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Handley Page Military Aircraft and Prospects For ROYAL AERONAUTICAL SOCIETY HISTORICAL GROUP Handley Page Ltd Celebrating the Centenary of the First British Aircraft Company Session 2: Technical Achievements of Handley Page Ltd HANDLEY PAGE MILITARY AIRCRAFT AND PROSPECTS FOR FUTURE EUROPEAN MILITARY AIRCRAFT by Simon Howison, FREng, FRAeS, FIET Engineering Director BAE Systems Military Aircraft Solutions SLIDE 1: TITLE Good afternoon. It's good to be here at Hamilton Place, and it's a real privilege to be delivering my part in a centenary tribute to one of the great founding fathers of the aviation industry and to his company. For the record what I am going to say and what I am going to show you represents as manifestation of my views and not necessary those of BAE Systems, the company I work for. We do see eye to eye at least some of the time however! And one other thing, during this tribute, and taking a cue from Sir Frederick himself, I will refer, with all due respect, to the man and his company as HP. What I want us to do is look at HP's military aircraft and their legacy. I want us to look at the changes we have seen from the environment in which HP operated in to that within which we operate today. And, in the context of this, I want us to look at the military aircraft of today and the outlook for them and the future. So I better begin......... INTRODUCTION The objective study of history – such as we are engaged in today – is as much about ever projecting forward – with the benefit of experience and lessons we can learn from it – as it is about recalling, documenting and applauding the past. 1 Handley Page was certainly one of the greatest exponents of this urge from the beginning – and it continued to be the central theme of his distinctive ethos throughout his sixty- year working lifetime and head of his company. HISTORICAL RECORD, KNOWLEDGE AND LOOKING FORWARD In reflecting on this central theme of the HP story, and recognizing his prodigious literary interest and knowledge, the words of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) are also apposite. In his treatise ‘On History’ Carlyle said: “What is all knowledge but recorded experience, and a product of history; of which, therefore, reasoning and belief, no less than action and passion, are essential materials?”. Now, a hundred years on, as the introductory words of the July 2009 special Handley Page issue of Aeroplane magazine have justifiably reiterated, his company was: ‘one of the most forward-looking and successful British aircraft manufacturers of the 20th century’. I would like to begin with a couple of bridging thoughts – spanning the HP decades and through to the present and future. This to set the scene for my contribution which centres on the common futuristic theme of these two radically different generations of our business. Whe n the exuberant 23 year-old Frederick Handley Page boldly decided to forego his established position as a trained electrical engineer and turned to the fledgling aeronautical dimension, he was motivated from the outset by his passionate belief in the exciting potential of the wholly-new dimension to human mobility that powered flight portended – the eventual extent and significance of which was far beyond his or anybody else’s comprehension at that time, especially in the military domain. Moreover, he was simultaneously starting a new career in a new business with a new company in a new science and technology – and not without its many skeptics – an unimaginable challenge for an individual of any age and in any context today. Could he also have been motivated by the that famous line of his contemporary, George Bernard Shaw, who wrote: “Activity is the only road to knowledge?”. Starting less than six years after the Wright Brothers had inaugurated the heavier-than- air, man-carrying powered flight era – and doubtless inspired by them – there was still comparatively little directly applicable theory or practice available to enable him to realize and fly a practical aeroplane himself – other than the many, and sometimes crazy, artistic images that had followed that famous original engraving by Sir George Cayley of 110 years earlier in 1799 – the first known concept of the aeroplane shape and form as we know it – incorporating fixed wings, a cruciform tail unit and a propulsion system (paddles) – now held here by the Society. ARTISTIC TO REALISTIC 2 And so HP’s daunting task was essentially translating from the artistic to the realistic within a fledgling science of shape, form, construction and mobility that borrowed heavily from hydrodynamics and engineering principles and practices derived from civil engineering and from the still rudimentary internal combustion engine of the motor car. Interestingly and coincidentally, in that same year – 1909 – a widely influential concept emerged in the art world called: ‘A Manifesto of Futurism’ – a point of view that found meaning and fulfillment in the future rather than in the past, declaring that futurists would celebrate ‘a new beauty of speed’. The full dictionary definition of Futurism is: ‘An artistic movement in art that claimed to anticipate and point the way for the future by strongly rejecting traditional aesthetic forms and values and aiming to express confidence in the modern world by embracing the dynamic energy and movement of the modern technological and mechanical processes of the machine age’. Although there is no known connection between this notion and Handley Page, he is said to have taken a close interest in the experience of one Jose Weiss – a pioneering French landscape artist and engineer living in England and his inherently stable models based on the flight of the samara-type seed-leaf of the Javanese Zanonia macrocarpi plant (with which the horticulturists among us will doubtless be familiar!). Hence, the concept and term – Futurism – can also be regarded as aptly describing the enduring Handley Page ethos – always looking to the next need and opportunity and the most effective and realistic means of fulfilling it. (Incidentally, the centenary of this equally enduring concept of the art world has also been extensively celebrated this year at the Tate Modern). WORLD AFFAIRS – THEN AND NOW It is also salutary to reflect briefly on the very marked contrast between the state of world affairs – straddling the dawn of the 20th century and the emergence of military aviation in World War I, a mere six years after HP had started from scratch, and to which, as we have heard, he engaged in a major way – and that of today. This is eloquently summarized in the 2007 book: ‘The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World’ by Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the United States Federal Reserve Board, in which he says: “By all contemporaneous accounts, the world prior to 1914 seemed to be moving irreversibly toward higher levels of civility and civilisation; human society seemed perfectible. … The pace of global invention had advanced throughout the nineteenth century, bringing railroads, the telephone, the electric light, cinema, the motor car, and 3 household conveniences too numerous to mention. … The sense of the irreversibility of such progress was universal”. But, Greenspan also points out … “World War I was more devastating to civility and civilization than the physically far more destructive World War II: the earlier conflict destroyed the idea. I cannot erase the thought of those pre-World War I years, when the future of mankind appeared unencumbered and without limit. “Today, our outlook is starkly different from a century ago but perhaps a bit more consonant with reality. Will terror, global warming, or resurgent populism do to the current era of life-advancing globalisation what World War I did for the previous one?. No one can be confident of the answer”. The first paragraph highlights both the tranquil and adventurousness nature of life when HP started. The second, the huge impetus that set him on the path of large military bomber-transport aircraft that were to dominate his whole story. And the last paragraph effectively encapsulates the environment in which the European military aircraft business is having to face up today to in determining its future direction. SLIDE 2: HP MILITARY AIRCRAFT · Sovereign company and sovereign customer – highlighted with an outstanding 86-year record of service with nearly 9000 aircraft for the Royal Air Force, from its foundation in 1918 through to 2004 (and the very last military Jetstream only leaving Royal Navy service earlier this year). · Major contributions in three World wars: 600 0/100 and 0/400 heavy bombers in the First World War; nearly 1600 twin-engine Hampden/Hereford aircraft and more than 6000 four-engine Halifax medium and heavy bombers in the Second World War; and the 84 Victor nuclear V-bombers in the Cold War – and later the Victor Tanker conversion supporting the Falklands and Gulf Wars. · The Halton transport conversion of the Halifax – notably with Freddie Laker in the Berlin Airlift of 1948 – the first major post-war humanitarian aid airlift operation and which activity is now so often prevalent in military operations alongside full-scale military conflict. · The 146 post World War II Hastings transports which served the RAF for more than 20 years – prefacing the continuing need for large-scale global transport aircraft logistics today. SLIDE 3: THE HP LEGACY 4 · The split (or diversified) production principle of the Hampden and Halifax era is standard practice in multinational military and civil aircraft programmes today. · Now the traditional subcontractor ‘build-to-print’ pattern has been replaced by ‘design-and-build’ partnerships – including managing the corresponding ‘supply chain’ and equipping – with the prime company being the ‘programme integrator’ at final assembly.
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