zen #31 - Bristol won (T.188) for reasons even now I'm not that clear on. PMN1, #35 - Intrigue and Infamy....
1953. RAE's perception for far/fast was stainless steel in Meteor-esque layout. In those days the job of industry was to perform to the MoS-piper's bidding. A proof-of-concept vehicle must precede award of a V-Bomber replacement, for which, logically, Avro/HP/Vickers would be preferred candidates. Previous such exercises had been placed with idle design teams (e.g: General did the crescent wing Attacker-for-Victor; BPA had done delta BP.111/120; later, Hunting did the jet flap H.126), knowing no assembly-line would come their way, but hoping for some structural sub-contracts. It would be a waste, fraught with conflict, to put Experiments in proper teams. A one-off called for just as much design effort as a job intended to be built en masse: MoS used them to suckle spare resources, just-in-case.
In 1953/54 Bristol was a design orphan, thus available. Zen noted EE and Saro, but both were well-loaded - Canberra enhancements, P1; sketchy IRBM work and the mixed-powerplant interceptor (to be S.R.53). The essence of (to be T.188) was not airframe scheming, ably assisted by RAE day trips down the A4, but was structure fabrication. All those Daniel Doncasters would pace that. HSAL's Avro was emerging as preferred source for (to be) Avro 730, so HSAL's AWA (busy on other HSAL jobs - ASM/Hunters, NF Meteors, Sea Hawk, Javelin) was imposed onto Bristol, to do the wing. RAE Bedford would do the flying; Filton's job would be assembly, plus not a lot.
By April,1957 Avro 730 and other applications for DH Gyron Jr. had been chopped. Logically T.188 should also have expired, but RAE/MoS tucked it away in a vague "Aircraft Research" budget line, beneath Ministers' radar. VG Swallows, Jet Flap, perforated aerofoils, weird SST shapes also lurked there. All drifted, because no-one really cared. Ministers/Treasury might first have become aware of some of them, pirouetting in front of hospitality tents at SBAC Shows.