Talk:Royal Aircraft Establishment

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Untitled[edit]

"Barnes Wallis used the water tanks here to test scale prototypes of the bouncing bomb used for the Second World War Dambusters raid." According to all the references I have found Wallis did his testing at the National Physics Laboratory at Teddington. DJ Clayworth 14:03, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

cleanup tag added[edit]

Did RAE not have other sites, too, eg Bedford? And is there not more than 1 listed WT building? Sc147 23:19, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

RAE had many sites and outstations, including the two separate Bedford sites. One of the Bedford sites housed the numerous wind tunnel facilities built postwar (originally established as the NAE - National Aeronautical Establishment) while the other included the existing Thurleigh airfield. The original NAE plan was ambitious in scope, including a runway linking both tunnel and airfield sites, as considered necessary for operations of Brabazon-type aircraft. Until the early 1990s, RAE operated air ferry services to a number of outstations, predominantly those supporting trials activities, including Aberporth, Llanbedr, and West Freugh, as well as Bedford.--Stephen McParlin 14:48, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have cross-referenced to the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment which it joined as a 'merger' in WW2 - perhaps someone can do the same with the Bedford installations? Ephebi 13:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Controversy[edit]

It is an important part of the history of the RAE that in the first world war period and after it was the subject of heavy press and political pressure, being "blamed" for the almost all the failures of the British Aircraft Industry of the time, and denied credit for much useful research which was done there.

I have endeavoured to mention this briefly, and without too much "POV" - the original article attracted a lot of "Fact" requests for citations. Unfortunately line by line citations would be difficult without going into much greater detail than could probably be justified - I have referred anyone interested in the general facts of the case to a couple of sources - someone may want to change the format of this to something more like a conventional academic "citation".--Soundofmusicals (talk) 04:47, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Will look up Arthur Gould Lee's "No Parachute"; he was a pilot and later a RAF Air Marshall, and did not think much of the RAE designs. And see Neville Shute on their Airship designs! Hugo999 (talk) 12:27, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Neville Shute was after the case - the Royal Aircraft Factory was long defunct. He blamed the scrapping of his own work on the R.100 on the wreck of the "Government sponsored" R.101. Was this even an RAE design? If so this needs to be mentioned in the article.
The main references to RAF designs in Lee (at least in the reproduced "letters and diary" portion of the book - by far the most valuable) are to the B.E.2e - which was still serving in front line service in mid 1917 - because many RFC pilots preferred it to the R.E.8 (which was trickier to fly). He likened it to "flying a mangle, after the Pup" (well, from all accounts of both aircraft, so what?). In an appendix he repeats many of the libels against the factory - many of which had their origins in the self-interested machinations of Pemberton-Billing. The B.E.12, for instance, was never intended as a fighter - it was certainly not, as Lee states, a rival to any Sopwith design!
The R.E.8 served with fair distinction in the RFC, after a rocky start which ruined its reputation. The F.E.2b was a fine aircraft for 1915 - considering its obsolete "Farman" layout it had a very illustrious career and remained a difficult opponent well into 1917. And the S.E.5 was very simply the best all-round allied fighter to see widespread squadron service in WW1. Take out the B.E.2 fiasco and the "factory" doesn't have a bad record really. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 13:06, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Lee was a pilot in WWI and later an Air Marshal, so can’t be dismissed out-of-hand as ill-informed. He criticises the RAE designs; saying that the RNAS purchased from private British firms eg the Sopwith Pup. He also asked why the parachute was not adopted in WWI by the High Command – ie the senior ranks in the War Office and Air Ministry (who were “too senior to fight”), and subsequently looked at the War Office files for the period. He does not think that Trenchard was involved in this decision, and notes that Mervyn O’Gorman the Superintendent of the Royal Aircraft Factory was one of the few people “alive to the potential of the parachute” in 1915.

Terraine in “The Right of the Line” pages 28-29 criticized the time taken (pre-WWII) to approve and develop new aircraft eg the Wellington. He was impressed (page 39) when Lockheed produced a mock-up for them in 24 hours rather than months!

PS: the R101 was designed at Cardington, though Neville Shute comments unfavourably on WWI British fighter design by the government in his autobiography, being in favour of private enterprise!

PS: R.V. Jones in chapter 10 of “Most Secret War” comments on the need to ensure the specification “defines the essential requirement” – instancing British WWII bombers which initially did not have self-sealing fuel tanks (though they had been developed at the end of WWI) and were much more vulnerable than German bombers. But after WWI in peace-time, air crashes were the major danger so fuel tanks had to be crash-proof as well. Submitted designs were tested at Farnborough by dropping them 60 feet onto concrete; no designs survived this though some were bullet-proof. Jones said that a colleague demonstrated that according to the War Office specification the ideal material for helmets for motorcycle despatch riders “would have been plate glass”. Hugo999 (talk) 13:17, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Lee's book is an absolutely marvelous source - since so much of it was written "hot" - on the day the events occurred. One would be foolish not to have the greatest respect for Lee - on the whole his book (even when it covers historical material retrospectively rather than immediately) is sensible and unbiased, and I'm certainly not "dismissing" him as unusually prone to ignorant and uninformed comment - although he does repeat some comment by others on the specific subject of the Royal Aircraft Factory that is both. Historically we'd now say that his idea that the B.E.12 was ordered "instead of the Pup" was not accurate - it was ordered well before the Pup was available, and not even (initially at least) as a fighter. The RNAS got aircraft like the Pup and Camel earlier than the RFC NOT because they "ordered from private British constructors", but to a large extent because the Admiralty had Sopwiths (among other companies) contracted to supply them, and the War Office had to make do with orders to sub-contracters, many of which were new to aircraft production, and slow to get their orders delivered. This interservice rubbish was one reason why the RAF was established (as, to be fair, Lee hints himself).
I agree with you about War Office (and Air Ministry for that matter) specifications - although they have nothing to do with the case really. The Royal Aircraft Factory did not design "to specification" more or less than anyone else.
Neville Shute is in my opinion a greatly underrated novelist - I think "On the Beach" is a simply one of the great novels of the 20th century - but he is VERY ideologically bent - in a direction for which I have absolutely no sympathy - and which I think is thoroughly debunked by the current economic crisis. (This has even less to do with the case in point - although it does have to be taken into account when considering his stated opinions about anything). --Soundofmusicals (talk) 05:55, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arthur Gould Lee's "No Parachute" clearest statement on his view of the problem of aircraft procurement and his criticism of the factory isn't in the main text of his book, but an essay that formed an appendix to the book, written with historical perspective.

It's been a while since I've read the book, but as I recall there as a determined effort pre-WWI by the factory to have the factory supply all the RFC's needs, both in aircraft and designs. This was primarily an economy measure, or at least that was the argument. Lee attributed the decision more on the controlling tendencies of the chief engineer of the factory, who was able to convince others of his view.

The result — and again, this is Lee's version, which I haven't challenged myself — was that private contractors did business with the Royal Navy because the navy was their only large-scale customer.

While this view needs a good challenge, it would explain a lot. We can criticize inter-service squabbling all day long -- but that really does nothing to explain HOW the Royal Navy managed to get the upper hand on purchases of the best British aircraft from private firms, leaving the army picking up knock-offs by subcontractors.

There's also the issue of wastage.

RFC pilot training was a scandal until the reforms of Robert Smith-Barry in 1917. People who could barely land an aircraft were going up against Germans with at least 60 hours of flight time BEFORE they received further advanced training closer to the front. From a strictly cold-blooded accounting point of view, it was a strain on an already underdeveloped British aircraft industry to feed this meat grinder.

The "glamorous" war in the air was more of a battle of pure attrition than trench fighting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.9.217.229 (talk) 15:58, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The B.E.2 and R.E.8 were originally intended for artillery spotting and aerial photography for the Army for-which a stable platform was required, hence they were unsuitable for employment as fighters. The RFC and RNAS entered the war, as did the other combatants, with no previous experience of air fighting, nor any guidelines as to what was likely to develop. In addition, the commanders were more used to the horse than to the 'new-fangled' aeroplanes.
New pilots were sent to the Front with little experience because at the time no one in high places knew how much experience was actually required, their only previous experience being with the time taken in learning to ride a horse. Hence the recruitment of Smith-Barry to sort out the flying training programme.
Parachutes had been trialled but pilots did not trust them and they were inconvenient to accommodate within the aircraft, hence their use was restricted to use by observation balloon personnel. Parachutes of the period were stored in tubes and it was some years before the modern Irvin-type of parachute became available. Thus RFC/RNAS pilots were not provided with parachutes because a practicable design that could be used within a small aeroplane cockpit did not yet exist.
The R101 was built by the Government rather than by a private contractor (e.g., Vickers for the R100) because the airship was intended to try out new technologies which were likely to be beyond the financial means of a private company and pose an unacceptable financial risk, whereas the Government was able to provide taxpayer's money for the more adventurous design of the R101. That's why the R101 incorporated 'advanced' features that the R100 didn't. In addition, the relatively luxurious surroundings and budget allowed the people at Cardington contrasts with Shute's description of conditions he was working under at Vickers where money was restricted. A description of this is in James Gilbert's The World's Worst Aircraft. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.172.230 (talk) 10:53, 17 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Rockets and Missiles[edit]

These are obviously misplaced - hardly a product of the Royal Aircraft Factory!!

They should be moved into the portion of the article dealing with the RAE - but exactly where - anyone with more background in the history of the post 1918 establishment have any ideas?Soundofmusicals (talk) 11:21, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The article states that the rockets and missiles worked on by the RAE were 'eventually abandoned'. This is misleading - some of the listed projects were successfully completed: Black Knight and Skylark, at least.220.110.178.109 (talk) 05:21, 18 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Bombed in WW2[edit]

Wasn't The RAE and Farnborough airfield bombed by the Luftwaffe during World War 2?

Surely this is a worthwhile section on it's own? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trevorsem (talk • contribs) 12:17, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Article quality[edit]

This article is surely the worst I've ever encountered on Wikipedia. With a few exceptions, poorly researched, and there is so much missing it beggars belief. Examples being the ground-breaking research on metal fatigue that began with the investigation into the (then) mysterious crashes of the Comet airliner. Then there was RAE's role as the leading design authority for the first generations of Britain's atomic and thermonuclear bombs (in which I had a small bit part). Then the work on the front end improvements to the Polaris missile, known as Chevaline.

There is hardly a single aircraft project of the Cold War that the RAE was not involved with, primarily because the RAE was the British Government's own in-house source of independent unbiased technical advice; independent in the sense of not being a part of industry with a product to sell. In many ways RAE was comparable with Sandia National Laboratory in the United States. The RAF, the Royal Navy and the Army wrote their aircraft specifications with advice from RAE, and only the RAE had the expertise to advise them on proposals submitted by industry, the independence of industry to be trusted, and the expertise to monitor compliance.

No doubt I'll now be hounded by the trolls, - all no doubt deeply offended at these comments. Water, duck's backs etc etc are words that come to mind.

Sadly, I cannot find the time to restructure the article myself. Hopefully someone else can. Wikipedia is a valuable resource especially for the education of the young, who have no direct experience of those times. So it's important to get it right. Especially when the veteran scientists and engineers who worked at RAE are dying off. Roy Drommett's being the latest death in late 2015. Roy worked in the Air Armaments Dept at Farnborough on many leading-edge missile and nuclear weapon projects. We owe it to Roy Dromment and others like him to get it right for the benefit of future generations. George.Hutchinson (talk) 15:20, 30 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"You cannot find the time" - and yet someone has to, don't they? At present the article is actually a bit like the proverbial "curate's egg". Taken as an article about the Royal Aircraft Factory it is at least a fair start - but there is very obviously a great deal missing for the period after 1919! Bear in mind that an encyclopedia article is not a place for new, original thought - everything needs to be "sourced" to authoritative texts published "elsewhere". The first really good book about the "Factory Period" is really quite recent (predates most of the article in fact) - has anything been published about the rest that we could use as a basic source? Is what you are asking for a new book, rather than an updated article here? --Soundofmusicals (talk) 03:35, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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