Aeroplane September 2017

R

eading about the aircraft featured

in our special ‘British Airliners:

Project Cancelled’ section of this

month’s issue brought mixed

feelings. This is not so much the case with

the Saunders-Roe jet fl ying boats: the

manufacturer’s continued development

of these behemoths, as impressive as the

concepts were, can only be seen as a blind

alley. Even at the time, the signs were

clear that the era of the commercial fl ying

boat was over. But with Vickers/BAC’s

VC11 and double-deck VC10, things

are less clear-cut. These are designs that

were expected to compete on the global

market, to assist in bringing the British

aircraft industry back to its former position

of pre-eminence in the civil sector. But,

as with many other projects that fell into

that category during

the 25-30 years

following World War

Two, not a single

example was built.

And, as we know all

too well, many of

the designs that did

reach production —

the VC10, for one

— failed to win the

hoped-for orders.

To this day, Britain’s post-war jet

airliners provoke great debate. Take

another of those that came to fruition, the

Trident. Had British European Airways

not insisted that the design be downsized

as a knee-jerk response to falling passenger

fi gures, the argument goes, it could have

been a true British rival to the wildly

successful Boeing 727. Personally, I am

less than convinced. Such was the might

attained by the major US manufacturers in

the fi eld of transport aircraft development

— whether military or civil — since

the late pre-WW2 period that their

dominance was always going to be all but

impossible to unseat. Yes, the Vickers

Viscount and BAC One-Eleven attracted

notable orders from US carriers, but they

were rare exceptions rather than the rule.

Viewed with the benefi t of hindsight,

period reports of high-level discussions

between representatives of British airliner

manufacturers and their counterparts at

the major US airlines seem, at best, highly

optimistic.

In considering the reasons for this,

one needs perhaps to take a slightly longer

view. To my mind, the failure of most

post-war British airliners to gain a solid

commercial foothold in the world market

can be put down not to decisions taken at

the time, but to developments in the pre-

war years. Consider, for instance, 1934’s

MacRobertson Air Race. It was won by

a British aeroplane, but in the form of a

purpose-built racer. Behind the DH

Comet fi nished

two advanced

American airliners,

the Douglas DC-

and Boeing 247.

Look what designs

followed in their

wake — helped, of

course, by the vast

industrial capacity

built up in the USA

during hostilities. Maybe the failure of

concepts like the Vickers designs discussed

in this magazine was a virtual inevitability,

rather than the result of home-grown

political and commercial mistakes.

Whatever the truth, it’s one of the reasons

why these topics remain so fascinating

even now.

Subscribers to Aeroplane will receive the

2016 Index, kindly compiled by Vicky

Hales-Dutton, free with this issue. We

hope you fi nd it useful. If you’d like your

own copy, why not take out a subscription?

Our latest great-value offer is featured on

pages 24-25.

Ben Dunnell

CONTRIBUTORS THIS MONTH

LUIGINO CALIARO

With the help of two

former Alitalia pilots,

together with some

superb historical imagery

drawn from friends’

collections, Luigino this

month tells the unusual

story of how the Italian

national airline briefl y used

the Aermacchi MB326 for pilot instruction. The

pretty little Italian jet trainer is one of the more

unusual types to have worn the livery of a

European fl ag-carrier, but it proved very effective

in the role.

BRUCE HALES-DUTTON

“I recently had my fi rst

fl ight in a double-deck

airliner”, reports Bruce.

“While I fi nd it fascinating

that British Aircraft

Corporation engineers

were beavering away on a

two-tier version of the

much-loved VC10 four

decades before the A380, I’m not sure I’d have

wanted to fl y on it. What’s really interesting,

though, is that they were considering wide-body

layouts as their counterparts in Seattle were

thinking along similar lines. The difference

being, of course, that BAC’s work led to the

promising Three-Eleven, which was cancelled in

the year the fi rst 747 arrived at Heathrow.”

JAMES KIGHTLY

James enjoys travelling in

inter-war airliners when

and where possible —

including Stan Smith’s

DH84 Dragon, fl own by

Andrew Schooler in New

Zealand. Working on the

Dragon Database and

reading Flight and The

Aeroplane to research it felt like going back to

the early thirties for a week, when aviation’s

horizons were very different. Today, the Dragon

is mostly eclipsed by the Dragon Rapide, but

James hopes this feature will bring back some

credit to a reliable old stager.

RICHARD PAYNE

“Already being interested

in airports and airlines,

living near Hatfi eld I was

able to visit the site and

see the BAe 146 gestate

from wooden mock-up to

fl ying prototype”, recalls

Richard. “The gift of the

excellent Project

Cancelled book instilled in

me a love of all things unbuilt of any genre, and

in 2004 my own book Stuck on the Drawing

Board was published. Over 20 years I have had

articles published in many periodicals on both

aircraft and anything British.”

4 http://www.aeroplanemonthly.com AEROPLANE SEPTEMBER 2017

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(^) Maybe the failure of
many post-war British
airliner designs was a
virtual inevitability, rather
than the result of home-
grown mistakes^
04_AM_ED&CONTRIB_Sept17_cc C.indd 4 31/07/2017 16: