BilgeRat From United Kingdom, joined Dec 2006, 155 posts, RR: 1 Posted (5 years 1 month 1 day 19 hours ago) and read 5357 times:
There was an interesting if somewhat dry article in the March issue of Aircraft Illustrated titled "The Best Of British?" that discussed the VC10, BAC One-Eleven, Trident, Britannia and Viscount.
There were some interesting questions posed by the author:
What if the Vickers V1000 had not been cancelled in 1955? Would the 707 and DC-8 been such a success for their manufacturers?
What if Hawker Siddeley had been allowed to build the Trident they wanted to build? A 111 seat tri-jet powered by the Rolls Royce Medway turbofan... It would have beaten the 727 to the market by at least a year.
What if the BAC One-Eleven had been developed further? BAC had plans for a Two-Eleven, a stretched version that would be powered by the RB211. There were also plans for a widebody development of the One-Eleven, dubbed the Three-Eleven, again powered by the RB211. This would have provided stiff competition to the A300. There were also designs to re-engine the One-Eleven with the CFM56, a combination that could potentially have scuppered the A320 before it got off the ground. The author says a former BAe Chairman commented to him the BAe 146 was a mistake - a re-engined and modernised One-Eleven would have been far better and would have gone onto dominate the RJ market in the 1990s.
Interesting stuff, if not just to try and imagine what the aviation landscape would have looked like if British designers had been allowed to design the aircraft they wanted to build without political interference. I don't think Britain would ever have had the industrial capacity to build aircraft in the numbers that Boeing and Douglas did, but Britain could have made some great aircraft!
Philb From Ireland, joined exactly 13 years ago today! , 2915 posts, RR: 17 Reply 1, posted (5 years 1 month 1 day 14 hours ago) and read 5149 times:
Quoting BilgeRat (Thread starter): What if the Vickers V1000 had not been cancelled in 1955?
There is a great deal written about the V1000, much in rather rosy terms and its cancellation is often seen as a mystery, particularly as the Britannia was chosen in its place as the troop carrier and BOAC had to make do with the Comet until its 707s arrived.
The truth is that the V1000 was becoming overweight and certainly couldn't have used some of the runways the military originally saw it using. Then there was the realisation that the Empire was rapidly shrinking. The Britannia, already late, plagued by problems with the Proteus and short of orders could go anywhere the military needed it to go, albeit more slowly and had the distinct advantage of being available almost off the shelf.
Two other points often overlooked in the minds of the V1000 proponents:
The design relied heavily on the Valiant - the first and by far the shortest lived V bomber which had to be prematurely retired due to incurable corrosion problems.
BOAC was not committed to the project and no other airline was exactly willing to take a gamble on an unproven UK built jetliner as, at the time it was cancelled, the Comet problems were very much in the industry's mind and were only just being understood and resolved.
If de Havilland (not Hawker Siddeley) had had their way the Trident could have stopped the 727 being developed before it was even thought of. It is well known that de Havilland invited a team from Boeing to visit Hatfield where they pored over the various Trident options and, stunned at the BEA enforced cut backs, went away and did so much better with the layout.
The BAC 2-11 would have been overpowered and probably uneconomic but the 3-11 may have found a reasonable market. A CFM56 engined 1-11 would probably have been beyond the design limits of the original airframe.
When the HS146 was eventually launched by BAe it was far from a mistake having gained some very substantial orders. The four engines got it in and out of tight runways, made it powerful enough to lift 100 pax far more quietly than anything else and, with the wing design, gave excellent low speed qualities which have made it such a sought after aircraft in the second hand market - particularly the later variants. The tragedy was that BAe Sysytems handed the market on a plate to the Brazilians and the Canadians after 9/11 on the flimsiest - and now proven erroneous - evidence.
You fail to mention the developments proposed for the VC10 - the Superb and VC11. These were rather pie in the sky given the failure of the original design to capture significant orders, again due to airline and political interference.
I'm afraid this comment is way wide of the mark:
Quoting BilgeRat (Thread starter): I don't think Britain would ever have had the industrial capacity to build aircraft in the numbers that Boeing and Douglas did,
Before the Thatcher women handbagged the industrial base, the UK was an industrialised country rather than the call centre/shopping mall/tourist museum economy it now is. Using experience from WW2 and the fact that in the 1940s/50s/60s there used to be engineers who passed on their skills through something called apprenticeships -where people had to learn not only how to be a craftsman but actually produce something whilst learning - Britain could easily have handled volume airframe production as they did with fighters - over 4,000 Vampires and over 1900 Hunters produced and, in the airliner field, had the CV340/440 not taken most of the US and part of the European market due partly to conservatism amongst airline executives, Weybridge, Wisley and Hurn could have increased Viscount production by 30% or more to cope with the need the Convair liners serviced as well as producing the Valiant, working on th V1000 and, toward the end of Viscount production, the Vanguard and the VC10.
Jasond From Australia, joined Jul 2009, 23 posts, RR: 0 Reply 2, posted (5 years 1 month 1 day 8 hours ago) and read 4986 times:
As part of VH-XBA's return to Australia recently Geoff Watson presented a documentary called 'Return of our 707' in which he explains the reasoning behind QF's decision to buy the 707 in the late 50's despite much political pressure to acquire DH Comets. The reasons stated as being 1) The Comet was considered 'structurally' unsound and 2) it did not have the capacity QF was looking for. Compared to those issues of the day it appeared Boeing had the answer in an alternative product. An interesting sideline and one that has always intrigued me is the success or failure of a particular airliner because of the economic and political enviroment of the day. The Comet was passed over by Qantas because of issues stated above in favour of the 707, and with QF onboard with that aircraft would have done no harm at all to Boeing in chasing other customers. Interestingly the Comet would later spawn the Nimrod which has served the RAF with great longevity and distinction. Had its structural issues been resolved quickly and its capacity was logically increased, who knows, it may have been a different and more successful story for both the Comet and others to come out of British factories. The Comet would always be hamstrung by its engine installation over time. With the aviation world moving quickly to high bypass fans the Comet would not be able to accomodate these. The Trident and VC10 however I think were different. Despite the earlier Tirdents (or Grippers as they were called) being under powered, both aircraft served their masters well and the Trident in particular was a personal favourite.
Argonaut From UK - Scotland, joined Dec 2004, 413 posts, RR: 1 Reply 3, posted (5 years 1 month 22 hours ago) and read 4799 times:
Always a very absorbing topic to us old-timers. Doubtless we could keep a thread like this going for weeks simply hacking our way through the forest of received opinion and groping through the mists of time! Philb, your response is very interesting and I would argue with little of it, though I do beg to stir the pot with an observation or two:
Concerning the RAF's "choice" of the Britannia over the V.1000: Was this not at least as much a budgetary and political decision, taken at ministerial level, as a military re-assessment of operational requirements? In particular, for political reasons that probably need no spelling out here, the UK government wanted to ensure work in Northern Ireland, and saw a good opportunity to do this by supporting the establishment of a second Britannia production-line, at Short Bros., where the aircraft for Transport Command would then be built. Shorts was badly in need of work, having recently suffered from the evaporation of the Comet 2, very many of which were similarly to have been built on a supplementary production line in Belfast. Shorts had also been left in the lurch by the cancellation of military assembly-line work, due to (here my memory might be fuzzy) the abandonment of the Supermarine Swift. All this meant that to promote the Britannia, at the expense of the much more costly V.1000, could bring about a tidy solution and be politically very helpful. (We could also argue that, even if we question the overall viability of the Britannia programme, the decision at least improved matters for Bristol by significantly fattening the order book, thereby lowering unit costs, keeping the programme going for longer and enabling the manufacturer to keep promoting the aircraft to the airlines.)
Quoting Philb (Reply 1): The design relied heavily on the Valiant - the first and by far the shortest lived V bomber which had to be prematurely retired due to incurable corrosion problems.
I understood that the Valiant suffered not from corrosion but from a curtailed fatigue life, evidenced by the appearance of cracks in parts of the wing structure. The fatigue problems arose as a consequence of the re-assignment of the Victor to the low-level "hedge-hopping" mission from the original high-altitude role, subjecting the airframes to much higher stresses than anticipated in their design. Whether corrosion was an additional problem I don't recall; we could both be right. In any case, your point holds.
Quoting Philb (Reply 1): the Comet problems were very much in the industry's mind and were only just being understood
This is absolutely true, and can't be emphasised enough. It is too often overlooked just how traumatic the Comet failure was and how its radical effects permeated the whole industry. For example, a large but generally forgotten part of why the Britannia schedule slipped so badly was that the rules for certification changed dramatically---with the project already underway and its timetable fixed. The Britannia suddenly had to undertake many times more test flying than planned---and that's only one part of the picture. The stress analysts must have been going round the bend with it all.
I can't say I'm so sure the UK really did have the industrial capacity to handle production of the number of V.1000s (or VC7s, as the commercial variant was to have been called) the world might have wanted had the aircraft really sneaked onto the market ahead of the 707. As referred-to above, even medium-scale production of sophisticated airliners already often required subcontracting much of the final assembly to other companies, as Bristol and de Havilland did. Vickers managed better: the company built its own new factory at Hurn expressly to meet the demand for Viscounts, for which Weybridge was inadequate on its own. Had the V.1000/VC7 survived, the more forward-thinking Vickers approach (thanks to Sir George Edwards) might have seen further expansion to cope with VC7s and Vanguards as well as continuing Viscount manufacture. (The VC10 is irrelevant here, since it probably would not have come about if the VC7 had survived, although a VC7 successor in the form of an advanced VC10-like type (the Superb?) eventually might.)
Nevertheless, I agree there's no question that the manufacturing ability was certainly present in terms of skill and inventiveness; potentially the workforce was there too. But there's a distinction between ability and capacity. For the UK aircraft industry, the problem was more complex than having sufficient engineering know-how and people. Physical facilities were inadequate, in terms both of size and of manufacturing methods. Techniques and practices that had worked well during the war were outdated and unsuited to the more exacting standards set by commercial customers and certifying authorities. But improvement would have required investment, and here lies the heart of the problem: What hamstrung the industry was a serious shortage of capital. To design and build modern factories, and to sustain the increasingly demanding (and long-term) projects needed to take on an ever-more competitive world market, required heavy money. The reasons why finding adequate investment for the commercial aviation industry in the UK of the 50s and 60s was evidently like pulling teeth are no doubt many and varied...and beyond my intellectual pay-grade, I'm afraid...
How we love to rearrange the chess pieces of a bygone time!
VV701 From United Kingdom, joined Aug 2005, 5860 posts, RR: 15 Reply 4, posted (5 years 1 month 22 hours ago) and read 4759 times:
Quoting Philb (Reply 1): Before the Thatcher women handbagged the industrial base, the UK was an industrialised country rather than the call centre/shopping mall/tourist museum economy it now is. Using experience from WW2 and the fact that in the 1940s/50s/60s there used to be engineers who passed on their skills through something called apprenticeships -where people had to learn not only how to be a craftsman but actually produce something whilst learning
It needs to be made clear that apprenticeships had disappeared before Thatcher came to power. They were very valuable as a (low paid) skills training particularly in engineering and much more lucrative for the apprentices themselves than spending the same time at college. But the Trade Unions regarded them as exploitation and the Callaghan Labour Government fell into line with its paymasters and effectively abolished them.
However we should not take a too pessimistic view. Many regard the 380 as a French aircraft but it is, of course, European. To get into the air it primarily requires thrust and wings and with engines built at Derby and wings at Hawarden more than 50 per cent by value of a RR powered 380 is British. So it is pretty clear that neither the Callaghan abolition of apprenticeships or the Thatcher handbag were terminal for UK plc as a manufacturer.
BilgeRat From United Kingdom, joined Dec 2006, 155 posts, RR: 1 Reply 5, posted (5 years 1 month 19 hours ago) and read 4616 times:
On the subject of the loss of engineering and manufacturing skills in this country...
Last year I completed my cadetship as a marine engineer in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. Three years of hard work at college and at sea, three years of working at minimum wage. However, at the end you get a slew of professional and academic qualifications that are recognised worldwide. There's lots of demand within the industry for European officers, and there is a worldwide shortage of marine engineers. In the Royal Fleet Auxiliary the problem is even worse, three years ago I was told that two thirds of marine engineers would reach retirement age within ten years. There is just no interest in technical or engineering professions among young people these days. I wonder if the trend started in the 1960's?
With a couple of exceptions, all of our ships were built in UK yards, and although we have some new ones, a lot of them are very old. So far I've sailed on three and the youngest was built in 1980! I just came home from a 34 year old small fleet replenishment tanker. I used to think how sad it was seeing the manufacturer's plates on all the machinery, and knowing that those companies and all the expertise is long gone!
Philb From Ireland, joined exactly 13 years ago today! , 2915 posts, RR: 17 Reply 6, posted (5 years 1 month 16 hours ago) and read 4541 times:
Argonaut:
The "choice" of Britannia for the RAF was very political and your points about Shorts etc. are well made but the question remains: "was the V1000 cancelled for political reasons including to help Shorts and Northern Ireland or was the aircraft too heavy and beyond its intended design envelope and the Shorts option was just one of those lucky happenstances which Governments wish would come along more often"?!!
Quoting Argonaut (Reply 3): Whether corrosion was an additional problem I don't recall; we could both be right. In any case, your point holds.
If I remember rightly there was a corrosion problem in some early airframes, the cracks were the last straw.
The amount of Industrial capacity for outsourcing of components would have been the acid test. Certainly in the 1950s there was a multitude of companies capable of the various types of work all over the UK. Whilst it is true that standards were becoming more stringent and WW2 practices fell far short of the revised needs, there is no doubt that between 1955 and 1970 the UK lost thousands of good engineers and other tradesmen and the number of companies providing engineering services declined dramatically due to lack of continuity of contracts rather than an inability to change and modernise.
However, the point about capital is also a major factor. After WW2 the country was broke and commited to running an Empire and paying massive debts. There seems to have been a great deal of blinkered thinking in the Treasury, financial services and the national psyche when it came to funding projects that could have provided work, income and the base for capital growth.
Quoting VV701 (Reply 4): It needs to be made clear that apprenticeships had disappeared before Thatcher came to power. They were very valuable as a (low paid) skills training particularly in engineering and much more lucrative for the apprentices themselves than spending the same time at college. But the Trade Unions regarded them as exploitation and the Callaghan Labour Government fell into line with its paymasters and effectively abolished them.
Very true, I wasn't blaming Thatcher re apprenticeships. If you follow the construction of the paragraph, the position of the full stop after "is" in the second line and the wording of the second sentence, including the dates, you can see the distinction:
Quoting VV701 (Reply 4): Quoting Philb (Reply 1):
Before the Thatcher women handbagged the industrial base, the UK was an industrialised country rather than the call centre/shopping mall/tourist museum economy it now is. Using experience from WW2 and the fact that in the 1940s/50s/60s there used to be engineers who passed on their skills through something called apprenticeships -where people had to learn not only how to be a craftsman but actually produce something whilst learning
Quoting BilgeRat (Reply 5): Three years of hard work at college and at sea, three years of working at minimum wage. However,
The country needs people like you for the future BUT, in days gone by apprenticeships were 5 or 7 years of work from 15 or 16 sometimes with day release, always with night school and with, until the 1970s a 5 and a half day week to boot.
Rikkus67 From Canada, joined Jun 2000, 1374 posts, RR: 2 Reply 7, posted (5 years 1 month 14 hours ago) and read 4449 times:
the Vickers Valliant and proposed V1000 civil airliner
Wow... the V1000 would have been an amazing aircraft! Its amazing looking back at what happens when politics is involved. Just look what happened in Canada with the AVRO Arrow and AVRO Jetliner...both amazing planes with remarkable capabilities, and both cancelled so near full production ramp up....
the 50 seater "pocket rocket"... built after the comet, and before the 707...what a shame it never went into production!
To the Brits on this forum, I wonder what influences out of our respective countries had to do with the cancellation of such promising designs?
Cessna 172; King Air 100; Twin Otter; SAAB 340; Dash 7; Dash 8-100,-200,-300,-400; CRJ-200,700,900; ERJ-170; F-28; DC 9-
Jasond From Australia, joined Jul 2009, 23 posts, RR: 0 Reply 8, posted (5 years 1 month 12 hours ago) and read 4375 times:
Quoting Rikkus67 (Reply 7): To the Brits on this forum, I wonder what influences out of our respective countries had to do with the cancellation of such promising designs?
Antskip From Australia, joined Jan 2006, 880 posts, RR: 6 Reply 9, posted (5 years 1 month 12 hours ago) and read 4349 times:
Quoting Jasond (Reply 2): Geoff Watson presented a documentary called 'Return of our 707' in which he explains the reasoning behind QF's decision to buy the 707 in the late 50's...The Comet was considered 'structurally' unsound
I think the programme was incorrect on that point. The "Comet" on offer was the Comet 4C, which had fixed the structural problems of the problematic Comet 1. The Comet 4 was a small plane, however. A fascinating little beauty to fly in, though - one of my more memorable flying experiences. The proposed upgrade, the "Comet 5", it appears, would have matched the USA planes in size, but didn't happen.
BilgeRat From United Kingdom, joined Dec 2006, 155 posts, RR: 1 Reply 10, posted (5 years 1 month 11 hours ago) and read 4326 times:
I think a kind of malaise settled over Britain in the era following the Second World War. Although we were on the winning side, it was a hollow victory for Britain. Six years of war had bankrupted Britain, the Empire was diminishing and Britain was a world power in decline. The tragedy of the Comet I resulted in a feeling among the British Governments that "Britain was just no good at building aeroplanes." Then of course the Labour Governments of the era needed money to fund their grand social experiments, and what better source of money than Britain's faltering (in the eyes of the politicians at least) aero industry. Why design and build our own aircraft when we can just buy them off the Americans?
This was of course a travesty for the nation that did so much to build the modern world, and ultimately resulted in the nation of hairdressers and shop assistants that we have today. It's very sad really, especially considering the scientific and engineering achievements of previous generations on these islands.
You can also find the odd account here and there from industry insiders from that period who believe that American manufacturer's were pulling strings behind the scenes to make sure that competing British designs never made it to production.
ImperialEagle From United States of America, joined Jan 2006, 1102 posts, RR: 15 Reply 11, posted (5 years 1 month 10 hours ago) and read 4267 times:
I've often wondered what might have been if the VC-10 airframe had been available in the same time period as the 707 or DC-8. Especially if the Conway by-pass jet turbines had been available at that time!
All kinds of interesting possibilities!
Certainly RR would have captured some business---PA and AA might just have gone RR. AA wanted turbo- fans anyway. And can you imagine the performance of a 707/720 airframe with 21,000st RR Conways hanging on the wings!
I wish!
(What if P&W had the JT-3D ready in higher thrust (21,000st) to match RR! Could P&W have hung some JT-3D's on the VC-10's?) Would be interesting to see the economics.
In any event, IMO the Vickers aircraft always stood out in my mind as exceptionally well built aircraft. We saw plenty of Viscounts here at ATL back in the 50's (CA) and 60's (UA). I used to admire the TC's Vanguards at TPA. Those huge windows were great!
Certainly the VC-10 is one of the most beautiful designs I've ever seen. What a gorgeous airplane!
I would have loved to see some TW,PA or NW VC-10's. Can you imagine how beautiful the Supers would have looked in any of those carriers original jet liveries?!! NW's 70's livery! Better yet a BN Super in a (dark green) Halston livery!
"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough!"
MCIGuy From United States of America, joined Mar 2006, 1919 posts, RR: 0 Reply 12, posted (5 years 1 month 10 hours ago) and read 4248 times:
I think it is entirely possible for Great Britain to return to it's former aviation glory. If but a handfull of current British companies got together they could do great things.
XT6Wagon From United States of America, joined Feb 2007, 2845 posts, RR: 4 Reply 13, posted (5 years 1 month 10 hours ago) and read 4209 times:
I think people miss just how HUGE a revolution boeing had with using podded engines for the 707. I think that even had the comet had 0 structural failures, the 707 would have put it and all the other early jets in their graves. Certainly a turbine failure on a 707 was a far milder and far more survivable event than an engine completely surrounded by the wing and its structural members... and fuel....
YVRLTN From Canada, joined Oct 2006, 1759 posts, RR: 0 Reply 14, posted (5 years 1 month 8 hours ago) and read 4140 times:
Thanks for this thread - I too love aviation history.
Its sad looking back at the dozens of British aircraft designers, who in their time made wonderful world leading aircraft, mainly in WW2 of course, who are all now just names in the distant past - and now all that is left is BAe - with no civilian aircraft, excluding Airbus participation of course. Just to name a few - DH, Hawker / Armstrong Whitworth / Gloster / HS, Avro, Handley Page, Miles, Percival / Hunting, Auster / Beagle, Folland, Supermarine, English Electric, BAC, Bristol, Blackburn, Airspeed, Vickers, Fairey - think of the dozens of legends made by these companies!! Then theres Shorts and Bombardier of course, and to a lessor extent Westland / GKN. The only British civilian aircraft I can think of still being made (I think??) in 'airliner' or rather air taxi service is the B-N Islander, which is owned by Pilatus of Switzerland anyway.
Despite all that could have beem, what a great portfolio BAe could still have without treading on Airbus toes:
125 business jet - originally DH, then HS, one of the best selling bizjets of all time, now made in the US by Raytheon and even called a 'Hawker' and other products (the Beech 400A Beechjet - itself based on the Mitsubishi Diamond...) is now also being called a 'Hawker' - Im sure Harry Hawker would not be impressed!! Netjets alone are ordering scores and externally, the shape is still basically the same as the original RR Viper powered versions from the 60's. Briefly, why did BAe sell such a gem to Raytheon??
146 - again originally HS. Look at the recent success of the E-Jets and larger CRJ's now offering capacity in 146 territory and even on-going demand for 2nd hand Fokker's. Im not an engineer, but surely something could have been done to keep this aircraft going by modernizing it and making it more fuel efficient - its still operated today by blue chip carriers such as BA, LH, AF, LX, SN etc.
Jetstream 31 - sold respectably but now the B1900 is not being made, if there was a smaller version to compete with the King Air to supplement it too (say a 21 instead of the 41), this is a huge market in North America alone Raytheon largely has to itself.
ATP - we know about its problems, but is predecessor the HS748 is a very solid aircraft. Now the Dash 8Q's and ATR's are making a come back, if Bombardier and ATR can modernize and sell their products, why can there not be a successful ATP?
Im sure you will all give me good reasons why not to all these points, which I will be glad to hear, but it seems BAe had plenty of potential gold mines which they've simply thrown away, particularly when they have so much experience with modern technology with their involvment with Airbus and the military - I guess they make more money selling missiles, tanks, Typhoons, Saab Gripens, Nimrods & Hawks.
Philb From Ireland, joined exactly 13 years ago today! , 2915 posts, RR: 17 Reply 15, posted (5 years 1 month 4 hours ago) and read 4063 times:
Quoting BilgeRat (Reply 10): Then of course the Labour Governments of the era needed money to fund their grand social experiments, and what better source of money than Britain's faltering (in the eyes of the politicians at least) aero industry. Why design and build our own aircraft when we can just buy them off the Americans?
That, I'm afraid, is a total corruption of history. The Attlee Government fully supported both the civil and military aircraft developments in the period 1945 - 1951. It was the successive Tory Governments under Churchill, Eden, Macmillan and Home who did the damage. Churchill nearly cancelled the Viscount in 1951, then had the misfortune of the Comet disasters during his term. Eden cancelled the V1000 and Macmillan's government (supposedly in favour of free competition) allowed BEA and BOAC to unfairly dominate the UK airline market and, in so doing, so narrowly define the parameters of the Trident and VC10 that they became uncompetitive and, worse, forced the amalgamation of the industry into Hawker Siddeley and BAC - including some very poor pairings - leaving Westland as the helicopter manufacturer, though Bristol had the only large helicopter experience, destroying the innovative and well tried firm of Fairey and forcing thousands of skilled aero engineers and workers to seek employment either overseas - including work at Boeing, Douglas and NASA - or leave the industry altogether..
Both Macmillan and Home toyed with cancelling Concorde unlike Labour which persevered - Labour's sins were to cancel restrict airline development between 1945 and 1951, cancelling TSR2 and, having failed to learn from their meddling in the airline market in the 1940s, continued to uphold the BOAC/BEA predominance against the emergence of BUA and smaller start ups.
Philb From Ireland, joined exactly 13 years ago today! , 2915 posts, RR: 17 Reply 16, posted (5 years 1 month 3 hours ago) and read 4031 times:
Quoting Antskip (Reply 9): I think the programme was incorrect on that point. The "Comet" on offer was the Comet 4C, which had fixed the structural problems of the problematic Comet 1.
At the time QANTAS was ready to order the 707 the Comet 4C was a paper aircraft and the structural problems of the Comet were only just being absorbed and translated to design improvements for the Comet 4 through development work on the Comet 3..
Quoting ImperialEagle (Reply 11): And can you imagine the performance of a 707/720 airframe with 21,000st RR Conways hanging on the wings!
The noise would have been wonderful!
Quoting XT6Wagon (Reply 13): I think people miss just how HUGE a revolution boeing had with using podded engines for the 707. I think that even had the comet had 0 structural failures, the 707 would have put it and all the other early jets in their graves. Certainly a turbine failure on a 707 was a far milder and far more survivable event than an engine completely surrounded by the wing and its structural members... and fuel....
I think you are placing too much emphasis on the podded engines. They have advantages regarding accessibility for maintenance, the fact that there is no weight penalty due to having to shield the engines as has to be done with wing root buried engines and turbine blade failure can be less damaging but the penalties are the need for a much bigger vertical fin, greater assymetrical control problems with an engine out and greater FOD risk due to the proximity to the ground. Their greatest problem is that the wing, not being a "clean" flying surface, is less efficient and has to be engineered in a more sophisticated and expensive way,
The argument has, undeniably, been won by the podded engine (though rear engine jets, sharing many of the weight/shielding problems of the wing root buried engines, have sold exceptionally well) but the Comet's structural failures had the most massive impact, not only on the Comet but on Boeing and Douglas both of whom carefully studied the findings and took appropriate action.
BTW, I don't think anyone can say the 707 put the DC8 in its grave - in fact there are more DC8s flying now than 707s.
Lemurs From United States of America, joined Mar 2005, 1439 posts, RR: 4 Reply 17, posted (5 years 1 month 3 hours ago) and read 4020 times:
Quoting Philb (Reply 16): BTW, I don't think anyone can say the 707 put the DC8 in its grave - in fact there are more DC8s flying now than 707s.
Who said it did? I don't think he was implying that it did...after all, the DC-8 went for a poded layout as well. Regardless, in may not have killed off a wing-root design in that first generation of airliner, but there wouldn't have been a follow-up generation, which I think was his point. The operating economics of flying and maintaining those turbines would have become clear after flying head to head for a generation...aesthetics and aerodynamic benefits be damned. It was just a matter of time...
There are 10 kinds of people in the world; those who understand binary, and those that don't.
Philb From Ireland, joined exactly 13 years ago today! , 2915 posts, RR: 17 Reply 18, posted (5 years 1 month 3 hours ago) and read 4009 times:
Quoting Lemurs (Reply 17): Quoting Philb (Reply 16):
BTW, I don't think anyone can say the 707 put the DC8 in its grave - in fact there are more DC8s flying now than 707s.
Who said it did? I don't think he was implying that it did...
Quoting XT6Wagon (Reply 13): the 707 would have put it and all the other early jets in their grave
XT6Wagon From United States of America, joined Feb 2007, 2845 posts, RR: 4 Reply 19, posted (5 years 1 month 2 hours ago) and read 3992 times:
Quoting Philb (Reply 16): I think you are placing too much emphasis on the podded engines. They have advantages regarding accessibility for maintenance,
The jet engines of that day are a far far cry from the ones of today. Very low hours between MX and overhauls and a massively higher chance of a hot section suffering a failure. They were only reliable in comparison to the piston engined planes, which most routinely flew with one engine dead. Imagine if you went from 1/2 all the 747 flights having to shut down an engine in flight to 1 in a 100. Would seem like magic, but a far cry from the 1/100,000 we see today. Or look at it this way, imagine the amount of pissed off airlines if they had to tear an engine out of the wing root every hundred flights or so if they already knew you could hang it out front all nice and easy to get to.
Quoting Lemurs (Reply 17): Regardless, in may not have killed off a wing-root design in that first generation of airliner, but there wouldn't have been a follow-up generation, which I think was his point. The operating economics of flying and maintaining those turbines would have become clear after flying head to head for a generation...aesthetics and aerodynamic benefits be damned. It was just a matter of time...
I'll go as far to say that it would have killed off any orders from airlines that haven't received any airframes of a type with wingroot engines. Well once it had been in operation a year or so and proven the worth. It would have also cut short any follow up orders, and caused many airlines with higher utilization to switch as soon as possible. This is even if the comet 1 was picture perfect to the expected reliability and safety of the time.
Lemurs From United States of America, joined Mar 2005, 1439 posts, RR: 4 Reply 20, posted (5 years 1 month 2 hours ago) and read 3985 times:
Quoting Philb (Reply 18): Which part of "all" don't you understand?
The DC-8 entered service after the 707, and was launched after the 367-80 had already been rolled out and was flying. It was a contemporary of the 707, not an early predacessor. The Comet on the other hand, and any aborted follow-up designs based on the original, were obviously of an earlier design...they beat Boeing to market (and then out of market) with years in hand...both ways!
There are 10 kinds of people in the world; those who understand binary, and those that don't.
XT6Wagon From United States of America, joined Feb 2007, 2845 posts, RR: 4 Reply 21, posted (5 years 1 month 2 hours ago) and read 3973 times:
Quoting Philb (Reply 18): Quoting XT6Wagon (Reply 13):
the 707 would have put it and all the other early jets in their grave
Which part of "all" don't you understand?
The dash 80/707 was the first "modern" jet airliner, not the first jet airliner. Lets call the Comet and anything else that failed to come off the boards "generation 0", their failure in dramatic fashion kept them from being the true dawn of the jet age. If the comet didn't have the structural failures then it would have been regarded as the dawn of the jet age despite the 707 arriving to stop its success.
The 707 gets its fame from being 1st in the real first generation of jet airliners, and well marketed. The DC-8 doesn't because the early models were not all that good, and the real value in the DC-8 only showed up with the later larger versions that were in a class of their own for the time.
Oh and all through history you can find examples of technologies or concepts being used and in production years before someone actually gets it right and truly makes the first "real" item of the kind. False starts never get the credit in the end, and become footnotes in the history books.
Philb From Ireland, joined exactly 13 years ago today! , 2915 posts, RR: 17 Reply 22, posted (5 years 1 month 2 hours ago) and read 3965 times:
Quoting XT6Wagon (Reply 19): The jet engines of that day are a far far cry from the ones of today. Very low hours between MX and overhauls and a massively higher chance of a hot section suffering a failure. They were only reliable in comparison to the piston engined planes, which most routinely flew with one engine dead. Imagine if you went from 1/2 all the 747 flights having to shut down an engine in flight to 1 in a 100. Would seem like magic, but a far cry from the 1/100,000 we see today. Or look at it this way, imagine the amount of pissed off airlines if they had to tear an engine out of the wing root every hundred flights or so if they already knew you could hang it out front all nice and easy to get to.
You are trying to teach your grandmother how to suck eggs.
I lived through the period of the early jets, following them avidly from the age of 9 (1956) and I still have publications and archive material from that time. I'm well aware of the failure rate of both piston and early jet engines.
As it happens the Avons in the Comet were extremely reliable right up to the last commercial flight in 1980. Dan Air, which operated more of the type - and operated all versions of the Mk 4 - than any other airline had few problems and had engine changes off to a fine art as I observed at Lasham more than once. The Speys in the Nimrod have also proved to be reliable and haven't needed undue access - and the Spey is hardly a modern engine.
The Russians have also a great deal of experience of buried engines and continued to design airframes for their strategic forces long after the advent of wing mounted pods.
Finally, if buried engines are such a pain, why was the 727 such a success and why didn't the airlines campaign for a mid tail mounted engine?
VV701 From United Kingdom, joined Aug 2005, 5860 posts, RR: 15 Reply 23, posted (5 years 1 month 2 hours ago) and read 3942 times:
Quoting Philb (Reply 15): That, I'm afraid, is a total corruption of history.
I am not going to argue with the points that follow this start to Reply 15. There is too much truth in what they say. Both successive Labour, Conservative and Labour (again) post-war British governments all thought they new more about aircraft design and production than the aircraft manufacturers and more about commercial aviation than those who had spent many years working in it, So the products the British aviation industry produced with one or two notable exceptions like the Viscount were not what the manufacturers, left to their own devices, would have built or the professionals (and not the former civil servants) in the airline industry would have selected.
Thankfully since June 1979 successive British and Labour governments have stopped interfering in both British aeronautical manufacturing and commercial aviation although there was a bit of a hiccup in the mid 1990s when a former civil servant found his way to the very top of a leading British airline after he was seconded to it to steer it away from government control and influence.
If you need proof of the ineptitude when government influence becomes involved in the aviation industry look no further than the muddled airport policy in South East England. In 1958 the grass runway at LGW was paved. Since then we have had proposals to build a major new airport at Cublington/Wing (in Buckinghamshire), at Foulness (in the Thames Estuary off Essex) and in North Kent. But in the subsequent half century all but a year following the opening of the LGW runway what has happened as commercial aviation has expanded from being the domain of the very well off to a mass population mode of transport? Well in the South East of England we closed 05/23 at LHR and opened a single still shorter runway at LCY - a net gain of zero runways. I guess that partly to blame for all of this was the plethora of RAF / USAAF runways laid between 1939 and 1945. They always acted as a fall back to any government faced with an awkward decision!
Philb From Ireland, joined exactly 13 years ago today! , 2915 posts, RR: 17 Reply 24, posted (5 years 1 month 2 hours ago) and read 3927 times:
Quoting XT6Wagon (Reply 21): The dash 80/707 was the first "modern" jet airliner, not the first jet airliner. Lets call the Comet and anything else that failed to come off the boards "generation 0", their failure in dramatic fashion kept them from being the true dawn of the jet age. If the comet didn't have the structural failures then it would have been regarded as the dawn of the jet age despite the 707 arriving to stop its success.
The 707 gets its fame from being 1st in the real first generation of jet airliners, and well marketed. The DC-8 doesn't because the early models were not all that good, and the real value in the DC-8 only showed up with the later larger versions that were in a class of their own for the time.
Oh and all through history you can find examples of technologies or concepts being used and in production years before someone actually gets it right and truly makes the first "real" item of the kind. False starts never get the credit in the end, and become footnotes in the history
Well you can twist history all you want but you can't change the facts.
1. Had the Comet not had the structural failures airlines around the world would, by 1956/7, have had large fleets and the MK 3 would have been starting deliveries. Boeing and Douglas may well have proceeded with their designs and would have been in competition with whatever the UK industry came up with to compete - which certainly wouldn't have been the Mk4.
2. The early 707s were pretty poor for range and performance and extremely noisy, thirsty and dirty. There wasn't much to choose between them and the DC8. Boeing had to follow Douglas and widen the fuselage of the 707 to compete with the DC8. Boeing outsold Douglas because it got its jets in the air quicker and sold at a lower price as it had the benefits of economy of scale and a guaranteed cash flow from building the very similar B717 (C-135).
The early 707s were referred to as "lead sleds" and the first 707s needed around 10,000 feet of runway to get airborne fully laden compared to 9,000 ft for the DC8.
3. DC8s and B707s prior to the advent of the fan engine can only really be classed as early jets as they were unrefined and, frankly, were relatively dangerous - look at the hull losses and the incident reports for 1958 through 1964.
25 Philb: Unlike you I was around at the period and am totally aware of the sequence of events. Early jets airliners have, in my experience of aviation both fr
26 GDB: I agree pretty much with PhilB on this, also, never forget just what a state the UK was in after 1945, and those 'grand social experiments' were the w
27 LAPA_SAAB340: I would add the Tupolev Tu-104 and Tu-124 to that list as well.
28 Philb: Yes, I missed the TU104 but might argue the 124 given its fan engines and much later development.
29 BilgeRat: Indeed, democracy in action. I just find it fascinating to try and imagine what sort of aircraft we *could* have seen taking to the skies over the la
30 GDB: Totally agree there Bilge Rat, however, though it might not have seemed so at the time, the UK government's desire for multi national involvement for
31 F9Animal: Love the AVRO jetliner! Did they scrap the test aircraft?
32 LawnDart: Didn't BAe at one point toy with the idea of a twin-engine version of the 146? RJX or something similar (the fogs of time cloud my mind...).
33 Philb: BAe Systems (Company Motto: We single handedly destroyed what was left of British airliner production) scrapped the RJX programme and cancelled order
34 XT6Wagon: Well Phil, just need to talk BAe into bidding on making parts for the 737RS and maybe making a final assembly line for the EU bound frames. Plenty of
35 Lemurs: What does being alive have to do with what I said? I know how to read and study history as well as anyone, and people often sleepwalk their way throu
36 Philb: And trying to teach me history I knew about before you were a twinkle in your Daddy's eye isn't being condescindg I suppose? Try to learn the differen
37 Lemurs: I may not be from your generation, but I have enough friends and family who are to know that disagreeing with someone isn't inherently condescending.
38 Rampart: Just for the exercise in categorization, and no discredit to your list, which is fine, here's another way to group the early jets. Mostly subjective
39 Rampart: Sorry for the rapid fire repeat, but another thought unrelated to my previous... I find this a fascinating discussion. From the British point of view,
40 GDB: Before the RJX we know, which flew in 2000/2001, there had been another one, from the early 1990's, basically a twin 146, I think that the lower end o
41 Philb: You obviously have some problem with comprehension. You accused ME of being rude, I rebutted that claim: Re read the thread and you should get the se
42 VC10: In all the list of British Manufacturers did we miss Airspeed-------------------------------- built my favourite the Elizabethan Armstrong Whitworth =
43 Philb: The Ashton was a jet version of the Avro Tudor 8 see:http://www.pbase.com/marauder61/image/45291067 Your splitting of the list is fair enough and pre
44 Zeke: The bigger relevations were things like Richard Pearse, from Waitohi, New Zealand, March 31, 1902, for man's first powered flight.. Dr Hans Von Ohain
45 Philb: ...well the Ambassador anyway. The prototype first flew the day after I was born. Never managed to fly in one but saw them regularly in the BEA days
46 Lemurs: (directed at XT6Wagon) Let's just say that none of the above statements, (which were what I was reacting to) have anything to do with the below state
47 DAYflyer: I've heard this as well, but would like to see pictures or drawings of it. There is a version of this plane on Airline 6.0 game that is rather amazin
48 SEPilot: That is because the DC-8 was stretched and reengined; I would believe that there are probably more 707's flying today than unstretched DC-8's. Again,
49 ExFATboy: There's an artist's conception on the cover of this book. (And yep, I feel a purchase coming on...) And one on this page, scroll down to 1968.
50 Philb: Perhaps we are being separated by a common language. If I had typed "Try to learn the difference between my being direct and accurate, pointing out e
51 VC10DC10: Their motto might soon have to change: We single handedly destroyed what was left of British warship and submarine construction. The way they have me
52 Viscount724: Several other jet types that followed the 707 and DC-8 by a few years also had accident rates during their first few years of service that probably w
53 Philb: The last verifiable figures I can find are from early 2005 which show 140 DC8s in service (all cargo) plus 135 in storage (mostly still flyable) The
54 Philb: The 727 was considered a very hot ship and almost had itself grounded a la the Electra after accidents in very close order in 1965 at Salt Lake City,
55 SEPilot: The investigations on these accidents totally exonerated the aircraft; all were pilot error. The pilots weren't used to the slow spool-up of jet engi
56 Philb: All very true but the initial reaction by the CAB, probably in the light of the Electra experience, was a move to ground the aircraft which was narro
57 RayChuang: I think even if the Comet had not suffered the structural failure problems, it would have been overtaken by both the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 by th
58 SEPilot: This may be true; I read (I can't remember where) that the DC-8 did not meet its range/payload promises and that its high-speed high-altitude perform
59 RayChuang: That may have been true of the early models, but Douglas Aircraft addressed those problems with the Super Sixty series, which would have made it poss
60 Philb: The Trident:was effectively scuppered as a competitive aircraft because the development costs were underpinned by the government as owners of BEA and
61 VC10DC10: Maybe I'm just being niggling, but wouldn't the DC8-50 series really be the "ultimate" pre-Super Sixty DC8? Were the performance figures substantiall
62 Philb: The DC8-52 had a range of 5996 nautical miles, 189 seats, and a speed of 600 mph with a MTOW of 315,000 lbs, The DC8-54/55 took the range to 6157 nau
63 VC10DC10: So with the -50 series, Douglas narrowed the lead Boeing had with the 707-320s, but it took the Super Sixties to surpass the 707. Thanks very much fo
64 Philb: In as much as it mattered yes. But to many loyal Douglas customers and some newcomers it didn't. Load factors and stage lengths were looked at differ
65 VC10DC10: Fair enough. It surprises me, however, that Douglas lost sight of these vital "customer service" techniques (pricing and delivery options) that must
66 Philb: Exactly, although you will find a few Boeing die hards who will deny any cross over of the financial benefits gained from the C135 programme! That is
67 RayChuang: Which does remind me--how long did BOAC continue to use the 707-420 even after the VC-10 went into service? I remember seeing BOAC 707-420's flying in
68 Philb: They survived well into the time of BA. The G-APFx series went as follows: FB lsd to Syrian Arab 1974 rtd 1975 to British Airtours sold 1976 to Boein
69 Viscount724: UA actually never "ordered" any DC-8-30s, but they did buy 11 used -30s in 1967/68. 8 were ex-Pan Am, 2 ex-SAS, 1 ex-Panagra. But they weren't intend
70 Philb: Quite right, that was a typo and it should have read DC8-50 for international routes. United held long term rights to Hawaii and lobbied hard for tra
71 Highflier92660: (LOL) Absolutely priceless. Philb, I don't supposed you've seen NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) over on our side of the pond. Cheers.
72 Philb: The point I was making about the potential grounding was to do with the type of reaction to the accidents rather than the cause. There was an immedia
73 Highflier92660: Capital (with an A)- quite correct and separate from the airline I was thinking of. I'm also fascinated with the Bristol Britannia turboprop, which cl
74 GDB: ExFatBoy, thank you for linking that book about the 3-11, I had no idea of it's existence and I'm certainly interested in getting it. PhilB, spot on a
75 Philb: Well BOAC called it the Whispering Giant. Comparing it to the piston engined airliners of the time it was 50 mph faster than the Starliner and kept p
76 VV701: The question is whether it is better to design and build wings and aero engines or to build fuselages and assemble aircraft. Actually assembling them
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