British Aircraft Industry Research Articles

Warfare and wind tunnel: engineers, physicists, and the evolution of combat aircraft 1914-1918

Abstract The British aircraft industry was transformed across the course of the First World War. Annual output grew exponentially, while by 1917-1918 the intensity of wartime research and development saw technologically advanced machines seeking air supremacy in all theatres of operation, most notably the Western Front. Capability had been inhibited by the absence of reliable, high performance power units, but ultimately production and procurement problems were resolved. This heroic narrative warrants qualification given the high ratio of poor to outstanding aircraft and the reality that in August 1914 Britain was by no means wholly unequipped to wage war in the air: the development programmes of the National Physical Laboratory and Royal Aircraft Factory, and the Royal Naval Air Service’s collaboration with science-based companies such as Short Brothers run counter to a popular belief that machines were still crudely built and militarily ineffective. There existed a working partnership between pioneer engineers and designers, schooled in applied science at metropolitan technical colleges, and graduate physicists and mathematicians encouraged by far-sighted dons to join a fledgling but fast-growing industry. That fusion of theory and practice, academic and industrial, was consolidated once British science’s human assets were mobilised to wage ‘industrial war’. Yes, aviation saw huge changes across the War, but the continuity is striking: before 1914 designers and air frame manufacturers were drawn from both the shop floor and the varsity, a wartime infusion of research scientists generated remarkable advances in aeronautics and in consequence a vital extension of Allied air power; and after 1918 companies survived retrenchment thanks to a durable combination of the entrepreneurial engineer and the experimental analyst.

The British Aircraft Industry and American-Led Globalisation, 1943–1982 by Takeshi Sakade (review)

The British Aircraft Industry and American-Led Globalisation, 1943–1982 by Takeshi Sakade (review)

Defence procurement in perspective: what the history of the aircraft industry can tell us about UK defence procurement

ABSTRACT Defence procurement in the UK has drawn a large degree of political and academic attention due to large-scale projects regularly being delayed and costing significantly more than the original estimate. The focus on contemporary defence procurement, however, suffers from one major drawback: a lack of historical contexualistation. This article redresses this imbalance between the focus on contemporary defence procurement and the problems faced purchasing military equipment in the past. The defence industry most representative of the contemporary procurement environment is the British aircraft industry in the inter-war period. This was an industry that was not publicly owned and presented dynamics that are comparable to today. This article explores the problems associated with twenty-first century defence procurement through this historical lens, demonstrating that many of the problems faced, and solutions proposed are not necessarily as new or innovative as has been claimed.

The Grand Designers: The Evolution of the Airplane in the 20th Century by John D. Anderson Jr.

Reviewed by: The Grand Designers: The Evolution of the Airplane in the 20th Century by John D. Anderson Jr. Marc J. Alsina (bio) The Grand Designers: The Evolution of the Airplane in the 20th Century By John D. Anderson Jr. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Even the most cursory comparison of a Wright Flyer and a modern airliner leaves no doubt about the dizzying rate of change in aircraft technology throughout the twentieth century. In his latest book, National Air & Space Museum Curator of Aerodynamics John D. Anderson Jr. investigates what he describes as the “intellectual methodology” of conceptual aircraft design that drove the swift improvement of aviation technology. Anderson follows the careers of several “grand designers”—the Wright Brothers, Frank Barnwell, Arthur Raymond, R. J. Mitchell, Edgar Schmued, and Kelly Johnson—revealing the design processes these men used to transform their ideas into highly successful aircraft. [End Page 976] As Anderson explains, conceptual design is the first stage in creating a new airplane. Generally, the designer starts with a blank sheet of paper, then establishes the basic layout that will ideally meet the potential users’ performance requirements. Alongside their analysis of experimental data, aircraft designers marshal their experience, intuition, and aesthetic preferences to mold their creations. Anderson argues that despite differing personalities and education, all of his “grand designers” used the same basic methodology to establish and refine their conceptual designs. He begins with the nineteenth-century rudimentary flying machines, whose creators largely lacked a cohesive design methodology. In chapter two, Anderson reveals how the Wright Brothers were the first to create a “rational methodology” for aircraft design. In addition to understanding the airplane as a system, the brothers refined their design using mathematical parameters such as weight, lift coefficients, and velocity. These “design points” focused their design and experimentation process, eventually garnering them success where so many others failed. Yet the next designer, Frank Barnwell, is at the heart of The Grand Designers. Anderson argues that Barnwell, a fixture of the British aircraft industry until his death in 1928, set the “gold standard” for conceptual design. In his 1916 book Aeroplane Design, Barnwell described his process as starting with a precise outline of requirements before making a weight estimate. The requirements and projected weight then determined the desired performance parameters for the aircraft (such as the lift-to-drag ratio). Only then did the designer sketch a basic layout. Barnwell then reevaluated the estimated performance of the aircraft and made adjustments. Anderson argues that Barnwell’s method became commonplace in the aircraft design community. The other case studies reinforce the centrality of Barnwell’s methodology. In chapter four, Anderson follows Arthur Raymond and the creation of the DC-3 during the first “design revolution” in aviation in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The author emphasizes that Raymond used the same intellectual methodology of design, despite new advancements in streamlining, engines, and construction. This line of argument, however, is stretched in the subsequent chapters discussing R. J. Mitchell’s work on the Spitfire, Edgar Schmued on the P-51 Mustang, and Kelly Johnson with the “Skunk Works.” The book would have benefited from further analysis of these radical new technologies and the eccentricities of these designers. While Anderson focuses on the similarities of their methods, he also draws interesting distinctions in their uses of wind tunnel data, aerodynamic theory, and aesthetic taste for shaping their design. These details dispel any notion that educational background or familiarity with scientific theory were the sole determinants of success in the first half of the twentieth century. The Grand Designers is intended for both nontechnical and technical audiences and indeed succeeds in being accessible for newcomers to aviation [End Page 977] history and compelling for technical readers. Anderson excels when explaining complex processes of design, aerodynamic theory, and experimental testing. The many images accompanying the text bring extra clarity to what might have been an abstruse subject. Anderson’s secondary arguments about education and the relevance of scientific experimentation and theory to these grand designers’ processes deserve more emphasis. Furthermore, extensive footnoting would have helped to separate technical information from the overall narrative of each chapter. The Grand Designers is an...

坂出健著, 『イギリス航空機産業と「帝国の終焉」-軍事産業基盤と英米生産提携-』, 有斐閣, 2010年, vi+317頁

坂出健著, 『イギリス航空機産業と「帝国の終焉」-軍事産業基盤と英米生産提携-』, 有斐閣, 2010年, vi+317頁

Aircraft System Design and Integration

In the 1980's the British aircraft industry changed its approach to the management of projects from a system where a project office would manage a project and rely on a series of specialist departments to support them to a more process oriented method, using systems engineering models, whose most outwardly visible signs were the introduction of multidisciplinary product teams. One of the problems with the old method was that the individual departments often had different priorities and projects would get uneven support. The change in the system was only made possible for complex designs by the electronic distribution of data giving instantaneous access to all involved in the project. In 1997 the Defence and Aerospace Foresight Panel emphasised the need for a system engineering approach if British industry was to remain competitive. The Royal Academy of Engineering recognised that the change in working practices also changed what was required of a chartered engineer and redefined their requirements in 1997 [1]. The result of this is that engineering degree courses are now judged against new criteria with more emphasis placed on the relevance to industry rather than on purely academic content. At the University of Glasgow it was realized that the students ought to be made aware of current working practices and that there ought to be a review to ensure that the degrees give students the skills required by industry. It was decided to produce a one week introduction course in systems engineering for Masters of Engineering (MEng) students to be taught by both university lecturers and practitioners from a range of companies in the aerospace industry with the hope of expanding the course into a module. The reaction of the students was favourable in terms of the content but it seems ironic that the main criticism was that there was not enough discussion involving the students. This paper briefly describes the individual teaching modules and discusses the experiences and lessons learnt from this course with some thoughts on the way it is proposed to develop the course.

Skating Rinks to Shadow Factories: the Evolution of British Aircraft Manufacturing Complexes

This article provides a broad analysis of the development of the British aircraft industry and the factories that it has occupied. Particular attention is given to the use of second-hand buildings, the way in which sites and structures have been adapted, and the importance of investment during the two world wars and links with car manufacturers.

Skating Rinks to Shadow Factories: the Evolution of British Aircraft Manufacturing Complexes

This article provides a broad analysis of the development of the British aircraft industry and the factories that it has occupied. Particular attention is given to the use of second-hand buildings, the way in which sites and structures have been adapted, and the importance of investment during the two world wars and links with car manufacturers.

Aircraft procurement and operating costs at British European Airways (BEA), 1946–1964

In the twenty years or so following the Second World War, the procurement policies of the major British airlines had a significant impact upon the fortunes of British aircraft manufacturers. It is the main contention of this paper that the nationalized air corporations, especially BEA, were poor instruments with which to foster the British aircraft industry because they had operating costs which were too high to set competitive standards in manufacturing design and construction.

England and the Aeroplane: An Essay on a Militant and Technological Nation by David Edgerton

834 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE pages to a history of balloons both as reconnaissance and attack vehicles. The modern use of attack balloons is a facet of balloon history even less well known than the role of balloons in reconnoitering the Soviet Union. The public is generally unaware that the United States developed a balloon “bomber” in World War I; that the Japanese deployed transpacific balloons to bomb the United States in World War II (project FUGO); that the British used balloons to drop incendiary bombs on occupied Europe during much of World War II (OUTWARD); and that the United States developed an attack balloon in the 1950s to deliver chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction (FLYING CLOUD). Peebles describes these projects as well as those in which balloons were employed for reconnaissance and other tasks (e.g., bombing Venice in 1849, dropping propaganda leaflets in World War I, and monitoring Soviet atomic tests during the Cold War) as part of a history of the military uses of balloons from 1794 to 1958. He also briefly describes the political context in which advances in balloon technology occurred. The book thus forms a valuable addition to the literature on ballooning that, for the most part, deals with their nonmilitary applications. The book has a few shortcomings: Peebles has failed to provide an index, he relies too heavily on secondary sources, and his technical descriptions lack detail. These are relatively minor flaws, however, in a wide-ranging and well-written account of an underreported seg­ ment of technology. Charles A. Ziegler Dr. Ziegler, lecturer in cultural anthropology at Brandeis University, holds advanced degrees in anthropology and physics and has a special interest in the relationship between technology and other elements of culture. Recent publications include a study of scientific ballooning, “Technology and the Process of Scientific Discovery: The Case of Cosmic Rays,” in Technology and Culture, vol. 30 (1989). England and the Aeroplane: An Essay on a Militant and Technological Nation. By David Edgerton. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991. Pp. xx + 139; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. £35.00 (cloth); £14.99 (paper). The dawn of air power at the beginning of the 20th century had a powerful and unsettling effect on the British people, whose navy had previously protected them against foreign invasion. The phrase often attributed to Lord Northcliffe, “Britain is no longer an island,” suc­ cinctly described this new sense of insecurity. The book under review, by David Edgerton, does not pretend to compete with Alfred Collin’s balanced and exhaustive study under way on the British response to air power. Edgerton has written an essay, as opposed to a monograph, with “a high ratio of assertion to detailed evidence” (p. xviii). TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 835 Edgerton contends that the airplane has been central to under­ standing modern Britain. Previous attempts to describe this impor­ tant chapter of British history, however, have gotten it all wrong. The received version is that Britain ignored science and technology to its detriment. The lack of interest in aviation was an especially important case in point. Both world wars found British aviation unprepared. This history of neglect continued after World War II with the cancellation of important aviation projects, which served to intensify the decline of British industry, science, and technology. Edgerton’s version, presented in a no-holds-barred fashion, is strikingly different. He takes exception to the view that England has been “anti-scientific, anti-technological, anti-industrial, and anti­ militaristic” (p. xv). The English are portrayed as being overenthusiastic about the airplane, squandering national resources, both intel­ lectual and fiscal, on the war-related uses of aircraft. When World War I began, Britain was as ready to employ aircraft as any great power; during the 1920s, the British led the world in airplane production; in 1940, the British aircraft industry outproduced the Germans by 50 percent; and as late as the mid-1970s only the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, built more airplanes than Britain. This excessive commitment to the airplane, contrary to the popular notion, made Britain a warfare state, “a technological and militant nation” (p. 107). Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who was responsible...

The British Aircraft Industry by Keith Hayward

380 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE collection of contemporary documents published in Britain by the Navy Records Society. These omissions do not much detract from this eloquent, useful, and most welcome survey. It is likely to become a favored textbook, and a point of departure for further research. Kennett never forgets that the first duty of a historian is to be interesting, and he peppers his analysis with lively detail. On the shortcomings of aerial reconnais­ sance by untrained observers, for example, he mentions the inexpe­ rienced German aircrew who reported that the men in a British post “were thoroughly disorganized and running about in blind panic” (p. 30). The Germans had flown over a group of Tommies playing soccer. David Omissi Dr. Omissi read history at the University of Lancaster, then moved to the Department of War Studies at King’s College, University of London, where he gained an M.A. and a Ph.D. Formerly a lecturer in history at the University of Edinburgh, he is now a Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, working on a social and political history of the Indian Army. He is the author of Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force, 1919—1939 (Manchester University Press, 1990). The British Aircraft Industry. By Keith Hayward. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press and St. Martin’s Press (distr.), 1989. Pp. xvi+ 221; tables, notes, index. $59.95. Keith Hayward’s work is the first in a series on British industry in the 20th century edited by Derek H. Aldcroft. In his introduction, the editor stresses imports and exports and employment but fails to note that international competition and linkages in technology and pro­ ductivity are key ingredients. This sets the tone for the book. Hayward, author of The Government and British Civil Aerospace (Manchester, 1983), tells a straightforward story of the evolution of the industry from its gentlemanly and shop-floor beginnings through its peaking in the four revolutions of 1935—45—the technological, the electronic, the jet, and the airfield. He concentrates on the development of airframes and engines, and this ultimately means that he focuses on Rolls-Royce and the British Aerospace Corporation. He duly notes how bad decisions were made after World War II when the industry tried desperately on the civil side to recover under the Brabazon Report proposals. He points correctly to the decision to take test pilots out of aircraft and to use rocket-powered models instead. Thus while the United States was struggling with its first not-verysatisfactoryjet aircraft, the British were largely limited to models. The British economy and the failure of the Treasury to grasp the new costing problems of modern aircraft coupled with the crash of the TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 381 Comet I’s helped push the industry down in the 1960s. But at the same time the necessary consolidation of the industry and the newer technological developments were moving ahead. So on the one hand there were cancellations of aircraft such as the TSR-2 and on the other the successes such as the Anglo-French Concorde, a technolog­ ical if not an economic success. If the decade of the 1960s was a nadir, with phased cancellation of the VC-10 family in the face of American competition that under­ stood that aircraft had to be made for all customers and not tailored to a captive market of the nationalized airlines, then success was about to return in other guises. By the end of the 1980s, aerospace was driving British technology—40 percent of it in electronics. Moreover, the United Kingdom was surviving as one of only three countries in the world that could boast a complete industry (the others being the United States and the USSR, although France would come close). Part of Hayward’s thesis is that international market forces have been constantly affected by state interference. The truth of this can be gleaned in the three volumes by Ian Lloyd on Rolls-Royce (1978) and in the studies of Arthur Reed, Britain's Aircraft Industry: What Went Right? What Went Wrong? (London, 1973), and of Daniel Todd and Jamie Simpson, The World...

The British Aircraft Industry

The British Aircraft Industry

The British Aircraft Industry.

The British Aircraft Industry.

Book Review: The British Aircraft Industry

Book Review: The British Aircraft Industry

Planning and Building the British Bomber Force, 1934–1939

Students of planning may profitably ponder the myriad difficulties faced by the British aircraft industry in the decade before the outbreak of World War II. On a small civilian aircraft industry, provided with hardly any opportunity to gain military aircraft experience between World War I and the early 1930s, the Air Ministry tried to impose a nearly anarchic system of strategic military planning in which the very philosophy of the use of aircraft in war was at issue. Forced to work under conditions that included a “shadow industry” of civilian plant space that was theoretically capable of quick conversion to military aircraft production and that in the meantime turned out automobiles, the aircraft industry somehow ended up with two superb heavy bombers, the Halifax and the Lancaster, and a highly dependable prime contractor, A. V. Roe. Basing his narrative on both government and industry sources, Dr. Smith concludes that this was an outstanding example of British wartime “muddling through.”

Editorial

Over the past few months we have expressed some quite strong views on a number of matters of interest to the British aircraft industry and it seems that we are not alone in our concern.

Editoral

IN our editorial in May we made a strong appeal to the Opposition in the House of Commons to throw out that iniquitous Bill to hi‐jack the British aircraft industry. In the event the Opposition did at least manage to delay the proceedings despite some extremely questionable manoeuvring by the Leader of the House. We are not so conceited as to suggest that our words swung the pendulum but we certainly congratulate those members who, even at so late a date, imported some sanity into Britain's industrial methods.

Achievements, problems and prospects for the british aircraft industry

AMONG all the anxious, complex and difficult problems which confront the United Kingdom and its people in these times of economic and social stress, there are none of more importance and significance for the future than those of British manufacturing in general and of the Aircraft — or “Aerospace” — Industry in particular.

The British Airframe Industry and the State in the Interwar Period: A Comment

EW people would dispute the general conclusion arrived at by Mr Fearon in his essay on the relationship between the state and the British airframe industry in the inter-war period.2 There is a considerable body of literature relating to the same theme, most (but not all)3 of which he has cited, and which points to much the same conclusion: the condition of the British aircraft industry on the eve of rearmament in the middle 'thirties, and the quality and quantity of the aircraft it produced, could have been much better than they were had the state pursued more sensible and imaginative policies towards the industry in the preceding seventeen years. This is not to say that Mr Fearon has done no more than to restate the conventional wisdom: previous studies have been primarily concerned with the military implications of state aviation policy in terms of Britain's preparedness for war in the late 'thirties and have not, on the whole, seriously explored the impact on the structure and organization of the airframe industry, as he has done. But while it is difficult to disagree with Mr Fearon in a general way that there was room for improvement in the fruits of the relationship between the state and the aircraft industry in the period he reviews, there does appear to be scope for further discussion on important points of detail. Specifically there appear to be three areas in which his views might be open to question. One wonders if the extent of Britain's backwardness in certain aspects of aircraft development was really as great as he suggests; if his interpretation of some of the policies followed by the state is entirely accurate; and, most important perhaps, if the state's adherence to other policies-such as are suggested by Mr Fearon himself-would materially have improved the aircraft industry's situation.

The Royal Air Force

There is one point which I wish to make right away because I believe it to be true, important and appropriate to this lecture which is given in memory of a great aircraft designer. Raleigh, the author of the First Volume of The War in the Air wrote: “The man who makes a machine and the man who flies it are the heroes of the epic of flight”. This sentiment I fully support and I take no exception to the fact that the “maker” takes precedence over the “flier” since, apart from any other consideration, this represents a convenient sequence of events. Putting Raleigh's statement another way, I would say that such success as the Royal Air Force has had over the years has been dependent more on the British Aircraft Industry than on any other single factor except perhaps the existence of Trenchard who, incidentally, was himself wholly alive to the importance of a healthy aircraft industry if we were to have a healthy Air Force.