A Little VC10derness

does anybody know much about the chinese delegation who wanted super vc10,s,i think they where having alot of problems with there il62,s [they where not a great aircraft as stated else where on this site].. but sadly the jigs had already been scrapped...so the story goes.my father worked at hawker siddley at brough near hull at the time..he was working on the hs trident order for the chinese at the time,if its true it seems such a shame that the jigs where scrapped so quickly..i wonder who made that decision?..short sighted accountants with clipboards?..when you think how much it costs to develop a large jet,,you would have thought they would have kept the jigs for a while??,, after all the comet became the nimrod and was still in production until 6 months ago???..and the boeing 707 platform was in production until the 1990,s?..the vc10 is just as good a platform,i wish they,d have kept the jigs,the china order could have been followed by other military orders,tankers ect [i beleive the vc10 is a much better platform tanker than the 707.].. if you gooogle ;[china orders super vc10] and then go to [quick veiw] ..you can veiw the flight international issue november 1973 on the subject at the time.

Well, there were several things at work here. First of all bear in mind that the jigs were not just a few cardboard items. If you look at this page: The VC10 - 50 years ago you'll see some photos of these jigs, like this one:


The complete set filled up most of the large construction buildings at Weybridge, and this room was sorely needed for other projects.

This graph has been copied from the First Flight Dates page:


It shows that the last VC10 built was delivered in early 1970, and at that time there were just no orders left on the books. Charles Gardner explains in British Aircraft Corporation - A History (1981) that the Chinese interest in the VC10 started late in 1972 and ran into early 1973. That's four years after the last VC10 left the building and leaving all this metalwork in place for all that time just wasn't feasible. By that time Weybridge was busy with Concorde, the prototype of which flew in 1969, and BAC 1-11s were being produced at a significant rate.

Scott Henderson has a larger account of the Chinese deal in Silent, Swift, Superb (1998), in which he explains that BAC was quite willing to reopen the VC10 production line, at a cost of GBP 20 million, if China made a firm order. There were more options available to sell VC10s to at that point and they had calculated that selling 20 VC10s at over GBP 3 million each would make it worthwhile. A sales delegation was sent (through a roundabout way and on 707s!) to China but in the end the Chinese airline was not able to commit itself to a large order due to the costs. We know that specifications for a Chinese VC10 were produced, that's how serious BAC was at the time:


So in conclusion the management had to make a sensible decision at the time that 5H-MOG was delivered, and at that time other projects seemed more likely to bring in money than keeping up hopes for more VC10 sales. By the time the Chinese interest became apparent (they had earlier turned down an offer for a demonstration flight!) it was too late, but even then BAC put up a serious effort to get the production started up again, only to find that the orders would not emerge. And that was the end of it.

thanks for a great reply..however...i thought 5H-MOG rolled out in 1970?..and i could be wrong here..but..i don,t think Weybridge was incredibly busy after the vc10 programm,having spoken to an employee at the time,i understand they made parts for concorde and the bac 1 11 but im not sure if that would have fully utilised the two new huge hangers,the vatican and the cathedral facilities?,also they had brand new hangers at wisley espcially built for the vc10 programm..i have a feeling they might well have had enough space to maybe store the jigs somewhere at the time?..i supose it was just my fear that they went to scrap a little on the early side considering the huge investment in the facilities and infrastructure and possibilities of orders emerging in the near future?

You're right, it was 1970. I went by the graph which I made and as it turns out that one is a little odd in that the line marked 1969 denotes the end of the year, not the beginning. My mistake and now corrected.

As for how busy Weybridge was back then, I cannot comment on that. The main problem here is that we're looking at it with 20/20 hindsight. At the time they had an airliner which had only sold 54 examples in the eight years since its first flight. Not very impressive and therefore I guess not worth keeping the jigs around for. The Chinese interest was still three years later, how much time do you wait for more orders to turn up?

Another angle on this is the fact that you've got an entire workforce that you need to keep paying and preferably keep busy as well. By dismantling the jigs you're actually recouping some money and components which you can then sell off again, which is better for the financial balance than leaving them lying around. I'm not stating that this is what happened, but it might have.

i guess so ..and with concorde having her first flight at the time and alot of airline intrest in her,perhaps BAC was happy to have the space awaiting the big orders for concorde,little did they know the vc10 would out sell concorde by a long way and fly on long after concorde had retired

Fascinating post!

"Fascinating post!"

Hear, hear!

The Chinese ordered the Il-62 during a brief spell of improved relations with the USSR after Khruschev's fall. When relations took a dive in the later 1960s, the USSR refused to supply any further Il-62s but did fulfil the original order for five.

In the late 1960s, BAC could not fill the gap formed by the Soviet refusal to supply further Il-62s by supplying VC10s to China. This was because of at least three reasons:

1. There was no Chinese interest at the time, as Jelle mentions above;

2. In 1967, Red Guards had burst into the British Embassy in Peking (now styled Beijing), set fire to it, beat diplomats and held them hostage for a short time. Wars have started for less...

3. There was immensely strong US pressure to prevent any British aviation sales to China (see Cold War at 30,000 Feet: The Anglo-American Fight for Aviation Supremacy by Jeffrey A Engel). This resulted in a secret British government veto of a Chinese order for Trident 1Es in 1964. Even the supply of obsolescent turboprop Viscounts to CAAC in the early 1960s caused huge behind-the-scenes tensions between Britain and the USA.

By the early 1970s, all this had changed. Armed clashes between China and the USSR over islands in the Usuri river put a definitive end to any possible Soviet aviation sales to China, including further Il-62 deliveries. The Nixon administration played "the China Card", recognising Mao's People's Republic of China and "de-recognising" Chiang Kai-Shek's Republic of China (Taiwan). CAAC meanwhile bought the Pakistani fleet of four Trident 1Es secondhand, thus negating the 1964 British government veto. (See Engel for suspicions that the PIA sale of Trident 1Es was in fact a manoeuvre to supply CAAC with Tridents through the back door. PIA only kept the Trident in service for three short years. CAAC went on to order over 30 new-build Tridents...) VC10s were now both needed by China (to fill the gap left after Il-62 deliveries halted) and could be delivered without Britain incurring US wrath. And CAAC expressed interest in VC10s...

Sadly, the jigs had, by now, been broken. In 1973, CAAC ordererd 707s...

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P.S. Just to add -- I am not aware of the Chinese having any problems (let alone "alot of problems" [sic!]) with their Il-62s. In a certain sense, they would have loved to have problems with them, because their relations with the USSR were at rock bottom between 1966 and 1989, and anything to embarrass the Soviets would have been welcome. Instead, CAAC used their five Il-62s rather extensively for schedules and VIP flights all the way into the mid-late 1980s. They could easily have replaced them with 707s, but they didn't. They could easily have returned them to the USSR (the Egyptians did so with their Tu-154s in 1974, embarrassing the Soviets), but they didn't. They could easily have sold them to the two Soviet satellite airlines operating the Il-62 (Tarom, Cubana) with whom China had good relations, but they didn't. Instead, they made good use of them until the end of their lives. I'm just adding this so we retain a sense of perspective around here!

that was perhaps the best and the most well researched answer to a question i have ever posted..thank you so much for that.i rememer reading somewhere about china,s problems with the il62, i will try and find out where i got that from..thank you again..i bet the americans did,nt mind stopping the order?..

"I remember reading somewhere about China's problems with the Il-62"

Ah, yes... Perhaps here:

http://www.flightglobal.com/FlightPDFAr ... 203112.PDF

"... It has been reported from Peking that the Civil Aviation Administration of China is dissatisfied with the Il-62 and has cancelled five of the ten aircraft originally ordered. Problems with noise, high operating costs and trim as well as Soviet reluctance to supply information on the two recent Il-62 crashes appear to be the reason behind the decision. There is also an unconfirmed report of trouble with the rear structure of a Chinese Il-62. ..."

As a journalist (I wrote for Flight in the 1980s) I can only suspect that CAAC ventilated the story unattributably (there is no source quoted, as in for instance "a senior fleet planner at CAAC claimed that...") simply to have a go at the Russians. These are the games people play in politics and international commerce. We have to look at the facts, not the propaganda -- the Chinese went on to make very full and prolonged use of their Il-62s. As to the "trouble" with the rear fuselage structure (here Flight puts in a disclaimer -- "an unconfirmed report"), that clearly can't have been all that great, since the aircraft concerned continued in use for a long time afterwards.

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"I bet the Americans didn't mind stopping the order?"

Well, they didn't even try to stop it, in the first place because it simply could not be placed. Besides, by 1973 they had no objections to China getting hold of Western technology, anyway, as shown by Trident deliveries which continued until 1978. In any cae, the Americans knew full well the VC10 was a closed book by 1972/3.