In the fall of 1986, bids were tendered for the CF-18 maintenance contract. Bristol Aerospace of Winnipeg owned the equipment, had the expertise, and had the lowest bid. Canadair of Montreal had nothing, and bid $3.5 million higher. Location, location, location. As a consolation, Bristol was given the contract to maintain CF-5's until 1995, when they were deemed useless. The CF-5s were manufactured by Canadair originally, and never achieved a viable role in Canadian service except taking up space. Why does it work that way? Similar snubs have been directed at alternate Canadian airlines such as Canadian Pacific etc., which were not Montreal-based. The harder they tried, the greater the obstructionism. Am I making this up?
The Need for Speed: Technology Thread
- Thread starter Delta Force
- Start date
In the fall of 1986, bids were tendered for the CF-18 maintenance contract. Bristol Aerospace of Winnipeg owned the equipment, had the expertise, and had the lowest bid. Canadair of Montreal had nothing, and bid $3.5 million higher. Location, location, location. As a consolation, Bristol was given the contract to maintain CF-5's until 1995, when they were deemed useless. The CF-5s were manufactured by Canadair originally, and never achieved a viable role in Canadian service except taking up space. Why does it work that way? Similar snubs have been directed at alternate Canadian airlines such as Canadian Pacific etc., which were not Montreal-based. The harder they tried, the greater the obstructionism. Am I making this up?
I trust not, but how exactly does it happen, and not just back in the immediate postwar years but into modern times? The Canadian government answers to Parliament, right, and Parliament is drawn in proportion to population from all over the country, as are no doubt the officers of the Canadian Forces. So if Montreal is the biggest city, I suppose they'd have a lot of weight, but isn't Ontario the most populous province, and won't political factions that may indeed have their centers of mass in Quebec and Ontario still need to do a bit of log-rolling with MPs from other provinces to get majorities? Why should the MPs from the other provinces not demand, and get, a bit of pork?
For all our sins, in the USA the aero biz has spread out, not evenly to be sure, but major centers in New England, New York State, Southern California, Seattle, and even, especially during WWII and in the Cold War years, scattered all over the middle of the country--Kansas, Oklahoma, of course Texas, and eventually, in the Sunbelt years, Georgia, Florida, even Alabama. The numerous private companies locate for a lot of reasons; sometimes central authorities dictate locations for strategic reasons (WWII, moving them away from possibly vulnerable coasts into the heartland). Big government programs like NASA get spread out over multiple centers. A bit of something for everyone.
And back in Britain, I gather the big names one reads about in history have had amazingly scattered centers too; Shorts for instance was IIRC based in northern Ireland.
So why should Canada be so different? The argument that Montreal already has the infrastructure should eventually lead to "Yes, and now it's someplace else's turn, for the greater long term good as well as our own here in {Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, fill in other blanks...}" So why not?
Is this some dark side of the easygoing, rational Canada I have in my head, of some shadowy Old Boy's network that infamously runs the show still and has no sense of playing fair?
One could hardly even blame it on British imperialism at the late date of the mid-80s, it would have to be something natively Canadian.
So why favor Montreal then? I guess because it was and still is the biggest city; being east of Ontario it was a logical destination for early Imperial transAtlantic aviation (such as the R-100, which is perhaps the very origin of aero-imperial Montreal, I believe the facilities developed to serve the Imperial airship scheme were the nucleus of Montreal's current main airport). The fact that it's spang in the middle of the most Francophone province may have seemed a minor detail, then later sheer institutional inertia keeps the industry based there despite the increasing assertiveness of the Francophones. Or are Quebecois a hugely out-of-proportion part of the workforce of Canadian aeronautics, from shop floor work to top designers?
It's hard to see why a clique of all-powerful oligarchs, presumably overwhelmingly Anglo, would deliberately arrange such a circumstance. But sheer chance would seem to favor a more scattered industry as in the USA.
It's your conundrum, how do you answer it?
A conindrum is an enigma and cannot be answered. It can only be described and remarked on. Toronto has a greater population than Montreal. But Montreal has trained more lawyers who become prime ministers. Brian Mulroney was involved in a bribery scandal. The Cretien government gave him an apology and $2.1 million . Now that it is evident that Mulroney got $300,000, Cretien says it is up to the Harper government to get the money back. Cretien himself banked $200,000 over the Gomery scandal, from the government, by order of a judge of the Supreme Court. Ethics prevent conjecture over facts not proven in a court of law. Trudeau was also a Montreal lawyer.
Nobody talks about fightclub. Nobody talks about backroom dealings. That's why I only talk about airplanes.
Canada 3000 was a fine company which teetered financially and was allowed to fail when it could have recovered. Had it's head office been farther east, it might have been saved. My opinion.
Delta Force
Banned
Convair Jetliners
The Convair Super Jetliner was unrelated to the earlier Jetliner, but both would prove
to be highly influential early Jet Age aircraft and went on to cement Convair's place
as a major commercial jet aircraft producer.
Ironically, the first jetliner to see service with American airlines, the Convair Jetliner, was designed and manufactured in Canada. The Jetliner was originally designed by Avro Canada and flew a few weeks after the de Havilland Comet. Although test flights between Canada and the Northeastern United States generated significant publicity for the aircraft in the early, Avro Canada's CF-100 fighter was behind in development and the firm was ordered by “minister of everything” C.D. Howe to drop development of the Jetliner and focus solely on military projects.
The Jetliner would have remained a footnote in the history of the Jet Age were it not for the intervention of famed aviator and businessman Howard Hughes in 1953 who saw the great benefit such aircraft could have for Trans World Airlines, one of his many businesses. After leasing the unused aircraft from Avro Canada and personally conducting several test flights, Hughes attempted to purchase thirty Jetliners from the company but was repeatedly turned down due to limited manufacturing capacities. Refusing to let such a revolutionary aircraft pass by, and prohibited by federal law from manufacturing his own aircraft, Hughes turned to Convair as a possible producer of the aircraft. What happened next became one of the greatest missed opportunities in the history of Canadian aerospace and helped to cement Convair's place as a major commercial aircraft manufacturer.
With Avro Canada still busy with military projects for the Royal Canadian Air Force, Howe once again refused permission for Avro Canada to participate in any civil aviation projects. Howe also refused to allow for license production of the aircraft outside of Canada, being a leading proponent of Canadian aviation. A compromise was thus reached between the Canadian government and negotiators from Convair's parent company General Dynamics. General Dynamic's recently purchased Canadair facility in Montreal would be used to produce Jetliners under the direction of Convair managers, helping to develop an aviation center in Quebec and bring high tech jobs to the province. At the same time, General Dynamics would be allowed to market the aircraft as the Convair Jetliner, thus promoting the Convair brand.
The Jetliner proved to be so popular that its production continued well into the mid-1960s alongside Convair's own design, the Super Jetliner, an aircraft capable of seating 110 passengers with a cruising speed of 535 knots. The Super Jetliner was powered by a civilian version of the General Electric J79, the same engine used in Convair's own supersonic B-58 Hustler bomber. While not as large as the Douglas DC-8, the Super Jetliner proved popular with airlines and passengers alike due to its performance and luxury and the airliner proved to be a great commercial success for Convair.
Boeing Boeing Gone
A rare image of the Boeing 707 in Pan Am service. The aircraft proved to be a
commercial failure and most were retired from airline service by the 1980s. Tragically,
the last flight worthy example was scrapped in 2009, ensuring the type will never fly
again.
The sudden arrival of the Convair Jetliner in the American market took Boeing executives by surprise, as it was expected that a commercial version of the KC-135 would be the first American jetliner. Despite reports that Douglas was working on development of a jetliner with six-abreast seating, Boeing decided to embark on a program to produce a commercial jetliner as soon as possible and used as many components of the KC-135 as possible for rapid development, which proved to cripple the aircraft's long term prospects. While the DC-8 could carry up to 176 passengers at a cruising speed of 511 knots and the Super Jetliner could carry up to 110 passengers at a cruising speed of 535 knots, the first Boeing 707 was deficient in both passenger capacity and cruising speed. It could carry only 116 passengers at the low cruising speed of 480 knots. The 707-320 increased the capacity to 168 and the cruising speed to 525 knots, but by that point the DC-8 and Convair Super Jetliner families had already secured much of the market for large jetliners. Low development costs prevented the Boeing 707 from being a disaster, but production ended with around one hundred examples produced for commercial service while Convair and Douglas received hundreds of orders.
-----
Edit: American and Canadian military aviation and the DC-8 will follow up shortly. Afterwards, we will go back to Europe to check up on French and British military and commercial developments.
The Convair Super Jetliner was unrelated to the earlier Jetliner, but both would prove
to be highly influential early Jet Age aircraft and went on to cement Convair's place
as a major commercial jet aircraft producer.
Ironically, the first jetliner to see service with American airlines, the Convair Jetliner, was designed and manufactured in Canada. The Jetliner was originally designed by Avro Canada and flew a few weeks after the de Havilland Comet. Although test flights between Canada and the Northeastern United States generated significant publicity for the aircraft in the early, Avro Canada's CF-100 fighter was behind in development and the firm was ordered by “minister of everything” C.D. Howe to drop development of the Jetliner and focus solely on military projects.
The Jetliner would have remained a footnote in the history of the Jet Age were it not for the intervention of famed aviator and businessman Howard Hughes in 1953 who saw the great benefit such aircraft could have for Trans World Airlines, one of his many businesses. After leasing the unused aircraft from Avro Canada and personally conducting several test flights, Hughes attempted to purchase thirty Jetliners from the company but was repeatedly turned down due to limited manufacturing capacities. Refusing to let such a revolutionary aircraft pass by, and prohibited by federal law from manufacturing his own aircraft, Hughes turned to Convair as a possible producer of the aircraft. What happened next became one of the greatest missed opportunities in the history of Canadian aerospace and helped to cement Convair's place as a major commercial aircraft manufacturer.
With Avro Canada still busy with military projects for the Royal Canadian Air Force, Howe once again refused permission for Avro Canada to participate in any civil aviation projects. Howe also refused to allow for license production of the aircraft outside of Canada, being a leading proponent of Canadian aviation. A compromise was thus reached between the Canadian government and negotiators from Convair's parent company General Dynamics. General Dynamic's recently purchased Canadair facility in Montreal would be used to produce Jetliners under the direction of Convair managers, helping to develop an aviation center in Quebec and bring high tech jobs to the province. At the same time, General Dynamics would be allowed to market the aircraft as the Convair Jetliner, thus promoting the Convair brand.
The Jetliner proved to be so popular that its production continued well into the mid-1960s alongside Convair's own design, the Super Jetliner, an aircraft capable of seating 110 passengers with a cruising speed of 535 knots. The Super Jetliner was powered by a civilian version of the General Electric J79, the same engine used in Convair's own supersonic B-58 Hustler bomber. While not as large as the Douglas DC-8, the Super Jetliner proved popular with airlines and passengers alike due to its performance and luxury and the airliner proved to be a great commercial success for Convair.
Boeing Boeing Gone
A rare image of the Boeing 707 in Pan Am service. The aircraft proved to be a
commercial failure and most were retired from airline service by the 1980s. Tragically,
the last flight worthy example was scrapped in 2009, ensuring the type will never fly
again.
The sudden arrival of the Convair Jetliner in the American market took Boeing executives by surprise, as it was expected that a commercial version of the KC-135 would be the first American jetliner. Despite reports that Douglas was working on development of a jetliner with six-abreast seating, Boeing decided to embark on a program to produce a commercial jetliner as soon as possible and used as many components of the KC-135 as possible for rapid development, which proved to cripple the aircraft's long term prospects. While the DC-8 could carry up to 176 passengers at a cruising speed of 511 knots and the Super Jetliner could carry up to 110 passengers at a cruising speed of 535 knots, the first Boeing 707 was deficient in both passenger capacity and cruising speed. It could carry only 116 passengers at the low cruising speed of 480 knots. The 707-320 increased the capacity to 168 and the cruising speed to 525 knots, but by that point the DC-8 and Convair Super Jetliner families had already secured much of the market for large jetliners. Low development costs prevented the Boeing 707 from being a disaster, but production ended with around one hundred examples produced for commercial service while Convair and Douglas received hundreds of orders.
-----
Edit: American and Canadian military aviation and the DC-8 will follow up shortly. Afterwards, we will go back to Europe to check up on French and British military and commercial developments.
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Flap, butterflies! Flap!
It's exciting to contemplate the alternative possibilities.
Let me shed a tear though
for the magnificent 747 that now will (probably, certainly not with that designation) never be. OTL it's a fine aircraft.
I hope whatever takes its place (one gathers, something supersonic?) will match it both in economic impact and in coolness. Given the way this TL is going we're probably going to be high on the coolness, maybe the economic plausibility will be stretched.
But yes, the aero biz is one of high stakes gambling and even a very good player can lose their shirt.
It's exciting to contemplate the alternative possibilities.
Let me shed a tear though
for the magnificent 747 that now will (probably, certainly not with that designation) never be. OTL it's a fine aircraft.I hope whatever takes its place (one gathers, something supersonic?) will match it both in economic impact and in coolness. Given the way this TL is going we're probably going to be high on the coolness, maybe the economic plausibility will be stretched.
But yes, the aero biz is one of high stakes gambling and even a very good player can lose their shirt.
Eh, I dunno. Something like it seems likely. Unless the CX-Heavy Logistics System request for proposal from the USAF is butterflied, all the big players will participate in it. Some of them will lose so have this huge designs lying around. Juan Trippe will still push for a giant aircraft to ease congestion, and there will be this big proposals around so something like it will still happen. Only way to keep that from happening would be some kind of collapse in demand for air travel.
Well, sure. That's not the point! my weeping is for the 747 specifically.
Maybe someone else responds to the challenge by making something even cooler ITTL. But I still feel a world without 747s is a world missing something.
Or, for SSTs to get locked in as the standard early on. Since I rather hope this isn't a world rocked by constant sonic booms, even with lots of SSTs they are mostly operating over water, with some other aircraft feeding port city airports with passengers from the interiors. So even in a world where SSTs are the norm for transoceanic travel we might still get some big, um, "jumbo" sized we might say, planes for those feeder and local transit roles.
But part of what makes a 747 what it is is that the same airframe serves in both cargo and passenger forms. In an SST world, passengers will be diverted to supersonic planes whenever they can, and big subsonic planes will be thought of as cargo carriers first, since cargo will not be economical to ship on SSTs, which probably would even have physical dimensions too restrictive to take a lot of it!
So, no 747s. Something else might be like it, but its status must surely be different.
To expand and clarify, there surely would be quite a lot of development of large high-subsonic speed jet transports, quickly going over to turbofan jets as these are developed. The superior economics of subsonic speeds would divert essentially all cargo to these; the substantial difference in ticket prices between a supersonic flight and a subsonic one (even making the very best-case assumptions for supersonic--that is, low fuel prices, a modest supersonic speed leading to somewhat better than Concorde first cost, maintenance and fuel consumption, massive development of the market and semi-standardization leading to economies of scale for SSTs) might always divert a substantial part of the passenger market to choose subsonic flight, and this diversion would be quite marked if/when fuel prices skyrocket. Also, assuming as I would that there is no toleration of supersonic flight over inhabited land (and even say the Sahara or the Canadian Arctic is somewhat inhabited--by exceptions I'm mainly thinking, Greenland or Antarctica! and the margins of Greenland are inhabited, while Antarctica isn't on very many practical routes!) then many high-demand routes would be closed to SSTs, creating a guaranteed market for high-speed, high efficiency subsonics.
Meanwhile the 747 OTL stemmed from a military contract (that Boeing did not win) and so even if the vision fails for the passenger market, the big subsonics will be developed for military transport, then adapted to commercial cargo and hence be available to fill those passenger niches.
However, the efforts of the airframe makers will be diverted toward the high-status SSTs; they won't put as much thought or loving care in as Boeing did OTL for the 747, which (short of the long-term prospects of their SST, which was after all government-subsidized) OTL bid fair to gratify all markets at once.
So the ATL passenger versions of the big subsonics will be something of afterthoughts, relatively crude and clumsy adaptations of something first designed for military and cargo.
I imagine that as the markets shake down there will be a quick catch-up in quality to OTL standards, especially once the oil shocks hit. But the designers will still be preoccupied with making SSTs more economical, and also faster and bigger; passengers will always feel that going subsonic is not the top level of service they could have.
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While on these threads I've been Mister "Slower is Better for SSTs" Shevek, I have to confess that lately I've been intrigued with this monster!
OTL Reaction Engines got going in the early 80's with the British HOTOL; the LACE proposals from which the SABRE engine design derives go back to the late '50s. The preoccupation was with using airbreathing to boost rockets (actually, an integrated single-stage-to-orbit, HOTOL and Skylon being distinguished by designing the SABRE to make one engine serve both as an air-breathing jet and a rocket engine) to orbit, but the application of both airframe and engine tech to high supersonic/low hypersonic aerodynamic cruising is evident enough and in a timeline where commercial operators routinely fly supersonic and butt their heads against the challenges of speeds above Mach 2 all the time, this application would come to mind quickly.
It could then be that passenger jets that work at somewhat lower Mach speeds than the OTL Concorde, around Mach 1.4-1.7, first conquer the market and then survive the oil price shocks simply because passengers refuse to accept dramatically slower speeds on long routes; then, finding the challenge of incrementally pushing the speed up past Mach 2 toward Mach 3 while retaining decent economies in first and operating costs too daunting, designers are tempted by the radical leaps offered by the SABRE engine concept and focus on the even faster Mach 4-6 range offered. With more attention and effort lavished on it, I suspect something somewhat inferior to what Reaction Engines today confidently promises, say something that reliably and with reasonable economy flies at Mach 4.5, might be on the market by the late Eighties.
Meanwhile the 747 OTL stemmed from a military contract (that Boeing did not win) and so even if the vision fails for the passenger market, the big subsonics will be developed for military transport, then adapted to commercial cargo and hence be available to fill those passenger niches.
However, the efforts of the airframe makers will be diverted toward the high-status SSTs; they won't put as much thought or loving care in as Boeing did OTL for the 747, which (short of the long-term prospects of their SST, which was after all government-subsidized) OTL bid fair to gratify all markets at once.
So the ATL passenger versions of the big subsonics will be something of afterthoughts, relatively crude and clumsy adaptations of something first designed for military and cargo.
I imagine that as the markets shake down there will be a quick catch-up in quality to OTL standards, especially once the oil shocks hit. But the designers will still be preoccupied with making SSTs more economical, and also faster and bigger; passengers will always feel that going subsonic is not the top level of service they could have.
-----
While on these threads I've been Mister "Slower is Better for SSTs" Shevek, I have to confess that lately I've been intrigued with this monster!
OTL Reaction Engines got going in the early 80's with the British HOTOL; the LACE proposals from which the SABRE engine design derives go back to the late '50s. The preoccupation was with using airbreathing to boost rockets (actually, an integrated single-stage-to-orbit, HOTOL and Skylon being distinguished by designing the SABRE to make one engine serve both as an air-breathing jet and a rocket engine) to orbit, but the application of both airframe and engine tech to high supersonic/low hypersonic aerodynamic cruising is evident enough and in a timeline where commercial operators routinely fly supersonic and butt their heads against the challenges of speeds above Mach 2 all the time, this application would come to mind quickly.
It could then be that passenger jets that work at somewhat lower Mach speeds than the OTL Concorde, around Mach 1.4-1.7, first conquer the market and then survive the oil price shocks simply because passengers refuse to accept dramatically slower speeds on long routes; then, finding the challenge of incrementally pushing the speed up past Mach 2 toward Mach 3 while retaining decent economies in first and operating costs too daunting, designers are tempted by the radical leaps offered by the SABRE engine concept and focus on the even faster Mach 4-6 range offered. With more attention and effort lavished on it, I suspect something somewhat inferior to what Reaction Engines today confidently promises, say something that reliably and with reasonable economy flies at Mach 4.5, might be on the market by the late Eighties.
Oh, well then yeah.
Well, I think that may be kinda the same thing, or at least access to air travel is more restricted. I can only really SSTs staying the standard if demand consists mostly of those who can pay the higher cost. Now an important niche roll..
I'm pretty sure that the 747 was put together by Boeing's B team, and in a big hurry due to Pan Ams insistence. The A team was busy working on the 2707. So I don't think the jumbo's will be as unrefined as you think.
Ah, I don't know about that. Just because people feel that they aren't getting the best, doesn't mean they won't buy. And since this is before air travel really took off with deregulation, and since most domestic travelers will be traveling in the slows anyway, I don't think the masses will come to appreciate SSTs the way business travelers might.
So yeah, SSTs will be a niche market I think, unless again air travel is somehow restricted. Maybe no deregulation?
Speaking of which, what are you, Delta Force, going to do about deregulation?
I love the concept of the LAPCAT hypersonic airliner. The performance and relatively competetive seat/mile cost (brochure or prospectus performance) is indeed stellar. The only possible snag could be maintaining a sizable investment over 25 years, including potential cost over-runs and inflation, while maintaining customer demand. Investors may prefer something with a quicker turn-around to profitablity.
Delta Force said:
Except this requires either a) no Korean War, b) no C. D. Howe in government, c) no nitwits running TCA, or d) all of the above. Probably d).Otherwise, it looks really interesting. If you can get the C.102 in service, she should steal the market niche filled by the 727 & Caravelle, & make Avro Canada the #1 seller of jetliners in the world.
They had at least a 6-year lead on Boeing, being only about a month behind de Havilland's DH.106.That last one, presumably the SST, repeats the mistake Convair made with the Hustler regarding engine placement. I hope they don't do that when designing an SST.
I hope so too, but history does tend to repeat mistakes, and the configuration would suit a Jetliner/Convair co-production. Drawing it up more sensibly would probably result in Concorde, but that's been done. A tri-jet config would lose the jetliner basis, and increase vibration levels in the cabin. Any suggestions?
I'd disagree. There's no reason the C.102 had to have transatlantic range. Indeed, the most successful jetliner befor the 747, the 727, was in the same range class as the C.102. And, AFAIK, the Derwents used by the C.102 weren't especially thirsty. The C.102 did have issues of fuel reserves; early on, as I understand it, the reserves required by law were ridiculously high.Shevek23 said:
Not transcontinental, but regional carriers: Houston-Dallas, Detroit-Chicago/Cleveland, NYC-Boston-Philadelphia-DC, L.A.-SF, so forth. Why didn't they buy it? Because TCA didn't--& if the original contracting customer didn't (even it was for stupid reasons,Shevek23 said:
& it was), U.S. airlines were bound to be suspicious...It was. It wouldn't have mattered: with no competition,Shevek23 said:
lower purchase cost (about half what a DC-6 cost), much lower operating costs (fuel, spares, &, most important, crews), higher speeds (& so more passengers/day without needing more crews), the C.102 could easily have dominated the airline market. Avro Canada would have been the #1 maker by default. (The only thing AvCan needed to deal with is making sure the C.102 had round windows.)See "TCA are morons" upthread.Shevek23 said:
As I understand it, it was because the C.102 didn't have the AJ.65 (Avon) engines TCA had specified. The AJ.65 weren't available for civil use at the time, IIRC, nor would they be for years to come. So AvCan used Derwents, which were available & dead reliable. When they presented to TCA, the airline said no, because the AJ.65s weren't used. (This is taken from a potentially partisan source, so take with a grain or two of salt.)Howard Hughes looked at it seriously. And the USAF was looking for a fast tanker type to service its jet fightes, the KC-97s being too slow. An order for even a handful (instead of the *KC-135), Avro would have been golden. This might have been just enough to carry them til Hughes decided to buy a few, & Hughes was always fairly obsessed with speed.Shevek23 said:
One thing I do wonder: if the C.102 does take the place of the 727 beginning around 1950, does that wipe out any airliner makers? IIRC, Convair was on the way out anyhow.
You have no idea.Shevek23 said:
Possible, but it looks like the biggie, round windows, was already addressed. Lack of seats could be dealt with in later models, as it was in the OTL 707 & 727. (This might ultimately require stronger wing spars.)Shevek23 said:
RCAF Brat said:
I'd forgotten about that...As said, not impossible the C.102 would run into trouble. Still, it's not like airliners, even in 1950, were considered safe as houses.RCAF Brat said:
Unlike now. If there were a couple of accidents in the C.102, after entering service somewhere, it could push back wider acceptance of jetliners by a decade.
By then, as I understand it, the C.102 was already a dead duck.Delta Force said:
You're ignoring the obvious: it's Quebec. Which has always gotten special treatment. Not only because, to win a federal election, you pretty much have to win both Ontario & Quebec. Nor only because of the separatistas.Shevek23 said:
"Must"? OTL it bears much the same relationship as the KC-135 to the 707: derived from a military spec. I see no reason the USAF wouldn't still need, & buy, a *747. It might not buy the Lockheed & get the C-5; it might actually prefer the Boeing proposal TTL, which means 747.Shevek23 said:
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Delta Force
Banned
Boeing was not dealt a fatal blow with the failure of the 707 in this timeline because it used so much technology and tooling from the KC-135. I have to determine what niche they will fill in this timeline though. By 1960 Convair will have a lock on smaller aircraft (the Jetliner) and a strong base for medium sized airliners (the Super Jetliner). Convair also has extensive experience with high performance fighters and supersonic bombers. Douglas has the DC-8 and thus a great base for large aircraft.
A big breakthrough for one of the major defense contractors into the airliner market will be the Heavy Logistics System program, which resulted in Lockheed's C-5. If Lockheed wins, that will be the end of Boeing or at least very difficult times for them, as the KC-135 ends production in 1965 and Boeing needs another major program to keep them going. If Boeing wins the contract they gain more buffer space to figure out what to do.
Another big chance for Boeing is for the next generation of short ranged airliners to come after the Jetliner. If Boeing can get the 727 into service before Douglas can launch its DC-9 and Convair can launch its own replacement Boeing can take the larger routes serviced by a few DC-8 flights or many Jetliner flights.
Regarding SSTs, there will still be a role for subsonic aircraft. The Concorde took fifteen minutes just to break the sound barrier, so obviously an SST would be of little use on short ranged flights.
As sparsely populated as Canada north of about 55 is, I could quite readily see extensive transpolar flights. So, what about Yellowknife, Churchill, Moosonee, Prince Rupert, & Anchorage (especially) becoming major SST hubs? Maybe Prince George, Prince Albert, even Battleford. Gander could still serve transatlantic routes. In Europe, what about Reykjavik, Murmansk, & Archangel? In Asia, Petropavlovsk (Kamchatka), the Kuriles, & somehwere in Hokkaido?Shevek23 said:
Allowing for high speed meanining shorter range, this might also mean, frex, Midway, Wake, Saipan, Truk, & the like also turning into airline hubs.
That's what they said about the Caravelle too--"oh, who needs a jet for short regional hops?" And indeed, on some flights they just barely got up to cruising speed before it was time to start descending for landing approach.
Yet, people liked it.
The chief barrier I see to short range SSTs is that most short flights are going to be over land. There would be some exceptions, say Paris-London--but there too, the flight is mostly over land. Assuming the public doesn't put up with sonic booms wracking them, SSTs remain restricted mainly to a transoceanic role. Thus, long distances and a need for range--which to be sure also makes the high speeds that much more worthwhile.
Against that, it's obviously easier to make a short-range than long-range SST. But that's too bad.
It's not Boeing as such I'm in love with, I just particularly like the 747, something else that fills its role still won't be the same plane. Even if Boeing gets the Air Force contract, fills it with something similar to their OTL design (not so likely, they won't have Pan Am's Trippe noodging them) and then converts that to a civil design, it still won't be the same, because OTL they had the experiences of designing the 707 and 727 under their belts and lots of feedback from service contracts on hundreds of planes all around the world.
And OTL Lockheed never fielded a civil version of the C-5; getting the Air Force contract means they focus all effort on satisfying their military customer with its peculiar needs that are not in phase with the civil market, then when it comes time to look around at the civil market, one of their competitors who didn't get that Air Force contract but drafted a design for the competition has probably done as Boeing did OTL and took it straight to a civil design.
To be sure in a timeline where SST travel is routine by say 1970, it's a different, smaller less lucrative market, the money would mainly then be in cargo transport. There might indeed be lots of prospective passengers, but they'd be the ones who can't afford an SST ticket. If the SSTs are still an extreme luxury affordable only by those who buy first-class tickets OTL, then that's a large market to be sure, but I'd think the pressure would be on to offer SST at a tourist-class ticket level, and with modest supersonic speeds I think that goal might be attainable. The SST market itself would split between ultrafast Mach 2+ machines, smaller than OTL Concorde and first class all the way (as much as cramped cabin conditions allow anyway), and more pedestrian but still supersonic Mach 1.4-1.8 machines that carry the mass traffic at much more affordable prices. But if that can happen, then anything subsonic is seen as a very slow boat indeed! But perfectly fine for cargo, or troop transports.
So the good news is, our Air Force contract holder might not have to modify their product much at all; their civil customers will broadly speaking want what the Air Force wants. Like the C-5 it might actually cruise at a considerably lower speed than OTL standard speeds for jetliners today, which is itself a bit slower than many of the planes that pioneered the market. Around Mach .75 or so. And the civil market may not have snapped up the niche already after all.
The bad news? It isn't a 747; it's slower, its something of a brute of a sky truck. That might have its own romance. I've read things about the 747 that impress me, well this thing might in its own way be more impressive--strong as an ox, tough, very dependable (once the bugs are shaken out--both the C-5 and the 747 OTL had some worrisome teething troubles).
Ah well, meanwhile there are all these various speed SSTs to admire.
It's a puzzler I admit.
BTW why would a tri-jet "lose the jetliner basis?" I actually don't understand what that even means. Looking at the 727 and other successful trijets, I really don't understand.
Of course a supersonic trijet (which is exactly a reconfiguration I did propose for a B-58-derived SST, upthread--unless it was possibly in Delta Force's other thread--no, it was right here upthread) has the problem as another solution --putting all the engines in the tail of the plane. Either way as you say, the engine(s) are right there in the same airframe as the passengers, whether it's one (which with just 2 others requires all the engines to be 4/3 more powerful or the plane to be aerodynamically 3/4 the drag area) or two as I suggested, or all four so the plane winds up looking more like a big F-106. Also if all 4, or even just 2, engines are bunched together and one of them fails in a way that causes it to fly apart, the others with it are toast too.
First of all, Convair must lick the problem of the damn engines "unstarting" in the first place--as long as that's a problem, the FAA or CAB or whatever it was called back then is going to deny their certification anyway, even before realizing that one engine out can shut down the other too. If they can cure that unstart problem then the unstart cascade won't happen! So, I counsel perfection.
Second, I rather like the trijet even if it does mean an engine or two in the fuselage. After all on a civil plane they won't need the tailgun! Trijet is a good airliner configuration--if a wing engine goes out, you've got two, including one on the centerline, to maintain thrust and the yaw torque is manageable, if it's the centerline engine there is no yawing at all. Some trijets like the 727 put all the engines at the back. Boeing called the '27 a "Whisperjet" because the engines were actually farther away from the passengers than on wing-mounted-engine planes, and in the back, where much of their noise was lowered at high airspeeds. Certainly if it is a matter of vibration in the cabin, the interface between the tail section and the rest of the plane is easier to try to insulate than the wing roots, which are lifting the plane. The B-58 had the engines on pylons of course, which adds another insulation point, but then the wing root was most of the whole length of the plane.
Third--I wonder what Avro's (British parent company, not Avro Canada's) prospects are here. OTL they had plans to upgrade their delta-wing Vulcan bomber to supersonic capability--I don't know if that was just dash, or they wanted it to supercruise. I gather that when the USAF first put out tenders for what would become the B-58 all they wanted was supersonic dash capability, but several designers agreed, it would be only a bit harder to make it capable of supercruising, so the spec was modified accordingly. So with the Super-Vulcan I'd guess--if they could get it to dash with any efficiency, they could just as well get it to cruise.
So an SST derived from a supersonic Vulcan does seem to be in the cards. And to be sure, from the other V-bombers as well, though OTL it was the Vulcan that proved most durable.
So, an Avro design would probably bury the engines right in the wing. That requires a thicker wing, which is something to avoid in supersonic design, but with a long enough chord a delta wing does offer some volume to bury engines and the requisite intake management systems in.
That puts the engines right inside the same airframe with the passengers again of course. Makes the tri-jet arrangement look better!
But buried engines would make the plane that much cleaner, and with intakes right in the wing roots, the air coming in is as clean as it can be in terms of flow. If it is being brought down to subsonic intake speeds, probably by one common intake for both engines in each wing, then the engines themselves don't "see" the supersonic airflow problems that the external pod mounted ones on the B-58 did.
None of these solutions seem great, but they are workable I think.
And we shouldn't reject the Concorde-type layout (which is also the Valkyrie-type layout) just because "it's been done." Too bad! It worked. Besides in this timeline, it hasn't been done yet.