Q1: good riddance? or RIP? Well...it's all to do with money. We built this industry on taxes because it sat in target range of Zeppelin, then Heinkel. So, out of habit, we continued to fund from taxes in 1943 when we tried to convert this resource to civil. So, everything the industry did was a partnership of Basic work in Establishments, money from (the many names of) Mintech, and Applied Engineering/innovation by rude mechanicals. Now, almost invariably, they failed at market. Yes they did, save Viscount, Dart, Hunter, Canberra, Spey....er, maybe some more, can't think, though. So, why? Despite Mintech, or because of it? Anything Rolls sold after 1971 was because of (Govt.) who bailed them out, till 5/87. Very little commercial risk investment featured in UK Aero...yet very little Specification-direction came from the suits in Whitehall. It was BEAC, BOAC and Sir Geo.Edwards who decided that Viscount Major should copy Electra, not Caravelle and that to beat 707 and DC-8 in 1957 it would be good to hang the engines on a massive lump of mariners' structure. .
Today: around JV Boardrooms: techno-decisions are made in the interests of the Project, risk-investment decisions are made as the art of the possible. Payback schedules and such. So: in that sense: Mintech hurt the industry, by its commercial ignorance. So, your opinion: if UK Aero had been obliged to put its own money where its mouth was...what would they have built? My A: most Boards would have folded their tents and sold the land.