This paper looks at several typical management and marketing aspects of the operations and organisation of a large British engineering company whose biggest market is abroad. Exporting into highly competitive international markets is, therefore, a dominant feature of its business. Although this company is involved in a specialised field of advanced technology—that of aircraft manufacture—it happens also to be one with many of the characteristics of both the capital goods and consumer goods industries. It is, therefore, probably not unrepresentative, in many respects, of large industrial enterprises as a whole which are operating internationally.

There is one point which I wish to make right away because I believe it to be true, important and appropriate to this lecture which is given in memory of a great aircraft designer. Raleigh, the author of the First Volume of The War in the Air wrote: “The man who makes a machine and the man who flies it are the heroes of the epic of flight”. This sentiment I fully support and I take no exception to the fact that the “maker” takes precedence over the “flier” since, apart from any other consideration, this represents a convenient sequence of events. Putting Raleigh's statement another way, I would say that such success as the Royal Air Force has had over the years has been dependent more on the British Aircraft Industry than on any other single factor except perhaps the existence of Trenchard who, incidentally, was himself wholly alive to the importance of a healthy aircraft industry if we were to have a healthy Air Force.

Certainly one of the most important elements in today's spectrum of military weaponry is the tactical guided missile. Few developments have offered a greater opportunity to increase the fighting potential of our military forces. As it happens, however, few developments have caused the frustrations and problems along their path to fruition that have been associated with the tactical guided missile.

In selecting armament for a particular role, the merits and demerits of each class of weapon must be considered to arrive at that which is best for the particular application, and as such the guided missile must be viewed as just one of the possible candidates to be evaluated in its turn. The guided weapon often wins, of course, for it has certain unique characteristics that give it a number of advantages. But it is common now to find that in some applications that a decade ago would have been conceded to the missile, that guns and other types of “conventional” ordnance may be better.

An historical survey gives an opportunity to reflect on a few selected episodes which seem to have had a significant influence on shaping later events. I need not remind you that reflections on aircraft mostly having two-dimensional curvature with surface finish falling short of mirror standards, and not only is the image probably distorted but also the perspective depends very much on where the observer stands. Moreover, also, quite important objects can be thrown right out of vision.

As a necessary first step towards the large displacement analysis of the cooling tower structure by the finite element method, an account of the small displacement theory of the SABA family of elements has been given in the first part of the paper. It may be worth repeating the basic considerations which influenced the philosophy in the design of the element: for an economical large displacement analysis to be successful it is essential that the structure should be represented by as few displacement parameters as possible, consistent with an accurate description of the structural behaviour. The SABA element is an axi-symmetrical thin shell element which describes the displacement variation in the circumferential direction by a Fourier series, each term of which is associated with a polynomial for interpolation in the meridional direction. By the devise of interpolating the meridional geometry in the same way, no strain is induced in a rigid-body movement, thus achieving true equilibrium and avoiding serious error in a large displacement calculation. Results of the small displacement analysis by this element for various examples given in Part I agreed accurately with existing solutions by other methods.

The pursuit of better economics for subsonic transport aircraft has led in recent years to the development of high by-pass ratio turbofan aero engines. The improved efficiency of these engines results mainly from an improvement in the propulsive, or Froude efficiency brought about by the use of an increased airflow with a smaller jet velocity for a given thrust level. The specific thrust (thrust per unit airflow) for a high by-pass ratio engine is thus appreciably lower than for a conventional turbojet so that the ratio of engine gross thrust to installed net thrust is higher. Typically, for an engine of unit by-pass ratio, the ratio of gross to net thrust is about 1·6 under cruise conditions, while for an engine of by-pass ratio five it is between 2·6 and 3. Losses in the exhaust system effectively act on the gross thrust level so that any inefficiency is magnified by the gross to net thrust ratio. Thus the high values of this ratio in the new high by-pass engines render losses in the exhaust system of especial significance.