Description

Military aircraft in the post-war period became increasingly complex with the advent of the gas turbine, advanced avionics and guided weapons. Outlining the role of a new type and how it fulfilled that role required the issue to the aircraft companies of a set of focused instructions. These took the form of specifications that described what the aircraft should do, the performance required and the equipment that allowed the aircraft to function in the role. Specifications were the key to the development of British military aircraft during the Cold War and beyond.

Although the overall governing bodies changed over the years from the Air Ministry, Admiralty, Air and General Staffs to the Ministry of Defence (Procurement Executive), the issuing authority over the period 1950-1976 remained the Research and Development Technical (RDT) Branch, tasked with the issue of specifications to industry.

British Aircraft Specifications 1950 – 1976 describes the background to the issue of specifications by the RDT Branch, summaries of the specifications themselves and, where relevant, the various proposals submitted by the aircraft builders toward meeting these specifications.

In this companion work to their 1995 British Aircraft Specifications File, Meekcoms and Morgan describe the specifications that led to the aircraft that equipped the Royal Air Force, Fleet Air Arm and Army Air Corps throughout the Cold War and into the early 21st Century, as well as those that never made it that far, and is a valuable source for researchers and historians of that era.