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Government, Companies, and National Defense: British Aeronautical Experience, 1918–1945 as the Basis for a Broad Hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Robin Higham
Robin Higham
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History, Kansas State University
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Abstract

Through examination of the procedural relations of British aircraft companies and the State, Professor Higham suggests broader hypotheses regarding the process of government-business interaction.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1965 , pp. 323 - 347
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1965

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References

1 The following article should not be construed as definitive. It has been written to stimulate discussion, rebuttals, and further research. It is hoped that it will do so. The author would be delighted to have readers' comments before he finishes his current study, Production and Politics: The British Aircraft Industry. For another view, see Dupre, J. Stefan and Gustafson, W. Eric, “Contracting for Defense: Private Firms and the Public Interest,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. LXXVII (June, 1962), pp. 161–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Materials for this type of study exist in published company reports and histories, books giving the design, prototype, and production dates of aircraft as well as the number produced, in periodicals, especially the technical ones, in government reports, and in special investigations by legislatures. Charts of the pounds per horsepower of engines, the time to climb to 20,000 feet, of weights and costs, of numbers produced, etc., can reveal pertinent conclusions. A most useful chart is one showing the activities of the company in terms of aircraft in design, prototype, and production scaled in years and in terms of the average monthly number of aircraft produced. As further notes indicate, the British official histories contain a vast amount of information in volumes historians, at least, would overlook because of their titles. On this topic see my article, “A Government at War,” STAND-TO (Canberra, Australia), vol. VIII, (March–April, 1963), pp. 11–15, 32 and (May–June, 1963), reprinted in Library Quarterly, vol. XXXIV (July, 1964), pp. 240–48.

A bibliography for the study of the aircraft industry is given in my Armed Forces in Peacetime: Britain, 1918–1939 (London, 1963), pp. 201–207 and 313–15.

This essay is based upon my research for Britain's Imperial Air Routes, 1918–1939: The Story of Britain's Overseas Airlines (London, 1960), The British Rigid Airship, 1908–1931: A Study in Weapons Policy (London, 1961), Armed Forces in Peacetime: Britain, 1918–1940 (London, 1963), and an unpublished history of the British Overseas Airways Corporation, 1939–1963. For a resume of British government policy toward the airlines see my “The British Government and Overseas Airlines, 1918–1939: A Failure of Laissez-faire,” Journal of Air Law and Commerce, vol. XXVI (Winter, 1959), pp. 1–12.

2 See Hurstfield, J., The Control of Raw Materials (HMSO, 1953)Google Scholar, and Ashworth, W., Contracts and Finance (HMSO, 1953).Google Scholar Also Aerospace, vol. I (June, 1963), pp. 2–11.

3 151 H. C. Deb. 5s., 1462, March 9, 1922.

4 See the annual Report on the Progress of Civil Aviation (H.M.S.O., 1938). This series, begun with Cmd. 800 in 1919, continued to 1947–1948. The 1939–1945 volume was never published, but a microfilm exists at Baker Library, Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration.

5 Higham, Armed Forces in Peacetime, p. 129.

6 Rules on the citation of British government documents vary by departments. The Air Ministry allows no citation of sources other than an introductory note covering the whole manuscript. These figures were obtained during my 1959 visit to England.

7 See Jones, Leslie, Shipbuilding in Britain, Mostly Between the Two World Wars (Cardiff, 1957), pp. 58–60Google Scholar; also Hogg, O. F. G., The Royal Arsenal (London, 1963).Google Scholar

8 Ashworth, William, Contracts and Finance (H.M.S.O., 1953), p. 109Google Scholar, confirms the saying of a former chairman of Vickers that the dockyards were too valuable a yardstick for private enterprise ever to allow them to die. A certain class of submarine actually cost £170,000. A company was paid £320,000 for one in 1943, while the dockyard cost was even higher and was discreetly omitted by the official author.

9 When in March, 1943 the government took over Short Brothers under Defence (General) Regulation No. 78, the new directors refused to take fixed-price contracts (Ashworth, Contracts and Finance, pp. 122, 222).

10 Higham, Armed Forces in Peacetime, p. 199.

11 Aeroplane and Astronautics, December 9, 1960, p. 756.

12 126 H.C. Deb. 5s, 1622, March 11, 1920.

13 Aeroplane and Astronautics, January 27, 1961, p 83, contains, for instance, a pointed biography of Denis W. G. L. Haviland, Deputy Secretary (C) at the Ministry of Aviation. Though not brought up in aviation, he advises the Minister on technical contracts.

14 See in particular, Higham, Britain's Imperial Air Routes, chapter XIII and pp. 318–319.

15 Some brief indications as to the way things went may be gathered from the following statistics: Despite Britain's own enormous aircraft production, from 1938 to 1945–1946 the United States supplied 5,509 aircraft to the Fleet Air Arm and 18,556 to the RAF, Though the annual rate of production in 1918 was over 26,000 aircraft, by 1921 it had dropped to almost nothing and production was being spread over several years. Thus the Vickers Vernon of 1921 was delivered at the rate of one per month. In the days before rearmament in 1934 the peak monthly output of any firm does not appear to have passed eight, while figures so far compiled would indicate that 3½ aircraft monthly was a more normal number. When it is recalled that during the war the rate of production rose so much that the total monthly output of aircraft, which in January, 1939 was 445, had risen by the middle of the conflict to that number for Spitfires alone, the enormous change wrought in the industry may be visualized. Roskill, Captain S. W. in The War at Sea, vol. I (H.M.S.O., 1954), p. 31Google Scholar, says that in the four years 1929 to 1932 inclusive only 18 aircraft were added to the Fleet Air Arm. In 1939 naval air had only 232 first-line aircraft and 191 trainers. The average length of time in production, excluding the design and prototype stages, was about three years in peacetime. The exceptions were usually trainers, though the Blackburn Dart of 1923 lasted 8 years (though only 70 aircraft were delivered), and aircraft developed just before World War II. The Short Sunderland was in production for 9½ years. A factor which must also be taken into consideration is development time. In a few cases this was as short as six months, but it might also be as long as the ten years for the Westland Wyvern which was designed to meet a 1943–1944 specification, but did not enter service until 1953.

16 Scott, J. D. and Hughes, R., The Administration of War Production (H.M.S.O., 1955), pp. 18–18Google Scholar, and Hornby, W., Factories and Plant (H.M.S.O., 1958), pp. 204–269.Google Scholar

17 Aeroplane, March 18, 1960, p 332. See also this publication's annual British Aircraft Industry number published for the Farnborough Show in September; in 1960 in the September 2 issue.

18 The new Armstrong Whitworth Argosy (there was an older one in 1926–1929) involved the firm in an initial outlay of £5,000,000 before government support was forth coming. (Aeroplane and Astronautics, September 2, 1960, p 292).

19 There are about 30 main firms in the British aircraft industry now grouped into a more compact structure and some 530 firms are associated as suppliers or subcontractors. For the new structure of the industry, see Aeroplane and Astronautics, February 26, 1960, pp 244–46.

20 Aeroplane and Astronautics, January 27, 1961, p 83.

21 According to its advertisement in Aeroplane (January 27, 1961), the members of the British Aircraft Corporation had between 1945 and 1961 built: 500 four-engined turbo-prop airliners; 900 twin-and four-jet bombers; 1,700 jet fighters; and 1,100 trainers. These had been sold to 50 airlines and the armed forces of 28 nations. The bulk of these aircraft have been for export to an air-conscious world market in contrast to the pre-1940 situation. But, nevertheless, the government or its Corporations still play a vital role in financing new developments even for the two new giants, the British Aircraft Corporation and Hawker Siddeley Aviation Ltd.

22 Details of the ownership of British airliners will be found in Appendix II of Higham, Britain's Imperial Air Routes. On De Havilland see Jackson, A. J., De Havilland Aircraft, 1915–1961 (London, 1962)Google Scholar, and for the development of airliners, Brooks, Peter W., The Modern Airliner (London, 1961)Google Scholar, and Jackson, A. J., British Civil Aircraft (2 vols., London, 1959–1960).Google Scholar

23 This subject is dealt with in detail in my history of the British Overseas Airways Corporation, whose publication has been postponed by mutual agreement until the outcome of Sir Giles Guthrie, the new Chairman's, reforms becomes apparent.

The inability of the Independent assigned the trans-Atlantic Freight service simply drove the business into foreign hands and cost Bristols an order for five freighters from BOAC. In 1964 both BOAC and BEA raised once again the question of their being allowed to bid for trooping contracts, especially for “fill-up” loads on regular services. The business granted the Independents has been sufficient to siphon off the profits of the State Corporations.

24 Besides sources cited in notes 1 and 2 supra, see Sir Whittle's, FrankJet (London, 1953Google Scholar; in paperback, 1959). Equally interesting is General Walter Dornberger's V-2 (New York, 1954; in paperback, 1958).

25 See Hart, B. H. Liddell, A History of the World War (London, 1934), pp. 324–44Google Scholar, now amplified in his recent classic The Tanks: The History of the Royal Tank Regiment (London, 1960), and Fuller, J. F. C., Tanks in the Great War (London, 1920).Google Scholar

26 “Cost accountancy” is not strictly applicable as a term to either Britain or the United States. A long series of recent Parliamentary investigations into contracts granted by the Ministry of Supply and the Ministry of Aviation have emphasized that these ministries had no system of costing experimental projects until compelled to seek such in the late 1950's. The Pentagon apparently started costing individual programs during World War II, but the origins of the system are vague and but incompletely recalled today.

27 The late Lord Templewood, 1880–1959; Secretary of State for Air, 1922–1924, 1924–1929, 1940.

28 Churchill was Secretary of State for War and Air and then for the Colonies and Air, 1918–1922, and had been Minister of Munitions before that. Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister (Viscount Swinton) succeeded Lord Londonderry as Secretary of State for Air in 1935 and was largely concerned with rearming the Royal Air Force until replaced by Sir Kingsley Wood in 1938.

29 See Bishop, Edward, The Wooden Wonder (London, 1959).Google Scholar However, it is said that the credit for forcing the Mosquito on the RAF belongs not so much to Bishop's patron, Lord Beaverbrook, then Minister of Aircraft Production, as to Air Marshal Sir Wilfred Freeman who overcame the Service's objections to a wooden aircraft. Jackson, De Havilland Aircraft. See also: Sharp, C. Martin, DH-An Outline of De Havilland History (London, 1961)Google Scholar; SirHavilland, Geoffrey De, Sky Fever (London, 1961)Google Scholar; SirWebster, Charles and Frankland, Noble, The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany, 1939–1945 (4 vols., H.M.S.O., 1961).Google Scholar

30 The two largest companies outside the combinations, Handley Page and Rolls-Royce, may resist for some time as neither is at the moment in jeopardy.

31 For further reading see Sampson, Anthony, The Anatomy of Britain (London, 1962)Google Scholar; Lewis, Roy and Stewart, Rosemary, The Boss (London, 1958; in paperback, 1963)Google Scholar; Burch, A. H., Representative and Responsible Government (London, 1964)Google Scholar; and Chapman, Brian, British Government Observed (London, 1963).Google Scholar