Post war Competent Air Ministry

jsb · Feb 9, 2015

Inspired byFor Want of a ... Competent Air Ministry https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=122468

For want of a post war Competent Air Ministry

.

What would a post war competent British air policy look like and mean ?

Some ideas,

INDUSTRY
- Consolidating the industry into a few bigger companies (properly merged with merged design departments and manufacturing centres) with economy's of scale in design and manufacturing.
- Split up engines and airframes companies so they don't just used there own and compete with each other.
- Bigger but less design design departments.
- all others told to do parts or GA stuff.

CIVILIAN
- Brabazon committee work on different aircraft,
Type IIb - Viscount
Type III - Britannia
Type IV - Comet
Types IVb - Transatlantic Comet
Type V- Dove
- Cancel Sea plan development all other none GA planes.
- Work on trainers/GA light planes.

MILITARY -
- A jet fighter with swept and tech from M52 quickly
- Keep Canberra bomber ?
- Cancel the Lincoln/Shackleton and develop a Britannia/Comet based aircraft for transport and ASW (and maybe stopgap bomber for V force).
- V bombers (not x3)

ENGINES
- Cancel all none turbine engines (except for small >600HP GA stuff)
- how many do you need ? can you share designs for cores from Jets and Turboprops.
- develop a turbofan ?

RESEARCH
- Miles M.52
- water tank for pressure testing fuselage designs ? or just more testing equipment (wind tunnels) and computers.

TRADE
- How much should you use from USA (licence or simply import) and how much should you build yourself ? (ie B-50s, Bell 47, etc)
- Don't give the USSR the Nene ?

HELICOPTERS
- Drop tip jets and very fancy VTOL.
- What should you concentrate on ? or just licences US designs ?

What do you think ? JSB

Just Leo · Feb 9, 2015

I think you're talking about a more competent air industry, not just a humble ministry. In retrospect, they should have built some of the successful aircraft earlier and better, and skipped the garbage stuff altogether. You can look up the names of the men who constituted the Air Ministry, but it's hard to find out if any of them were competent when and regarding what. We can second-guess them only based on hind-sight, but in a few instances, we must mutter under our breath; What were they thinking?

Simon · Feb 9, 2015

I would argue that the best Air Ministry would be the smallest one possible, one of the major problems the British aerospace industry had was that they were just too reliant on government money and direction. Unlike in the US where companies such as Boeing were willing to risk their own money to develop new aircraft such as the 707 British ones in comparison wouldn't take any chances or do anything unless the government funded it to the hilt, witness the V-1000/VC-7. The other main problem was companies following the indirect government funding via British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) and British European Airways (BEA) orders to the exclusion of others so that their designs ended up too specialised to be of interest to foreign airlines.

jsb said:
INDUSTRY
- Consolidating the industry into a few bigger companies (properly merged with merged design departments and manufacturing centres) with economy's of scale in design and manufacturing.

Sensible enough. Considering the nationalisation binge Labour went on might as well get them to do something useful, use the threat to cajole the various companies to consolidate into two main companies run along the lines of the Hawker Siddeley Group. Should hopefully bring efficiencies whilst still allowing a certain amount of internal autonomy and can slowly start working towards more centralised companies.

CIVILIAN
- Cancel Sea plan development all other none GA planes.

IIRC the Saunders-Roe Princess and Bristol Brabazon, which you don't seem to have mentioned, did have some good points in that systems developed for them were used in later conventional jet and turboprop aircraft as they grew larger. I want to say things like powered control surfaces, engine controls and others but would need to check. Stanley Hooker would certainly love this idea, provided of course they were still developed, as the proposed mounting choice for the Bristol Proteus engines on the Princess meant no end of technical headaches for him with their development.

MILITARY -
- Keep Canberra bomber?
- Cancel the Lincoln/Shackleton and develop a Britannia/Comet based aircraft for transport and ASW (and maybe stopgap bomber for V force).
- V bombers (not x3)

Definitely keep the Canberra, it was an excellent plan as illustrated by it being one of only a handful of foreign planes that the US ever license produced for and operated in their own air force. As for the 'hundred thousand rivets flying in close formation' as the Shackleton was sometimes referred to as were jet engines fuel efficient enough or the sensors/weapons systems carried advanced enough at this stage to jump straight to the Nimrod? Without doing any serious research but merely looking at comparable aircraft that other countries were using in the period I'd guess not. A better progression to my mind would be to try and speed up the introduction of the Shackleton a couple of years, move over to something like the Canadair CP-107 Argus which was based off of the Bristol Britannia when you can, and then move on to the Nimrod when viable.

On the V bombers three is overkill but understandable at the time, for example if they hadn't include the Valiant they could have been left in the position of having just developed nuclear weapons but not having a jet to test drop them from. Short Sperrin is developed as a test-bed and back-up in case the other three fail, the Valiant is developed as the safest of the three but phased out as the other two come into service. The Vulcan is developed as in our timeline but the Victor rather try and be clever with things like crescent wings Handley-Page is told to build something along the lines of the B-52 but slightly smaller. Both can serve in the nuclear role but when that moves to Polaris it allows the Vulcan to serve in the conventional bombing or maritime anti-ship role and the Victor to be a conventional 'heavy' bomber that if the government is willing to spend on has a very long life. The Victor could play conventional heavy bomber even before then alongside the nuclear role.

ENGINES
- Cancel all none turbine engines (except for small >600HP GA stuff)
- how many do you need? Can you share designs for cores from Jets and Turboprops.
- develop a Turbojet?

Well there appears to have been a fair amount of cross-pollination between companies and designs anyway. Ideally I'd say three or four at most - one for both of the proto-BAC and Hawker Siddeley groups, Rolls-Royce as an independent, and possibly someone to concentrate on helicopter engines. When you say write turbojet do you perhaps mean turbofan?

RESEARCH
- Miles M.52
- Water tank for pressure testing fuselage designs? Or just more testing equipment (wind tunnels) and computers.

This is the type of things that I'd have a slimmed down Aviation Ministry concentrating on, well that and general co-ordination. You definitely need to encourage companies to build their own supersonic wind tunnels as IIRC there were hardly any which meant sending some models to the National Physical Laboratory for use of theirs which held things up. I believe that de Havilland did actually build their own water tank for pressure testing.

TRADE
- Don't give the USSR the Nene ?

Definitely not. They're going to get it, or similar, soon enough via espionage or bribery soon enough but there's no reason to make things easy for them. One knock-on from this though is that the MiG-15 might not be as dominating in Korea which means the West isn't as scarred and so pushed to develop a match or superior to it.

jsb · Feb 9, 2015

I agree its a little unfair to judge with hindsight but (its fun),

there are general patterns,

- of always builing lots of small runs of stuff never deciding after a few prototypes what type to concentrate on. (V bombers for one, but there are lots of others)

- Building stuff to slowly that it would be useless (probably due to spreading design/cash assets thinly in lots of different projects, link to above).

- The use of specification that would always lead to not wanted aircraft. (concentrating on small hot high runways for all airliners, big flying boats, etc)

- Not making a desision if you can avoid it (even if not making one is generally worse than making a few bad ones)

ADD - RAF and FAA must be different (as must everybody else) forget that you could have fought most of WW2 fighter wise with just different Spitfires (total 20,351)

Have a look at http://www.flightglobal.com it has all the old mags free to look at if you are interested.

JSB

Mumbles · Feb 9, 2015

jsb said:
- Keep Canberra bomber ?
- Cancel the Lincoln/Shackleton and develop a Britannia/Comet based aircraft for transport and ASW (and maybe stopgap bomber for V force).

Not sure what you mean by "Keep Canberra", since it was kept IOTL, staying in RAF service in some form or another until 2006. The final bomber/interdictor variants only left RAF service in 1972 or so, and other variants stayed on until the 80's and 90's, with the PR.9 being the final operational version. It outlived several supposed "Canberra replacements", and a standing joke during development of the Multi Role Combat Aircraft that became the Tornado was that MRCA stood for "Must Refurbish Canberra Again".

Given that both the both the Lincoln and Shackleton were mid-40's concepts, if you cancel them you are going to have a significant capability gap until any version of the Britannia or Comet is available, as they were very immature types until long after the Lincoln and Shackleton were well established in service. Both were developments of an existing airframe to meet a specific need.

Britannia as a stop-gap bomber is a non-starter for various reasons (like where do you put the bomb bay for one), but it was used for transport in the RAF IOTL.

jsb · Feb 9, 2015

Simon said:
I would argue that the best Air Ministry would be the smallest one possible, one of the major problems the British aerospace industry had was that they were just too reliant on government money and direction. Unlike in the US where companies such as Boeing were willing to risk their own money to develop new aircraft such as the 707 British ones in comparison wouldn't take any chances or do anything unless the government funded it to the hilt, witness the V-1000/VC-7.

This is the type of things that I'd have a slimmed down Aviation Ministry concentrating on, well that and general co-ordination. You definitely need to encourage companies to build their own supersonic wind tunnels as IIRC there were hardly any which meant sending some models to the National Physical Laboratory for use of theirs which held things up. I believe that de Havilland did actually build their own water tank for pressure testing.

I'm not sure any companies are really going to be sufficiently large to spend the development cash on their own and as you the Gov are the major customer (at least for the fast jets and some of the civilian as well) you will just be paying for the development anyway in the sale price....

Did Boeing real pay for it all or did they just use the info they got paid for by DOD for the B47/B52/Tankers ?

The other main problem was companies following the indirect government funding via British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) and British European Airways (BEA) orders to the exclusion of others so that their designs ended up too specialised to be of interest to foreign airlines.

Totally agree and you could add the same for the RAF v sales of cheaper jets to others, but don't think a week air ministry will help this at all.

IIRC the Saunders-Roe Princess and Bristol Brabazon, which you don't seem to have mentioned, did have some good points in that systems developed for them were used in later conventional jet and turboprop aircraft as they grew larger. I want to say things like powered control surfaces, engine controls and others but would need to check. Stanley Hooker would certainly love this idea, provided of course they were still developed, as the proposed mounting choice for the Bristol Proteus engines on the Princess meant no end of technical headaches for him with their development.

I would not build them what do they tell you that a few more Britannia prototypes do not ? and I think we can agree that SH should be doing more important stuff that fixing flying 3 unused flying boats.

As for the 'hundred thousand rivets flying in close formation' as the Shackleton was sometimes referred to as were jet engines fuel efficient enough or the sensors/weapons systems carried advanced enough at this stage to jump straight to the Nimrod? Without doing any serious research but merely looking at comparable aircraft that other countries were using in the period I'd guess not. A better progression to my mind would be to try and speed up the introduction of the Shackleton a couple of years, move over to something like the Canadair CP-107 Argus which was based off of the Bristol Britannia when you can, and then move on to the Nimrod when viable.

On the V bombers three is overkill but understandable at the time, for example if they hadn't include the Valiant they could have been left in the position of having just developed nuclear weapons but not having a jet to test drop them from. Short Sperrin is developed as a test-bed and back-up in case the other three fail, the Valiant is developed as the safest of the three but phased out as the other two come into service. The Vulcan is developed as in our timeline but the Victor rather try and be clever with things like crescent wings Handley-Page is told to build something along the lines of the B-52 but slightly smaller. Both can serve in the nuclear role but when that moves to Polaris it allows the Vulcan to serve in the conventional bombing or maritime anti-ship role and the Victor to be a conventional 'heavy' bomber that if the government is willing to spend on has a very long life. The Victor could play conventional heavy bomber even before then alongside the nuclear role.

My thoughts are that OTL you had the following bombers in (built/used by the UK),

Lincoln
B29
Shackleton
Canberra
Sperrin
Valiant
Vulcan
Victor
Buccaneer
Nimrod

Do you need even 1/2 of them ? In 45 you could surly get B29s cheap and then develop Canberra, do you need anything else depends on what nukes you have I see a gap between 54 (BD) and 58 (RB) (unless you can get earlier smaller bombs or US ones) where Canberra cant carry the bombs and a B29 might not make it past Mig15s ?
Options might be a Britania or Comet derived Bomber say a early Nimrod as a bomber and Recon/ASW/AEW ?

When you say write turbojet do you perhaps mean turbofan?

Yes fixed both thanks Simon & Mumbles

Mumbles · Feb 9, 2015

jsb said:
Did Boeing real pay for it all or did they just use the info they got paid for by DOD for the B47/B52/Tankers ?

Short simplified version - the DoD funds Boeing received to develop and build hundreds of Stratotankers (and B-47's and B-52's) enabled development of the 707. Where Boeing truly bet the company funds wise was with the 747 -if it had failed, so would have Boeing. As an aside it seems a common belief that the -135 and 707 are the same aircraft. They aren't, but were both developed from the same starting point in the form of the Dash-80.

jsb said:
My thoughts are that OTL you had the following bombers in RAF service,

Lincoln
B29
Shackleton
Canberra
Sperrin
Valiant
Vulcan
Victor
Nimrod

Sperrin never entered RAF service, the two built were used for trials work only. Nimrod can't really be called a "bomber" in any role specific sense. Buccaneer should be on the list as well

jsb · Feb 9, 2015

Would a Comet derived bomber (ie Nimrod style thing) be able to work as a bomber ?

Nimrod was started in 64/65 and flew/entered service in 67/69 with a early start from the Comet flight in 49 could it not be ready before/same time as the Valiant first flight in 51 ?

Would it be able to carry early nukes ? Not sure it has a long bomb bay but is it wide and deep ?
Would it be viable as an early bomber ? how good do you need to be to get past the USSR defences ?

That or can you just use the Valiant (used till 65 OTL) till you get Polaris in 68 ? or even just buy B47/B52 under licence or import as number are small (say a swap for Canberra) and concentrate on smaller fighters and airliners ?

Just Leo · Feb 9, 2015

I must have been out of town when the UK built the B-29.

jsb · Feb 9, 2015

Just Leo said:
I must have been out of town when the UK built the B-29.

Well you where in town when I was swapping the words from the used by RAF to built by UK to finally, Used and or build by UK

vl100butch · Feb 9, 2015

Simon said:
Definitely keep the Canberra, it was an excellent plan as illustrated by it being one of only a handful of foreign planes that the US ever license produced for and operated in their own air force..

NASA still has two or three B-57H's in service and I believe there are one or two in the boneyard for spares...

Just Leo · Feb 9, 2015

Mumbles said:
Short simplified version - the DoD funds Boeing received to develop and build hundreds of Stratotankers (and B-47's and B-52's) enabled development of the 707. Where Boeing truly bet the company funds wise was with the 747 -if it had failed, so would have Boeing. As an aside it seems a common belief that the -135 and 707 are the same aircraft. They aren't, but were both developed from the same starting point in the form of the Dash-80.

Bill Allen determined that Boeing was going to either pay the gummint an excess profits tax, something like 82% of profits, or develop the B367-80 with the money instead. He chose instead. It was company money they were going to lose.

By comparison, at least during WWII, the MoP was on hand, on a daily basis to ensure that British aircraft companies never received excess profit, and were usually paid late.

Simon · Feb 9, 2015

jsb said:
I would not build them what do they tell you that a few more Britannia prototypes do not? And I think we can agree that SH should be doing more important stuff that fixing flying 3 unused flying boats.

My apologies I didn't write that very clearly, Hooker never worked on any of the aircraft but the Bristol Proteus turboprop engine. When I wrote 'provided of course they were still developed' I meant the Proteus if the Brabazon and Princess for which it was developed were never started. Apparently the engine had some unusual features due to the way they wanted to mount it so that even when the Princess was cancelled it still provided him problems when developing it in a simplified design. Potentially it could avoid the icing issues that were initially problematic for them on the Bristol Britannia airliners and caused the government to overreact in the wake of the de Havilland Comet issues.

Lincoln
B-29
Shackleton
Canberra
Sperrin
Valiant
Vulcan
Victor
Buccaneer
Nimrod

Do you need even 1/2 of them? In 45 you could surly get B-29s cheap and then develop Canberra, do you need anything else depends on what nukes you have I see a gap between 54 (BD) and 58 (RB) (unless you can get earlier smaller bombs or US ones) where Canberra can't carry the bombs and a B29 might not make it past MiG-15s?

That's using an awful lot of hindsight/foresight, in his thread Alratan certainly had them make some smart choices but not extraordinarily so. The Lincoln was a WWII development for use in the Pacific so unless you can find a way to get the UK cede that entire theatre of conflict to the US, and this is years before they knew if the Manhattan Project was going to successful in time or even successful at all, it's still going to be developed as they didn't know about future availability of the B-29 Washington. There's also the balance of maintaining domestic capability, that crosses over into large civilian aircraft, versus cost of foreign supplied planes. As Mumbles said the only two Sperrins were built but aside from being a back-up they provided incredibly valuable research on the development of jet engine heavy bombers.

The Shackleton is needed because otherwise you're going to have a glaring gap in your maritime reconnaissance capability and after the very recent Battle of the Atlantic there's simply no way in hell that's going to be allowed to occur. The Canberra as already said is definitely a keeper. With the V bombers you could have reduced the number of Valiants somewhat if you don't mind the capability gap or somehow speed up the other two, could have just picked either the Vulcan or Victor to develop but if it all goes wrong then you're completely screwed and now have no way to deliver your nice shiny new nuclear bombs for the next five-ten years short of going cap in hand to the Americans for a plane. Which since the UK government started their nuclear programme in large part to stop being discounted by the US, who then up until the early 1960s kept trying to get the UK to give up their nuclear weapons, would be somewhat problematic. Best scenario to my mind is try and speed up the Vulcan and Victor - and design it as a smaller B-52 type, more limited buy of the Valiant, then retire it as soon as the other two become operational.

Options might be a Britania or Comet derived Bomber say a early Nimrod as a bomber and Recon/ASW/AEW?

Unfortunately it's not just a case of cutting a hole for bomb bay doors in the bottom of an already existing aircraft, the work and modifications to the whole plane from what I've been told would be so extensive as to give few if any real savings. Even then airliners and bombers are built for different strengths so what you finally get might not be all that great. The Britol Britannia did become the Canadian Canadair CP-107 Argus but that still leaves a six year gap between when the Shackleton came into service in our timeline and when the Argus would. AEW versions are a non-starter, just look at the absolute disaster that was our timeline's Nimrod AEW3 programme, as with the size of the electronics of the period and cooling required for all the heat they generated the planes are too small. Also since the UK would likely be only buying a limited number of them this is one of the few times that I think buying off the shelf from the US would be the best solution. You could maybe try slotting an American system into a British aircraft if they had actually built the Vickers VC-1000/VC-7 but anything smaller than that you're better off simply buy complete Boeing E-3 Sentry AWACS in my opinion.

Mumbles · Feb 9, 2015

Simon said:
Unfortunately it's not just a case of cutting a hole for bomb bay doors in the bottom of an already existing aircraft, the work and modifications to the whole plane from what I've been told would be so extensive as to give few if any real savings.

Then there is the slight question of survivability as far as the Britannia is concerned. Given the ground clearance of the Nimrod as built mating it with any kind of stand-off missile like Blue Steel would be problematic at best. I'm still impressed they managed to shoehorn Blue Steel under the Victor.

Simon said:
You could maybe try slotting an American system into a British aircraft if they had actually built the Vickers VC-1000/VC-7 . . .

Like the Shackleton AEW.2, and the Gannet AEW.3 and the mighty/legendary/state-of-the-ark AN/APS-20? For some of those individual sets the Shackleton was at least the third aircraft type they had been installed in.

One option not yet mentioned - the Valiant B.2 which solved most of the B.1's shortcomings and was specifically designed with low-level ops in mind and actually flew in prototype form. Given that the retirement of the B.1 was forced, not planned, not developing the other V's leaves a yawning strategic capability gap between 1965 and 1969.

Mumbles · Feb 9, 2015

Simon said:
Best scenario to my mind is try and speed up the Vulcan and Victor - and design it as a smaller B-52 type, more limited buy of the Valiant, then retire it as soon as the other two become operational.

The OTL Vulcan B.3/Phase 6 proposal springs to mind. Bigger wing, more fuel, six Skybolt ALBMs. That's if you can persuade the US to continue developing the latter though.

jsb said:
That or can you just use the Valiant (used till 65 OTL) till you get Polaris in 68 ?

See above. Get the Skybolt equipped Vulcan B.2 and B.3 into service and the question becomes moot.

riggerrob · Feb 10, 2015

Fuel economy is the primary reason that a Comet/Nimrod anti-submarine airplane was not viable during the late 1940s. The primary reason that Canadair hung piston engines on the Britannia/Argus ASW airplane was because they had much better fuel economy/range at the low altitudes flown during ASW missions. Lockheed did eventually improve endurance on the turbo-props installed in P-3 ASW airplanes, but it was not until this century that Boeing was able to build competitive endurance into 737/P-8 jets. The greatest advantage of jets is their quicker cruise speeds which mean fewer hours transiting to their patrol sector.

riggerrob · Feb 10, 2015

Remember that Britain was bankrupt after WW2. They were still rationing food until 1954. The Labour government was struggling to keep factory workers off the dole.
Also consider that Canada, France, Russia and the USA built dozens of short-lived prototypes as they struggled to learn how to build jets.
Britain was not alone with a poorly-managed aircraft industry.

Jukra · Feb 10, 2015

Mumbles said:
Then there is the slight question of survivability as far as the Britannia is concerned. Given the ground clearance of the Nimrod as built mating it with any kind of stand-off missile like Blue Steel would be problematic at best. I'm still impressed they managed to shoehorn Blue Steel under the Victor.

Why not build Comet with shoulder wing or high wing on the outset, which would enable the same airframe to be used as bomber or transport aircraft more easier?

With hindsight the whole V-bomber force was a waste. Some kind of enlarged Canberra with aerial refuelling would have been enough for Blue Danube, as the first nuclear missions would have been one way missions anyway. From Red Beard onwards a Canberra would do. By that point stand-off weapons would have been available if developed.

riggerrob · Feb 11, 2015

Jukra said:
Why not build Comet with shoulder wing or high wing on the outset, which would enable the same airframe to be used as bomber or transport aircraft more easier?

With hindsight the whole V-bomber force was a waste. Some kind of enlarged Canberra with aerial refuelling would have been enough for Blue Danube, as the first nuclear missions would have been one way missions anyway. From Red Beard onwards a Canberra would do. By that point stand-off weapons would have been available if developed.

.........................................................................................................

High wings are slightly heavier than low wings, because of the need to transmit landing gear loads a greater distance/height. Only military transports seem to be willing to carry the extra structural weight.
The other heavy part of military transports is the ramp under the tail. Ramps are also difficult to streamline.
Notice that militaries don't need to para-drop or LAPES cargo, they revert to slightly modified civilian air-liners with low-wings?
As for using Comets for military transports, both the RAF and RCAF used them happily for several years, mainly to more personnel long distances. The basic Comet configuration could also have easily been adapted for aerial refueling.

As for using a Comet as a bomber???? That might have worked as a first-generation jet bomber. Just bolt a bomb pannier under the belly (ala. Nimrod). But to out-fly second-generation jet fighters, they needed to fly Mach .9 at 40,000 or 50,000 feet .... maybe a ficticious Comet Mark 6.