Gloster Meteor

Snautzer01 said:

Because the contract was signed with Gloster?

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Makes sense there, but the internal duplication at Hawker-Siddeley, where two separate teams are developing two jet fighters for the RAF, where both E.1/44 and P.1035 prototypes first fly in 1947 just seems to me an inefficient use of the conglomerate's limited time, talent and treasure. Mikoyan-Gurevich threw everything they had to get the MiG-15, which also first flies in 1947 into service asap. I wonder if the best Hawker-Siddeley jet fighter could have entered early service if the Gloster and Hawker engineers had worked together toward a common aircraft. Perhaps we might have seen the Hawker P1052 - the swept wing Hawk enter service in time for Korea.

I'm reminded of a later example of apparently duplication within the greater company, where two wholly-owned subsidiaries of Hawker-Siddeley designed in parallel both the P.1121 and the Avro Arrow (first flown in 1958), with both programs being cancelled. Instead, had the two company divisions collaborated and combined economies of scale, we might have got past the Canadian and British finance and defence departments, and ended up with a Hawker-Siddeley competitor to the F4 Phantom - coincidentally, also first flown in 1958.

Considering how several of Israeli's founding fathers participated in insurrection and terrorism against British rule, the nation made quick use of British-supplied weaponry, including these smartly painted Meteors.



It goes to show that my enemy's enemy is my friend. And you have to love their Black Spitfire!

Admiral Beez said:

..Considering how several of Israeli's founding fathers participated in insurrection and liberation against British rule, the nation made quick use of British-supplied weaponry, including these smartly painted Meteors...

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Fixed it.

SaparotRob said:

Fixed it.

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Rubbish. Much of the existence of Israel today is thanks to Britain. The Brits seized the place from the Ottomans after WW1, set up the Mandate of Palestine under the League of Nations, not as a British colony, but with the expressed plan to hand over the country to the Jewish people as their homeland, as described in the 1917 Balfour Declaration. The reason that Jewish terrorists began killing and attacking British officials and soldiers in Palestine was in reaction to Britain trying to balance the tensions between Jewish and Arab populations, with the Jews wanting Britain gone asap so that unrestricted immigration of Jews from post-Holocaust Europe could begin. As for your mentioning of liberation, it is the British, fighting alongside Jews that liberated Palestine from the Ottomans for the Jewish people.

Was not one of the conditions of the Rothshields giving very much needed loans and acces to other money lenders, a bit of a state for Jews.?

Admiral Beez said:

Why did Hawker-Siddeley market the Meteor under the otherwise dying Gloster brand? Why not the Hawker Meteor? With the exception of the Javelin, the rest of the firm's jets (Hunter, Sea Hawk, Harrier) were branded as Hawkers.

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Because the name Hawker Siddeley was not formally used as a company name until 1963, before then, each subsidiary built aircraft under their own company names.

Admiral Beez said:

Rubbish. Much of the existence of Israel today is thanks to Britain. The Brits seized the place from the Ottomans after WW1, set up the Mandate of Palestine under the League of Nations, not as a British colony, but with the expressed plan to hand over the country to the Jewish people as their homeland, as described in the 1917 Balfour Declaration. The reason that Jewish terrorists began killing and attacking British officials and soldiers in Palestine was in reaction to Britain trying to balance the tensions between Jewish and Arab populations, with the Jews wanting Britain gone asap so that unrestricted immigration of Jews from post-Holocaust Europe could begin. As for your mentioning of liberation, it is the British, fighting alongside Jews that liberated Palestine from the Ottomans for the Jewish people.

The Jewish Spies Who Helped the British Defeat the Ottoman Empire in World War I

The achievements and sacrifice of a family of Palestinian Jews helped to secure both victory in war and Great Britain's endorsement of Zionism.

mosaicmagazine.com

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Heaven forbid if the people who were already living there for generations wanted to stay there…

A bit of political background to the circumstances within the British aerospace industry in the late 50s/early 60s. Remember that the formality of merging British aircraft companies came about following the 1957 Defence White Paper under the guise of building a Canberra replacement to General Operational Requirement 339. This was owing to the British government demanding a rationalisation of the industry. Britain had arguably too many aircraft companies bidding for a small number of contracts, which was going to get smaller in the future, so the government said, "Merge, or die..."

The winning submission to OR.339 was a joint Vickers/English Electric design and these two became the biggest players in the British Aircraft Corporation. And, no, the TSR.2 was not built to GOR.339, it was built to GOR.343. While companies like Avro, Bristol, Gloster, de Havilland and Hawker formed the Hawker Siddeley group, until this time it was not formally recognised as a company; each firm was trading under their own auspices. Often firms within the same group found themselves bidding against each other. Avro, Bristol and de Havilland bid for the contract to design a three-engined airliner for British European Airways that the DH.121 Trident, later renamed Hawker Siddeley Trident following the change of company status in 1963, won.

Bristol for one was not very happy about this at all, but BEA's Chairman, the former Air Chief Marshal William Sholto-Douglas was working with de Havilland in introducing the Comet 4 into BEA service at the time, so he favoured their working relationship. This led Bristol and Avro to merge their ideas to design a rival to de Havilland's DH.121, but they formally gave up once Sholto-Douglas told them to cut it out and deal with the fact that de Havilland won the contract. Making things more complicated, to build the DH.121, de Havilland created a separate company called Airco. The name died once Hawker Siddeley formally took over. It was, of course, a rehash of the name of the Aircraft Manufacturing Company, or Airco, set up by George Holt-Thomas in 1914 with Geoffrey de Havilland as Chief Designer. When de Havilland wanted to use the name to build the Trident, it was still a registered company name, so de Havilland had to apply to Companies House especially to use it.

Politics, politics, politics...

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