government expenditure on plane production during the war

I was wondering if anyone knows how I could find out how much the government spent on plane production during the war. It would be really great if someone knew where I could get how much the government gave to individual companies, Gloster Aircraft Compant in particular.
Thankyou for your time Jessica

[Vigilant]

The only source I can think of off-hand would be 'Hansard', the record of Parliamentary debates. If you look up the Air Estimate debate for 1918 this should at least give you the global figure that the Air Ministry handed out to the maufacturing companies.

BTW are you sure Gloster were in existence during WW1? I thought they were a post-war creation, but I may be wrong. Often am.

'Vigilant'

[Graeme]

From the Gloster Aircraft Company by Derek N James, Tempus Publishing Ltd, StroudISBN 0 75241 700 2:

The Gloucestershire Aircraft Company Ltd began life on 5 June 1917. Its predecessor, Aircraft Manufacturing Co, had very successfully manufactured aircraft components and spares and were licensed to sell other manufacturers’ aircraft. With the outbreak of WW1, things hotted up and when an order was received for 250 DH2 single seater scout aircraft the company’s facilities could not cope. So work was sub-contracted and it seemed logical to bind the sub-contractors into a new, joint company and move all the production to an available site in Cheltenham. One of the disadvantages of the move was that there was no way of test flying anything nearer than an Aircraft Acceptance Park seven miles away at Hucclecote, the aircraft being towed there by a Ford lorry.

By 1918 the company was capable of producing 45 aircraft a week, but the end of the war brought a halt to orders and the company began to struggle. They decided to promote themselves as builders of high performance aircraft to attract the attention of the Air Ministry and designed (under the aegis of Harry Folland) racing craft for the various competitions that were very popular at the time. None of the designs quite succeeded and Folland turned to developing wings with new aerofoil sections to improve the performance and efficiency of biplanes.

The company persevered with both biplanes and wooden construction and the various projects suggested suffered from the most awful names — the Gamecock (the RAF’s last wooden biplane fighter) was followed by the Gorcock, the Guan, the Goral and the Göring, not to mention the Gambet and the Gnatsnapper! However, there were some successes, the Grebe became the first aeroplane to be built in quantity by the company for the RAF and were in front-line service from 1924 to 1929.

The Company’s name proved unpronounceable to overseas buyers, so in 1926 it was changed from ‘Gloucestershire’ to ‘Gloster’, which is what they had been calling their racing aircraft anyway. By then the company was involved with the Schneider Trophy races, but never came better than second.

As well as aircraft, the company was at the cutting edge of new technology regarding variable pitch propellers and undercarriages Rotol and Dowty being very closely associated.

The great breakthrough was the winning, against competition from all the big names like Armstrong Whitworth, Blackburn, Boulton & Paul, Bristol, Hawker, Supermarine and Westland, of the contract to build what was to be the last RAF biplane fighter, the Gladiator.

After that the company built the world’s first jet aircraft and then the Meteor, the only jet to go into service with the RAF in WW2, followed by the Javelin in nine different versions. Sadly, by 1958, it became clear that Gloster Aircraft’s days as a military aircraft manufacturer were numbered. The company was by then part of Hawker Siddeley Aviation and production gradually switched to interesting things like automatic vending machines and agricultural forage harvesters - a sad end for one of Britain’s great aviation names.

Graeme