"Cub Driver" wrote:
|
| Another good example is
| the Brabazon.
|
| I'd forgotten that one. Did you know that it was the Brabazon
| Committee that laid down the specs for the plane that became the
| Comet? (The first prototype actually seated 20 passengers.)
|
| Be interesting to know how the how the Airbus evolved. Was that too a
| government committee?
|
| I suppose aircraft design is now more craft than art, whereas in the
| 1940s you built the plane first and then discovered whether or not it
| would fly.


The Brabazon committee proposed a series of different civil aircraft
types that would be needed in a post war world. One of them became the
Comet (high speed mail carrier), another became the Airspeed Ambassador
(the Brabazon IIA, a DC-3 replacement) and one became the Vickers
Viscount (the Brabazon IIB)..... The committee I believe specified the
target market that may or may not have ever existed in the post war
world.