Better British Aviation 1918-39

I've never known good politicians myself, but they have been heard in the field of aviation through various committees which issue reports, such as Hambling, Cadman and Brabazon. They advise the Air Ministry, which was neither stupid nor ignorant. They just did stupid and ignorant things.
"Civil aviation must fly by itself," Winston Churchill.

That is my POD for interwar Civil Aviation. IIRC he was advocating nationalisation of the railways and then running them at a loss to help the economy at the same time.

He was also Chancellor of the Exchequer from 6th November 1924 to 4th June 1929.
 
A few sooner than that, like the Ford and Fokker trimotors

Junkers did very well throughout the 20s and 30s selling transport aircraft all over the world. All of them were of all metal construction with cantilever wings.

The DC-3 was developed from the DC-2 and DC-1, which were also viable, and those were designed to compete with the Boeing 247, one of the first truly successful large airliners. At about the same time the Armstrong Whitworth Atalanta also first flew. Even before that there was the famous Zeppelin-Staaken E4/20, about the same size as the DC-2, built in 1919, and scrapped under the Inter-Allied Control Commission because of its potential as a bomber. Unsurprisingly, the Commission wouldn't allow the E4/20 to be sold or even given away to an Allied country- that would make too much sense.

Perhaps I understated my claim. I've often read that the DC-3 was the first aircraft to make a profit carrying passengers alone. In 1935, there were 267 million passenger air miles flown in the US. By 1938, this number had risen to 1369, a five-fold increase. By 1938, 95% of US air travel was in DC-3s. 30 foreign airlines flew the Gooney Bird by 1938, and 90% of world air traffic was on DC-3. The Boeing 247 was constructed on the bones of the failed Fokker, who sold DC-3s in Europe. The DC-3 ground 247 sales into the dirt. There was no commercial DC-1, and the second Atalanta was so named because the first one crashed, and they didn't want anyone to notice.
 
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To paraphrase Paul Daniels, "You're not going to like this, quite a lot!"

It is the section on Civil Aviation from my unfinished RAF 1919-39 essay. That involved increasing the Air Estimates by £15 million a year between 1919-20 and 1938-39. Within that spending on Civil Aviation including subsidies to the overseas airlines was quadrupled to 1934 and doubled from then to 1939.
In this version of history Civil Aviation was double the size of the real world from 1919 until the 1970s, which was of considerable help to the RAF before, during and after the war. For example 1,600 civilian aircraft could have been impressed by the RAF in September 1939 instead of 800. However, the improvements in the quality aircraft and aerial navigation were the most important benefits because the extra support for Civil Aviation resulted in improvements to airframes, engines and aircraft equipment that rebounded on the RAF and FAA. This was due to the considerable financial support provided by the British Government, which did it to:
  1. Enhance national prestige;
  2. Aid commerce by speeding the mails;
  3. And to provide a reserve for the RAF.
In May 1917 the Government appointed the Civil Aerial Transport Committee (CATC) to consider: the likely post-war uses of and control over civil aviation; and what role the services could play in helping to develop this form of transportation. It also set up the Advisory Committee on Civil Aviation (ACCA), which published its Report on Imperial Air Routes in 1919. The Government ignored the excellent advice given by both committees and muddled through.

In 1920, Winston Churchill[1] told the Commons that, “Civil Aviation must fly by itself!” It could not! The fledgling British airlines were forced to stop flying in 1921, because they could not compete against the subsidised continental airlines and the Government was therefore forced to subsidise them. It appointed another committee to study civil aviation, which produced the Hambling Report in 1923. This time the Government followed its advice and Imperial Airways, was, created as its “chosen instrument” in 1924, but lack of finance and political difficulties meant the Company grew at a very slow rate. There was no significant improvement until 1936 when it lost the European routes that it did not want to British Airways and 1937 when the Empire Air Mail Scheme (EAMS) came into operation. This arrangement was short lived because the Cadman Committee recommended the nationalisation of the overseas airlines, which led to the creation of the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) on 1st April 1940. However, BOAC lost the domestic and European routes when the British European Airways Corporation (BEA) was created after the war.

In this version of history adequate financial support from the Government meant progress was faster. Churchill implemented the recommendations of the CATC and ACCA. The Government subsidised airlines (which were subsidiaries of the shipping lines) to operate the overseas air routes and by 1924 they were flying to Sydney, Cape Town and every major European capital. This was a great improvement over the real world where the Cape Town and Sydney routes were not completed until 1934 and the European network was still incomplete in 1939. Imperial Airways was still created in 1924. It built on the success of its predecessors by extending the Eastern Route to Hong Kong and New Zealand by 1929, which was 10 years ahead of the real world. It had also set up a line to South America and West Africa, via Lisbon and Bathurst by 1929, which in the real world, was still on the "to do" list when the Second World War started. In this version of history the Government approved the EAMS in 1924 and it came into operation in 1927. This was also 10 years ahead of the real world.

British Airways took over the line to West Africa and South America and the European routes in 1936. However, in common with the real world they were replaced by BOAC in April 1940. It was not possible to open the North Atlantic route any earlier, but when it did start it was a joint British-American operation instead of the all-American enterprise of the real world because the British aircraft were delivered on time.

In the period from 1919 to 1934 the overseas airlines were four times the size of the real world because they were operating longer routes and carrying more passengers and freight. After that, Imperial Airways was double the size of the real world and there were some improvements to its aircraft.

[1] He was Secretary of State for War and Air.
 
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So we have a PoD and a rough sketch of the development of Civil/Commercial aviation up until
WWII.

One big change i can think of is decent purpose built aircraft for Transport Command
rather than relying on hastily converted bomber designs, or maybe simply coopting civilian
designs like the Americans did with the Dakota/Skytrain. Maybe a bigger role for air transport in logistics?
Shipping stuff in bulk by air from theatre to theatre isn't realistic in WWII, but maybe more use of air transport within theatre?

Obviously you have a much more developed aviation industry and infrastructure overall,
more money and competition in design and development. Earlier monoplane designs for the RAF/FAA?
Other offshoots from aviation technology? Using a British aviation engine for tanks rather than licence
building the Liberty?

With more extensive air travel to and from different parts of the Empire/Commonwealth,
how does this affect the development of aviation infrastructure and industry in the Dominions
and India?

General questions, R & D and other technological developments and the business side of the industry. Do designers find private sponsorship as well a government funding? With the aviation industry receiving government support rights after WWI, does this mean more companies survive for longer?
 
To supplement Post 43 here is some information from Robin Higham's history of the British Overseas Airlines, which was my main source for Post 43.

The first figure is the Net Air Estimates for the financial year and the second is Vote 8 - Civil Aviation. The third figure is the amount I propose to spend ITTL. Note that the increase in spending is not quite what I proposed in Post 43. It is quadrupled from 1922-23 to 1936-37 and doubled in the other years.

I'm not sure if Vote 8 is the gross or net figure. Furthermore Higham's figures might not include supplementary estimates as I have not crosschecked them against my other source, which is the articles on the Air Estimates from Flight Magazine which can be downloaded from the Flight Archive website.

The spending from 1924 to 1931 may or may not include the cost of the Imperial Airship Scheme, which might have been in the vote for research and development.

The overall increase from 1919-20 to 1938-39 is nearly £30 million, but the Government should get some of that back through increased taxes collected from the aviation industry and indirectly from the expansion of commerce that the speeding up of the mails was intended to create.

1919-20 - £ 54,030,850 - nil - £2,000,000
1920-21 - £ 21,056,930 - £ 894,540 - £ 1,789,080
1921-22 - £ 18,411,000 - £ 880,000 - £ 1,760,000
1922-23 - £ 10,895,000 - £ 364,000 - £ 1,456,000
1923-24 - £ 12,011,000 - £ 287,000 - £ 1,148,000
1924-25 - £ 14,511,000 - £ 355,000 - £ 1,420,000
1925-26 - £ 15,513,000 - £ 357,000 - £ 1,428,000
1926-27 - £ 16,000,000 - £ 462,000 - £ 1,848,000
1927-28 - £ 15,500,000 - £ 464,000 - £ 1,856,000
1928-29 - £ 16,250,000 - £ 415,000 - £ 1,660,000
1929-30 - £ 16,200,000 - £ 450,000 - £ 1,800,000
1930-31 - £ 17,850,000 - £ 500,000 - £ 2,000,000
1931-32 - £ 18,100,000 - £ 470,000 - £ 1,880,000
1932-33 - £ 17,400,000 - £ 473,000 - £ 1,892,000
1933-34 - £ 17,426,000 - £ 490,000 - £ 1,960,000
1934-35 - £ 17,561,000 - £ 513,000 - £ 2,052,000
1935-36 - £ 20,650,000 - £ 595,000 - £ 2,380,000
1936-37 - £ 39,000,000 - £ 760,000 - £ 3,040,000
1937-38 - £ 56,500,000 - £ 2,315,000 - £ 4,630,000
1938-39 - £ 73,500,000 - £ 2,925,000 - £ 5,850,000
1939-40 - £ 66,561,000 - £ 4,787,000 - £ 9,574,000
 
Very tricky factoring in the side benefits to the overall economy.
Yes, how can it be proved that a British firm won a contract in South America because the correspondence went by air instead of ship?

Speeding the mails was the main reason for subsidising the overseas air lines IOTL and eventually led to the Empire Air Mail Scheme. IIRC the US Post office manipulated the air mail contracts to create Pan Am and America's big four domestic carriers. The Empire Air Mail Scheme did give us the Short Empire Flying Boat and indirectly the Short Sunderland, but it also gave us the Armstrong Whitworth Ensign.

Something I didn't put in Post 43 was that the British air mail contracts (at least in the beginning) only paid for the weight of mail actually carried. Meanwhile the shipping lines that operated Royal Mail Ships were paid for the amount of space allocated, regardless of whether it was actually used. ITTL the air mail followed sea mail practice from the start.
 
The overall increase from 1919-20 to 1938-39 is nearly £30 million, but the Government should get some of that back through increased taxes collected from the aviation industry and indirectly from the expansion of commerce that the speeding up of the mails was intended to create.

So you're trying to calculate how much revenue the government would gain in net terms from a more extensive aviation industry including mail contracts.
 
So you're trying to calculate how much revenue the government would gain in net terms from a more extensive aviation industry including mail contracts.
No. I'm finishing a cup of coffee before I go out to buy my nephew's birthday present. I wouldn't know how to start working that out and even if I could I'd spend too much time writing posts justifying my conclusions.
 
Transferred from the Hawker Henley thread because it fits better here...
This comes as a shock to me, and contrary to information as I know it. What I knew was that Airspeed was owned by De Havilland, and had licenses for two unsold Fokker transports which didn't sell because they were inferior to the DC-3. None produced by Airspeed.
I found my notes from the Putnams volume about Airspeed Aircraft Since 1931.

In January 1935 Airspeed obtained a licence agreement with Fokker

A.S.16 - Fokker F.XXII - transport
A.S.17 - Fokker D.XVII
A.S.18 - a variant of the A.S.17
A.S.19 - Fokker D.XIX
A.S.20 - Fokker F. XXXVI
A.S.21 - Fokker D.XX
A.S.22 - Fokker C.X
A.S.23 - Douglas DC-2

The licence allowed Airspeed to build Fokker designed aircraft and sell them in the British Empire and also to build and sell the Douglas DC-2 in Britain for which Fokker held the licence for Europe.

My notes make no specific mention of the licence including the DC-3, but they do say that a possible contract for 12 DC-3 for British Continental Airways in 1936 had to be turned down because the firm was busy with other work.
 
Something that might be addressed in a thread about better British aviation is this.View attachment 292657

When the Prime Minister went to Munich, he flew on British Airways.
In an aeroplane imported from America. The simplest solution to that is for a British firm to get a licence to build Lockheed's aircraft circa 1935. Lockheed gave a licence on the Electra family to the Japanese (who also had licences on the DC-2, DC-3 and original DC-4), Auster had a licence on the American Taylorcraft, hence their original name, British Taylorcraft and as already explained Airspeed had a licence on the DC-2 and DC-3 via Fokker.

The D.H.95 Flamingo was the belated British rival to the Lockheed Electra family. There might be a way to bump it forward or because it was the firm's first attempt at a metal aircraft a wooden version?

On the subject of De Havilland I want to find a way for it to introduce monoplane versions of the Moth and the Dragon family of airliners sooner. Notes I made from the Putnam book on De Havilland aircraft say that as early as 1930 De Havilland was considering a low wing monoplane successor to the Moth. It would be easier to build, devoid of rigging problems and have superior performance on low power. The eventual result was the D.H.94 Moth Minor which flew in 1937, but before that there was the sole D.H.81 Swallow Moth that flew in 1931.
 
So the Americans are still dominating the civil aviation market in terms of designs, by the British have more money and infrastructure to spare to build under licence.

An earlier Flamingo makes sense though. Will this start an RAF convention of naming transport aircraft after wading birds? The de Haviland Heron has a nice ring to it.
 
An earlier Flamingo makes sense though. Will this start an RAF convention of naming transport aircraft after wading birds? The de Haviland Heron has a nice ring to it.
Unfortunately the RAF version of the Flamingo was going to be called the Hertfordshire.
 
Could you get a commercially viable aircraft at this time that offered the levels of comfort that the airship was supposed to give?
It's later in the period but that's what the Short Empire flying boat was. Since it had a higher cruise speed and was much less affected by the wind it could fly during the day, land and put off its passengers into a local hotel overnight, and still reach its destination in a shorter time. I'd also seriously question how comfortable the airships actually were.
 
I'd also seriously question how comfortable the airships actually were.

Very: only airships could have the luxuries of staterooms like passenger Liners had.
Verandah Lounge from R101
19155ii5u8actjpg.jpg


Stateroom and kitchen of Graf Zeppelin
19155kh6ypuq3jpg.jpg


Wasn't till postwar till they had in flight meals that were cooked in flight. Before, they just handed out sandwiches and some coffee from flasks.
 
Airspeed's license agreement with Fokker was curious. Companies normally paid a fee for the licence and another payment per unit sold. It's quite possible that Fokker's arrangement was merely to have a British sales agent, whether any production took place or not. None certainly took place and no all-aluminum aircraft were developed until the somewhat ill-fated Ambassador. The key to British subsidized civil aviation was intended to promote British products. British products at the time were not up to standards, but rather, reaction to other country's products. Such an example was seeing an HP-42 parked next to a DC-2. And none of the British responses to the world markets, the Ensign, Albatross or Flamingo, were turning heads. The Ensign required American engines to survive. The industry needed a big shake-up.
000Brant.png

My response.
 
To Flesh Out Post 43...
Phase 1 - 1919-24


The Government follows the advice of the Civil Aerial Transport Committee (CATC) and the Advisory Committee on Civil Aviation (ACCA). The Civil Aviation Department of the Air Ministry organises the routes for state aided companies to operate. It issues invitations to tender for 4 groups of routes, which were: the line to the Cape Town with a branch to West Africa; the line to the Far East which after India would divide into branches to Hong Kong and Australia with an extension to New Zealand when technology allowed; and two groups of routes to the major European capitals.

Due to the quadrupling of spending on Civil Aviation by HMG the following were actually completed by 1924:
  1. The Line to Cape Town and is branch from Khartoum to the British West African colonies;
  2. The Line to India and its branch to Sydney in Australia. Hong Kong and New Zealand would not be reached until 1929;
  3. The Lines to the major European capitals.
According to the appendix in Higham's book the 5 airlines that existed between 1919 and 1924 (Aircraft Transport and Travel, Ltd., the British Marine Air Navigation Co Ltd, the Daimler Airway, Handley Page Air Transport, Ltd. and the Instone Air Line) operated 98 aircraft between them, but some were operated by more than one airline and might have been counted twice. They were as follows:

2 Bristol Frieghters
1 Bristol Ten Seater
1 Bristol Tourer
1 BAT FK26
18 De Havilland D.H.4 and D.H.4A
10 De Havilland D.H.9 and D.H.9A
8 De Havilland D.H.16
10 De Havilland D.H.18
10 De Havilland D.H.34
10 Handley Page H.P. O/400
8 Handley Page H.P. O/10
5 Handley Page H.P. O/11
4 Handley Page W.8
2 Supermarine Sea Eagle
1 Vickers Vimy Commercial
3 Vickers Vulcan
4 Westland Limousine

I was simply going to say that the airlines that existed ITTL were 4 times as large as the RW airlines operating 4 times as many aircraft and quadruple the above. However, I also thought that aircraft of greater range would be needed for the Imperial Air Routes, which would be based on the Handley Page V/1500.
 
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