6 ms·

Such a wasted opportunity. Around the same time, the UK was throwing away its leadership in computing too. Weirdly, both ended up in Seattle.

by gaius 10y ago

douche 10y ago
It's hard to keep up when you've lost the better part of two generations in a row, and most of the stockpiled capital of a century of imperialism - especially when you also lose the empire that generated all that wealth.
- Aloha 10y ago
  I've often argued that the root cause for loss of empire, was the best and brightest of a generation was left on Flanders fields. The best and brightest of the ruling class at the time was simple used up as cannon fodder, its also the cause for the decline of the aristocracy too.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    And this was why postwar Germany lost its scientific and technical advantage and is now a ruined backwater - wait, no. Germany not only lost technicians and an aristocracy in WW1 and 2 but murdered those of its Jewish population that were not able to escape. Survivors defected to the US like Von Braun. The loss of empire was after WW2 not WW1, and partly due to the US insisting (Suez) and partly because it became morally and economically impossible to subdue (Mau Mau etc.). The postwar British disease was labour relations, which were handled far better in Germany with worker representatives at board level. (I might argue far more cynically that the aristocracy was by definition not a meritocracy, and that only its violent destruction by war enabled Europe to have a chance at becoming more egalitarian.)
    - dba7dba 10y ago
      I agree with your assessment, pjc50. All major European nations lost most of their privileged/gifted young men in WW1 and WW2, not just UK.
    - woodandsteel 10y ago
      >The postwar British disease was labour relations, which were handled far better in Germany with worker representatives at board level. Interesting, UK went socialist after WWII while Germany went social democratic. I wonder what made the difference. Perhaps part of the answer is that the aristocracy retained more power in the UK? I have read that socialism in the UK was supported by the aristocracy as a way to keep control of the economy, but I am not sure if that is correct. Also, Germany was under US occupation for a number of years, I would suppose that made a difference, since the US is quite anti-socialist.
      - pjc50 10y ago
        "Socialist" is almost a useless label these days, it's used to mean too many things that the US doesn't like. It's true that some of the aristocracy (e.g. Tony Benn) supported Labour and some very left-wing politics. But that was a small part of the whole. What is true is the Fabian Society proposing incrementalist socialism as an antidote to revolutionary socialism - a way for the aristocracy to keep their heads. The UK nationalised a lot of industries after the war but then failed to run them effectively. After a few decades of this the Thatcherite response was to just privatise everything and give up on trying any form of state management. This leaves us in the bizarre situation where Germany, France, the Netherlands etc have state-owned rail companies running UK railways recieving UK subsidy.
    - rodgerd 10y ago
      I recommend Len Deighton's well-researched _Blood, Sweat, and Folly_ for a view of the disasterous management of the war effort - that the same people would mis-manage the peace isn't surprising.
notahacker 10y ago
Classic case of first mover disadvantage. Their failures helped Boeing learn some tough lessons about metal stress, and Boeing got many aspects of the fuselage of their first jet liner so right they're still used on the latest generation of the 737 which will finish in the top two biggest selling aircraft this year. Of course, us Brits learned tough lessons of a different kind with the Concorde: no matter how brilliant the engineering is, you need a mass market to break even on an aerospace programme. It's not as if the UK's contribution to Airbus or other parts of the aviation supply chain today is insubstantial though.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Airbus is one of the companies that will be hit hard by brexit. Arguably the single market is what made Airbus possible to begin with.
  - josst 10y ago
    Airbus is based largely in France and Germany. BAE will likely suffer more as a contractor.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      http://www.airbus.com/company/worldwide-presence/airbus-in-uk/ http://www.airbus.com/company/worldwide-presence/airbus-in-u...
dboreham 10y ago
ARM is in Seattle?
reidacdc 10y ago
You might be interested in James Hamilton-Paterson's book, "Empire of the Clouds", which is about the glory days and subsequent decline of Britain's aviation industry. Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Clouds-Britains-Aircraft-Ruled/dp/0571247954 https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Clouds-Britains-Aircraft-Ruled... It's been a while since I read it, but one of the factors he talks about is echoed in the article, about the airplane being built "by engineers" -- it's an improvement on being built by marketers, of course, but it's only part of the right answer. Hamilton-Paterson's book talks about British aviation engineers' deafness to important feedback from pilots, and the additional role the British class system played. Engineers were mostly educated people from good schools, and pilots were mostly farm-boys who'd been recruited by a desperate nation during the war and then advanced professionally in their RAF service. When conflicts between them percolated up to managers, who were also educated men from good schools, the engineers tended to carry the day, whether or not they were right. The portion of the article where the pilots talked about the lack of force-feedback on the new hydraulic controls, leading to several over-rotation accidents on take-off, reminded me forcefully of this -- obviously I don't know about that issue specifically, but it's exactly the kind of thing that might have come up in flight testing where test-pilot concerns might have been ignored. The other piece of British aviation decline is government priorities -- aviation innovation is expensive and not profitable in the short term, so the UK decided to hedge their bets by becoming junior partners with Europe. British engineering and technology remains excellent, but it's not leading. Instead, the UK focused on financial services. The contrast with France is particularly striking. Unlike the US, France was similarly ravaged by war, but the French government basically decided that aviation was a national priority, and supported it accordingly. Today, they are senior partners of European aerospace, and even have a large independent jet manufacturer, Dassault.

Such a wasted opportunity. Around the same time, the UK was throwing away its leadership in computing too. Weirdly, both ended up in Seattle.

by gaius 10y ago

Such a wasted opportunity. Around the same time, the UK was throwing away its leadership in computing too. Weirdly, both ended up in Seattle.

douche 10y ago

It's hard to keep up when you've lost the better part of two generations in a row, and most of the stockpiled capital of a century of imperialism - especially when you also lose the empire that generated all that wealth.

Aloha 10y ago
I've often argued that the root cause for loss of empire, was the best and brightest of a generation was left on Flanders fields. The best and brightest of the ruling class at the time was simple used up as cannon fodder, its also the cause for the decline of the aristocracy too.
- pjc50 10y ago
  And this was why postwar Germany lost its scientific and technical advantage and is now a ruined backwater - wait, no. Germany not only lost technicians and an aristocracy in WW1 and 2 but murdered those of its Jewish population that were not able to escape. Survivors defected to the US like Von Braun. The loss of empire was after WW2 not WW1, and partly due to the US insisting (Suez) and partly because it became morally and economically impossible to subdue (Mau Mau etc.). The postwar British disease was labour relations, which were handled far better in Germany with worker representatives at board level. (I might argue far more cynically that the aristocracy was by definition not a meritocracy, and that only its violent destruction by war enabled Europe to have a chance at becoming more egalitarian.)
  - dba7dba 10y ago
    I agree with your assessment, pjc50. All major European nations lost most of their privileged/gifted young men in WW1 and WW2, not just UK.
  - woodandsteel 10y ago
    >The postwar British disease was labour relations, which were handled far better in Germany with worker representatives at board level. Interesting, UK went socialist after WWII while Germany went social democratic. I wonder what made the difference. Perhaps part of the answer is that the aristocracy retained more power in the UK? I have read that socialism in the UK was supported by the aristocracy as a way to keep control of the economy, but I am not sure if that is correct. Also, Germany was under US occupation for a number of years, I would suppose that made a difference, since the US is quite anti-socialist.
    - pjc50 10y ago
      "Socialist" is almost a useless label these days, it's used to mean too many things that the US doesn't like. It's true that some of the aristocracy (e.g. Tony Benn) supported Labour and some very left-wing politics. But that was a small part of the whole. What is true is the Fabian Society proposing incrementalist socialism as an antidote to revolutionary socialism - a way for the aristocracy to keep their heads. The UK nationalised a lot of industries after the war but then failed to run them effectively. After a few decades of this the Thatcherite response was to just privatise everything and give up on trying any form of state management. This leaves us in the bizarre situation where Germany, France, the Netherlands etc have state-owned rail companies running UK railways recieving UK subsidy.
  - rodgerd 10y ago
    I recommend Len Deighton's well-researched _Blood, Sweat, and Folly_ for a view of the disasterous management of the war effort - that the same people would mis-manage the peace isn't surprising.

notahacker 10y ago

Classic case of first mover disadvantage. Their failures helped Boeing learn some tough lessons about metal stress, and Boeing got many aspects of the fuselage of their first jet liner so right they're still used on the latest generation of the 737 which will finish in the top two biggest selling aircraft this year. Of course, us Brits learned tough lessons of a different kind with the Concorde: no matter how brilliant the engineering is, you need a mass market to break even on an aerospace programme. It's not as if the UK's contribution to Airbus or other parts of the aviation supply chain today is insubstantial though.

jacquesm 10y ago
Airbus is one of the companies that will be hit hard by brexit. Arguably the single market is what made Airbus possible to begin with.
- josst 10y ago
  Airbus is based largely in France and Germany. BAE will likely suffer more as a contractor.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    http://www.airbus.com/company/worldwide-presence/airbus-in-uk/ http://www.airbus.com/company/worldwide-presence/airbus-in-u...

dboreham 10y ago

ARM is in Seattle?

reidacdc 10y ago

You might be interested in James Hamilton-Paterson's book, "Empire of the Clouds", which is about the glory days and subsequent decline of Britain's aviation industry. Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Clouds-Britains-Aircraft-Ruled/dp/0571247954 https://www.amazon.com/Empire-Clouds-Britains-Aircraft-Ruled... It's been a while since I read it, but one of the factors he talks about is echoed in the article, about the airplane being built "by engineers" -- it's an improvement on being built by marketers, of course, but it's only part of the right answer. Hamilton-Paterson's book talks about British aviation engineers' deafness to important feedback from pilots, and the additional role the British class system played. Engineers were mostly educated people from good schools, and pilots were mostly farm-boys who'd been recruited by a desperate nation during the war and then advanced professionally in their RAF service. When conflicts between them percolated up to managers, who were also educated men from good schools, the engineers tended to carry the day, whether or not they were right. The portion of the article where the pilots talked about the lack of force-feedback on the new hydraulic controls, leading to several over-rotation accidents on take-off, reminded me forcefully of this -- obviously I don't know about that issue specifically, but it's exactly the kind of thing that might have come up in flight testing where test-pilot concerns might have been ignored. The other piece of British aviation decline is government priorities -- aviation innovation is expensive and not profitable in the short term, so the UK decided to hedge their bets by becoming junior partners with Europe. British engineering and technology remains excellent, but it's not leading. Instead, the UK focused on financial services. The contrast with France is particularly striking. Unlike the US, France was similarly ravaged by war, but the French government basically decided that aviation was a national priority, and supported it accordingly. Today, they are senior partners of European aerospace, and even have a large independent jet manufacturer, Dassault.