Why We Lost The Vietnam War

In article ,
"Spiv" writes:

"Peter Stickney" wrote in message
One of the last, certainly. One of the best... It's doubtful.
At the same time that the Britannia was being dumped, Eastern Air
Lines in the U.S. was inaugerating their Boston-New York-Washington
D.C. Shuttle service, using Lockheed L188 Electras (After they'd got
the Whirl Mode problems sorted out) The Electras proved ideal for this
service, being able to often beat the block times (Gate-Gate) of the
jets available. They proved so economical in service that they stayed
in service on that run until the mid '70s. (For a bit of perspective,
Boston, Massachusetts to Washington D.C. is about the same as going
from Northern Scotland to London. No offence, Sport, but you've got a
tiny country.

Viscounts were used on similar runs in the UK unless the 70s too, until
being replaced by mainly BAC 1-11s (another brilliant little gem). Now the
Viscount was a superb turboprop, being the first turboprop airliner in the
world. It had a wonderful distinctive sound.

And, in fact, it's taken you around 100 posts to actually arrive at
the one truly successful airliner that the Brits have been able to
produce. (I don't win the pool - my bet was for 50 posts.)

The UK is not tiny. Others are much bigger, but the UK is "not" small.
Also the UK is not full of useless deserts, being highly fertile. It also
produces more food than the whole of Australia, well did do until farmers
were given lots of lolly to stop producing.

The U.K. _is_ tiny, by American (North or South), Asian, or African
standards. It is larger than Luxembourg, and Lichtenstein, and San
Marino. But it's still smaller than Denmark. (I'll bet local
Breakfast Pastry to Local Currency he can't figure that one out. To
think that I was worried about how the U.S. schools stak up
worldwide...)
By our standards, it's a Day Trip from North to South, and you're
never more than an hour's drive from the coast.
In contrast, you can spen 3 days trying to escape from Texas.
And our Desearts aren't useless. We keep some for Nuclear Weapons
Testing, We also use ours to test all the modern aircraft that we
build. (And my back yard grows more than all of Australia.)
And some we just keep around to look at. You should see Sunset on the
Painted Desert, or Sunrise at the Grand Canyon.

(And you missed the Vanguard, as well. Brilliant planning, there.
Instead of concentrating on one type, (Brittania or Vanguard), and
thus having the potential of lowering the unit cost to the point where
people might buy them, you built two different competing aircraft, and
poisoned both projects.)

The Vanguard was made by a different company, Vickers, which still doesn't
detract from the Britannia being the best prop airliner ever - well a close
run between that and the Viscount.

Erm, by that time, _All_ development was done under Ministry of Supply
contracts, part of the Socialization that was going on in your Isles
during the 1950s and 1960s. For some ungodly reason, this produced an
incredibly wasteful duplication of effort. Three V-Bombers, 2 of which
had nearly identical performance. Two mendium range turboprops,
(Brittania and Vanguard), which not only undercut each other, but were
so long delayed that they had no market niche when they finally went
into service.


--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster