Brabazon Committee


The Brabazon Committee was a committee set up by the British government in 1942 to investigate the future needs of the British Empire's civilian airliner market following World War II. The study was an attempt at defining in broad overview; the impact of projected advances in aviation technology and to forecast the global needs of the post war British Empire and Commonwealth in the area of air transport, for passengers, mail, and cargo.
The study recognized that the British Empire and Commonwealth as both a political and economic entity would have a vital need for aviation systems to facilitate its continued existence and self-reliance in the post-war world. For military and commercial reasons, the empire simply could not continue to exist if did not understand the needs, and develop the industrial infrastructure to provide, the aviation systems and sub-systems necessary to supply and maintain a global air transport service.

Background

Soon after the start of World War II, with no recorded discussion in government, a decision was taken to concentrate all efforts of the British aircraft industry on combat aircraft, and two embryo airliner projects, the Fairey FC1 and the Short S.32, were both cancelled. Subsequently, Britain had to purchase three Boeing 314 flying boats for BOAC to operate an air service between the USA and the UK. It has been suggested that there was then some agreement with the United States that the US would concentrate on transport aircraft while the UK would concentrate on their heavy bombers. However, Sir Peter Masefield was certain that such a policy was never even suggested, far less implemented. On the contrary, the action was simply to do nothing - no orders were ever placed for new British transport aircraft. It was stated in Parliament in December 1942 that "the work of aircraft designers must, at the present stage of the war, be devoted wholly to war requirements". The UK was simply too busy producing military aircraft to find the capacity to build transports, and the materials required were in any case in very short supply.
When Winston Churchill attended the 1942 Moscow Conference, travelling in the freezing bomb bay of a Consolidated Liberator bomber, it brought home to him the absence of modern British airliners and the need for action with regard to transport aircraft. After discussion with Sir Stafford Cripps, the Minister of Aircraft Production, and his predecessor Lord Brabazon, he recognized that as a result of that neglect the United Kingdom was to be left at the close of the war with little experience in the design, manufacture and final assembly of transport aircraft, and no infrastructure or trained personnel for the doing of same. Yet, the massive infrastructure created in the US would allow them to produce civilian aircraft based upon military transport designs; and crucially these would have to be purchased by the UK, Empire and Commonwealth to meet their post-war civilian transport aviation needs.
In consequence, Churchill asked Lord Brabazon to form a Committee to investigate the issue and make suitable recommendations. Following this the Cabinet authorized a Second Committee to undertake more detailed work and prepare a list of requirements for each type to provide a basis for design and development.
On 24 Dec 1942, a two-part article in Flight concluded "The whole British Empire at the present time has an operational fleet of transport aircraft, comprising conversions, makeshifts and cast-offs, totally inadequate to represent the Empire in serving the air routes of the world in the peace to come. Have we to rely upon other nations to do it for us? The British aircraft industry is equal to the task. The Government should decide this vital question at once."

First Committee and Interim Report

The first Committee under the leadership of Lord Brabazon first met on 23 December 1942 and met a further nine times between then and 9 February 1943, when it submitted its outline recommendations to the UK Cabinet in its Interim Report. This recommended the adaptation for civil use of four military types of aircraft which were then in, or near, production, and the design of five new types specifically for civil use.
The four adaptations were:
The five new types proposed were:
Some weeks after the report from the First Committee, it was decided to form a Second Committee with more comprehensive and detailed terms of reference. The Second Committee began meeting on 25 May 1943 under the leadership of Lord Brabazon in order to investigate the future needs of the British civilian airliner market. The committee included members of the state-owned airlines British Overseas Airways Corporation and later British European Airways, and the Secretary was Peter Masefield who later became the Chief Executive of BEA. They studied a number of designs and technical considerations, meeting frequently over the next two years to further clarify the needs of different market segments, and producing 151 papers. The government contact for this committee was Sir Stafford Cripps, the Minister of Aircraft Production until May 1945 when he was succeeded by Ernest Brown.
The views of the Committee changed considerably in that period and the list of Brabazon Types continued to vary, as did the specifications of each. One early recommendation was to pursue the "Interim Types" which were conversions and/or developments of wartime aircraft. The original four adaptations became:
These were all produced in some numbers in due course, although the Tudor I and Tudor II never entered service. They were all too late to compete with the earlier and much more capable Douglas DC-4 which had been in service since 1942 and could carry more passengers further and faster. The final report in December 1945 ignored all these interim types and called for the construction of seven new designs which would be required after the war:
The normal method for government aircraft production was that a Ministry Specification was issued and aircraft companies provided designs to meet the specification. It was customary then to order prototypes of two designs for evaluation. This process did not allow for companies to propose solutions which were, in their view, better, neither did it necessarily reflect the requirements of the planned operator who may have wanted something different. Additionally, other government bodies such as the Royal Aircraft Establishment had input to the process and these often conflicted with the designers being given contradictory instructions. One example of this is the trouble that Miles Aircraft had with the Ministry of Aircraft Production in relation to the design of the Marathon. In 1944, the Ministry of Aircraft Production started the process for contracts for all of these planes with individual companies; this role was taken over by the newly-created Ministry of Supply in 1945. The view of the Sir Cyril Musgrave, Permanent Under-Secretary in the Ministry of Supply, was that "Only I can order civil airliners!" This attitude was a source of considerable difficulties in this process.

The aircraft

There were other aircraft built as interim Brabazon types, and also there were some which were strictly not Brabazon types, but are often referred to as such. In some cases the Ministry would adopt a design by writing a specification for it. Some were built to the Brabazon specification in the hope of getting Ministry approval and finance, some were built totally as private ventures and others were contracted by the Ministry without reference to the Committee. The principal aircraft of note were:
The Saunders-Roe SR.45 Princess was not a Brabazon Committee recommendation as a Type I aircraft but was direct submission from the company which gained Ministry funding. At the time, BOAC still considered that there was a future for luxury travel by flying boat. Three aircraft were built but BOAC ceased flying boat operations in November 1950 before the first flight in August 1952. No use was found for the three aircraft but they were not scrapped until 1967.
The Vickers VC.1 Viking was a private venture by Vickers by developing their Wellington bomber with a new stressed-skin fuselage. It was notionally a Type IIA aircraft for short haul European routes. It achieved good success in its forms as the Viking, Varsity and Valetta with 588 aircraft made, principally for the Royal Air Force.
The Bristol 170 Freighter was a 1944 private venture for which the Ministry ordered two prototypes. Ultimately 214 were made and were used world-wide.

Success and failure

Of the seven Brabazon Report-derived designs that were produced, only two were outright successes, namely the Dove and the Viscount, although neither owed its success to the Brabazon Report:
The others were all fated in some way:
The Brabazon Committee was essentially a failure. All the major designs proposed suffered from protracted development periods at a time when airliners were needed quickly to compete with the American products; this was largely due to the time required to develop the new jet engines but was also due to failures of the Brabazon specifications, the poor decision making of the manufacturers and various UK government Ministries involved, and an amount of prejudice on the part of BOAC, the major customer whose input was not often requested. This prejudice by BOAC was seen subsequently in decisions such as cancelling the Vickers V.1000 airliner, failing to support the Vickers VC10 which had been designed to BOAC's specification, and a continued desire to buy American products. BEA later requested a larger Viscount which became the Vickers Vanguard but which only sold 43, and then insisted on a smaller Trident than the design proposed by Hawker Siddeley. Consequently, the Trident, like the VC-10, failed to sell in significant numbers. The BAC 1-11 was more successful but suffered from a lack of investment in development as much government funding was directed to Concorde. Subsequently, after production of the HS146 ended in 2002, no more complete airliners have been designed or made in the UK, and the industry makes only components.