So: Schn,#22, Brab. Cttee, less said.... 2 lines of thought in this thread: is UK manufacturing decline real; are Ministers culpable for loss of UK's Empire of the Air? Brabazon Committee is pertinent to both.
"Decline" requires today's stature to be inferior to what could/should have been. UK Aero, 1944 employed >1million, all at taxpayers' expense. Today, is it 300,000, some, not all, at taxpayers' expense. Even that professional exploiter of employment subsidy, RR, now raises its new product Launch Aid largely at commercial risk (some modest Govt. last recourse). Measured as return on investment, UK Aero has never been as impressive as today. It does however not roll out complete indigenous aeroplanes, missiles, engines, anything really. It takes the role of partner in teams, sometimes Prime. Like Automotive does. Times change. Few Mercs are made in Stuttgart. Verdict: decline: not proven.
Ministers killed the industry. What leadership? Showing Hendon last week to folk unfamiliar with Aero, I found myself saying PoS just as often as I said "supreme!" (Belvedere, Beaufort, Battle; cf. Spitfire, Canberra, Hunter). What should Ministers have done, which they did not? Which was a lot:
11/42. Cripps, failing to oust WSC, is shunted into MAP explicitly to deliver belated Heavies on which Grand Strategy rests. He had been vocal critic of The Strategic Bombing Campaign's priority, so accepts on basis that he is allowed to start conversion of military Aero to civil when War Effort so permits. WSC allows him to form a Committee to explore the market, imposes as Chairman the Minister that Cripps got sacked, 2/42. Cripps ensures his constituent, otherwise idle, gets the prestige Transatlantic job, then sets about sorting out the industry, which had outrun its managerial span (why were we still building Whitley, Wellington, Hurricane?...cos their successors were PoS). He ejects Shorts from Stirling, inserts AWA to complete production; imposes Controllers on Fairey, DH, BPA...gains industry's undivided attention. By late 1943, improvement is evident. So he turns to civil conversion.
It was not the fault of Ministers that UK Aero did not understand pressurisation (Ambassador, Tudor, Comet), or operating economics (Marathon, Hermes, more). Continuing with Cripps at Trade, then Treasury, multiple civil programmes were funded, wholly, by Ministers: only Viscount and Dove proved supreme. Not the fault of Brabazon or of Ministers, who continued to invest, when, winter 1947, voters were cold and hungry, their spuds and bread now on the ration, unlike through the War. Aero: privilege, scorned. Culpable?...moaners, look in the mirror.