Glad you appreciate the good natured rivalry, Alisdair. It was always a point of discussion, humour, as we taxied out at LHR in a VC10 for a long night sector to see all the Tridents parked for the night !

Great shame the Trident was screwed by the. BEA board ,( as was the VC10 by the BOAC board) constantly changing its spec. otherwise a technically superb aeroplane could have rivalled the B727.

and if you think the Trident came off the earth at a tangent, you never flew the Victor 1 tanker !

The biggest hindrance to British airliner design POLITICS !