England and the Aeroplane

This may be of interest:

https://hushkit.net/2017/09/28/england-the-aeroplane-an-interview-with-historian-david-edgerton/

That's irritating, there's just enough I agree with that I can't dismiss it out of hand, but there's so much where I would disagree. The number of ultra-rightists in 30s aerospace circles is accurate, but it has to be seen in a context of being true everywhere, think Lindbergh, rather than exceptional. And the shift from worldwide empire to the present is very much a naval rather than an aerospace phenomenon, to do with the changing balance of shipping and the loss of first the informal empire, the trade partners who looked on us to police the seas while carrying their trade, and then the formal empire. Much of that would have happened come what may, the independence movements were a juggernaut gathering speed, but the World Wars were hugely damaging. And the argument we've become more militaristic is incredibly selective with its facts. Gulf War 1 and Afghanistan weren't individual decisions, but collective alliance ones in response to external attacks, Libya was again a collective one, though without anyone being invaded. There's more of a case to be made with Gulf War II, but even that was largely driven by the fact the U.S. was going in anyway and there was huge pressure to back our primary ally. And of course the truth is the UK has been consistently involved in national peace enforcement missions since the end of WWII, and the withdrawal east of Suez didn't stop that, we just got better at doing it with fewer troops, c.f. Sierra Leone.

His book is worth reading but personally I feel he overrates the influence of those with far-right views, even those who appeared well placed to do so. As DWG says much would have remained the same either with or without them.

My hackles, amd suspicions of authorial accuracy, rise when someone uses "England" when they mean "Britain" or "The United Kingdom".

Indeed, my immediate presumption is US author when I see 'England' used like that. Bit like using 'California and the Airplane' for a U.S. history.

DWG said:

Indeed, my immediate presumption is US author when I see 'England' used like that. Bit like using 'California and the Airplane' for a U.S. history.

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I'm going to steal this idea for a future book if I ever decide to write one.

I viewed it in the same way as Starviking but Edgerton makes it quite clear in his introduction why he called it England and the Aeroplane.

Chris

The first edition is available free here:

https://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/historyofscience/public/files/edgerton_england_and_the_aeroplane.pdf

The explanation of 'England' is on p.xviii of the preface.

An overview of the 2nd ed here:

https://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/historyofscience/Public/files/edgerton_england_aeroplane_revisited.pdf

I quite like Edgerton's work, when I first read his The Warfare State I was quite struck at how it chimed with my own thoughts (that and I tend to side with mythbusters!).
England and the Aeroplane was his earliest work and informed his later work. The Warfare State builds on the first book but takes a wider view of 20th century defence and industrial policy, including the arguments around interpretations regarding Britain's miltarism and the government involvement in defence industries made by the right and left wing of historians and people who took part in the events covered. His latest book is Britain's War Machine, a revisonist look at Britain's war economy and the preperations for war and the rearmament policy. He has also written various academic articles on the aviation industry. I would say that all his work is characterised by his focus on anti-declinist history, anti-left interpretations of a 'weak' peaceful Britain and strong government support for defence and technology.

Generally from his books I would say he characterises the British as actually being quite militaristic. I don't think he's saying we're becoming more militaristic but that we have always been militaristic but are more accepting of it now. Think of the changes in the last ten years; we now have Armed Forces Day, serving military personnel are often seen at sports events in uniform, major sporting events often have military guards of honour when the Cup is brought onto the pitch etc. The armed forces are a much more visible part of British life (excluding Northern Ireland for obvious reasons) since 2003 than they have been since 1945 or even the height of the Cold War. It's perhaps no accident one of our only major export manufacturing industries remaining is armaments.

Edgerton wasn't a popular historian in academic circles during the 1990s and 2000s for rocking the boat, revisionist historians are often viewed with skepticism. I don't buy all his arguments, but much of what he says makes sense. In any case he makes far better conclusions than James Hamilton-Paterson's Empire of the Skies which is the fawning, mythological kind of crap that Edgerton was trying to counter. I suspect given the multiple editions and format of the later book that far more people have read it than England and the Aeroplane. Edgerton is an academic and his books are published mainly as academic books, hence the lack of wider readership and distribution of his ideas. Note in the interview that he declines to get into technical details of TSR.2, V.1000 etc., he takes the correct view that you need to understand the technical side, as an academic his strongpoint is political and economic history. Aircraft aficionados can get bogged down in numbers but overlook the political and economic historical aspects. There are few who can balance both.

Well, I try (very trying, me.)
He is in the camp warning against the military-industrial-intel complex, Defence as welfare for capital. A thrust in the 1st book was of excess Right presence in 1930s' Aero (T.O.M Sopwith, SoS/Air Londonderry).

There is much of this in academia: teach that RAFBC veterans are war criminals, Nagasaki was a crime against humanity...and gain tenure.

What sane, balanced common-sensicals like us should do...is to be open to alternative views; explore them, check, tolerate, ignore, oppose...as we see fit. None of us is always correct (well...oh, all right).
Hitler built the splendid autobahn network as Bolshie-repelling make-work, like FDR's Dam...
Musso made the trains run on time in a country others found/find to be inherently undisciplined...
the better to invade people.

British Patriots (inc. Duke of Windsor) sympathised with disciplined Movements in Central Europe (inc. Hungary, Finland, Poland) to counter foul baboonery of Bolshevism. PM Baldwin 29/7/36: “If there is any fighting in Europe to be done I should like to see the Bolshies (and) Nazis doing it” H.M-Hyde,Br.Air Policy Between the Wars,Hein,76,P389.

CJGibson said:

I viewed it in the same way as Starviking but Edgerton makes it quite clear in his introduction why he called it England and the Aeroplane.

Chris

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I thought that might be his reasoning. Looking forward to Iron Ships: Ulster, Alba, and t'North

Starviking

Tykes and t'Aeroplane - Aviation in Yorkshire
Wor airyplanes, Pet - Aviation in Tyneside
You'll have had your Aircraft - Aviation in Edinburgh
Yer man and the Aircraft - Aviation in Ulster

Errr...that's enough.

Chris

That's right canny, like.

That's class! ;D

I dislike Edgerton's work. I find it shallow and at times even vapid. He has a habit of simply dismissing the work of other writers who have often done considerably deeper research than he has. That he is now banging on about the influence of Nazi sympathisers in the UK aviation industry is indicative of an academic whose work is all to often lead not by his research but by his own ideology.

To his credit, he often reaches the correct conclusion just in spite of his research rather than because of it.

Interesting that he points out Whittle and Wallis as ending up on the right-wing fringe, both men also ended up on the fringe of the aeronautical world as well. Famous but not exactly feted by those in the Ministries or the companies they worked for (at least in Wallis' case, Whittle of course was squeezed out). That would tend to undermine his argument that there is any link between politics and their careers. It was the success or failure of how they worked the levers of power that affected their careers rather than their ideologies.

Of course you could argue that aircraft and aviation have ideological roots with the right as far back as the Italian Futurists before the Great War. Speed and modernity went hand in hand. You'll be surprised how far totalitarian ideologies penetrated even seemingly more vapid stylistic styles like the American Streamlining of the 1930s. Modernist architecture has the same themes. Its fascinating stuff but in no sense can you call all these people Nazi sympathesiers. That's a rather big leap of sloppy thinking and I suspect is more of a 'journalistic' slant he put on for the interview.

'The Conservative party at work' is how he puts it. By right wing he is not saying the aircraft industry is full of Nazi sympathisers, although in the 1930s there were some like that in the UK, a few of whom liked planes and linked the two vocally. Similarly on the left lots fawned over Stalin. An age of extremes and all that.

Edgerton's book is a response to Corelli Barnett's 'The Audit of War', which forcefully said that the UK, including the aircraft industry, was brought by an arts educated elite. They dropped the baton passed by Britain's 18th century greatness -Victorian values were the problem, leading to welfare and softness and general muddle-headedness, along with an ignorance of industry. This was the idea of 'declinism'.

Edgerton is arguing there was no decline, and that the aircraft industry, which Barnett took a hard look at, was really run by fairly competent people, many from public schools, who had engineering educations and experience and made fair decisions. That they lived in a world that they did not control fully, and therefore had to deal with e.g. better American planes (discuss!) is hardly cause for blame. He also says that 'Project Cancelled' is anti-history; 'if only we'd had the TSR.2 etc.' is wrong as it would not have changed much and it is mere speculation to say it would.

Whether you agree or not he is the only serious academic historian who looks at the main subject of this forum, so is worth a read.

The 'versus' aspect came out in the London Review of Books over 20 years ago:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v18/n05/david-edgerton/declinism

with follow up letters (you can get a free look at a few articles by registering).

The differences between them are clear in their approaches. Barnett marshals selected, detailed facts to make an argument. Edgerton uses ideas and debates in the historiography, along with some archival material, to counter these. Both are polemical to a greater or lesser extent, and both have a different view on the purpose of academic history (made clear in the above LRB review).

Barnett is interesting as sounding right wing but seeing Europe as the answer, which used to be the standard, anti-American, view of Conservatives like Julian Amery.

Studying aviation throws up such unusual things, and both Edgerton and Barnett, read critically, contribute a lot, albeit in different ways. While they were academic sparring partners I am told they get along fine. That is how it should be.

I should say that I studied for my MSc with David Edgerton and found him to be a very good supervisor, open to interesting ideas that might differ from his own, and absolutely fastidious in his requirement for sound archival work to get a good mark. He was the one who said I should look at the P.1154. The rest, as they say, is history (or will be when I finish what I am now writing).

JFC Fuller said:

I dislike Edgerton's work. I find it shallow and at times even vapid. He has a habit of simply dismissing the work of other writers who have often done considerably deeper research than he has. That he is now banging on about the influence of Nazi sympathisers in the UK aviation industry is indicative of an academic whose work is all to often lead not by his research but by his own ideology.

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I read EATA about twenty years ago and from what I remember that's about what JFC Fuller says here is what I came away with. In 'The Audit of War' Corelli Barnet analyses Britain's industrial performance in WWII in the light of Britain's postwar industrial performance. He devotes two chapters to denigrating the aircraft industry in which he ties himself in statistical knots and produces an incorrect conclusion from misunderstood data. Your best off ignoring them, or at least reading some of the articles in the aviation press that (for my money) demolish his argument. 'A New Audit of War: The Productivity of Britain's Wartime Aircraft Industry Reconsidered' by Sebastian Richie is a good start. Barnet's analysis of the shipbuilding industry has also inspired rebuttal, notably by D.K. Brown and I.L. Buxton.

I do not understand why he doesn't devote much more time to analysis of the British tank industry which produced a succession of mediocre designs (or worse still designs that would have been satisfactory had their entry into service not been delayed by periods of years) and consistently got lost in half-baked projects. Both 'Rude Mechanicals' by A.J. Smithers and 'The Great Tank Scandal' by David Fletcher go into this subject in detail and Barnet could have made a point about British industry by talking about tanks instead of undermining it by talking about aircraft.

JFC Fuller said:

That he is now banging on about the influence of Nazi sympathisers in the UK aviation industry

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OTOH that shouldn't be dismissed, it goes all the way back to Noel Pemberton-Billing, MP (founder of what became Supermarine) running a newspaper called The Vigilante during WWI, alleging that there were German Jews lurking on every streetcorner, ready to lure the manhood of the Empire into homosexuality (Dr Strangelove's roots go back further than we imagined). Then we have the Master of Sempill, so in love with authoritarian government that he was a willing spy for the Japanese long before he was a Nazi apologist (known about from quite early, but suppressed because his father was ADC to the King, which meant he was still passing intelligence in 1940). Then we have A V Roe as a member of the British Union of Fascists and supporter of Mosely, and Admiral Murray Sueter, MP in the Anglo-German Fellowship, plus John Moore-Brabazon, MP trying to keep Britain out of the war in conjunction with Oswald Mosely.

Definitely a case to be answered.

Barnett versus Edgerton was indeed a typical heated academic argument. Declinism is still a hot topic for discussion and most undergraduate history students will discuss it during their seminars.
As Harrier says, Edgerton is one of the few academics who works within the aeronautical theme and understands the industry and the politics. My own MSc supervisor who was active in defence policy and aviation history, was broadly supportive of Edgerton.

Edgerton raises an interesting point in his chapter Whatever Happened to the British Warfare State? The Ministry of Supply, 1945-51 in Labour Governments and Private Industry: The Experience of 1945-1951, eds. H. Mercer, N. Rollings & J.D. Tomlinson, Edinbrugh University Press, 1992, when he points out that most historians have never made a detailed study of the Ministry of Supply despite the fact that it was the largest wartime and post-war ministry with responsibility for every major defence and nuclear programme and production.

Another interesting read on this topic, in particular the British government's pre-occupation with securing exports and beating American commerical dominance is, The Surly Bonds: American Cold War Constraints on British Aviation by Jeffrey A. Engel.


However, I don't think we can totally discount some degree of 'decline' in the industry that may have set in during the war. For example, if we look at all the famous and successful wartime types you'll find most of them are pre-war designs. There were relatively few designs on the drawing board or produced from 1940 onwards that were actually successful or entered service. The A.W. Albemarle, Bristol Buckingham, Hawker Tornado, Vickers Warwick, Vickers Windsor, Blackburn Firebrand, Shorts Sturgeon immediately come to mind. Some of that was due to engine deficiencies or production decisions, but its striking how much of the development work in the mid-war period actually produced very little of note in terms of serviceable types (Brigand, Sea Fury, Tempest, Lincoln were all successful but can all trace direct design linage to earlier types). The jet field is perhaps better the gambles made paid off in most cases but the Attacker was a dud, the AW.52 flawed and the Comet in hindsight was also flawed but it was ambitious, the type of gamble the industry needed to make, the M.52 too was a giant leap to be thinking about mid-war. In the commercial field most of the larger Brabazon types were completely misguided and the bomber conversions and relatively basic types like the Viking could only build a short-term basis for stability but not export growth.

Hood said:

....... For example, if we look at all the famous and successful wartime types you'll find most of them are pre-war designs. There were relatively few designs on the drawing board or produced from 1940 onwards that were actually successful or entered service.......

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A large degree of that was a set of deliberate decisions by the MAP in the early years of the war, right or wrong, to concentrate effort on existing types and construction facilities. That in terms of the war effort it worked is pretty clear, but its legacy for the post-war world was not good.
The less said about the Brabazon Committee and its ultimate recommendations the better.

The closer one looks at some of the types abandoned in 1940 the more logical their abandonment looks; the really obvious one is B.1/39.

Barnett's basic view is that British government and industry was excessively dominated by what were essentially business amateurs, he evidences this bluntly by listing the educational background of most of the participants he discusses. I tend to agree with him for two reasons, I see it myself today in my own career and UK managers are consistently found wanting compared to their international equivalents. It is worth noting the lack of business school culture in the UK compared with the US.

JFC Fuller said:

UK managers are consistently found wanting compared to their international equivalents.

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I actually found rather the reverse (and my subsidiary ended up run from the States).

Hood said:

However, I don't think we can totally discount some degree of 'decline' in the industry that may have set in during the war. For example, if we look at all the famous and successful wartime types you'll find most of them are pre-war designs. There were relatively few designs on the drawing board or produced from 1940 onwards that were actually successful or entered service. The A.W. Albemarle, Bristol Buckingham, Hawker Tornado, Vickers Warwick, Vickers Windsor, Blackburn Firebrand, Shorts Sturgeon immediately come to mind. Some of that was due to engine deficiencies or production decisions, but its striking how much of the development work in the mid-war period actually produced very little of note in terms of serviceable types (Brigand, Sea Fury, Tempest, Lincoln were all successful but can all trace direct design linage to earlier types). The jet field is perhaps better the gambles made paid off in most cases but the Attacker was a dud, the AW.52 flawed and the Comet in hindsight was also flawed but it was ambitious, the type of gamble the industry needed to make, the M.52 too was a giant leap to be thinking about mid-war. In the commercial field most of the larger Brabazon types were completely misguided and the bomber conversions and relatively basic types like the Viking could only build a short-term basis for stability but not export growth.

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That's true for all the aircraft industries. Very few German or American types that were started during the war were ever bought into service.

Hood said:

There were relatively few designs on the drawing board or produced from 1940 onwards that were actually successful or entered service. The A.W. Albemarle, Bristol Buckingham, Hawker Tornado, Vickers Warwick, Vickers Windsor, Blackburn Firebrand, Shorts Sturgeon immediately come to mind. Some of that was due to engine deficiencies or production decisions, but its striking how much of the development work in the mid-war period actually produced very little of note in terms of serviceable types (Brigand, Sea Fury, Tempest, Lincoln were all successful but can all trace direct design linage to earlier types).

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Being a derivative of earlier designs doesn't make an aircraft any less of a success. WRT your first list, Albemarle was deliberately hamstrung to create an emergency design using non-strategic materials we then didn't need to utilize. Buckingham was a requirements creep disaster, it might have worked well as Beaumont, certainly better than Blenheim V (similarly the H.7/42 Buccaneer rather than Brigand, and Beaufighter III/IV is forever tantalizing). Tornado would have been decent, possibly better than Typhoon, but for Vulture, which probably was fixable but for the Merlin monoculture mania at MAP. Vickers, fair point, they'd designed themselves into a geodetic hole courtesy of Wallis. Even a simple stretch of Wellington proved difficult, though Warwick probably was decent enough to serve beyond what it did. Let's gloss over Windsor. Firebrand probably should have been left as the F.I, even if that meant waiting for a decent Sabre. While Sturgeon was a perfectly capable aircraft, but whose only suitable operating bases, the Audacious and Malta class carriers, were cancelled

I don't for a minute criticise the decision to standardise on the types then in production and how well those basic designs were exploited and upgraded far beyond their original intention. That of course used a fair slice of the R&D resources available to industry. That was the correct decision.
My comment was mainly musings that even in wartime, larger amounts of R&D funding and new specifications accounting for war-experience are not always beneficial when you have so much tied up in productive effort and trying to keep your standardised types relevant and upgraded. It also shows how long the development cycle was even back in those 'glory days', almost as long as the war. I suspect, as Nick Sumner points out, that the same was true in all war industries. But it also shows that the designers and engineers even with ample motivation of national defence and increased resources and harnessing of technical manpower did not necessarily improve their outputs, engines as well as airframes.

Of course looking at the post-war world, the Brabazon Committee was fore-sighted in terms of what had passed for commercial planning before the war in Britain, but that isn't saying much since technically and economically Britain was far behind in airliners. The 'C' Class flying boats were an exception but the Maia/Mercury combo and early in-flight refueling were technical tinkering rather than actually trying to carve out a reliable and economic airliner. They had a lot of ground to make up post-1945 and we should perhaps be surprised how much progress was made rather than lamenting what sales were achieved.

DWG/#20: Brabazon. (Pls indulge this declared prejudice. I have met his son; I have not read the Pugh source of the Wiki anti-Germany-war comment.)

The Baldwin quote in my #9 was to a Defence Deputation around WSC, which included M-B. They were pressing for more Defence spend NOW! From 4/9/39 M-B was in All Party Parliamentary Action Group, urging Bombing of Germany NOW! Lt.Col., MC, RAero Club Aviator Certificate No.1. I have a note of him as WSC's "friend", and he held Office under him, 10/40-2/42, where maybe truly Guilty Men did not..

None of that, granted, excludes hope/wish not to do mud/gas/trenches again. I merely, gently, invite exclusion of M-B from any Guilty Men list. Stalin to his Congress days before he invaded Poland restated the Party position that (UK/France) had tried to point Germany East to ethnically cleanse Mother Russia up to the Volga. You can interprete what UK Ministers did, 1933-39, as exactly that. And sigh...what if...

Oh, I don't particularly see Brabazon as a quasi-fascist, more an early version of the Tory backwoodsman (though God knows that's no endorsement) but his forced resignation, followed by rapid elevation to the Lords, after hoping Germany and Russia destroy themselves, while a minister of the crown, and with Russia our declared ally, does show a certain lack of balance. No doubt many more thought the same, but that and associating with Moseley show a distinct lack of wisdom.

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.

Interesting assessment alertken. As in all major industries dependant on government the PoS issue runs from top to bottom; political masters, civil/military leaders, civil services types, industry managers, investment managers, designers and work force. Each can be, and in many cases were, supportive and imaginative, but for others some point in the chain was dull, dogmatic, grasping or down-right bone idle. The aviation industry does not stand out at any period as either particularly good or bad in comparison to others.

Watching from the sidelines the current Boeing/Bombardier spat I'm reminded that if you want to build an industry government have to support it unless you have a massive competitive advantage. For UK aero (and cars and ships and steel etc) Govt became lender of first last and only resort. British Imperialism: 1688-2015 by P.J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins shows that one of the biggest problems for UK industry was that commercial finance went elsewhere. The title of the book is dishonest by the way, its about UK economy not imperialism but fascinating (if dense) read.

Airbus, built on subsidies. Soviet aero, successful because of subsidy and protection; Japanese car manufacture, successful because of subsidy and protection; Korean shipbuilding, same deal. US industry was successful along multiple lines of endeavor because 1935-75 all the money in the world went to America so high tech prospered. If you want to see UK aero prosper more fully 1945 - present all you need is shed loads of cash, cash that keeps coming after failures, because the cash doesn't buy the goods, it buys the teams that make them.