It was a time when Britain waived the rules that constrained the old technology of passenger aircraft serving British Empire routes as it set about winning the race to fly passengers across the Atlantic to the USA.
Virtually penniless after the Second World War, Britain’s achievements were vast, but largely in the past. At the time, it was in debt to America until the launch of the De Havilland Comet suddenly represented a way of escaping austerity. Unfortunately, cruel fate brought the aircraft down when a spate of catastrophic failures involving a wing design prone to over-rotation and metal fatigue throughout the Comet’s pressurised cabin resulted in a series of fatal accidents.
The Vickers Viscount and the Bristol Type 175 Britannia turboprop passenger aircraft took up the challenge. America wanted to place orders, but the large band of small British companies were unable to cope, leading to many orders being delayed. Cue some painful forced marriages of companies made to merge with each other by the government.
There was also commercial pressure from BOAC, waggishly referred to as the ‘Boeing Only Aircraft Corporation’. No British aircraft could succeed without its backing, but despite the Vickers VC10 being built to its exacting specifications, BOAC wanted a more economical-to-run jet airliner – an American one called the Boeing 707.
The end of an era came with the 1966 Farnborough Airshow, which finally went ‘international’ because there weren’t enough British planes to fill it. It drew to a close a wonderful creative age for British aviation.
Britain had launched the first passenger turboprop plane and the first jetliner in a golden age of confidence that changed the way the world would fly forever. By the end of the 1960s, the supersonic Concorde was born. But that’s another story!
Mike Richardson, editor
