Editing Air Ministry (section)

===Aircraft production===
The Air Ministry issued specifications for aircraft that British aircraft companies would supply prototypes to. These were then assessed, if ordered the Ministry assigned the aircraft name. (see [[List of Air Ministry specifications]]).

The ordering procedure used I.T.P. (Intention to Proceed) contract papers; these specified a maximum fixed price, which could (after investigation) be less. But when [[Lord Nuffield]] got the I.T.P.  contract papers for a Wolseley radial aero engine, which would have required re-orientation of their offices with an army of chartered accountants, he decided to deal only with the War Office and the Admiralty, not the Air Ministry. So the aero engine project was abandoned in 1936, see [[Airspeed Ltd#Wolseley engine|Airspeed]].  [[Nevil Shute Norway]] wrote that the loss of such a technically advanced engine was a great loss to Britain as well as Airspeed, and blamed the over-cautious high civil servants of the Air Ministry. When he had asked Lord Nuffield to retain the engine, Nuffield said: ''I tell you, Norway ... I sent that I.T.P. thing back to them, and I told them they could put it where the monkey put the nuts!''<ref>''Slide Rule'' by [[Nevil Shute]] (1954, William Heinemann, London) page 235</ref>

In later years the actual production of aircraft was the responsibility of the [[Ministry of Aircraft Production]] (1940–46), the [[Ministry of Supply]] (1946–59), the [[Ministry of Aviation]] (1959–67) and finally the [[Ministry of Technology]] (1967–70).

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