HARRY STONECIPHER, the veteran American industrialist brought out of retirement to stem the crisis at Boeing, was all set to shift to Britain last year — but was held back by a dog.

Such was the craggy-featured Stonecipher’s love for his miniature schnauzer that he abandoned a planned six-month stay in London after his (first) retirement from Boeing in 2002.

Stonecipher’s confession of a canine soft spot, made to The Sunday Times during a flying visit to see Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, Rod Eddington, British Airways’ chief executive, and Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson, may cause a reappraisal of his reputation.

Schooled at General Electric under Jack Welch, he is known as an unsentimental straight talker, unafraid of unpopular decisions — an ideal choice to rescue Boeing from the mire it found itself in last year.

But at one stage Stonecipher was headed for Britain. He and his wife, Joan, wanted to live in London for six months, and had gone as far as looking at flats around Harrods. The difficulties of moving Sam Francis — the dog is named after the American abstract artist — meant Stonecipher stayed put in his retirement home in Florida.. The schnauzer also put paid to any thoughts Stonecipher might have had of helping out at BAE Systems, the British defence company plagued by cost overruns on problem contracts.

“If Dick (Sir Richard Evans, BAE’s chairman) had asked me to come and help put some things right — I’m pretty good at that — I would have been willing to do that,” he said. But Stonecipher last week ruled out any chance of Boeing stepping in to solve BAE’s perennial search for a US partner. He said the company was no longer interested in buying the British group. “They have gone a different way with some of the mergers and acquisitions they have done. There are lot of things that we are not interested in in there (BAE),” he said.

Stonecipher’s recall to stop the rot at Boeing was one of the most dramatic events in corporate America last year.

After the discovery of alleged illegal practices in the bidding for a $20 billion (£10.8 billion) tanker contract for the US Air Force, Boeing sacked Mike Sears, its finance director, who was seen as heir apparent to chairman and chief executive Phil Condit. With him went Darleen Druyun, a former government procurement official hired after she left the Pentagon. A week later, Condit resigned.

Stonecipher, 67, was back in harness, and with the difficult task of restoring Boeing’s reputation with the Pentagon, and its position as one of the pillars of American industry.

The activities of Sears and Druyun “made me ill”, said Stonecipher. He was particularly wounded by Sears’s alleged wrongdoing. “Sears is my protégé. It was me who put him in charge of running the F-18 programme. Darleen was the best procurement advocate I’ve ever seen in government. It just was astounding to me. Both were very bright people.

“But as you look round the world, some really bright people do some really stupid things and I’m sure both of them right now are thinking — why? why?”

Industry analysts have speculated that more heads will roll at Boeing. Jim Albaugh, head of Boeing’s defence business, the division under which the controversial tanker programme falls, is most people’s pick for the chop. But Stonecipher is having none of it.

“We had people running round wanting to cut Jim’s head off. I said to a number of people who had that view, ‘Why don’t you write down for me the names of people anywhere in the world who are better than Jim to run that business.’ Some people let him down, he wasn’t alert enough to see some signals, or something happened.

“The point is, as long as he has his head screwed on straight and is running in the right direction, he will do just fine.”

Boeing’s own inquiry into the tanker affair, being conducted by an independent legal firm, will be presented to the board this month. It is the second in quick succession — last year the lawyers investigated another procurement scandal that led to the company being banned from military satellite work. The Pentagon’s inquiry into the tanker affair should be finished around the end of this month.

In the meantime, Stonecipher has asked all 155,000 employees involved with military programmes to sign a statement that they have read, understood and will comply with the company’s procurement rules. “This will be a condition of employment,” he said.

His efforts may soon start to pay dividends. Stonecipher said he expected Boeing would get back its military-satellite business at the end of March.

Away from Boeing’s Pentagon woes, its commercial- aircraft business has, for the first time, lost its traditional market leadership to Airbus, the European aircraft maker.

Stonecipher and the board have pinned their hopes on the 7E7, the company’s first all-new commercial aircraft for more than a decade. He is convinced Airbus’s new super jumbo, the A380, will be a commercial failure. “We don’t think there is much of a market for that size of aircraft.”

Boeing needs to sell about 400 7E7s to break even and is hopeful of announcing a launch customer in a few months.

Stonecipher would not be drawn on the customer’s likely identity, but sources said the company is wooing Emirates, the fast-growing Gulf airline.

Airbus is also making inroads into another Boeing stronghold, military-tanker aircraft. EADS, Airbus’s parent company, has broken a Boeing monopoly by taking pole position for a £13 billion contract for the Royal Air Force.

Stonecipher said the importance of the UK’s decision is “that suddenly it gives EADS a position in the tanker business”. He is not quite ready to admit defeat: “We have been asked to leave the field. You won’t hear us say we lost.”

If Boeing got another chance, said Stonecipher, it would offer the UK brand-new aircraft taken from the US tanker programme and not rely on second-hand aircraft from British Airways.

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