britishtourer wrote:10 Belfasts were made which means there were more Belfasts than P1121's. Therefore, the Belfast must have been more of a success than the P1121.
Hardly an argument for a successful aeroplane, is it? The Belfast was ordered only by the RAF, under protest: they didn't want it, and when they got it they found that it couldn't even get over the Alps with a full payload.
In service, it was known as the Dragmaster - Shorts got their drag calculations terribly wrong, and although the strakes on the rear fuselage helped to alleviate some of that, it was never liked by the only operator who actually paid for it. No other customer was found, in spite of extensive marketing by Shorts, and the project sustained a huge loss. It had been a jobs programme for a depressed region.
Yes, it could carry some outsize payloads, and given that Heavylift got the secondhand-and-hardly-used aircraft from the RAF very, very cheaply (and as soon as Transport Command could dump them), it was possible for a civil operator to use a few on ad-hoc charters and still make money, but that's bending the definition of 'success' more than a little.
Let's remember what Shorts did: they took the proven Britannia wing, a proven engine, applied technology well within the then-current state-of-the-art and produced an aeroplane which failed to meet its performance guarantees.
The P1121, on the other hand, like the later (and better known) TSR2 showed exceptional promise and was stopped for entirely political reasons. Potential export customers were turned away. Remember, this was not a 'limited-development-potential' aeroplane like the SR177, which might have been overtaken in a few years by technical developments, but an aeroplane which might still have been in use today.
Kevin