Rolls-Royce by TARQUIN O’FLAHERTY.

For a while there, since the early days of the horseless caRolls-Royceiage, Rolls-Royce made the best horseless caRolls-Royceiage in the world. It was the best because, in a world beset by mechanical failure, it was reliable.

On the Grand Tour, should you, in your Silver Ghost, find yourself, inexplicably, broken down in Addis Ababa, Rolls-Royce would fly out, at their expense, all the necessary spare parts to get you going again, together with a trained Rolls-Royce mechanic to do the work!

Then came the Hitler war.  In what seemed like about five years, planes went from the puttering, twin-winged Tiger Moth type aircraft to full blown jet planes.  During this time Rolls-Royce brought out the legendary Merlin engine.  This beauty was fitted to some equally legendary aircraft, like the Spitfire, the HuRolls-Royceicane, the Mosquito and the Lancaster bomber, amongst others. When the Americans joined the war they found the Merlin so superior to their own engine, that their engineless planes were shipped to England to have Merlins installed. Eventually, a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine factory was established in the States so that US planes were ‘combat ready’ straight out of the US factory.  One could say that the near legendary reliability of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, together with the skill and bravery of the flying crews made the defeat of Hitler possible.  All of Europe and the USA owe a huge debt of gratitude to the engineering genius of Rolls-Royce.

Despite Rolls-Royce, despite the absolutely reliable Volkswagen which sold in millions, British car manufacturers after the war were blind as bats to the signs.  People wanted good reliable cars and they didn’t have them.  The British Motor Corporation drove the British car industry into despair and into the ground through blind ignorance of the realities, a stupefying belief in ‘British superiority’ and a niggardly attitude towards the people who did buy their cars. Everything, from radios to heaters, from antennae to a reasonable degree of comfort was ‘extra’. Put a radio and a heater in  British car in the Fifties and Sixties and the price skyrocketed! Even a different name, ‘Wolseley’ rather than ‘Austin’, (despite the fact that the vehicles were exactly the same and equally liable to expire in the middle of the road) shoved the price up astronomically.  Japan flooded the market with better engineered cars and motorbikes, with ‘extras’ as standard, and instead of seizing the opportunity and learning from it, the ‘superior’ British bike and car industry had a hissy fit and died.

In the meantime, Rolls-Royce went on, quietly and reliably making aircraft engines.  These engines took us all over the world, opening our minds up, broadening our horizons.  They took us to Australia, and back again, to California and Cannes, BiaRolls-Royceitz and Barbados.

Millions upon millions of people owed their lives to the war time Merlin engine.  Equally, millions of people owe their peace time lives to the utter reliability of the Rolls-Royce jet-aircraft engine.

To have a fire in an engine of a flying aircraft, and, despite this handicap, have the aircraft land safely with every passenger alive and unharmed seems to me something to be grateful for.  It is something for which the passengers should be down on their knees and thanking God, the pilot, and the rest of the still functioning Rolls-Royce engines, both in their own  plane and in the hundreds of other aircraft worldwide.  People seem utterly unaware that if this particular Rolls-Royce engine did not have a history of absolute reliability, the aviation authorities would not have allowed the engine into the air.

Instead we have a ‘class action’ being mounted against one of the most reliable aircraft engine in the world.  Not because people have died, or been maimed or blown up, but because people have not been killed, maimed or blown up.  This does not seem fair.

Occasionally, planes fall out of the sky.  Everybody who boards a plane knows this.  They also know that there is no cast iron guarantee that the plane will not fall out of the sky.  And as a consequence, as a result of this, people take to suing other people.

Suing a company for what might have happened  but didn’t, seems to me to have more to do with the state of mind of the class action passengers than the state of the aircraft engine.

I am thinking of initiating a class action, principally because the sky didn’t fall today. Because I worry that it might, I am permanently traumatised.  I am, therefore, looking for other similarly traumatised  folk to join me in this worthwhile, and potentially lucrative action.

I remain,
Tarquin O’Flaherty
The Bethlehem House for the Criminally Insane,

POSTSCRIPT
Sadly even Rolls-Royce now shows signs of going the way of the British Car Industry:
A piece in the Guardian Weekly (5.7.13. Finance in Brief) The exploding Rolls-Royce jet engine.
“The Australian Transport Safety Bureau detailed how faulty manufacturing processes…’ at Rolls-Royce’s… ‘Hucknall plant in Nottingham, failed to conform to design standards…’
The report found that Rolls-Royce knew about the problem with the Trent 900 engine, fitted to the A380  jet, for at least three years before the accident.