At the end of the Second World War, there were over twenty-five aircraft manufacturers dotted around the UK. Some, like Avro and Hawker, or Vickers and Supermarine, were already conjoined, but although part of the same group, still built aircraft under their own names.
Despite Hawker Siddeley’s acquisition of Avro before the war, for instance, the Vulcan bomber was always the Avro Vulcan. The record-breaking Swift was always the Supermarine Swift, not the Vickers-Armstrong Swift. Some quickly retired from the scene. After the outstanding MB.5 fighter failed to attract an order, Martin-Baker turned its attention to building ejection seats. Miles was wrapped up soon after the cancellation of the promising M.52 supersonic research jet. Even ten years after the war’s end, the extraordinary sequence of government-enforced mergers and acquisitions that was on the horizon would have seemed unlikely to those in the industry. But by the mid-seventies, though, there were just four companies still making aircraft in the UK.
