Good Morning, Oppo

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 04/03/2018 at 09:15 • Filed to: good morning oppo

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Remember when England had aircraft carriers? And built their own airplanes?

HMS Ark Royal ca. 1957, with Fairey Gannets aft, an impressive row of Hawker Sea Hawks amidships, and a gaggle of de Havilland Sea Venoms forward.

OpposResidentLexusGuy - USE20, XF20, XU30 and Press Cars > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 09:20

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djmt1 > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 09:24

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Oi

facw > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 09:29

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I mean they have one:

And will soon have more than one:

Also, they do build some planes (though granted not carrier capable ones, though BAE is making some F-35 parts in the UK I believe):

WilliamsSW > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 09:33

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They also had some of the best airplane names.

Wacko > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 09:33

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ttyymmnn > WilliamsSW 04/03/2018 at 09:34

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Supermarine Spiteful.

fintail > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 09:37

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This must have been back when they had viable automobile and motorcycle industries too.

ttyymmnn > facw 04/03/2018 at 09:37

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They’ll eventually have two, but the HMS Queen Elizabeth won’t be operational until at least 2020. And consortiums don’t really count. I was thinking more along the lines of the days when Britain had a distinctly British aviation industry.

ttyymmnn > djmt1 04/03/2018 at 09:38

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Not operational until 2020. But yes, they’ll eventually have two. Flying American-built planes.

facw > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 09:39

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Of course the real trick is that they flew F-4s off that tiny thing:

It’s a bit smaller than what we flew the Phantom off of:

ttyymmnn > facw 04/03/2018 at 09:40

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Just a bit. But they do get the credit for inventing the angled deck.

Cé hé sin > fintail 04/03/2018 at 09:43

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Plenty of cars made there still (PSA, Nissan, Toyota, Honda,Bentley, RR, AM) although not by indigenous makers.

I’m sure Triumph would take issue about not being a viable bike maker....

AuthiCooper1300 > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 09:44

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Arguably the Brits invented the aircraft carrier as we know it today: if I remember correctly, the “island” and the angled deck were their idea.

Even the “jump ramp” was conceived by them (or at least the RN was the first to put it into practice).

fintail > Cé hé sin 04/03/2018 at 09:45

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That’s what I meant, no indigenous makers. With the Germans owning Bentley and Rolls-Royce, and the Indians owning Jaaaaaaaaaag and Land Rover, some parts of the past have come full circle.

Triumph isn’t an industry, just the last surviving maker.

AuthiCooper1300 > facw 04/03/2018 at 09:48

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Hadn’t thought about that. Well, the Speys were more powerful than the J79, right? At least at lower altitudes?

AuthiCooper1300 > fintail 04/03/2018 at 09:51

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Win the war, lose the peace.

More recently, a misguided economic policy that decided to concentrate on the financial industry rather than manufacturing did not help. At all.

ttyymmnn > AuthiCooper1300 04/03/2018 at 10:01

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I believe you are correct on all counts.

facw > AuthiCooper1300 04/03/2018 at 10:01

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I believe so. IIRC, one of the reasons for the different engines was the requirement to operate from the smaller Royal Navy carriers.

fintail > AuthiCooper1300 04/03/2018 at 10:02

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Pretty much it. Or like I joke about the DCX “merger of equals”, revenge for 1945. Maybe a little ex-colonial snark for JLR too (although I don’t know if those are actually running in the black, the jury is out on who gets the last laugh).

Economies centered on housing and investment brokering might not be the most sustainable. Beware, USA and Canada.

facw > AuthiCooper1300 04/03/2018 at 10:10

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Not sure it is misguided to focus on highly profitable financial services instead of low margin manufacturing.

Now voting for Brexit, which will devastate the financial sector was seriously misguided. 

AuthiCooper1300 > fintail 04/03/2018 at 10:14

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“Ex-colonial snarks”? Back in the 19th century Jamsetji Tata tried in vain to get help from steel industrialists in the UK in order to set up a steel mill in India; in 2007 Tata Steel took over Corus - which included the last sad remains of a once proud British steel industry.

Talk about karma.

shop-teacher > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 10:17

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Remember? No, that was a little before my time :P

fintail > AuthiCooper1300 04/03/2018 at 10:19

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It’s pretty amusing.

For some of the British actions in India, all of this is an interesting comeuppance indeed. The sun set.

AuthiCooper1300 > facw 04/03/2018 at 10:29

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Well, the UK is not London, which is alredy accumulating more wealth than the rest of Great Britain combined.

There is a huge imbalance between the economic weight of the financial sector and all the rest. Also some communities in the North of England or in Scotland would really, really wonder what use is the City and all its wealth for them.

The reasons why the British manufacturing sector went under had a lot to do with the parlous state of the UK’s economy post-war... to which you have to add the effort of paying all that Lend & Lease stuff the Brits got from the US until 1945. Food rationing persisted in the UK until well into the 50s. There was no money left to renew the industrial sector, everything was used to pay the foreign debt. On top of that the UK tried to keep “punching above its weight”, militarily speaking, which diverted even more funds from proper industrial redevelopment.

Germany and Japan, on the other hand, restarted from scratch, without the onus of having to keep sizable armed forces and/or a defence sector; also helped with extremely soft loans from guess who - the US.

The geopolitical landscape post-war and a series of very bad political decisions in Westminster did the rest.

I fully agree with you that voting for Brexit is tantamount to economic suicide though.

ttyymmnn > shop-teacher 04/03/2018 at 10:37

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You’re old enough to remember the Falklands War. The Royal Navy had two carriers in that fight, HMS Hermes and HMS Invincible . Both were flying (partially) British-built Harriers.

Cé hé sin > fintail 04/03/2018 at 10:52

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Strictly speaking, Triumph aren’t a survivor of anything: they’re a new company using an old name. The first representative of UK bike industry 2.0 if you will.

AuthiCooper1300 > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 11:00

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Hmmm, that “partially”... I understood the Harriers that fought in the Falklands (both from the Fleet Air Arm and the RAF) were British-made? Maybe you are thinking of the Harrier II, which would be the British version of the AV-8, but is a later development?

I could be wrong, the lineage of the “Harrier” in all its versions is almost as confusing as that of “105" Alfas...

fintail > Cé hé sin 04/03/2018 at 11:09

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Legally speaking, sure - but buying an old name when the original failed, using the same facilities, logo, etc, it’s enough of a connection for me. It’s been over 30 years since the reorganization, right?

I can give credit to them for surviving, but to me anyway, one firm doesn’t make an industry.

shop-teacher > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 11:26

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Uhhhh, I was ALMOST 1-year old when the Falklands War ended, so saying that I remember it is a bit of an overstatement :)

I honestly didn’t know much about it at all until that whole Top Gear incident.

ttyymmnn > shop-teacher 04/03/2018 at 11:33

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So, you’re not as old as I thought. Sorry. The Falklands War took place in 1982, and I graduated high school in 1984. So, as a budding military historian and aviation geek, I was fascinated by the conflict.

ttyymmnn > AuthiCooper1300 04/03/2018 at 11:35

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I could very well be wrong. If those were Sea Harriers, which I suppose they were, then they were produced by Hawker Siddeley and BAE. I was thinking of the Harrier II, which was primarily built by McDonnell Douglas.

shop-teacher > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 13:24

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I was born in June of ‘81, graduated high school in ‘99. I can see how I may come across older though. My mom once told me, “You’ve been 40 since you were 12 years old.” I’m kind of a crabby old man at heart :)

ranwhenparked > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 18:44

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I was under the impression that BAE was assembling the F-35s in the UK? Granted, with massive American parts content, but, still, technically British built by a British company.

ranwhenparked > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 18:47

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Well, I mean, there’s the Queen Elizabeth class, but it is taking a ridiculously long time to become operational, probably because the Royal Navy decommissioned their other carriers before the new ones were ready, creating a carrier operations skills gap for pilots and shipboard crew.

And they just decommissioned the Ocean for some crazy reason, when, realistically, they probably should have built more than one of those in the first place.

ttyymmnn > ranwhenparked 04/03/2018 at 18:50

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I knew the QE was coming, but not until 2020. Prince of Wales won’t be in service until 2023. And then, they’ll be flying F-35s. As a(n) historian, I’m sad that Britain doesn’t have a distinct aviation industry any more. The 50s were awesome.

ranwhenparked > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 18:50

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And it was damn good luck that Argentina invaded when they did, Hermes had been scheduled for decommissioning in a few months. Would have made it very difficult to fight with only one carrier, even with two it was kind of a shoestring operation.

ttyymmnn > ranwhenparked 04/03/2018 at 18:54

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Technicalities. I see those Sea Hawks, and long for the olden days of British military aviation.

ranwhenparked > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 18:54

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It is really insane, considering that the Queen Elizabeth is fully completed, delivered, and commissioned right now as we speak, and Prince of Wales will be delivered next year. But, it takes 3-4 years after commissioning for them to actually be functional.

The whole process will have taken some 18 years from order placement to full operational status for both ships. Not that the US military is any more efficient, but, still, crazy timelines in an otherwise fast paced world.

ttyymmnn > ranwhenparked 04/03/2018 at 19:18

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How else are the defense contractors supposed to get so rich?

ranwhenparked > ttyymmnn 04/03/2018 at 19:20

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And its kind of what happens when entire industries become dependent on essentially one customer that can’t or won’t go anywhere else (UK and US shipbuilding).