(There is a Bristol Brabazon thread on WW.2 forum. "Our" Schneiderman has articles in current Aeroplane Monthly surveying the actual Types. So, tangent to original Q) . No Brabazon Committee?
What if... Churchill had banished the Pretender for his job, sending him not to Aircraft Production but some other backwater.
Actual: was that R.S.Cripps tried to oust Churchill, but lost to elAlamein. He could not decline MAP, 11/42, because we needed Heavies and he accepted PM's flattery that he was the man for the job. But he was a noisy Christian Socialist, had been critical of area bombing, and let us know he had a conscience. So he needed penance, was Bristol E. MP. He accepted CAS Portal's dumping of 100ton Bombers to accelerate Halifax and Lancaster NOW! although the Bristol A/c scheme was of interest. Sir R.Fedden (ex-Bristol, Centaurus designer) was MAP Special Technical Adviser, who told him the 100t wing could lift people. So RSC told PM: "I'll deliver Heavies, you let me put such spare resources as I can find into Civil A/c." Deal, said PM, then imposed on him the ex-Minister, ousted by Unions+Cripps 22/2/42 for suggesting "it suited us" that Germany had turned East. So: the Brabazon Committee. See how it is the players that make the play.
What If...PM had put anybody else into MAP, 22/11/42? AN.Other might have produced the Heavies, but would not have given a moment's thought that day to Civil Aircraft. So no 2/43 Brabazon Report. What then?
Ponder these Options: * more C-54s and some C-69s come our way, free. In 1946 we pay to keep them.
* Bristol try harder, post-Fedden, to make Theseus work for Windsor, do so, and fix it by say 1945: Bristol Aeroplane start scheming it into (what emerged as) Britannia and interest BOAC/BLAAL in it, but:
* V-A make Windsor work, too, so pitch Civil variant with Theseus or RR Clyde.
All firms think about (what Brabazon called) Empire Type, because we can count on good sales volume to our buddies. No-one bothers with mail Express (no volume) or Continental (which exists as DC-3).