ABSTRACT

By 1955, most observers agreed that something had gone wrong with the British aircraft industry. A string of disasters such as Comet crashes in 1954 had led to the growing recognition that the domestic industry was falling behind its American, French and Russian rivals. As pointed questions started to be asked, the government had to admit in a white paper to serious problems in the procurement of military aircraft. Several of Britain's latest military aircraft suffered from a number of serious problems affecting their performance.1 These reports dashed the bright hopes most observers had had for the industry's future a decade earlier at the end of the Second World War. At the time, most observers had been convinced that British aeronautical engineering led the world in jet engine technology. Over the next ten years, some of the pioneering efforts of British aircraft firms maintained this image of world leadership in aircraft technology. However, despite some remarkable successes in this period, the reputation of the industry had become decidedly tarnished by 1955.