FlyPast 02.2018

Defence: The Outline of Future

Policy, April 4, 1957

Above left

The TSR-2 under

test.

Below left

English Electric

chief test pilot

Roland Beamont

beside the cockpit

of the fi rst P.1,

WG760. First fl own

on August 4, 1954,

the programme

was too advanced

to be cancelled

when the 1957

White Paper was

released. ALL KEY

COLLECTION UNLESS

NOTED

February 2018 FLYPAST 97

Handley Page branched out into

making central heating radiators,

but diversification only went so far.

The Sandys’ switch was to use air

power instead of manpower east of

Suez. There were then more British

troops in the Middle and Far East

than there were in West Germany.

Sandys was only interested in multi-

role types that could be adapted to

differing circumstances.

Consequently, the Armstrong

Whitworth Argosy tactical freighter

was built to allow rapid mobility

of the UK-based ‘Central Reserve’.

The Hawker Hunter was another

suitably flexible and reliable gem.

Misread reformer
To say that Duncan Sandys made
himself unpopular through his 1957
White Paper is something of an
understatement. However, much of

the opprobrium heaped upon him

was deposited by people who failed

to fully appreciate his plan.

Sandys had been tasked by

Macmillan with redirecting scarce

funds from military to civil projects.

He didn’t kill manned aviation;

he killed big government military

funding.

He got some things wrong – the

Bloodhound 1 surface-to-air missile

didn’t really work, but Sandys put

a good spin on it. Forty years ago,

I interviewed ACM Sir Harry

Broadhurst who was Commander-

in-Chief Bomber Command in

1957. ‘Broady’ was quite clear that
      his opposite number in Fighter
      Command, ACM Sir Thomas Pike,
      was fully supportive of the logic
      underpinning the White Paper, as
      was the Air Force Board.
      It was only subsequently, when the

recriminations were flying around,

that the RAF hierarchy quietly

forgot that they had backed the

White Paper and Sandys was left to

‘carry the can’.

Aubrey Jones foresaw that many

of the industry’s pet projects,

notably TSR.2, would eventually

be cancelled. Jones lobbied for his

waning ministry to be converted

into a Ministry of Technology – an

idea the Labour party realised six

years later – but Sandys pushed

back.

After the Conservative landslide

victory in 1959, Macmillan

abolished the Ministry of Supply

and made Sandys Minister of

Aviation. But the problem of rising

project costs and managing complex

defence programmes would not go

away, and by the early 1960s the UK

government faced a succession of

procurement crises.

Much of the Sandys White Paper

was outdated by 1964, with the

McDonnell Douglas Phantom

proving to be the optimum manned

fast jet of my generation. Yet this

formidable machine, which joined

the RAF and Royal Navy in 1968,

bore a very close resemblance

in performance and payload to

the Hawker P.1121 – which was

cancelled by Sandys in 1957.

Manned fast jets were still very

much on the agenda.

Looking back, Sandys was aiming

to reform defence procurement by

creating a system that would deliver

effective weapons on time and close

to the original estimated costs. That

is still a pipe dream today.

“Sandys had been tasked by Macmillan with redirecting scarce

funds from military to civil projects. He didn’t kill manned aviation;

he killed big government military funding”