The Magic of a Name: The Rolls-Royce Story, Part 3 E-Book

Peter Pugh

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 768

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

The Magic of a Name tells the story of the first 40 years of Britain's most prestigious manufacturer - Rolls-Royce. Beginning with the historic meeting in 1904 of Henry Royce and the Honourable C.S. Rolls, and the birth in 1906 of the legendary Silver Ghost, Peter Pugh tells a story of genius, skill, hard work and dedication which gave the world cars and aero engines unrivalled in their excellence. In 1915, 100 years ago, the pair produced their first aero engine, the Eagle which along with the Hawk, Falcon and Condor proved themselves in battle in the First World War. In the Second the totemic Merlin was installed in the Spitfire and built in a race against time in 1940 to help win the Battle of Britain. With unrivalled access to the company's archives, Peter Pugh's history is a unique portrait of both an iconic name and of British industry at its best.

Leseprobe

Printed edition published in the UK in 2002 by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39-41 North Road, London N7 9DP email: [e-mail]

This electronic edition published in 2012 by Icon Books Ltd

ISBN: 978-1-84831-481-8

Text copyright © 2002 Peter Pugh The author has asserted his moral rights

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Typesetting by Hands Fotoset, Woodthorpe, Nottingham

Design and layout by Christos Kondeatis

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PHOTO CREDITS

THE VALUE OF MONEY

CHAPTER ONE A VERY HIGH-THRUST ENGINE

CHAPTER TWO DIVERSIFICATION

CHAPTER THREE RECESSION

CHAPTER FOUR THE ALLISON ENGINE COMPANY

CHAPTER FIVE ‘THE NAME IS SYNONYMOUS WITH THE BEST’

CHAPTER SIX THE TRENT FAMILY

CHAPTER SEVEN THE MILITARY MARKET

CHAPTER EIGHT POWER ON LAND AND SEA AS WELL

CHAPTER NINE THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS CONSULTED

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

As I said in the Introduction to the first two parts of this history, many books have been written about Rolls-Royce. Most of them are either biographies of the leading personalities, or works that tackle specific aspects of the cars or aeroengines.

The last publication to attempt a truly comprehensive history of Rolls-Royce was Harold Nockolds’s The Magic of a Name, published by Foulis in 1938 and reprinted several times until a third edition was finally printed in 1972. These three books are the first attempt since then to cover comprehensively the story of Rolls-Royce from its earliest days until the present. The Rolls-Royce name is magic, made so by the calibre of its people and its products, and the title The Magic of a Name is singularly appropriate. Foulis, now owned by Haynes Publishing, has kindly allowed us to use the title again.

The first part of this trilogy took the story from 1904 to 1945 with all the excitement of the meeting of the great engineer, Henry Royce, and the aristocratic motor-car enthusiast and salesman, the Hon. C.S. Rolls, through the early pioneering days with the best car in the world, the Silver Ghost, on to the design by Royce and production by Rolls-Royce of the leading aeroengine of the First World War, the Eagle. We moved on to Royce’s design of an aeroengine which enabled Britain to retain the Schneider Trophy. This association with the aircraft designer R.J. Mitchell led on to the Spitfire and Rolls-Royce’s Merlin engines. As we saw, without the Spitfire and the Hurricane, and the Merlins that powered them, the Battle of Britain would have been lost. Finally, we saw how Ernest (later Lord) Hives realised the significance of the jet engine and how he backed Sir Frank Whittle to the hilt.

Part Two was the story of Rolls-Royce’s realisation that it must tackle the US civil-airliner market if it was to remain a world player in the aeroengine business. The British civil-aircraft industry faded away in the 1960s after the success of the Vickers Viscount and the initial triumphs of the de Havilland Comet before its tragic accidents.

The USA was where Rolls-Royce had to be and, to their credit, Sir Denning Pearson and Sir David Huddie knew it and went for it. Unfortunately, Rolls-Royce did not have the resources to withstand the inevitable development setbacks entailed in bringing the revolutionary three-shaft RB 211 to market, and the company was forced into receivership in February 1971.

Nevertheless, the vision was right, and the RB 211 won further orders as the company recovered in its Government-ownership days in the 1970s and 1980s.

Meanwhile, the Motor Car Division was floated as a separate company and continued to develop the Rolls-Royce and Bentley brands, first on its own and then in conjunction with Vickers. In this period also, Rolls-Royce broadened its activity to provide gas-turbine power to the Royal Navy and other navies, and also to the oil and gas industries.

By the mid-1980s, Rolls-Royce was sufficiently robust to be returned to the private sector, and that’s where Part Two ended.

This book starts with Rolls-Royce coping with the competitive world without Government protection. As always, the competition from its two arch-rivals, General Electric and Pratt & Whitney, was as fierce as ever, and Rolls-Royce had to decide whether it wanted to compete with them across a range of engines or only in certain sizes. We saw in Part Two how it flirted with the idea of leaving the big-engine field to General Electric. This was the plan of Chairman Bill Duncan, but when he died his successor, Lord Tombs, and the Managing Director, Sir Ralph Robins, would have none of it. Rolls-Royce would compete across the range.

This book is the story of how Rolls-Royce moved from a company with a small number of engines supplying an equally small number of airlines to a company with a complete ‘family’ of engines supplying nearly all the world’s major airlines and most of the smaller ones too. Thanks to strategic partnerships and acquisitions, it has also become a truly global operation in both civil and military aerospace, in the commercial and naval marine industry and in the energy markets of the world. This volume covers a period that matches the achievements of Rolls-Royce at any other point in its history.

Peter PughJune 2002

AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In researching this third volume of the history of Rolls-Royce, I have read all the books mentioned in the bibliography and quoted from several of them. I am grateful to the authors and to the publishers. I have interviewed many people, some of them several times, and I am grateful to them too. Most of the interviews took place in Britain, but I visited the Rolls-Royce Allison plant in Indianapolis again, Rolls-Royce North America’s new headquarters in Chantilly, near Washington DC, and Rolls-Royce’s plant in Montreal. I also had the privilege of interviewing Dr Eberhard von Kuenheim in Munich, Dr Bernd Pischetsrieder in Wolfsburg, Jean Pierson in Nice and Rod Eddington at Heathrow, as well as visiting the new Rolls-Royce Deutschland plant in Dahlewitz near Berlin and the ITP offices in Madrid. I also had the great pleasure of visiting Singapore and interviewing a number of present and former executives of Singapore Airlines, including Dr Cheong Choong Kong, Chew Choon Seng and Joe Pillay.

I would like to mention especially: Jonathan Asherson, Brian Allen, Peter Baines, Sam Beale, Tom Bowling, Ian Brackenbury, Sir Colin Chandler, John Cheffins, Charles Coltman, John Coplin, Bob Crabtree, Charles Cudding-ton, Nick Cumpsty, Nick Devall, Martin Duckworth, Norm Egbert, John Ferrie, Keith Garwood, Jack Gordon, Duncan Gorham, Tony Gott, Colin Green, Jim Guyette, Sir Terence Harrison, Dr Bob Hawley, Paul Heiden, Lord Heseltine, Dr Mike Hicks, Jock Hill, Darrel Hinder, Chris Hornblower, Mike Howse, Charles Hughes, David Hygate, Gerry James, Neil Jennings, Tim Jones, Jim Keir, Ian Kinnear, Geoff Kirk, Saul Lanyado, Martin Lee, Ian Lloyd, Peter Lockton, George Lowe, Sue Lyons, Lord Marshall, Richard Maudslay, Martin Menrath, J. George Mikelsons, Riley Mixson, The Rt. Hon. Lord Moore, Barry Morgan, Mike Mundy, Frank Mungo, Mike Neale, Sir Robin Nicholson, Al Novick, Gordon Page, Peter Pavey, Jorge Montes del Pino, Fernando Pombo, Chris Pratt, Roy Quipp, Andrew Rice, John Rivers, Jim Roberts, John Rose, Tony Roulstone, Phil Ruffles, Michael Ryan, John Sandford, Rob Sellick, Jorge Sendagorta, David Sidaway, Sir Donald Spiers, Mike Steele, Andy Stephens, Bob Sunerton, Mike Terrett, Bill Thomas, Robin Thuillier, Stan Todd, Frank Turner, Mike Turner, Richard Turner, Gordon Waddington, David Watkins, David Whetton, Ray Whitfield, Derek Wilding, Phil Wilkins, Steve Williams, John Wragg, Sir William Wratten.

As with Parts One and Two of this history, I received constant help and advice from Mike Evans, whom I now reinstate as Chairman of the Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust, a post from which I inadvertently retired him in my acknowledgements in Part Two. Philip Hall, curator of the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation at The Hunt House, Paulerspury, kindly read the motor-car chapter and also provided photographs of Rolls-Royce and Bentley motor cars.

In the USA, Dave Newill organised interviews for me when I visited Indianapolis, and provided photographs and helped with the captions for the Allison chapter. Mike Hudson kindly read the Allison chapter and made some very helpful suggestions.

The Rolls-Royce Corporate Communications Department at Buckingham Gate, Derby and Bristol were at all times extremely helpful in providing media cuttings and photographs, and in giving constant support to the project. I would like to mention Martin Brodie, David Howie, Andrew Siddons, Martin Johnson, Martin Nield, Roger Scriven and Zara Turner. I found the Rolls-Royce Magazine a great fount of information. It must be the best in-house magazine in British industry. I must not forget the Chairman’s magnificent secretary Sally Cameron, who has replied instantly to my e-mail requests and who has fitted me into the Chairman’s busy schedule whenever I have requested it.

Finally, I must thank most of all the Chairman himself, Sir Ralph Robins, whose idea it was to have this history written. His enthusiasm for it has never wavered, and he has been constantly available for help and advice for the whole of the five-and-a-half years it has taken to complete this project.

As you can see, the jacket on this book is green – perhaps British Racing Green – and I have to tell you why. When we were selecting a colour, everyone agreed it should be burgundy. Burgundy goes beautifully with the blue and silver of the first two volumes. We mocked up a burgundy cover, put it on a book, put it in a slip case with the other two volumes and took it to show the Chairman. Not wanting to dictate the colour to him, we also mocked up a black cover and a green one, but did not put them on a book. The Chairman said the burgundy, silver and blue looked fine, in fact perfect. Then he spotted the green cover, and I could see going through his head, ‘That looks just like my Bentley.’ ‘That green looks rather good. Can I see it on a book? … Oh yes, green, that’s the colour.’ I hope the Chairman in 2010 doesn’t have a yellow Rolls-Royce!

Finally, I must thank all the people of Rolls-Royce with whom I have come in contact. Whether it’s because I was writing for the Chairman or whether because I was writing about their company I don’t know, but, without exception, every single person was extremely helpful and courteous, often going beyond the call of duty to make sure I received the necessary information. I said to the Chairman a few months ago how much I enjoyed interviewing people who work for Rolls-Royce, and I said I thought it was because they were all so knowledgeable. I remarked at the time that it was a bit strange, because very often clever and knowledgeable people can be a bit too ‘clever’ and overbearing – or, to put it more bluntly, a bit of a pain. A week later, I interviewed two of the engineers responsible for Rolls-Royce’s achievements in securing the company’s participation on Joint Strike Fighter, and it came to me why Rolls-Royce’s clever people are not ‘a bit of a pain’. It’s because they are so modest. No one ever said to me, ‘I did this.’ It was always ‘We did this’ or ‘Rolls-Royce did this.’

How will I ever write about another company?

Peter PughJune 2002

PHOTO CREDITS

The majority of the photographs have been provided either by the Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust or by Andrew Siddons in Rolls-Royce’s media department.

The photographs relating to Rolls-Royce BMW between pages 82 and 83 were provided by Rolls-Royce Deutschland, and almost all between pages 114 and 115 by Rolls-Royce Allison in Indianapolis.

The photographs of Bentley and Rolls-Royce motor cars between pages 146 and 147 were provided by the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation, and those of Henri Ziegler, Roger Beteille, Jean Pierson and Noël Forgeard by Airbus Industrie. The XG-40 Demonstrator Engine photograph was provided by Mike Neale.

The photographs of the Tornado aircraft and the Sea King helicopter between pages 210 and 211, and those of the Iwate, HMS Invincible, the submarine, Vickers machine gun and Vickers light tank between pages 274 and 275, are reproduced by kind permission of the Imperial War Museum.

THE VALUE OF MONEY

In a book about a business, we cannot ignore the changing value of money, and – with the exception of the inter-war years – the twentieth century has been inflationary. There is no magic formula for translating 1900 prices into those of 2000. Some items have exploded in price, others have declined. We have to choose some criterion of measurement, and I have chosen the average working wage.

The Victorian age was one of stable prices, but prices started to rise just before the First World War, and rose sharply at the end of it. (Wars are always inflationary, because they distort supply and demand.) Immediately after the war, prices were more than twice as high as in 1914, and although they declined somewhat in the depressed economic conditions of the 1920s and 30s, they remained about twice as high as those before the war.

Price controls and rationing were imposed in the Second World War, but as these were withdrawn, prices again doubled. Inflation continued at about 3 per cent a year through the 1950s and 60s, but then rose sharply, almost catastrophically, in the 1970s. Although it was brought under control by the end of that decade, there were two more nasty upward blips in the early and late 1980s before the more stable 1990s.

I have used the following formula:

Late nineteenth century – multiply by 110 to equate with today’s prices Early twentieth century – multiply by 100 to equate with today’s prices 1918–45 – multiply by 50 to equate with today’s prices 1945–50 – multiply by 30 to equate with today’s prices 1950–60 – multiply by 25 to equate with today’s prices 1960–70 – multiply by 18 to equate with today’s prices 1970–74 – multiply by 15 to equate with today’s prices 1975–77 – multiply by 10 to equate with today’s prices 1978–80 – multiply by 6 to equate with today’s prices 1980–87 – multiply by 3 to equate with today’s prices 1987–91 – multiply by 2 to equate with today’s prices 1991–97 – multiply by 1.5 to equate with today’s prices

Since 1997, the rate of inflation, by the standards of most of the twentieth century, has been very low, averaging less than the present Government’s stated aim of maintaining it at 2.5 per cent. You don’t need me to tell you that some items, such as telephone charges, are going down in price, while others, such as houses, are going up very sharply.

CHAPTER ONEA VERY HIGH-THRUST ENGINE

THE BIG FAN BATTLE ALL SET FAIR A CRITICAL BREAKTHROUGH ‘WE DECIDED TO MAKE A NEW AIRPLANE’ ‘A BILLION-DOLLAR BILL IS NOW SMALL CHANGE’ ‘AN ENGINE A DAY FOR SEVEN YEARS’ PROJECT DERWENT

THE BIG FAN BATTLE

TORY PRIME MINISTER Harold Macmillan once remarked that privatisation was akin to ‘selling off the family silver’. Yet as Rolls-Royce was floated on the Stock Exchange in 1987 – having been in Government ownership since 1971 – the Observer was able to write:

Rolls-Royce is arguably the flashiest piece of family silver that the Thatcher Government has put up for public auction via its privatisation programme. Rolls has the glamour of a global mega brand and the go-go promise of high-tech.

Rolls-Royce Managing Director Ralph Robins said that going public was to ‘return back to where we should be, on our own two feet’. And Chairman Sir Francis Tombs added:

Rolls-Royce virtually went to sleep for sixteen years. It wasn’t their fault, they just couldn’t get decisions quickly enough.

Rolls-Royce had regained its freedom on 28 April 1987, and the Chairman, then Sir Francis Tombs, said in the prospectus inviting potential investors to buy shares in the famous company, as he announced a record pre-tax profit of £120 million for 1986:

With outstanding orders worth £3.1 billion, the prospects for 1987 are encouraging. We have a strong order book, there is a large civil and military engine market to be satisfied, and we have a broad product range with which to compete. Add to this the steady growth in productivity over the past five years, improved financial controls, an experienced management team and skilled workforce, and I am confident that we have the ingredients for a successful future.

On privatisation – ‘Impact Day’ – Rolls-Royce aeroengines were in service with more than 270 airlines, 700 executive and corporate operators and 110 armed services worldwide. The company also had over 175 industrial customers operating gas turbines for power generation, gas- and oil-pipeline pumping and other industrial uses. Its gas turbines powered the naval vessels of 25 countries.

Nevertheless, Rolls-Royce, if it were to survive and prosper as an independent company, would need to invest heavily and expand rapidly. Tombs, along with the rest of the Board and senior management, could hardly wait to move from the state to the private sector.

Rolls-Royce still only had 8 per cent of the world airline-engine market. As Stewart Miller, Director of Engineering in the late 1980s, said:

Where we’d been available we’d done well but we weren’t available on enough aircraft.

For example, its sole Airbus application was the A320, powered by its joint-venture engine within the International Aero Engines consortium, the V-2500. Would Rolls-Royce now seize the opportunities that freedom from Government restraint would bring?

It would not be easy. The product range was limited, the number of customers small, the dependence on military spending heavy. On large civil engines, Rolls-Royce’s market share was only 8 per cent. It was little more than a niche player compared with General Electric (GE) and Pratt & Whitney, supplying scarcely more than half a dozen of the world’s major airlines.

This was not going to satisfy the freshly liberated Rolls-Royce. Sir Francis Tombs and Managing Director Sir Ralph Robins had already extricated the company from the onerous arrangement with GE that would have prevented Rolls-Royce manufacturing large engines in its own right. This was followed by the production of a strategy paper that outlined the plan to produce a family of engines based on a common core. The aim was no less than to place Rolls-Royce in a position from which it could produce an engine for every gas-turbine civil aircraft manufactured anywhere in the world.

The need for a higher-thrust engine became clear during 1987. The 42,000lb thrust of the original RB 211 had been increased to 60,600lb on the RB 211-524G/H, which powered the Boeing 747-400 and the 767. However, this was not going to be sufficient for the new wide-bodied airliners being developed by Boeing and Airbus, which would require a new payload/range capability as well as the need for a high initial cruise altitude.

The new aircraft – the Boeing 777, McDonnell Douglas MD-11 and the Airbus A330 and 340 – would all want to fly much further than the 747, DC-10 and TriStar that they would replace. Airlines could also benefit if their aircraft could start their cruise at high altitude, because in busy periods they were more likely to obtain operating slots at a favourable time of the day. The higher cruise altitude also reduced fuel consumption. The result of these requirements was the need for engines capable of thrust much higher than 60,000lb for all but the A340, which was going to use four engines.

In devising its big-engine strategy, Rolls-Royce immediately had to make two fundamental decisions. Would the engine be a brand new one or a derivative, and would it be three-shaft or two-? In coming to conclusions, Rolls-Royce appreciated the key factor of reliability. The new twin-engined wide-body aircraft would demand absolute reliability from the very first days of service.

This certainly pushed Rolls-Royce towards the derivative and three-shaft approach. Giles Harvey, General Manager of the Trent, which, as we shall see shortly, would be Rolls-Royce’s new big engine, said:

Our basic strategy was to build on what we were good at, which was a three-shaft engine, with its inherent advantages of stiffness, performance retention and fuel economy.

However, in pursuing the concept of an RB 211 derivative, they had to be aware of its supposed unfavourable weight comparison with its competitors. Harvey felt this would not be a problem, saying:

Although we knew the early RB211s were of conservative design and hence heavier than their competitors, we knew that, as we pushed the fan size up, the engine became relatively lighter. We’d obviously done design studies before, but we’d never appreciated the significance of the weight saving that would occur with this size of engine.

It was the higher thrusts that made the difference. The three-shaft engine had better stage matching which meant that each spool could be better optimised aerodynamically thereby working more efficiently and saving weight.

Stan Todd, Trent project director at the time, said:

The benefits were always there, but at smaller sizes, two-shaft designs could make up the difference with active clearance control and careful design.

Harvey maintained that, at high thrusts, the two-shaft design had limited options, adding:

To get adequate core flow they either have to put more booster stages on the fan, or increase the length of the high-pressure (HP) compressor. The larger fans of the new engines were limited in rotational speed because of noise and blade-off considerations, which meant that grafting extra stages on to the back of the booster was progressively less effective. So you had to think about more stages on the high pressure system. The problem there was that the HP compressor became longer while its diameter was constrained to control rotational speed. Then you were into shaft whirl problems and the bearing arrangement to control that was less than optimum.

Mike Howse, current Director of Engineering at Rolls-Royce, summed it up:

The three-shaft engine concept comprises a low-pressure system and a gas generator made up of an intermediate (IP) and high-pressure (HP) system. These three systems can then be individually designed to run at their optimum aerodynamic loading which gives high efficiency and a low number of compressor and turbine stages. This was one of the design intents when the concept was formulated in the mid 1960s.

The lower speed of the IP turbine (relative to the HP) means low mechanical loading so that the IP blade could be uncooled and has remained so on all Trents ever since. This provides further fuel savings.

The fan runs at its own slow correct speed allowing the core compressors, each of modest pressure ratio, to run close to their ideal higher speeds. Each stage can generate high pressure and so relatively few stages are needed with a minimum of variable geometry stators. Because the IP compressor creates high pressure rise, the short HP system, which runs even faster, can avoid the use of variables, allowing easier overhaul and lower cost maintenance.

The three-shaft design is therefore shorter, more rigid and lighter than the equivalent two-shaft engine. It performs its duties with fewer stages, fewer aerofoils, fewer total components, giving low unit cost. The short rigid engine can be designed with high structural strength incorporating double-skin casings and four bearing chambers, each located by a rigid radial support structure. This gives excellent support to each of the short rotating systems ensuring tight tip clearance control for the fan, compressors and turbine blades, giving excellent performance retention.

An inherent advantage of the three-shaft configuration is the flexibility of the arrangement, easily providing a family of engines with a range of bypass ratios or thrusts. This arises because the HP and IP systems can be designed without being compromised by the slow LP system. Individual scaling of components leads to a great number of options and this, combined with present day computer modelling, has made it possible to realise these options industrially in a practical cost effective way …

With the more efficient structure, the reduced numbers of components and its ability to get more thrust out of a smaller fan diameter, the three-shaft concept has produced lighter engines relative to the two-shaft designs as engine thrust requirements have increased. The inherent thrust-to-weight benefits of the Trent engine can result in a payload advantage of over 8000lb on the Boeing 777 aircraft.

The ‘derivative approach’ meant that, apart from material changes and improved aerodynamics, the Trent HP system would be similar to that of the RB 211-524G/H that was under development; whereas Rolls-Royce had introduced the -535E4 as the world’s first high-bypass-ratio engine with a wide-chord, snubberless (clapperless) fan and followed suit with later -524s and then with the Trent. Titanium remained the chosen material because, as we saw in Part Two, the attempt to introduce composite blades on the original RB 211s failed in bird-strike tests. The wide-chord blades had proved their worth in thousands of hours of service, most notably when a 757 hit a flock of Canada geese on a take-off from Chicago. One engine ingested at least four 3-kilogram birds but continued to run for the go-around and landing. And this go-around would not be just a simple fly round and land. Regulations would demand that fuel would have to be dumped mid-air so that the aircraft would be much lighter than for take-off.

As we have already seen, Rolls-Royce had made the conscious decision to compete in the large-engine market. How was it going to fare and what was the competition?

The three combatants – Rolls-Royce, GE and Pratt & Whitney – were playing for even higher stakes than in the past. They were aiming specifically at the new breed of big twin-engined aircraft that would operate extensively in the extended-range twin-engine operations environment better known as ETOPS, which some dubbed ‘Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim’.

The relevant Federal Aviation Regulation stipulated:

Unless authorized by the Administrator, based on the character of the terrain, the kind of operation, or the performance of the airplane to be used, no certificate holder may operate two-engine or three-engine airplanes (except three-engine turbine powered airplanes) over a route that contains a point farther than one hour flying time (in still air at normal cruising speed with one engine inoperative) from an adequate airport.

This meant the demand would be for the kind of reliability from the beginning of service that, in the past, had been expected only from engines with years of development history. There was also a continuing demand for better performance, reduced fuel burn, lower emissions and noise, and lower operating costs.

GE was the only one of the three developing an all-new core. Pratt & Whitney planned to extend its PW4000 core, and Rolls-Royce was going to develop the Trent from its RB 211 family. The key design feature of the GE90 engine was its huge 3.12-metre-diameter fan, which would boost the bypass ratio to between 9:1 and 10:1. It was expected to enter service at a thrust level of 342kN, and at this level its wide-chord fan blades would pump through 1,520kg/s of air at the top of the climb, compared with 830kg/s for its existing 277kN CF6-80C2. The bypass ratio of the CF6 was only 5:1. GE, like Pratt & Whitney, was adopting the wide-chord fan for the first time, and, for reasons of weight, GE was also hoping for the fan to be made of composite materials, but was aware of the dangers of delamination under stress or bird impact.

Pratt & Whitney was working on a 2.84-metre-diameter, hollow, shroudless, titanium wide-chord fan-blade set, yet acknowledged that:

Composites may come into play later as we grow into the Advanced Ducted Prop.

It confidently announced that when the PW4073 went into service with United Airlines (Pratt & Whitney had won the first 777 order), the PW4000 core would have 14 million hours of flight experience behind it.

For its part, Rolls-Royce was promoting its lower turbine entry temperature (TET). According to statistics given to Boeing by all three engine makers, the Trent 665/668 TET would be up to 100°C cooler than the PW4000 on the MD-11 aircraft, and, for the Trent 770/772/775 on the A330 aircraft, 60°C cooler than the CF6-80E1 or the PW4164. The Trent 800 series was claimed to have a TET some 100°C lower for the Boeing 777 aircraft than the GE90. One of the advantages of running cooler would be greater reliability, while maintaining competitive fuel efficiency due to the three-shaft configuration.

Furthermore, the Trent was the lightest of the engines offered for the 777. Rolls-Royce had struggled against the GE CF6 and the Pratt & Whitney JT9 and PW4000 with the extra weight of the RB 211. Now Boeing agreed that the Trent would be lighter than both the Pratt & Whitney and GE engines. However, GE claimed when it announced its brand new GE90 that it would be quieter than the Trent. In a typical example of his humour, Robins retorted:

At the moment it’s infinitely quieter than the Trent because it’s only a wooden mock-up.

When the Trent engine was unveiled at the Farnborough Air Show in 1988, the father of the jet engine, Sir Frank Whittle, was invited by Rolls-Royce to come and look at it. His first engine had produced 480lb thrust. Whittle said of the Trent:

The most powerful engine I designed had a thrust of 2,500lb … I would have said something like 10,000lb was as far as we were likely to go. If we wanted more power for a particular aeroplane, we’d just have had more engines than, say, two of these enormous powerful jobs.

ALL SET FAIR

As Rolls-Royce faced its new life as an independent company in the spring of 1987, all seemed set fair on the economic and political fronts.

In June, the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, won a third term in office. The result was decisive, with the Conservatives securing a 101-seat majority. This had not seemed likely earlier in the year when the Government was still suffering the effects of the Westland Helicopters affair.

Indeed, as late as January 1987 the Conservative and Labour parties were given equal backing in the opinion polls, and, in a by-election in the London constituency of Greenwich on 26 February, the Conservative share of the vote fell from 35 per cent, reached in the 1983 election, to just 11 per cent – the biggest decline in any by-election since Thatcher had come to power in 1979.

Nevertheless, with her popularity boosted by a successful and widely publicised visit to the Soviet Union for lengthy talks with Mikhail Gorbachev – someone she had earlier declared she ‘could do business with’ – Thatcher decided to call the election for 11 June, and won comfortably. In doing so, she became the first Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool 160 years earlier to win three consecutive general-election victories. Furthermore, she did so with a more radical agenda than in 1979 and 1983, spurning the advice of many senior Conservatives to pursue a policy of consolidation. The great psephologist David Butler summed up Thatcher’s success in winning her third election:

Mrs Thatcher had gone through one or two bad patches but in Cabinet and parliament she remained overwhelmingly dominant … and she was presiding over an economy that despite three million unemployed, was continuously growing. An expanding economy is the most generally accepted formula for electoral success.

By the autumn of 1987, the overall economic picture was not looking quite as rosy. In the middle of October, after a long bull-run stretching back to 1982, the world’s stock markets crashed; but, in truth, the seeds of Thatcher’s eventual downfall had already been sown when the Local Government Finance Act received the royal assent in July 1987. This law established the timetable for the abolition of rates and for its replacement by a flat-rate ‘community charge’, or ‘poll tax’ as it became popularly, or perhaps unpopu-larly, known. In principle, the poll tax was supposed to be simpler, which it probably was, and fairer, which it was not – at least in the sense that many of the poorer members of society would be paying more, while the richer would be paying less, than under the old system of rates. It was introduced at a time of relatively high inflation, and although the Government had estimated that the average charge would be £278 per person, the same as the average rates bill, the outcome was an average of £363. Gallup polls showed it to be the most unpopular reform the UK Government had introduced since the Second World War, and on 31 March 1990 a demonstration in London’s West End turned into the worst riot in the city in the twentieth century.

Combined with economic difficulties, mainly caused by overheating, and the Conservative Party’s obvious disarray over Europe, the poll tax was the final straw, and Conservatives, fearing that their once brilliant leader was now a liability, voted her out of office when a challenge was mounted by Michael Heseltine in the autumn of 1990. Thatcher gained 204 votes to Heseltine’s 152, with 16 abstentions. This was only four votes short of the 56 majority she needed for victory. Her reaction was to fight on, but her cabinet colleagues advised her to quit. This left the way open for others to come forward to fight Heseltine. Two did so: John Major, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Douglas Hurd, Foreign Secretary. One hundred and eighty-seven votes were required for victory: Major won 185, Heseltine 131 and Hurd 56. Heseltine and Hurd immediately conceded, and John Major, to the surprise of many, became Prime Minister – the youngest, at that point, of the twentieth century.

Nicholas Ridley, Thatcher’s close friend, who had been forced to resign his position as Minister for Trade and Industry in 1990 for describing the European Union as a ‘German racket’, wrote later of the Conservative Party:

It is a very cruel animal … It is ruthless and cruel. Few that evening spared a moment to regret both the fact and the manner of her going, let alone permit themselves a tear. There was much unconcealed pleasure at the clever way they got her out.

David Childs wrote in his Britain Since 1945:

When the victory of John Major was announced, Margaret Thatcher said she was ‘thrilled’. Labour’s John Cunningham called him a Thatcherite and Liberal Democrat Paddy Ashdown said he was ‘a Thatcherite with a different face’. The Liberal MP Alan Beith commented, ‘I like him and he is a very competent man, but I do not understand what he believes.’ His Cabinet colleague, Tony Newton, said he cared deeply about the plight of the under-privileged.

Margaret Thatcher did not remain ‘thrilled’ for long and irritated Major enormously throughout his six-and-a-half-year period as Prime Minister with her critical comments. Alan Beith had summed up Major accurately – he did not seem to believe in much except competence; but then, that’s really what most of the electorate want from their government – competence.

A CRITICAL BREAKTHROUGH

Apart from political ups and downs, Rolls-Royce after privatisation was launched into a booming civil-airline market. Indeed, the major issue in the air transport industry in 1987 was the problem of insufficient airport capacity. The problem was at its worst in the USA, where demand was growing annually at 14 per cent. To cope with this growth in demand, forecasts were put forward for the need for new aircraft. Airbus Industrie calculated that 7,300 airliners would be needed in the next twenty years. Commercial aircraft designers continued to produce new or ‘derivative’ designs. For example, in February 1987 Airbus Industrie flew its 150-seat A320 for the first time and could boast orders and options for 400 aircraft.

Airbus Industrie also took a bold step when it announced in June 1987 that it would have a new wide-bodied, twin-engined airliner, the A330, which would meet the emerging demand for greater payloads in Europe and elsewhere over short-to-medium distances. Furthermore, it would have a wide-bodied, four-engined, long-range stablemate, the A340. The two aircraft would have a common wing design and many other common components, but different engines.

This was effectively a challenge to the three engine manufacturers to design and develop suitable engines. The A340 could possibly use enhanced versions of existing engines, but clearly the A330 would need something new. Rolls-Royce may have recently been liberated, but, as we have seen, the future looked pretty daunting. There were about 1,500 Rolls-Royce RB 211s flying worldwide – half the number of GE CF6s and Pratt & Whitney JT9Ds. Furthermore, two-thirds of those RB 211s were on Lockheed L.1011 TriStars, an aircraft no longer in production. As airlines looked for replacement aircraft, Rolls-Royce had to force its way on to those new aircraft if it was going to retain its customers.

Under Government control in the 1970s and early 1980s, Rolls-Royce had been acutely aware that its engines were not on enough aircraft types. However, big and radical investment decisions were not possible; only small investment decisions could be made. One of those was to try to get the RB 211 on to the 747. As we saw in Part Two, that was achieved in the late 1970s, and by the late 1980s the RB 211-524, introduced in 1977, had captured 25 per cent of the 747-200/300 market. Rolls-Royce had developed this engine to meet the 747’s increasing thrust demands, and had held on to their BA, Qantas and Cathay customers for the extensively updated and higher-rated 747-400.

Perhaps the most important engine competition that Rolls-Royce ever won in the civil market was the one in 1988/9 to supply American Airlines with the RB 211-535E4 for its Boeing 757s. The 757 had originally been launched in 1978 (as we saw in Part Two, Eastern Airlines and British Airways launched it with Rolls-Royce RB 211-535C engines) but initially sold only in small numbers. Boeing’s marketing manager for the 737 and 757, Brian Boyd, said:

In retrospect the 757 was developed too early. We didn’t anticipate deregulation nor the steady fuel price. The market has grown to the 757.

After the rising fuel costs of the early 1970s, Boeing thought there would be a high demand for a fuel-efficient 727 replacement. However, high labour costs had been largely curbed by the airlines, and the fuel price stabilised, reducing the economic need to replace the three-cockpit-crew 727s with the two-crew 757s. By the mid-1980s, the market was changing. Congestion at airports and in the air combined with noise restrictions to increase the attractions of the 757. The airlines wanted more seats without more flights.

In May 1988, American Airlines ordered 50 757s with an option on another 50, and Chairman Bob Crandall cited the low noise of the RB 211-535 as an important influence on his specifying the Rolls-Royce engines to power the aircraft. For example, American could take the 757s into and out of John Wayne Airport, Orange County, California – which had some of the strictest noise regulations in the world – without any restrictions on the number of movements. Washington National (now Washington Reagan) quickly followed Orange County in imposing night-curfew noise limits. The 757, with Rolls-Royce’s RB 211-535, was within these limits but not with Pratt & Whitney’s PW2037. This enabled Rolls-Royce to place advertisements referring to ‘The Quiet American’.

Richard Turner, currently Marketing Director of Rolls-Royce, said in 2001:

This was an absolutely critical breakthrough. It was a kind of coming-of-age. We had really been a marginal supplier in the States with engines on the TriStar, Fokker F28 and F100 and with a small share on 747s.

Sir Ralph Robins agreed. In his view, the 757 was one of the most important episodes in the growth of Rolls-Royce’s position as a civil-engine manufacturer. It was the first time a Boeing aircraft was launched with a Rolls-Royce engine, and the -535E4’s subsequent domination of the market against the Pratt & Whitney 2037 was a major factor in building the airline customer base that Rolls-Royce would exploit to sell the Trent family.

Now Rolls-Royce needed to be on the planned Airbus Industrie twin-jet A330, the McDonnell Douglas tri-jet MD-11 and Boeing’s planned 767X. The company certainly took up the challenge, and, a few months before he died in 1999, Stewart Miller told the author that the one thing he wanted to be remembered for was his persuading the Rolls-Royce Board, only a few months after privatisation, that the company should invest in developing the new ‘very high thrust’ engine, which in the Rolls-Royce manner of naming civil aeroengines after rivers, they called the Trent. Robins said:

We thought about Derwent and Clyde but I decided that Trent was the most appropriate.

There had been two previous Rolls-Royce Trent engines. The first was the 1945 prop-jet demonstrator based on the Derwent, which flew in the Meteor, and the second was the late-1960s fan-jet destined for a Fairchild airliner. Some 1960s Trents were built and ran well, but the aircraft project was abandoned.

The brief was given to the Rolls-Royce engineers to design the best engine to meet the needs of the new wide-bodies of the 1990s. It should be based on the RB 211 three-shaft concept, proven by 45 million hours of experience, and incorporate state-of-the-art technology to give the lowest weight and fuel consumption, highest reliability and a capability of meeting all foreseeable thrust needs as well as noise and emission regulations.

When the Rolls-Royce Board gave its approval for the Trent development programme, the forecast for the potential market in the 1992–2001 period was 2,650 engines, and the presumed Rolls-Royce share was 22 per cent. Rolls-Royce spread its risk by bringing in its old friends in Japan – Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI) and Ishikawajima Harima Heavy Industries (IHI) – who between them took up an 11 per cent risk-sharing stake in the Trent programme. This consolidated a relationship that Rolls-Royce had been building in Japan for fifteen years. Manufacturing agreements had been set up on the Orpheus and Adour engines and on early models of the RB 211-524. There had also been a partnership with Kawasaki on industrial and marine engines. And, of course, the three Japanese companies – Kawasaki, Ishikawajima Harima and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries – were members of the Japanese Aero Engines Corporation, which had joined the consortium that developed the V-2500. Apart from spreading the risks, Rolls-Royce hoped that the Japanese links would help penetration of the Trent in the Far East, where demand for wide-bodied aircraft was expected to be particularly strong.

Discussions were continuing with Boeing on the possibility of the Trent being the launch engine on the 767X. A product strategy had been developed that would make the Trent suitable for all three new wide-bodied aircraft being developed. There would be three basic engine ratings but with a high degree of component commonality to minimise the effect on the total launch costs. Based on the Trent being the launch engine in the 767X with one initial competitor, Rolls-Royce’s view by late 1989 was that it would achieve a market share of 30 per cent rather than the 22 per cent forecast a year earlier.

At the time of the launch of the Trent, Boeing was studying a rewinged development of the existing 767. However, during 1989 the strategy changed, and Boeing proposed to develop a new aircraft with a competitive advantage over the rather larger Airbus A330 in terms of payload, range and cruise speed, but with a weight 12 per cent greater than the A330. This would need a higher-thrust engine, and by late 1989 a high-thrust version of the Trent had become a prime candidate for the possible launch customers, which included BA, United, American and Delta. BA was naturally seen as a key target customer, and a separate strategy was worked out to secure the British airline as the 767X launch customer.

The design of the 767X was aimed at the 4,000 nautical miles of intra-European and US domestic routes as a replacement for DC-10s and TriStars by 1995. The initial weight of the aircraft would be 495,000lb, with growth to 550,000lb to satisfy the 5,500 nautical miles of North Atlantic routes by 1997. A final growth step for an even higher-weight aircraft to tackle transpacific or high-density routes was planned for the year 2000.

‘WE DECIDED TO MAKE A NEW AIRPLANE’

When Boeing had assembled a team to design a brand new aircraft for the 1990s, Alan Mulally, second-in-command to engineer Phil Condit on the design team, said to them:

The airlines of the world told us they wanted an airplane that was bigger than the 767 and smaller than the 747. And we said, ‘Why don’t you buy 767s?’ And they said, ‘We want an airplane that’s bigger than the 767 and smaller than the 747 because on some of the city pairs that we fly we cannot get enough people to fill up a 747 and we have too many for a 767.’ It took us two years to figure out that they really wanted an airplane that was bigger than the 767 and smaller than the 747. So we decided to make a new airplane.

Jeff Pearce, chief project engineer on the 777 in the early 1990s, said:

Our forecasters were telling us that the total requirement for the industry through 2005 would be about 8,400 aircraft, worth some $516 billion and that approximately $210 billion worth of those aircraft would be in the medium-sized range.

We initially considered simply building an enlarged derivative of the 767, designated 767X. We came up with some pretty wild configurations, including the ‘humpback of Mukilteo’, named after the shape of the fuselage and a small town near Everett, where Boeing builds its widebodies. This was a 767 with an upper deck, much like the 747, but the deck was situated aft and so the aircraft was much stranger looking. Most of us thought it was ugly, and when an aircraft does not look right, it probably is not the best solution … That was when we decided to build a new aircraft family, the 777.

To help them, Boeing pulled together a team of representatives from eight of the world’s largest airlines – United, American, Delta, British Airways, Japan Airlines, All Nippon Airways, Qantas and Cathay Pacific. These became known as the ‘Gang of Eight’. In the end, the 777 was closer to the 747-100 in size, and 747-400 in systems, than it was to the 767. It was bigger than the other two large airliners – the twin-engined Airbus A330 and the triple-engined McDonnell Douglas MD-11.

The competition to supply the engines for this new aircraft would be close and fierce, as was illustrated in this remark by Gordon McKinzie of United Airlines, after he had selected Pratt & Whitney engines:

I’d say all three of the engines were technically very, very comparable. The GE engine was an excellent engine, but a brand-new-technology engine. There were three parts of that engine that were virtually new technology. It had a new wide-chord composite blade, a new combustor design, and a very high-pressure compressor which they had never tried before. But that engine also had a lot more growth potential than some of the others, and it had excellent fuel burn, so it was a real contender. The Rolls engine [was] also a great engine [with] a big core … we spent a lot of time in Derby looking at that engine. But we knew the Pratt engine very well, we were flying the core engine on the 747s and the 767s and we looked at the new engine they were looking at for this airplane, which was a kind of an extension of that design and we felt comfortable. But, in all honesty, all three engines would have worked for us.

Rolls-Royce put in place a strategy for the Trent family of engines that could cope with the demands they anticipated from the airlines and therefore the airframe makers. The Trent 650 was for the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 and had the capability of 4 per cent growth to the Trent 660, which would be competitive if McDonnell Douglas developed the aircraft to higher weights. In the event, Rolls-Royce concentrated on providing an engine for McDonnell Douglas’s long-range, 375-seat MD-12 airliner. The Trent 680 was planned for the entry of the A330 into service in 1995, but a higher-thrust engine, the Trent 720, was planned for use by Cathay Pacific and Trans World Airlines (TWA). The Trent 720 would meet the requirements of Airbus’s plans to increase the weight of the A330 from 208 to 223 tonnes. The Trent 760 would meet the requirements of Boeing’s planned 550,000lb 767X. However, Boeing’s plans for the ultimate development of the 767X to a maximum weight of 600,000lb would require a take-off thrust around 85,000 to 90,000lb. This would mean Rolls-Royce producing an engine with an increased fan diameter of up to 120 inches, with further core improvements and a new nacelle.

In looking at the competition, Rolls-Royce came to a number of conclusions. In terms of thrust, the Trent family was well matched to the competition and possessed adequate growth potential. For example, it would enhance the MD-11 capabilities from ‘hot and high’ airfields. Pratt & Whitney offered similar thrust capability, but the GE CF6-80C2 had limited growth potential and could not meet the thrust requirements of the heavier-weight versions of the A330 and 767X. As a result, it was thought GE was considering the development of a brand new, large-diameter engine.

The RB 211 had always been heavier, thrust for thrust, than its competitors, and the Trent gave Rolls-Royce a chance to eradicate this disadvantage. The Trent was similar in weight to its Pratt & Whitney competitors and, although it was heavier than the GE CF6-80E1 proposed for the A330, the GE engine did not possess adequate thrust for the higher-weight versions of the A330.

On fuel consumption, it was difficult to tie down an exact position. McDonnell Douglas said that the Trent was about 1 per cent worse than Pratt & Whitney and 1 per cent better than GE. Boeing had audited both the Trent and the Pratt & Whitney engine for the 767X and found them about equal. The GE90, a new high-bypass-ratio engine, was better but lost advantage from installation costs and high weight. Airbus showed the Trent to be worse than its competitors. One per cent of the deficit was due to the Trent long nacelle – a disadvantage Rolls-Royce expected to overcome after wind-tunnel testing. Rolls-Royce put the remaining deficit down to Airbus conservatism or unreal bids from Pratt & Whitney and GE. Rolls-Royce therefore entered discussions with Airbus to ensure a competitive representation of the Trent.

On reliability, Rolls-Royce showed the airlines and airframe manufacturers that the Trent was the fourth generation of the RB 211 and that intense attention was being given to ensure that the service experience of the earlier RB 211s would be fed into the Trent design. Rolls-Royce could show that such attention to detail had been applied with great success to the -535.

Crucial to the success of the Trent family of engines was Rolls-Royce’s successful development of the wide-chord fan. To appreciate the significance of this development, we need to understand in basic terms how a gas-turbine aeroengine works.

The engine sucks in air, compresses it, adds fuel and burns it, and ejects the resultant gas as a hot stream that drives the turbines, and thereby the compressors and the aircraft forwards. The function of the large fan at the front of the engine is to act as the first stage in the sequence of compressing the air that is ingested. The fan is like a multi-bladed propeller, some 8 feet or more in diameter in modern gas-turbine engines, and is driven by the rearmost turbine in the engine. The fan sucks in more than half a tonne of air every second, and more than 80 per cent of that air bypasses the gas-generator section of the engine, while the other 20 per cent is greatly compressed and then mixed with vaporised fuel and burned to provide the hot gas exhaust stream. At the rear of the engine, the bypass air is mixed with the hot gas exhaust to provide a massive rearward force that drives the engine and aircraft forward at high speed.

The front fan is one of the most vital parts of the engine. It is driven by 50,000 to 100,000 horsepower or more, which is extracted from the hot gas flow by means of the low-pressure turbine in the engine. This huge power is essential because the rotating fan is required to pump enormous volumes of air through the engine. The fan blades provide thrust in the same way as the wings of an aircraft produce lift, but the speed at which a fan blade meets the intake air increases along its span. Near its root, the twisted aerofoil sections of a fan blade act like the wing of a subsonic aircraft, progressively changing to that of a fighter flying at supersonic speed near the tip. Effectively, the fan provides propulsion efficiency.

Because the fan produces so much of an engine’s thrust, any improvement in its overall design that improves its efficiency has a beneficial effect on fuel consumption. Producing blades with a wider chord (i.e. the width in relation to the length) means the blades can be made stiffer and aerodynamically more stable, which in turn means fewer blades to achieve the same task. Thus, there is a saving in weight and, as it happens, greater foreign-object damage resistance.

After almost 25 years of development, Rolls-Royce produced the wide-chord fan with hollow blades filled with a metal honeycomb core. Viability was only achieved after many extremely exacting requirements had been satisfied in relation to adequate fatigue life, the minimising of vibration stresses and the provision of resistance to impact by birds and other foreign objects.

The wide-chord fan also brought significant benefits in noise reduction, thanks to the smaller number of blades and the blockage effect produced by the wider fan blades, making it more difficult for noise to escape forwards through the fan on a landing approach. At high thrust – on take-off or climb – the more rigid wide-chord fan blades produce less of the ‘buzz-saw’ sound that results from the supersonic flow over the tips of more flexible, narrower-chord blades.

Rolls-Royce’s first wide-chord fan went into service in late 1984 on the RB 211-535E4 powering the Boeing 757. It immediately showed its strengths in better fuel consumption, lower noise and increased reliability, and was soon used at different sizes on four other engines: the Tay turbofan, the V-2500, the higher-thrust developments of the RB 211-524 and the Trent.

By October 1989, the decision by the Board in June 1988 to proceed with the Trent programme seemed to be fully justified. Launch orders had been secured on the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 with Air Europe and on the Airbus A330 with Cathay Pacific. An order had also been placed by Trans World Airlines for Trent-powered A330s. Firm and option orders had reached 228, including those from the International Lease Finance Corporation (ILFC).

A progress report for the Board said:

Discussions have continued with Boeing, who are now finalising the specification of the 767X. This is a totally new and highly competitive aircraft for which we have an opportunity to be launch engine and therefore secure a market share equivalent to that achieved by the 535. A further development of the Trent for this new aircraft has been studied and Boeing now require formal proposals from the engine manufacturers, prior to a submission to their Board at the end of October.

A product strategy has been developed for the application of the Trent to all three new wide bodied aircraft and their future developments. Three basic engine ratings are identified to meet the different requirements of these aircraft, but a high degree of component commonality between the ratings has minimised the effect on the total launch costs.

On current sales, orders and options, the Trent was achieving a 60 per cent share on the A330 but only a 6 per cent share on the MD-11. However, the report saw opportunities about to rise on the MD-11 – especially in the Pacific Basin with Japanese Airlines, All Nippon Airways and Singapore Airlines, as well as with Continental in the USA.

Success with Airbus Industrie was particularly sweet because, apart from the International Aero Engines (IAE) V-2500 on the A320 and its A319 and A321 derivatives, Rolls-Royce had never powered an Airbus aircraft. Jean Pierson, the charismatic Managing Director of Airbus Industrie, when asked in May 1991 if he was not stretching the company by launching the A330 and A340 at the same time, said characteristically:

No. The most risky time for us was between 1978 and 1984, when we were introducing the A310 and developing the A300-600 and A320. For the next ten years we are looking at less investment than the last ten … There was a debate within Airbus. Some people said we should launch a twin, others a quad. Finally, the engineers promised they could do both aircraft with a common airframe for half a billion less. Let’s go! … The A330 and A340 do not represent a technology goal. The goal is to increase market share and, using the technology of the A320, to make money with that share. It’s a business goal. When you launch an aircraft you have to decide your priorities. These aircraft have already helped us to increase our market share from 20 per cent to 30 per cent in the last four years. We’ve sold more than 200 aircraft of both types and the A340 is not due to fly for five months.

‘A BILLION-DOLLAR BILL IS NOW SMALL CHANGE’

The strong market conditions that Rolls-Royce had enjoyed at privatisation in 1987 continued into 1988, with Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and Airbus Industrie all stretched to capacity. Boeing was the top producer, with 747s coming out of its Seattle plant at the rate of one per week. The 757 suddenly received a large spate of orders, and by the end of September 1988 Boeing had sold 368, compared with 307 of the 767s. Selling more than any of these three was Boeing’s smaller aircraft, the 737. Europe’s competing Airbus A320 entered service in February 1988, and, by the end of the year, orders and options had reached 700, comfortably above the 600 break-even level.

Rolls-Royce, full of confidence and renewed energy after its successful privatisation, began to increase its market share. As we saw earlier, on 26 May 1988 it was announced that American Airlines had ordered 50 Boeing 757-200 airliners to be powered by twin Rolls-Royce RB 211-535E4 engines. The contract was worth more than £500 million to Rolls-Royce over the life of the aircraft and could be worth over £1 billion if American took up its option of another 50 aircraft. Francis Tombs said that Rolls-Royce’s share of the world civil aeroengine market had reached 20 per cent and was still rising. Bob Crandall, Chairman and President of American Airlines, said that they had chosen the Rolls-Royce engine in preference to the Pratt & Whitney 2037 because:

It is a very quiet, fuel-efficient and extremely reliable engine that is also exceptionally cost effective to operate. The first 757s came in even quieter than we thought they would. Initial operating experience is very good, very good indeed.

By the late 1980s, American Airlines was the largest airline in the Western world, both in terms of fleet size and passengers carried. Based in Dallas, Texas, it had been founded in 1929 out of a combination of no fewer than 85 small airlines. Since then, led for many years by the legendary C.R. Smith, who eventually became Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Commerce in 1968 (the appointment caused American to change its mind about buying the British-made RB 211 for its Douglas DC-10s, as we saw in Part Two), American pioneered many new features of the US airline industry scene. For example, it offered the first sleeper service on its Curtiss Condors in the early 1930s, and it also offered the first non-stop coast-to-coast service in both directions in 1953 with the Douglas DC-7.

Bob Baker, American’s Vice-President of Operations, said that American’s experience with Rolls-Royce’s RB 211-535E4 had been ‘outstanding’, adding:

We haven’t had any problems. They are doing just what Rolls told us they would do.

Looking to the future, he said: