British Overseas Airways Corporation
On 24 November 1939, BOAC was created by Act of Parliament to become the British state airline, formed from the merger of Imperial Airways and British Airways Ltd. The companies had been operating together since war was declared on 3 September 1939, when their operations were evacuated from the London area to Bristol. On 1 April 1940, BOAC started operations as a single company. Following the Fall of France (22 June 1940), BOAC aircraft kept wartime Britain connected with its colonies and the allied world, often under enemy fire, and initially with desperate shortages of long-range aircraft. During the war, the airline was sometimes loosely referred to as 'British Airways', and aircraft and equipment were marked with combinations of that title and/or the Speedbird symbol and/or the Union Flag.
Basil Smallpeice
d'Erlanger and Smallpeice, who developed a particularly strong working relationship, were supporters of the British aviation industry, pursuing British built aircraft for BOAC. Smallpeice in particular had been a strong supporter of de Havilland throughout the period of the Comet crashes and re-introduction to service, but concerns about the reintroduction of the Comet, delays with the Bristol Britannia and a lack of any other suitable British aircraft nearing production would force BOAC into purchasing the Boeing 707 aircraft. Smallpeice was instrumental in their purchase, discreetly arranging for BOAC staff to visit America and examine the Boeing 367-80 prototype before persuading the government to authorise the purchase, as was necessary at the time.
The purchase of the Boeing 707 aircraft would be followed by several orders for Vickers competing design, the VC10, with BOAC having ordered 35 VC10 aircraft by 1959 and an additional ten (bringing the total on order to 45) by 1961. Payments for these aircraft together with a downturn in transatlantic traffic, increased competition on the transatlantic route by additional carriers equipped with jet aircraft, and a whole host of additional costs associated with the Vickers VC10 and Bristol Britannia purchase would result in BOAC becoming extremely unprofitable from late 1961 onwards.