the two airlines they really screwed the British aircraft industry at a critical time, which is basically why we are where we are now.

If only Peter Masefield had gone to BOAC as chairman, rather than Bristol's...

Quemerford - Spot on!! My VERY short association was when they were still being used , as Nav trainers, at Thorney. Did a couple of working trips to experience the .'untrim-outable'. nose-up cruise. M Plt 'Horse' Adams took me up to demo engine(s)-out 'performance' (non-existant) Still have the mental image of 'Horse' holding full aileron, wing still dropping and going downhill quite rapidly! Even with bags of sand under the pilots' seats, it was still prudent to get on board one at a time going fully forward before allowing anyone else on board! Its one saving grace was the proximity and similarity to each other of gear and flap levers - it helped to reduce the numbers in service! :D

I recall reading many years ago, that the USA govt paid for numerous runways to be lengthend to 707 requirements as 'international foreign aid' Whereupon the grateful nations duly bought 707s. Simples!

possel,

You are right about the early Trident debacle, but the VC10 was a commercial disaster from the start. It was built for use on "Empire routes" to hot and high airfields with short runways, something that disappeared before it was in service as everyone lengthened runways for Comets, B 707's and DC-8's, and the "Empire" routes were not the cash cows that an airline needed to make money, and they went the way of the Empire anyway. As a result the VC10 was hugely uneconomical compared to the Boeing 707 and DC-8 on routes that really made the money for the airlines. Yes they were popular with passengers, and of course BOAC were going to mount a campaign to get folk to fly them after the Government insisted they operate them, but they were not as economical as the competition both external to BOAC and internal with the Boeing 707. The ultimate judge was the market, and Boeing sold 865 707's to airlines, Douglas sold 556 DC-8's while Vickers managed to sell a paltry 40 to airlines, most of which were not wanted by the airline that bought them.

And as for building for one airline and to their requirements, why was it always the British airlines and airliner manufacturers that got it so wrong? Why on earth didn't Vickers build for THE one market that mattered, the North Atlantic?

" Why on earth didn't Vickers build for THE one market that mattered, the North Atlantic? "

Because, at the time, no one realised that this was the market that mattered.

I'm an "old fart" who feels that the British aircraft industry was fatally damaged by not only Government, but by the various bodies charged with "development" actually causing the exact opposite.
I still feel that the Comet, which due to the square windows was flawed, took too long to redesign and allowed the Americans (who we'd given the green light for transport aircraft development) to come up with the 707. We were still producing beautiful looking but totally unsuitable aircraft such as the Brabazon and could have competed fairly with Viscount and developments (not necessarily Vanguard) Britannia Trident and VC10.
I'm not au fait with why some say it was an economic disaster, but overlong development times meant that the conditions an aircraft was designed for no longer applied by the time it entered service.
And I guess that takes us back to the OP question - aircraft foisted when the requirement no longer existed.

But isn't that what the military always complain of, being given equipment designed to win the PREVIOUS War, not the CURRENT one?

As this thread has diverted from the RAF and military aircraft to BEA/BOAC and civil aeroplanes, perhaps I can offer our younger contributors a sight of the dilemma we British manufacturers had in the 1960s. If we designed and built what our market research thought suitable, and BEA/BOAC disagreed, our international customers would complain that "it can't be any good as even BEA/BOAC won't buy it."
If we built to BEA's specification we could (and did) find ourselves with what one of our senior engineers has described as "an internationally unwanted aeroplane."
Happily when we and our partners were scheming what became Airbus (aeroplane and company) we were able to offer an aeroplane that we and the customers found worth buying.
Icare9's belief that we took too long to redesign the Comet should also be thought of with regard to the magnitude of the task. The Comet 1 accidents were in early 1954 and the Comet 4, essentially a totally different aeroplane, was designed and built in such numbers that BOAC could offer a transatlantic service from September 1958.

Back to the original question.

I am not aware that the RAF has ever bought any aircraft.

I was not involved, but understand the answer to be "it depends". AFAIK the Basset could take 5 pax, but was told that the V-force needed an aircraft to hold the 5 aircrew plus a crew-chief - one too many for the Basset. Pembrokes were out of fatigue life by about 1968, so of scrap value only.