Britain has always played a major role in the development of aviation. During the First World War she produced some of the most effective aircraft used in that conflict. There was the Sopwith Camel, the Sopwith Triplane, the SE-5A and the Bristol Fighter.
At the end of World War Two, the United Kingdom was well placed to play a leading role in the design and manufacture of modern combat aircraft. While some significant successes were achieved, such as the Canberra and Hunter, the overall performance fell well short of the considerable potential available in the nation's industry. Protracted development programmes and poor decision making combined to result in missed opportunities and the waste of scarce resources resulted with the loss of both prestige and valuable exports.
The United Kingdom has a habit of making plans for its future then cancelling them at the last minute or pulling the plug after leaving the drawing board. Such action has squandered millions of pounds at public expense.
Perhaps the most expensive white elephant British civil aviation has ever produced, but perhaps one of the most beautiful and graceful too, the Bristol Brabazon was a proposed post WW2 transatlantic airliner, the prototype first flew in 1949. Propeller driven, with enormous cabin space - probably as capacious as a modern day 767 or A320 - it was designed to carry as many as 50 passengers in first class luxury from London to the US East coast.
Overtaken by the jet age, Britain's own Comet jet airliner and the American Boeing 707, the Brabazon was just the wrong aircraft in the wrong era. It was cancelled almost immediately.
The British Aircraft Corporation The TSR.2 was designed to an Royal Air Force specification for a new aircraft designed to penetrate enemy airspace at low level, high speed and to be able to deliver both conventional and nuclear weapons with a high degree of accuracy. First flight took place in 1964, the aircraft was cancelled shortly afterwards on the grounds of cost, despite the TSR2 being widely recognised as being the most advanced, most potent aircraft under development in the West.
The TSR2 is the greatest "what if" of British military aviation. With the exception of the subsonic Harrier jump jet, every RAF and Royal Navy combat aircraft since then has been developed jointly with, or bought from, other countries. This is what the TSR2 aircraft could have been on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEiNvasTo1U
There has been a host of military aircraft projects in the UK which were scrapped.
Paul Stoddart was commissioned into the Royal Air Force in 1983 and served for eight years as an aero-systems engineer. His first tour was at Brize Norton where he was in the second line maintenance on the VC-10. In 1986 he was posted to Number 4 Flying Training School at RAF Valley on the Hawk T.1 advanced trainer. In his final tour, he was on the Directing Staff of Initial Officer Training at Cranwell. After leaving the RAF, he worked for just under a year as a journalist on a car magazine until the publisher went into receivership and for one summer he taught English as a foreign language. He then took a post with the Ministry of Defence as an analyst at Farnborough, spending two and a half years on a project studying the options for a Tornado successor. He then transferred to Boscombe Down to run the trial programmes for the Harrier and Sea Harrier. After attending Staff College he took up his current post as an analyst at RAF Waddington. He has written a number of articles and presented several lectures on aviation history; most recently, on the Douglas DC-3 at Metheringam airfield earlier this year. He is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
He has been invited to give a lecture on the title BRITISH COMBAT AIRCRAFT PROCUREMENT 1945 TO 1980 - the squandered fortune.
This talk will outline the decisions made and the aircraft procured in the context of the political and economic environment. It will also propose an alternative approach to the procurement of combat aircraft for Royal Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration first few decades after the War.
His talk will begin 7.30pm on Wednesday, 28th September, at the Metheringham Airfield Visitor Centre.
Admission is £5.00 to visitors to include refreshments but is free to members of Friends of Metheringham Airfield and veterans of 106 Squadron.
For further details contact 07486 947095
John Shipton
Press Officer
Friends of Metheringham Airfield
Lincoln
Wartime home to 106 Squadron
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The squandered fortune on aircraft projects...
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