Britain's Glorious Aircraft Industry

100 Years of Success, Setback and Change

J Paul Hodgson

• Publisher: Air World
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781526774675
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Aviation
• Index: Technology & Engineering

"The rich and diverse history of the British aircraft industry is captured in superb detail by the author in this weighty tome." —Aviation News Great Britain's aircraft industry started in 1908, with the first formally registered organization in the world to offer to design and build an aeroplane "for commercial gain." This book tells the complete story of the 110 years since the start, all the companies formed and the aircraft they produced, highlighting the advances in aeronautical ambition and technology. Itis the story of the creation, survival and decline of all one hundred and twenty-three of the aircraft design and construction companies formed between 1908 and 2018.The exhilaration of success and the magic of aviation technology are vividly illustrated by the technical and political birth stories of iconic projects, such as the Cirrus/Gypsy Moths, the Tiger Moth, the flying boats of Imperial Airways, Spitfire, Lancaster, Viscount, Vulcan, Harrier, Buccaneer and many more. The rotary wing industry is not forgotten. The birth of the jet turbine engine and the quest for supersonic speed is included. The stories of the disappointments of failure and disaster, such as the Brabazon, Comet, Princess, Rotodyne and TSR-2, and the growth of international collaboration in Concorde, Tornado, Airbus, Eurofighter Typhoon and other projects are included, in the context of the international scene and domestic politics. The conclusion highlights the prominent reminiscences and speculates on the future of the aircraft industry in Britain. "An outstanding reference book and a thoroughly enjoyable canter through the decades, from the days of wood and fabric to the modern composite structure of the wings of the A400 Atlas." —RAF Historical Society

Chapter 1

The Very Beginnings

Mankind dreamed of winged flight “free as a bird” for centuries. Some 2,000 years before the Common Era (BCE, or 2,000 BC in old money) the kite was invented in China. Old records show that the Chinese were flying man-lifting kites in the mid-sixth century BCE. Over 400 years BCE, the Greek mythology story of Icarus and his disastrous flight is one of the earliest references to flying freely, without a connection to the ground. Leonardo da Vinci (b. 1452, d. 1519) had ideas on a number of designs for a flying machine. In the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were other theoretical and practical scientific aeronautical pioneers, in several countries.

The most successful experimenter, who also approached flying as a scientifically-based investigation, was the English baronet Sir George Cayley (b. 27 December 1773, d. 15 December 1857). His sixty-year aeronautical efforts, experiments with gliders of his own design, and his scientific aeronautical publications all earned him a posthumous worldwide reputation, as the “father of the aeroplane”. Although important, this pre-twentieth century British aviation pre-industry history activity is not part of this book.

After the first manned true controlled powered flight of the “Flyer” of brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright, in the USA on 17 December 1903, many aeronautical enthusiasts took great heart. Several were keen to emulate the Wright brothers’ success, keen to be the first to design, build and fly a machine of their own in their own country. Various short, low hops, often under poor control, were achieved by the earliest early twentieth century aircraft experimenters in Britain. The unavailability of a suitable lightweight engine was a limiting factor in many attempts – the Wright brothers had had to design their own engine.

With the aim of encouraging the development of aviation in Britain, Lord Northcliffe (proprietor of the Daily Mail British newspaper) offered several prizes for “firsts” in aviation. The first one announced was in 1906:- £10,000 for the first to fly from London to Manchester (won by Frenchman Louis Paulhan in 1910). Prize money started at £100 for the “best” successful model aeroplane (won by Alliott Verdon Roe in 1906, but only £75 actually awarded). Noting that £100 in 1906 would be equivalent to over £11,500 in 2019, the aviation pioneers responded. Daily Mail and other prizes for pioneering achievements continued to be announced, in the UK and the rest of the world. The Daily Mail prize of £1,000 for the first person to fly in a heavier-than-air aircraft across the English channel was won by Frenchman Louis Blériot on 25 July 1909, in a monoplane of his own design. The last Daily Mail aviation prize was won in 1930, when Amy Johnson won a prize of £10,000 for the first solo female flight from Britain to Australia.

In 1908–09, two credible competing claims emerged for the first powered true controlled flight of an aircraft designed and built in Britain. These claims were between two experimental aircraft, the British Army Aeroplane No.1 of USA-born Colonel Samuel Franklin Cody, and the Roe 1 Triplane of the English-born Alliott Verdon Roe. Colonel Cody had to wait to be allowed to transfer the 50 HP French Antoinette engine to his new aircraft, from the British Army’s experimental lighter-than-air Dirigible No. 1, “Nilli Secundus” on which Cody had been previously working. The Cody Army Aeroplane No. 1 is now recognised as the first aircraft designed and built in Britain which flew successfully, at Farnborough (Hampshire) on 16 October 1908. The aircraft empty weight was around 2,500lb (1,134kg) to which fuel and pilot weights would be added.

It is also recognised that the first flight of an all-British aircraft (i.e. aircraft and engine designed and made in Britain) was by the Roe 1 triplane, using a 9 HP JAP engine, at Walthamstow Marshes, London, on 10 June 1909. This signalled the imminent end of the purely experimental stage in the UK.

Avro Triplane (replica). (TSRL – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Short S.39 Triple Twin. (Flight magazine archive from FlightGlobal, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The aircraft industry story in Britain began with the Short Brothers partnership, formed in November 1908 by Horace Leonard, Albert Eustace and Hugh Oswald Short, as the first organisation in Britain to offer to produce a self-propelled aeroplane for sale, to their own design, or to the designs of others, should they so wish. The brothers had decided that the future of aviation was in heavier-than-air aeroplanes rather than the lighter-than-air balloon or dirigible craft. Unfortunately, their first in-house aeroplane never flew. This was Short Biplane No. 1, designed to an overall requirement of Frank McClean.1 Powered by a 30 HP engine, in November 1909 it barely left the ground, stalling as it left the ground and crashing, becoming damaged beyond repair. Shorts Biplane No.2 was specifically commissioned by John Moore-Brabazon,2 in a bid to win a £1,000 Daily Mail prize for the first flight by a British pilot in an all-British aircraft around a closed circuit of one mile. In October 1909 the prize was duly won by Brabazon. At first, most successful Short Brothers aircraft sales were, however, licence-built Wright flyers (the improved Model A). Meanwhile, Shorts created and flew several different aircraft and, in September 1911, Frank McClean flew the world’s first successful twin-engined aircraft, Shorts model S.39 Triple Twin. This had two French Gnome 50 HP engines, with three propellers, one engine and pusher propeller behind the pilot and a tractor propeller on each wing, contra-rotating chain-driven by a second engine in front of the pilot. The S.39 was subsequently purchased by the British Admiralty.

The first British aeroplane manufacturing company to be registered based on public subscription (rather than private money) was the Handley Page Company, in Barking (Essex), on 17 June 1909, registered by founder Frederick Handley Page. Starting with the Handley page Type A, the company built two unsuccessful monoplanes (the first crashed when the first attempt to turn the aircraft in flight was made) and a biplane to someone else’s design which Handley page soon “disowned”. The first Handley Page design to fly truly successfully was his Type D (later renamed as the HP.4) in 1910, but it took a few years for the fledgling company to create a useable and saleable flying machine.

After the 1909 success of his Roe 1 triplane, Alliott Verdon Roe and his elder brother Humphrey Verdon Roe started their then privately-funded company, on 1 January 1910 in Manchester (Lancashire). Humphrey provided financial support for the venture, using the resources of the webbing company which he had inherited. The second successful Roe design was a sturdier version of the first, with a more powerful engine. Two were constructed, one of which was sold. The longest recorded flight of the type was 600ft. (180m.). The ‘Avro’ acronym was soon adopted.

The 1908 founding of the Short Brothers aircraft company is the starting point for the remainder of this book, which attempts to describe what happened to the British aircraft industry in the one hundred and twelve years which followed. It tells the story of the changes which these years would bring. Alongside the technology explosion in the aeronautical world, the political, commercial and industrial events, policies and personalities form most of the answers to the “What?, Where?, When?, How?, Who? and Why?”.

1. Francis McClean had personal wealth and went on to commission and fly many aircraft from Shorts, often created to his personal order. He was commissioned in the Royal Naval Air Service on the outbreak of the First World War.

2. In May 1909, John Moore-Brabazon was the first person to make a flight in Britain and obtained the first British pilot’s licence in March 1910.

Chapter 2

From 1908 to 1939

2.1 The Founding of UK Aircraft Companies, to the End of the First World War

Enthusiasts starting the business of heavier-than-air aircraft design and manufacture before the First World War (WW1) were often told that “they were mad or foolish” and that “aircraft which were aeroplanes were inherently unsafe”. Aeroplane pioneers were also advised, on the other hand, that lighter-than-air aircraft (balloons and dirigibles) were safe and useful, as observation or survey platforms (especially useful in wartime, tethered of course). In Britain, after an official investigation into the potential of military aeronautics, the War Office actually stopped all work investigating aeroplanes of any kind. In reply to a 1908 letter from Alliot Verdon Roe, the British War Office declared opinion was “… we do not consider that aeroplanes will be of any possible use for war purposes”. However, even before the opening shots of the First World War were heard, there was rapid evolutionary progress in aeroplane capability which soon proved attractive for wartime use. Initially, this was seen by many as potential fast, long-range and uninhibited scouting capability. Progress in providing Britain with suitable aircraft was lamentably slow. One year before the First World War broke out, the British armed forces only had one hundred and twenty aircraft, out of which just fifty-three were fit to fly. Of these, only twenty-three were fully serviceable. Additionally, all British aircraft were inferior in performance to the best in French and German service.

Meanwhile, USA-born Samuel F. Cody had campaigned to build a self-propelled aeroplane at the Army Balloon Factory at Farnborough (originally established at Woolwich as the Army Balloon School in 1878). This finally resulted, in 1908, in the first aeroplane-style aircraft in Britain to make a complete self-propelled flight, the Cody-designed British Army Aeroplane No.1. The Farnborough facility was renamed as the “Royal Aircraft Factory” in 1912. The Admiralty established their Air Department in 1910. By that time, only two years after Short Brothers had started their aircraft business, seven independent aircraft partnerships or companies were designing and building aircraft “for gain” in the UK:- Short Brothers partnership (1908), Martin and Handasyde (1908), Handley Page Company (1909), Howard Theophilis Wright and brother Warwick Joseph Wright (1909, private partnership), A.V. Roe and Company (1910), the Blair Atholl Syndicate (building the designs of John William Dunne from 1910) and Bristol and Colonial Aeroplane founded in 1910 as a private company, by Sir George White and family, owners of Bristol Tramways and Carriage. Other pioneers quickly followed, such as Robert Blackburn who designed and flew his first aircraft in 1909 and his more successful second in 1911 at Filey, founding his aircraft company in Leeds in 1911.

John William Dunne commenced designing gliders whilst employed at the Army Balloon Factory. He had ideas about tailless inherently stable arrow-head winged aircraft (“arrow head wing planform” = swept back, but simply as a stability improver, not a transonic/supersonic feature!). He designed several different versions (eight in all) and had them built between 1907 and 1912 (three gliders before his first powered aircraft D.4 “hopped” in 1908). When the government curtailed all aeroplane development in 1909, he became independent. His designs were financed for construction by the Blair Atholl Syndicate in Scotland, which involved Charles Richard Fairey as managing director and the Duke of Atholl as chairman. Dunne’s D.8 biplane flew in 1912 and went on to be built under licence, in France and in the USA. He retired from flying due to ill health before the First World War started and the syndicate was wound up.

After initial attempts by Bristol and Colonial to licence-build and fly examples of the Zodiac aircraft (designed by Frenchman Gabriel Voisin) had not been successful enough, Sir George was advised to seek a licence to produce French Henri Farman biplanes instead. However, that licence was being negotiated by George Holt Thomas (eventually to found the Aircraft Manufacturing Company in 1912, based in North London). George White’s Chief Engineer was convinced he could design a copy of the Farman machine, partly based on the great detail published in the “Flight” magazine1. This revised design eventually became the Bristol Boxkite of 1910, which was to become the most-produced British aircraft before the beginning of the First World War (seventy-eight in total). The first production order came from the British government on 14 March 1911 and the first aircraft was delivered sixty-five days later. The original Bristol Boxkite unit sale price of around one thousand pounds equates to over one hundred thousand pounds in 2019.

More than one aspirational aircraft designer-constructor used land wit...