Jubilee Special: 60 Years Of Aerospace & Defence

Sixty years ago, in 1952, the young Princess Elizabeth famously returned to England from Kenya, flying on board a Canadair Argonaut piloted by Captain Ronald Ballantine.

The aircraft was operated by British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), which merged with British European Airways in 1974 to become British Airways -- which, of course, following the merger with Spain's Iberia in 2010, duly became the International Airlines Group (LSE: IAG).

Propeller-driven, and powered by four Rolls-Royce (LSE: RR) Merlin engines, the Argonaut was a derivative of the Douglas DC-4, itself a development of the hugely successful wartime Douglas DC-3, more popularly known as the Dakota.

And in a curious way, that flight home in 1952 would epitomise much of what subsequently happened in the FTSE's Aerospace & Defence sector over the coming 60 years.

In short, some names then redolent with promise would come to see that promise fulfilled. Others, equally promising, would fall by the wayside, and become subsumed in another characteristic of the early part of those 60 years -- a government tendency, practised by both major political parties, to engage in central planning, picking winners and engaging in national industrial policies of a type that seems very alien today.

By the time he retired in 1966, for instance, Captain Ballantine -- whose flying career had begun in the mid-1930s as a young second officer on the Croydon‑Brussels‑Cologne route -- had gone on to fly the Bristol Britannia, the ill-fated de Havilland Comet, and finally the Vickers VC-10.

But the Comet -- the world's first production commercial jetliner, remember, which first flew in 1949 -- struggled against Boeing because of a spate of mysterious mid-flight catastrophic crashes eventually tracked down to metal fatigue. The Bristol Aircraft Company, meanwhile, while initially successful in the post-war world with its Brabazon and Britannia propeller-driven airliners, struggled in an increasingly jet-oriented world.

And Vickers, despite the relative success of its Vanguard and Viscount small turboprop airliners, was eventually merged by the government -- along with English Electric, Bristol and Hunting Aircraft -- to become the publicly-held British Aircraft Corporation (BAC).

BAC launched the successful BAC-11 jet airliner, and co-built the Concorde -- which was part based on a Bristol design -- but continued to struggle against Boeing and Douglas.

Partly to blame -- at least in government eyes -- was the tendency of state-owned BOAC to prefer buying Boeing designs, in the shape of the company's Boeing 707 and Boeing 747, instead of British-built designs such as the VC-10. Hawker-Siddely, meanwhile, despite strong military offerings, struggled in the civilian sector, not least due to fact that its Trident airliner was firmly based on the needs of British European Airways, rather than having broader appeal with other airlines.

So while Hawker-Siddely initially avoided being merged into BAC, despite successive governments declaring this to be their preference, its declining aviation interests eventually made this inevitable, and the company was eventually merged with BAC and Scottish Aviation in 1977 -- by which time the Queen was celebrating 25 years on the throne -- to form British Aerospace, now BAE Systems (LSE: BA).

British Aerospace, of course, was still publicly owned -- and would be until 1981. But so too, surprisingly, was Rolls-Royce, which powered many of the aircraft British Aerospace produced -- both civil and military. For in 1971, to great shock, the company had suddenly collapsed, despite enormous success building engines for aircraft manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic.

To blame? Over-investing in the development of one particular engine type, the RB-211, intended for Lockheed's Tri-Star. Nationalised after its collapse by Edward Heath's Conservative government in 1971, Roll-Royce would eventually be privatised 1987 by Heath's eventual successor as a Conservative Prime Minister -- Margaret Thatcher.

A year after being privatised, in evident rude health, Rolls began an acquisition spree that is still ongoing -- and one that has seen it capture famous names in both German and American industrial history. American engine manufacturer, Allison, for instance, a development that would have doubtless surprised observers in austerity Britain, circa 1952.

Rolls acquired famous British names, too: Northern Engineering Industries, a group of heavy-engineering companies mainly associated with electrical generation and power management, which brought businesses such as Clarke Chapman, Reyrolle and Parsons into the fold. These days, Rolls-Royce powerplants can be found not just in aircraft, but ships, submarines and power stations as well.