Greatest ever blunder in the history of the UK aircraft industry?
 

Do we never learn? Following on from the 'Best Value' thread, this slightly more ignominious award seems to have more than a few likely candidates. Starting with..?

BBC News - Former BAE workers' call to save scrapped Nimrod planes

Plus ca change.

Greatest ever blunder in the history of the UK aircraft industry?
 

Greatest ever blunder in the history of the UK aircraft industry?:uhoh:


......combining a number of UK aviation companies into BWoS:ugh:

Unfortunately no one is listening, we are rapidly approaching a no return point.

PA5 (which has flown) has already suffered severe damage with some heavy handed rescuing of serviceable parts :{

:sad:

Believing a policitican.

Cancellation of TSR2?

Chiefy doing Slams on a Buccaneer outside the line shack..... and jumping the chocks ending up against the shack .. spoilng a good game of uckers,and a standeasy for the line crew :oh:

TSR-2
 

5 posts and that old chestnut is raised.....

Square windows?

I assume we are defining this thread as a blunder by UK manufacturing industry itself rather than politicians or the MoD or UK airlines? If so that will cut out quite a few options...and TSR2 was never a blunder...not by industry (excepting it was built at a factory where it could not be flight tested from!).....just political ineptitude, prejudice and cowardice.:ugh:

L J R...we've not all been around as long as you nor have the time to trawl through all the threads, so that "old chesnut" me old fruit, may well be a new one to many, and anyway, the point is totally in keeping with this thread.

Kindly remove oneself from one's high horse. :p

Tallsar, I assume differently! ;) Just remember what they say....

So was the supersonic Convair B58. First flight was strapped to the bottom of a B36.

A serious answer to this question?

For me, probably scaling down HS Trident 1 (DH 121) to meet the BEA requirement. Boeing were terrified of the original spec Trident 1, as it would've done very nasty things to the 727 (1831 built); instead, BEA insisted on a smaller, less capable aircraft and the result was Trident 1, 2, 3 - a total of 117 built.

S41

Fairey Battle, Blackburn Botha and Saro Lerwick, to name just a few....

But one of the very worst must have been the Percival P.74 helicopter - of which it was written "The first flight had to be aborted when the aircraft failed to fly".......:hmm:

TSR2 wasn't an industry blunder - it was killed by politicians and Lord Mountbottom.

The whole Comet debacle is, without doubt, our biggest boo boo to date.

I know it came at the wrong time but the time it took for us to investigate the cause of the two crashes and to do something about it, enabled the yanks to overtake us in the race for mass jet transport aircraft.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Britannia, too late,

Belfast, too slow,

Argosy, too heavy

Javelin, nine lives and still never supersonic

Andover, too clever

Nimwacs, just too . . .

or

Brabazon
Princess

LJR

The blunder is that we didn't do that much sooner after 1945 - we persevered too long with too many aviation companies, instead of consolidating the industry around two or three well-managed major organisations.

BEags

Aye to that

I suggest you all read a book called Empire of the Clouds ( When Britain's Aircraft ruled the World) A Litany of cockups, political ineptitude ( both Labour and Conservative in equal measure) and crass management. Aircraft put into service before they were ready etc etc

As regards the TSR2 John Farley said it would never have been any good as it didn't have enough wing Page 240

That and on the orders of the UK PLC HS travelling to the USA to Boeing in a technology sharing exercise and handing over the all the data on the Trident in what turned out to be a one sided technology sharing deal, this gave the USA the technology to build the curved intake duct for the rear engine that they had thought impossible.... and produce the 727 in the first place.

Handing over the moving tailplane concept data to the USA allowing the Bell X1 to crack the speed of sound, whilst scrapping the Miles M1 that would have and was later proved to have been capable of taking the record, long before the USA.

Nearly forgot......... The Bristol Brabazon.... still Filton got some decent hangars out of the project!

"That and on the orders of the UK PLC HS travelling to the USA to Boeing in a technology sharing exercise and handing over the all the data"

And add all the other technological knowledge we were obliged to share with the US as a result of the Lend Lease agreements we had entered into! To be fair though, the Cousins did give us their Polaris and Trident technology:O