Aircraft Designers Engineers and Notables

Sir Robert L.Lickley CBE 1912–1998

2011-12-30T10:51:00.000-08:00

Sir Robert Lang Lickley CBE FRSE FEng FRAeS FIEE

Robert Lickley was an aeronautical engineer of very high repute in both the British and American industries. Born in Dundee on 19 January 1912, he attended Dundee High School, graduating from Edinburgh University before proceeding to Imperial College London whence in 1933 he joined the Hawker Aircraft design office at Kingston-on –Thames. He was thus one of the early migrants from Scotland – and Wales – to the growing aircraft industry mainly based in southern England, which offered technical and intellectual opportunities to bright young engineering graduates.
Under Sydney Camm, Lickley made his mark with Roy Chaplin in the mid-Thirties by creating the project design of a single-seat eight-gun monoplane fighter. This project was conceived by the Hawker team as their reaction to the outcome of the Air Ministry specification F5/34 which Sydney Camm dismissed as “just not good enough”. The Hawker team incorporated the new Rolls-Royce PV12 engine, a retracting undercarriage and a fabric covered monoplane wing with
eight Browning 0.303 machine guns buried therein. This formidable concept eventually emerged as the ‘Hurricane’, which proved a huge advance on its predecessors, very robust, and a good steady gun platform.
The Air Ministry was so impressed by the prototype’s performance that a production order was placed in 1936 for no fewer than 600 of the type. This enabled the RAF to have quite a number of squadrons in service by the critical earlysummer of 1940. During the Battle of Britain which followed, Fighter Command used its Hurricanes to great effect, when they shot down more enemy aircraft than all other aircraft and ground forces combined. During the Second World War Lickley was deeply involved as chief project engineer in the development of the Hurricane,
Typhoon, Tempest and Fury. He thus saw through the final stages of evolution of the piston-engined fighter to its pinnacle of performance with a top speed of around 450mph, then ushered in the jet fighter age of 500mph for Hawkers with the P1040, which ultimately emerged as the Royal Navy’s shipborne Sea Hawk.
After the war he was appointed Professor of Aircraft Design at the new College of Aeronautics at Cranfield, in Bedfordshire. In this appointment he brought on many able young engineers who later made their mark throughout the industry. These were fortunate people, as their professor had up-to-date and wide experience of aircraft design, development, and production and was thus able to impart to them all the lessons he had learned in his previous years with Hawker.
However, an opportunity beckoned in 1951 to return to industry as Chief Engineer and Technical Director of Fairey Aviation. There he showed great skill in building up a team of mostly young engineers comprising mathematicians, aerodynamicists, structural, and aero-elasticity specialists, together with development engineers and test pilots. Thus equipped, Fairey’s was able to cope with a wide range of aircraft projects including the Gannet anti-submarine aircraft for the Fleet, with a later, vital variant, the Airborne Early Warning (AEW) version. These were the ‘bread and butter’ production aircraft for Fairey at this time. New projects included the Fairey Delta 2, a supersonic delta-wing experimental aircraft which in March 1956 smashed the world’s air-speed record by the huge margin of 300mph, reaching 1,132mph over a measured course off the Sussex Coast. The engineering team of designers,
draughtsmen, and specialists was housed in a new, but modest, building at the Hayes, Middlesex headquarters of Fairey Aviation. It was remarkable that the planning and preparations for the world air speed attempt by the FD2, to be piloted by Peter Twiss, was confined to those few directly involved and was unsuspected by those others who worked in the same small building. It was a tribute to Bob Lickley’s ability to impress upon his staff, and to sustain this pressure, of the need for secrecy, mainly to ‘catch out’ the Americans, then holders of the record. A good example of ‘Chinese Walls’ of which we hear so much nowadays, albeit in a City context.
Being developed at the same time was the Fairey Rotodyne, a large, fast rotary-wing aircraft of 33,000lb design weight capable of vertical take-off and landing and aimed at the short-haul intercity market. The sole prototype flew several hundred hours, setting a world-speed record of 307kph over the 100km closed circuit in January 1959, a record that stood for many, many years. However, the Rotodyne was cancelled in 1962 on the grounds of budgetary shortage and
external noise.
In addition, Fairey developed as a private venture a very small tip-jet propelled helicopter, the Ultra-Light, for a communication and observation role in the Royal Navy, operable from small ships. However it was not adopted, the Ministry of Supply sticking by the larger, heavier, Saunders-Roe Wasp, then at the prototype stage. These Fairey projects, Gannet, FD2, Rotodyne and Ultra-Light were all handled simultaneously by the engineering team at Hayes, where Lickley was by then managing director. The total strength of the engineering team at the time, including experimental shop, test personnel, typists and administrators, was not more than 1,000 people, an amazingly small number compared with those involved in the European Collaborative ventures which followed.

Lickley and Fairey’s suffered a severe disappointment when their new RAF fighter project was still-born by the ill-advised policy of Duncan Sandys as Minister for Defence, then Aviation, who opined that “the day of the manned fighter is over” and that guided missiles would reign instead. Fairey had won the competition with a design based on the successful FD2, so the cancellation very adversely affected the company’s fortunes and also those of the British aircraft industry. In
contrast the French government and industry seized the opportunity by initiating a design based on the FD2 concept that blossomed into the Dassault Mirage, many hundreds of which have been built and sold world-wide. After Westland purchased the UK interests of Fairey Aviation (and Bristol Helicopters and Saunders Roe) in 1960, Lickley decided his future lay elsewhere. He returned to Hawker Siddeley as a director, where he was much concerned with their VTOL (vertical take-off or landing) ideas, which came to fruition in due course as the Harrier.
The Rolls-Royce collapse in 1971 led to Lickley being involved, through the National Enterprise Board, as leader of the board’s Rolls-Royce Support Staff, where he worked hard to restore that company’s aero-engine business to its present successful strong international position.
Bob Lickley was essentially a very private person who never talked of any special hobbies; for recreation, he enjoyed golf, at which he was good enough to be an effective industry representative for several years in the annual golf match between the Society of British Aerospace Companies (SBAC) and the RAF. In the office he was pretty demanding of his
subordinates and perceived shortcomings drew acerbic remarks, which some found rather frightening. However the best response was a robust and well-argued case which Lickley respected. In debate he was a forceful, logical arguer but one able to accept other points of view without rancour. He was an active member of various committees of the Aeronautical Research Council (ARC) between 1946 and 1958, and was a committee member and later a member of council of the SBAC. In addition he was President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1971 and of the Institution of Production Engineers in 1981 and 1982. He was also an
honorary Fellow of the IMechE, a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the Royal Academy of Engineering and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of which he was elected a Fellow in 1977. The Royal Aeronautical Society awarded him its British Gold Medal in 1957 and its Taylor Gold Medal in 1958. The Universities of Edinburgh and Strathclyde each recognised his contribution to aviation by an Honorary Doctorate of
Science in 1973 and 1987 respectively. Robert Lickley died on 7 July 1998.

Credit George S.Hislop for biography

John Lloyd 1888-1978

2011-12-26T14:08:00.000-08:00

John Lloyd was born near Swansea in 1888. He was educated at Cavour Street Schools and at Hanley High School, he left school at sixteen. He became an apprentice at Shelton Bar and attended evening classes at the Technical School in London Road, Stoke.
Fascinated by the Wright brothers attempts to build a petrol engine powered glider, John designed and made model flying machines in his spare time.
Before the First World War (1914-18) aeroplanes had wooden frames covered with canvas. Having studied aerodynamics, John believed that an all-metal aircraft could be built. When war broke out, he was employed by the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough to design composite wood, metal and canvas fighter aircraft.
After the war Coventry based aeroplane manufacturer Armstrong Whitworth made John its chief designer and he designed the Armstrong Whitworth Siskin fighter-bomber. In 1923 a specially built two seater Siskin ll won the King’s Cup Air Race reaching a speed of 149 miles per hour. Shortly afterwards, he modified the aircraft’s design and created the Siskin lll, the Royal Air Force’s first all metal frame biplane.
Civil aviation developed rapidly after the First World War and in March 1924, the government founded Imperial Airways to carry passengers and mail throughout the British Empire.
An airmail service between England and India opened in 1929 and Imperial Airways asked Armstrong Whitworth to build a four-engine monoplane capable of carrying passengers and mail.
John designed the Atalanta, a commercial transport aircraft that had a range of 540 miles and could carry seventeen passengers. The Atalanta made its maiden flight on June 6th 1932. Imperial Airways bought eight Atalantas and the aircraft went into service on September 26th.
The company assigned four Atalantas to its airbase at Germinston in South Africa. The other four were sent to India where they flew from Karachi to Calcutta, Rangoon and Singapore.
As early as 1933, the government realised that Germany was preparing for war and decided to modernise the Royal Air Force. It asked the aircraft industry to build fast heavily armed monoplane fighters and long-range bombers to replace the Royal Air Force’s old-fashioned biplanes. John designed the Whitley, a long-range heavy bomber. Powered by two Rolls Royce Merlin engines, the Whitley’s maximum speed was 230 miles per hour. It had a range of 2,400 miles and could carry bombs weighing up to 7,000lbs.
A front line aircraft from 1939 to 1942, the Whitley played a major role in the Royal Air Force’s bombing offensive. During the Battle of Britain, it attacked Berlin and bombed aircraft factories, munitions works and railway marshalling yards in Italy. The Whitley’s last operational flight against Germany was on May 30th 1942 when it took part in the first 1,000 bomber raid. The target was Cologne and for nearly ninety minutes over 3,000 tons of bombs rained down on the city.
Between 1942 and 1949, John was at the cutting edge of aviation research working on the flying wing, an experimental tailless jet aircraft. Hoping these experiments would enable him to design an airliner, he constructed a two seater tailless glider which flew successfully. Impressed by the glider’s performance the government allowed him to build two jet powered flying wings, the AW52. One crashed and the other was taken to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough where it was used in tests which helped to develop the V Bomber force and Concorde. He also designed the A.W. Apollo.
During the 1950s, John developed the Sea Slug missile for the Royal Navy which was undoubtedly the finest and most effective ship to air guided missile in the world. In all, John Lloyd designed and was involved in the development of over 30 types of aircraft.

Tadeusz Leopold Joseph Ciastuła OBE 1909-1979

2011-12-26T13:45:00.000-08:00

Tadeusz Ciastuła was born in Kazimierz Dolny in Poland. He graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Warsaw Technical University with a degree in mechanical engineering, specialising in aviation. During this period, he was a success at gliding. Between 1936-39, he worked at ITL in Warsaw as a test pilot. When war broke out, he was evacuated to Romania and then to France, where he served at the Observer and Gunnery School in Bordeaux. After the fall of France, he evacuated to the UK, where in 1941 he was appointed to the Department of Applied Aerodynamics at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough.

He also flew in 302 Fighter Squadron of the Polish Air Force and 65 Fighter Squadron of the RAF. At the end of 1944, he was sent to the U.S. to learn about transport aircraft for paratroops and how to use them. In the spring of 1947, he joined the design office of the Cierva Aircraft Company in Southampton. There he designed a light helicopter, the Cierva W.14 Skeeter. Following the acquisition of Cierva in 1951 by Saunders-Roe (Saro),he designed the Saunders-Roe P.531 helicopter. Saro was acquired in 1959 by the Westland factory in Yeovil, Somerset. Whilst atWestland he was involved in the design of the Scout and Wasp helicopters. Ciastuła was the driving force for the G.13 design which was produced as the Lynx military helicopter. In addition, he participated in the modification of the Sikorsky S-58 - the Wessex, the Sikorsky S-61 - Sea King, and he adapted the Puma helicopter, which was produced under license from the French, to British requirements.

In 1965 he was awarded the Royal Aero Club's Richard Fairey/ Louis Breguet Memorial Trophy for his work with VTO aircraft. He was awarded the OBE in 1970.

Henry Romaine Watson BSc AFRAeS 1900-1995

2011-09-13T17:24:00.000-07:00

Henry Romaine Watson was born in Birmingham on 11 October 1900 and became interested in aeronautical matters at a very early age. Between 1918 and 1920 Watson was able to spend time at the Birmingham Technical College helping to repair aero-engines. Watson entered Birmingham University in 1920 and graduated with a BSc in mechanical engineering in 1924. Watson was able to join Armstrong Whitworth straight from university, holding a post in the stress calculation office. Watson progressed through the ranks at Armstrong Whitworth becoming Chief Stressman and then Chief Technician in 1939.When Armstrong Whitworth’s Chief Designer (Aircraft), John Lloyd, was promoted in 1948, Watson was chosen to succeed him with effect from 1 October of that year. The first project that Watson worked on as Chief Designer was the first iteration of night-fighter Meteor, the NF.11. Although the NF.11 resembled the T.7 training version of the Meteor, the extension to the nose to house the airborne interception radar, fitting of new engines and modifications to cope with changed aerodynamics and weight-distribution required much work and calculation. The amount of work involved is indicated by the fact that it was Armstrong-Whitworth’s Chief Designer who was entrusted with the work. After completing work on the Meteor night-fighter Watson was involved with the design and development of Armstrong-Whitworth’s transonic and supersonic aircraft projects. As part of this research Watson, still holding the post of Chief Designer (Aircraft), took part in Armstrong-Whitworth’s rocket engine testing programme, carried out at the Woomera weapons range, Australia, in early 1955. He also undertook a tour of the United States to keep abreast of rocket engine developments occurring there. Soon after his return to the UK, Watson was promoted onto the Armstrong-Whitworth board as Technical Director.

Godfrey Lee 1913-1998

2011-09-12T03:02:00.000-07:00

Godfrey Lee was born in August 1913 at Lee-on-Solent, Hampshire. After spending his school years in Essex he went on to study physics and aeronautics at the Royal College of Science in 1931, graduating with a BSc in 1933. Lee subsequently undertook a period of postgraduate studies at Imperial College.
Godfrey Lee’s professional life started with a post in the Instruments Section of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough before quickly moving to the Saunders Roe aircraft Company on the Isle of White. Lee’s long association with Handley Page began in 1937 as a stressman. With the outbreak of the Second World War he was put in charge of the research section due to the interment of the department’s head, Dr Gustav Lachmann, on the Isle of Man. During this period the main project on which Lee worked was the Handley Page H.P.75 Tailless Research Aircraft, nicknamed the Manx, undoubtedly due to the loss felt at Dr Lachmann’s enforced departure.
Involvement with the Manx project led to Godfrey Lee sitting on the Swept Wings Advisory Committee of the Aeronautical Research Council (ARC). With end of the war the ARC invited Lee to go to Germany to investigate German research into this area. A period of enforced period of sick leave followed this and Lee occupied himself with a proposal for a jet engined bomber with swept wings capable of carrying a 10,000lb bomb 5000 miles.
At a similar point Sir Fredrick Handley Page had learnt of English Electric’s projected new bomber, the Canberra, and invited his staff to submit proposals for a replacement for the RAF’s Avro Lincolns. The RAF too was going through a similar process realising a new bomber would be required. With Godfrey Lee’s design study at the centre of Handley page submission the stage was set for the creation of the H.P.80. Promotion followed in 1949 as Chief Aerodynamicist and Assistant Chief Designer in 1952, only to be promoted again a year later as Deputy Chief Designer a year later. During the whole of this period it was the Victor, as the H.P.80 was now christened that was to occupy a large proportion of Godfrey Lee’s time. With the successful introduction of the Victor Lee moved on to other projects including the H.P.115 delta research aircraft and the Jetsteam regional airliner before the company’s collapse. After this a number of years were spent working with British Airways, Airship Industries and lecturing in universities.
While Godfrey Lee never claimed to be the man behind the Victor, was never in charge of the overall project and always himself credited it as a team effort, his peers have always and still maintain that without Godfrey Lee there wouldn’t have been a Handley Page Victor.

Gustav Victor Lachmann 1896 - 1966

2011-09-06T06:58:00.000-07:00

Gustav Victor Lachmann was a German aeronautical engineer who spent most of his professional life working for the Handley Page.
Lachmann was born in Dresden in 1896. He served as a lieutenant in the German Army during WW1, and was trained as a pilot. He was severely injured in the crash of his plane in 1917. In 1918, he invented leading edge slats (Lachmann Flaps) to improve the resistance to spinning and reduce the stalling speed of an aircraft. The invention was initially rejected by the German Patent Office but eventually granted in 1922.
After the war he studied engineering. After periods of work in Germany and Japan, in 1929 he took a job with the Handley Page company in the UK, becoming director of scientific research there. He was regarded with suspicion as a possible spy, and on the outbreak of WW2 he was interned on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien, but after pressure from his employers was eventually permitted by the authorities to continue his work at Handley-Page.
He stayed with Handley-Page for the remainder of his career. He died in in 1966.

Harrison Storms 1916-1992

2011-09-05T10:43:00.000-07:00

Harrison Storms designs and leadership played a key role in developing B-25 bombers and P-51 Mustang fighters in World War II and in Project Apollo's billion-dollar race for the moon in the 1960's.
He joined North American Aviation in 1941, just after he received a graduate degree in aeronautical engineering from the California Institute of Technology. He continued with the company when it became Rockwell International. When he retired almost 30 years later, he had worked on a total of 48 aircraft and space vehicles.
These included the F-86 fighter of the Korean War and the F-100 Super Sabre. He also had a hand in designing the X-15 rocket plane, a space research craft.
Mr. Storms's contributions to American aerospace programs were honored with the International von Karman Wings Award for Lifetime Achievement, given by the Aerospace Historical Committee of the California Museum of Science and Industry. His earlier citations included the Air Force Meritorious Civilian Service Award.

Stanley Hiller 1924-2006

2011-09-05T10:34:00.001-07:00

Stanley Hiller was a true aviation pioneer in rotary wing flight, and was recognized as a "boy genius" when during his high school days in the late '30's he developed a miniature racing car manufacturing business. During WWII, his firm became a major producer of die castings for the aircraft industry. In 1942, at the age of 18, Hiller left Hiller Industries to devote his entire effort to helicopter development and founded United Helicopters, which subsequently became Hiller Aircraft.
Two-and-one-half years later, he completed the Model XH-44 Coaxial Helicopter. For this accomplishment, Stanley Hiller received the "Fawcett Award" for his "major contribution to the advancement of aviation." At 24, Hiller built a single rotor UH-5, the forerunner of the Hiller 360 which received its Civil Aeronautics Administration Type Certification in October, 1948.
In 1950, at the outset of the Korean Conflict, Hiller personally directed the sales efforts that resulted in his firm producing its first military helicopter, the H-23A. Used primarily for medical evacuation and popularized later in the TV series, "MASH", some 1,200 of his H-23 Models were delivered to the Army in a 12-year period.
Continuing his quest for design simplicity and reduced cost, Hiller then directed his company's R&D efforts into the field of tip propulsion, his YH-32 Hornet being powered by two 11-lb. ramjet engines mounted at the tips of its two-blade main rotor. In the process, the Hiller 8RJ2B ramjet engine received Type Certification in 1954, the first jet engine to be CAA-certified. In 1956, a quantity of YH-32s were delivered to the Army for evaluation.
In other Army-Navy related efforts, Hiller pursued the experimental XROE-1 one-man helicopter and the VZ-1E Flying Platform, both break-through projects. His X-18 VTOL aircraft sustained Tri-Service user interest in a large, four-engine tilt-wing VTOL transport aircraft.

Pierre Satre 1909-1980

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Designer of Caravelle and Concorde amongst many other types

Henry 'Jerry' Shaw 1892-1977

2011-09-05T10:30:00.000-07:00

Henry 'Jerry' Shaw flew in the RFC and RAF during the First World War, and in June 1919 joined Aircraft Transport and Travel Ltd, one of the pioneer commercial operators, as chief pilot and aerodrome manager.
On July 15, 1919, he piloted the first international commercial flight in a D.H.9C from Hendon to Le Bourget. His long connection with Shell-Mex and Shell began in October 1921 and lasted until he joined the de Havilland sales organization in 1952, from where he retired 10 years later.

Charles Timothy Wilkins O.B.E., F.R.Ae.S 1913-1979

2011-09-05T10:26:00.001-07:00

C. T. Wilkins joined deHavilland at Stag Lane' in 1928 after four years at Weybridge with Vickers, where he had started his career' in aviation after leaving Brighton College. He became a member of the design team, then no more than 30 strong and including R. E. Bishop, R.M. Clarkson, Hessel Tiltman and W.G. Carter under the leadership of Capt Geoffrey de Havilland, chief designer A. E. Hagg and C. C. Walker, the chief engineer.
That small team designed a great number of very successful and advanced aeroplanes in the decade that ended at the outbreak of the; Second World War. Apart from a period of two years in the depression of 1930-32, when he left Stag Lane to work with Cierva on the Auto giro, Tim Wilkins played a major part in the design of all the aircraft that: came from the de Havilland stable, including such notable types as the Puss Moth, Leopard Moth, Rapide, Comet Racer,
Albatross and Flamingo.
As assistant chief designer under R. E. Bishop he worked on the design and development of one of the outstanding aircraft of the Second World War, the Mosquito, followed by the Hornet. The post-war phase of his career was devoted to the Comet I and its later developments.
In 1954 he was appointed chief designer and, four years later, technical director, assuming
control of the team that designed the Trident and HS.125. He held this appointment until 1963, when, after transferring to Hawker Siddeley Dynamics, he became director and chief engineer space projects, remaining there until he retired in 1970. He was a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and was honoured with an OBE in 1953.

Barry P. Laight OBE 1920-

2011-09-05T10:23:00.000-07:00

Barry Laight OBE, engineer and aircraft designer, who became Technical Director of Blackburn Aircraft, chief designer for the Blackburn Buccaneer, then for Hawker Siddeley. He helped design the HS.Hawk as well as the HS. P.1154 (which was cancelled).

He was President of the Royal Aeronautical Society from 1974-5.

Edward Henry Heinemann 1908-1991

2011-04-12T12:23:00.000-07:00

Heinrich Focke 1890-1979

2010-06-09T05:20:00.000-07:00

Henrich Focke was a German aviation pioneer from Bremen. He was a co-founder of Focke-Wulf. He built a glider in 1909, and his first motorised plane, the Kolthoff-Focke A III, a year later. The A III was too underpowered to be airworthy. His next model, the A IV allowed his first motorised flight in 1912. He then joined forces with Georg Wulf and in 1914 they built the Focke-Wulf A VI. After the end of World War I, experimentation continued. Focke and Wulf built the new A VII around the engine from the A VI. In 1923, with Wulf and Dr. Werner Neumann, Focke co-founded Focke-Wulf, which developed and built large numbers of aircraft to support the Luftwaffe during World War II. Before the outbreak of war, Focke had parted ways from the company that continued to bear his name. In 1937 shareholder pressure ousted him, and he founded, with Gerd Achgelis, another company Focke Achgelis to specialise in helicopters. In 1951 he moved to Brazil. At the Brazilian General Command for Aerospace Technology (CTA) he conducted some ground tests with a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, called Convertiplano. The BF-1 Beija-Flor helicopter was a Prof. Focke design from 1956, at this time still working at CTA. A two-seater, the Beija Flor had its 225hp Continental E225 engine fitted in the nose, with a short coupling to the rotor pylon, which was mounted centrally in front of the crew. An open structure tubular steel tail boom carried a pair of tail surfaces and a small tail rotor. The prototype flew on 1st January 1959, and performed an extended flight-testing campaign until it was damaged in an accident. It is thought that further work on the Beija Flor was then abandoned. In 1956 Focke moves back from Brazil to Bremen.

John William Fozard OBE 1928-1996

2010-02-28T08:31:00.000-08:00

John Fozard (right) with Test Pilot John Farley

John William Fozard was the chief designer of the Harrier Jump Jet aircraft.
Forty plus years after its maiden flight in 1966, the vertical take-off Harrier continues to fly operationally with the RAF, and also with the US Marine Corps and the Spanish Navy.
In 1963 Fozard was appointed Chief Designer on the project to build the Hawker P 1154 Kestrel, the forerunner of the Harrier, and he came to the revolutionary concept of Vertical/Short Take-off and Landing with a strong reputation.
After serving an engineering apprenticeship with Blackburn Aircraft, he had joined Hawkers in 1950 as a design engineer under Sir Sydney Camm, whose historic designs included the Hart (1928), and the Hurricane prototype (1935).
As Fozard nursed the Harrier into being it was obvious to old Hawker hands that something of Camm had rubbed off on him. "Cammisms" were instantly recognisable even when camouflaged in "Fozprose", as his immaculate memoranda, correspondence and papers were termed.
His clarity of presentation, plain speaking and directness of approach were weapons in his career-long war against the reputed inarticulacy of engineers.
Fozard also believed in making himself available not only to members of his design and development team but also to those who, borrowing from Camm, he described as "fringe" people. He always found time to discuss difficulties and progress with them.
Fozard called the Harrier "the world's most misunderstood aircraft". Reflecting on his long battle to gain acceptance for Vertical Take-off and Landing, Fozard, pipe in hand and pushing back in his office chair, would explain the resistance: "The military man wants things he knows something about - more and better. He does not want to change quickly, and stays with the familiar - longer range, better airfields, bigger than before."

Sir Stanley George Hooker 1907-1984

2010-02-28T08:25:00.000-08:00

Sir Stanley George Hooker was a jet engine engineer, first at Rolls-Royce where he worked on the earliest designs such as the Welland and Derwent, and later at Bristol Aero Engines where he helped bring the troubled Proteus and Olympus to market, and then designed the famous Pegasus.

Stanley George Hooker was born at Sheerness and educated at Borden Grammar School. He won a scholarship for Imperial College London to study mathematics, and in particular, hydrodynamics. He became more interested in aerodynamics, and moved to Brasenose College, Oxford where he received his PhD in this area in 1935.
In late 1937 he applied for a job at Rolls-Royce, and started there in January 1938. He was able to study anything that caught his fancy, and soon moved into the supercharger design department. He started researching the superchargers used on the Merlin engine, and demonstrated that large improvements could be made to their efficiency. His recommendations were put into the production line for newer versions, notably the Merlin 45, improving its power by approximately 30%, and then the Merlin 61.

The Merlin 45 went into the Spitfire Mk V in October 1940, which was produced in the greatest number of any Spitfire variant. The two-stage supercharged Merlin 61 went into the Spitfire Mk IX, the second most-produced variant, which went into service in July 1942. This latter aircraft arrived in time to give the Spitfire a desperately needed advantage in rate of climb and service ceiling over the Butcher Bird, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190. This variant of the Merlin was also to become the powerplant of the North American P-51 Mustang, and due to its efficiency, gave the Mustang the ability to fly to Berlin, attack the defending German fighters, and return home; this engine and the laminar flow Mustang wing was the secret of its success.

The mathematics involved in optimising the efficiency of a supercharger, which Hooker developed, were the basis of the mathematics needed to make a gas turbine run efficiently. All jet engines, except for turbineless ones such as ram-jets, are based upon the equations used to develop the Merlin.

In 1940 Hooker was introduced to Frank Whittle, who was in the process of setting up production of his first production-quality jet engine, the W.2. In 1941 the Air Ministry had offered contracts to Rover to start production, but Whittle was growing increasingly frustrated with their inability to deliver various parts to start testing the new engine. Hooker was excited, and in turn brought Rolls-Royce chairman Ernest Hives to visit Rover's factory in Barnoldswick. Whittle mentioned his frustrations, and Hives told Whittle to send him the plans for the engine. Soon Rolls' Derby engine and supercharger factories were supplying the needed parts.

Rover was no happier with the state of affairs than Whittle. In 1942 Maurice Wilkes of Rover met Hives and Hooker in a pub near the factory. Wilkes and Hives eventually came to an agreement whereby Rover would take over production of the Rolls-Royce Meteor tank engine factory in Nottingham and Rolls would take over the jet engine factory in Barnoldswick. Hooker soon found himself as chief engineer of the new factory, delivering the W.2 as the Welland. Wellands went on to power the earliest models of the Gloster Meteor, and a development of the Welland known as the Derwent powered the vast majority of the later models.
Whittle had moved to the US in 1942 to help General Electric get the W.2 into production there, returning in early 1943. Hooker also visited in 1943, and was surprised to find they had made extensive changes and raised the power to 4,000 lbf (18 kN). Upon his return to England he decided that Rolls should recapture the power lead, and in 1944 the team started development of a larger version of the Derwent that was delivered as the 5,500 lbf (24,000 N) Nene. While this proved to be a successful design, it was not used widely on British designs, and Rolls eventually sold a license to the United States, and later, several engines to the Soviet Union, which then went on to copy it unlicensed. This set off a major political row, and soon the MiG-15, powered by a copy of the Nene, was outperforming anything the British or US had to counter it.

Meanwhile Hooker's team had moved onto their first axial-flow design, then known as the AJ.65 but soon to be renamed the Avon. The Avon did not turn out well at first, and Hooker felt he was being blamed for its problems. At the same time Rolls decided that their existing piston engines were a dead-end, and moved all future jet work from Barnoldswick to Derby, their main engine site. This reduced Hooker's role in the company, and after an emotional falling-out with Hives, he left.
In January 1949 Hooker started work at the Bristol Aero Engine company. He immediately started work on sorting out the various problems of Bristol's turboprop design, the Proteus, which was intended to power a number of Bristol aircraft designs, including the Britannia. The task of rectifying the many faults of the Proteus was immense, but most were solved. But a near-fatal accident with Britannia G-ALRX in February 1954 due to a spur gear failure prompted a telephone call from his old boss Hives, who subsequently sent his top team of Rolls-Royce jet engineers, composed of Elliott, Rubbra, Lovesey, Lombard, Howarth and Davies, to give Hooker some desperately needed help. Sadly this was the last communication between the two great men.

The Proteus was soon in production, but did not see widespread use, and only a small number of Britannias were built. Hooker also worked on finishing the Olympus, developing later versions that would be used on the Avro Vulcan and Concorde.

In 1952 Hooker was approached by the Folland company and asked if he could produce a 5,000 lbf (22 kN) thrust engine to power their new lightweight fighter, the Gnat. For this role he produced his first completely original design, the Orpheus, which went on to power the Fiat G91 and other light fighters. Hooker then used the Orpheus as the basis of an experimental vectored-thrust engine for VTOL aircraft, at that time considered by most to be the next big thing in aircraft design. By equipping an Orpheus to bleed off air from the compressor and turbine the thrust could be directed downwards, creating the Pegasus engine and leading to the Hawker Siddeley Harrier that used it.

In the late 1950s the Air Ministry forced through a series of mergers in the aerospace field that left only two airframe companies and two engine companies. Bristol was merged with Armstrong Siddeley to become Bristol Siddeley in 1958, while most other remaining engine companies merged with Rolls. In 1966 Bristol Siddeley was itself bought by the now cash-flush Rolls, with the result that there was only one engine company in England. After a brief period, Hooker retired in 1967, staying on as a consultant only. In 1970 he retired fully, and was upset that after almost 30 years in the industry he had never become director of engine development.
In 1971 Rolls-Royce was bankrupted by its hugely expensive RB.211 project. While trying to save the company and the project, Kenneth Keith, the new chairman who had been put to rescue the company, persuaded Hooker to return to Rolls full-time. As technical director he led a team of other retirees to fix the problems, and soon the RB.211 was in production. Its first application was for Lockheed's L-1011 Tri-Star. Hooker was knighted for his role in 1974. After another four years he retired once again in 1978.

During his return to Rolls-Royce, Sir Stanley was part of several high-level trade missions to China. These led to him becoming Honorary Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at Beijing University

Major Robert H. Mayo 1890-1957

2010-02-24T04:53:00.000-08:00

Major Robert H. Mayo, Technical General Manager at Imperial Airways (and later a designer at Shorts) proposed mounting a small, long-range seaplane on top of a larger carrier aircraft, using the combined power of both to bring the smaller aircraft to operational height, at which time the two aircraft would separate, the carrier aircraft returning to base while the other flew on to its destination

Frank Bernard Halford 1894-1955

2010-02-24T04:20:00.000-08:00

Major Frank Bernard Halford, John L. P. Brodie and Eric S. Moult, with the De Haviland Goblin Turbojet, standard power unit of the De Haviland Vampire Fighter. 1945

Frank Bernard Halford was an English aircraft engine designer. - Educated at Felsted, In 1913 he left the University of Nottingham before graduating to learn to fly at Brooklands and Bristol Flying School and became a flight instructor using Bristol Boxkites. - He served in the First World War, in the Aeronautical Inspection Department of the Air Ministry as an engine examiner, and the Royal Flying Corps where he fought at the front. Recalled to engineering duties he improved and enlarged the water-cooled six-cylinder Austro-Daimler, producing the 230 hp (170 kW) Beardmore Halford Pullinger (BHP). This engine was further developed by Armstrong Siddeley as the Puma. - In 1922 he rode a 4-valve Triumph Ricardo in the Senior TT, finishing 13th. That same year he was commissioned to produce a luxury motorcycle for Vauxhall. Based on aero-engine principles, it featured an in-line unit construction four cylinder engine, with shaft drive to the rear wheel. Four examples were made, one exists in a private collection in the Isle of Man. - In 1923 he set up his own consultancy in London, alongside the equally influential engine designer Harry Ricardo. There he designed the famous de Havilland Gipsy air-cooled inline engines, copying the success of the Cirrus Engine company in the general aviation role. - During this period Frank Halford also designed and had built the AM Halford Special racing car which he raced at Brooklands in the 1926 RAC British Grand Prix, as well as in many other races in 1925 and 1926. - During the 1930s Halford and Ricardo became interested in the sleeve valve as a method of increasing the allowable operating RPM of piston engines, thereby increasing the power from an otherwise smaller engine. While Ricardo worked with Bristol Engines, Halford worked with Napier & Son on their Sabre design which would go on to be one of the most powerful piston aero engines, producing 3,500 hp (2.6 MW) from only 2200 cubic inches (36 L) in late-war versions. During the war he became interested in jet engines, and designed a simplified version of Frank Whittle's centrifugal-flow designs with the air intake on the front and "straight-through" combustion chambers. Known initially as the Halford H.1, the project was taken up by de Havilland who produced it as the de Havilland Goblin. Halford's company was eventually purchased outright by de Havilland in 1944. Halford continued working on jets, turboprop and rocket engines.

George Herbert Miles 1911-1999

2010-02-24T04:00:00.001-08:00

George Herbert Miles was born on July 28 1911 at Portslade, on the Sussex coast, where his father owned the Star Model Laundry. It was there, amid the clutter of wicker baskets, that George's elder brother Fred began to build the family's first aeroplane.

By 1929, at nearby Shoreham, Fred Miles had set up the Southern Aircraft Company in order to build a single-seat biplane, the Martlet. After leaving Hove College, George joined him to manage the fast-developing aircraft works, flying school and joyride business.

George Miles was quieter and more reflective than his extrovert brother, but he shared his flair for design. He complemented Fred's drive and impetuosity with a logical and incisive mind.

When the first Martlet was ready, it was bought by Maxine "Blossom" Freeman-Thomas, daughter of the actors Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson and Gertrude Elliott. Blossom Freeman- Thomas adored her Martlet. She was also rather keen on Fred Miles, who taught her to fly it. In due course, Blossom divorced her husband, heir to the Marquess of Willingdon, and married Miles. She also became a director and designer of the aircraft company.

In the early 1930s, leaving George to mind the shop at Shoreham, Fred and Blossom Miles joined with Charles Powis - a Reading garage owner with aeronautical ambitions - to establish Phillips & Powis Aircraft at Woodley, Berks. In 1933, having identified a market for an affordable light aircraft to compete with de Havilland's Moths, Phillips & Powis produced the Hawk, a wooden, low-wing monoplane which would establish the Mileses' reputation in air races.

As new types of aircraft multiplied, the time came for George to join Fred and Blossom Miles as engine manager and test pilot. Among their new designs was a custom-built Mohawk for Charles Lindbergh, the American aviator, who commissioned this fast, long-range cabin tourer. In seeking to keep a record of their aircraft plans, the Mileses also invented an early photocopier - the "Copy-cat".

As war loomed, the Mileses' designs were much in demand at the Air Ministry. The Hawk became an RAF trainer, and an Elementary Reserve Flying Training School was established at Woodley. The Miles trio also devised an early flight simulator, and in 1938 began to rollout the Miles Master, a two-seater tandem fighter trainer, more complex in design and operation than the Hawk. By September 1940, 500 of these aircraft had been built, and they had played a key role in the training of Hurricane and Spitfire pilots before the Battle of Britain.

The same team also designed the Miles Magister - known as "Maggie" - the RAF's first monoplane trainer and one in which thousands of their pilots learnt to fly.

The family then set up Miles Aircraft, which came to incorporate Phillips & Powis; in 1941 Fred Miles became chairman and managing director. George, then aged 30, was appointed technical director and chief designer.

As chief designer, George Miles held ambitions beyond building the simple trainers which had laid the foundations of the company's success. In some instances, his unorthodox ideas so exasperated the authorities that he felt compelled to conceal new designs from them. One such secret project was the experimental Libellula canard-wing aircraft, which Miles saw as the answer to the problem of operating high performance fighters from aircraft carriers.

When the prototype Libellula was ready for its clandestine maiden flight, the company's chief test pilot refused to fly the strange- looking machine, whose main lifting surface was at the rear. '.Very well," said Miles, "I'll take her up." It proved to be a hair-raising 'and hazardous experience, but despite its instability, the aeroplane's eccentric wing scheme provided many useful insights.

From 1943, George Miles helped his brother with the M.52, an experimental jet aircraft which promised to lead the world in supersonic flight. But in 1946 the government-funded project was abruptly cancelled by Sir Stafford Cripps, Minister of Aircraft Production. Cripps compounded the blow by ordering the Mileses to hand over their designs to the American Bell Aircraft Company. On October 14 1947, Major Chuck Yeager, of the United States air force, made the world's first supersonic flight in a Bell-X1.

As military orders declined, Miles Aircraft sought to replace them with civil ones. George Miles was involved in the designs of the Messenger (one of which was used by Field Marshal Montgomery), Monitor, Gemini, Aerovan and Merchantman aircraft. He also helped with subsidiary activities, such as the contract to market the Biro ballpoint pen outside the United States. But the new ventures were not lucrative enough, and in 1948 the company collapsed.

George Miles moved to Airspeed, and in 1949 became chief designer there. Among the aircraft which he helped to build for them was the Ambassador, known to airline passengers as the British European Airways Elizabethan. Subsequently, Fred Miles reestablished the Miles name in the aircraft business at Redhill, and in 1953 he returned to Shoreham, where George Miles rejoined him.

When, in 1960, Beagle Aircraft was set up to build light aeroplanes, George Miles, by then a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, became the company's technical director. Three years later he left to establish his own aircraft engineering business.

Frederick George Miles 1903-1976

2010-02-24T03:54:00.000-08:00

Frederick George Miles was born on 22 March 1903 in Worthing Sussex the oldest of four sons of Frederick, a laundry proprietor, and his wife Esther. He left school early in 1916 and started a motorcycle rental business. Miles soon became interested in aircraft and in 1922 he designed then built with some friends and his brother George a small biplane called the Gnat at the back of his father's laundry in Portslade. The aircraft was not flown but proved an interesting and inspiring project for the young Miles and his brother who had formed the Gnat Aero and Motor Company Limited. He was taught to fly by local pilot Cecil Pashley at Shoreham Airport and after gaining his licence he persuaded Pashley to enter into a partnership and start a flying school and joyriding business. The company soon expanded into aircraft repairs and then split into two separate companies in 1926; the Southern Aero Club and Southern Aircraft. One of the aircraft Miles acquired was an Avro Baby which he modified to turn it into an a erobatic sports aircraft which he called the Southern Martlet

In 1930 Miles intended to emigrate to South Africa to remove himself from a difficult situation when he fell in love with one of his pupils, but he returned after a year and then married the former pupil Maxine Freeman-Thomas a recent divorcee and always known as Blossom. Together they designed a single-seat biplane in 1932 (the Miles M1 Satyr), which was built for them by George Parnall & Co of Yate, Gloucestershire. Also in 1932 he met Charles Powis a motor engineer and owner of an aircraft business Phillips & Powis based at Woodley Aerodrome near Reading. Miles agreed to design a cheap but modern light monoplane which he called the Miles Hawk it was built by Phillips and Powis at Woodley Aerodrome, Reading. The Hawk sold well and Miles joined the company as technical director and chief designer. His brother followed him as a test pilot and manager of the engine section. Other successful designs followed including one special commissioned from Miles by Charles Lindbergh and known as the Miles Mohawk.[1]
In 1935 the Phillips and Powis became a public company with Rolls-Royce Limited becoming a major shareholder. Miles became chairman and managing director and his brother Herbert became technical director and chief designer. With the expansion of the Royal Air Force the company won a contract worth £2 million pounds for the Miles Magister basic trainer.
Rolls-Royce lost interest in the company and in 1941 Miles bought financial control of the company which he renamed Miles Aircraft Limited in 1943. Miles and his wife also started the Miles Aeronautical School to train apprentice technicians and draughtsman.
In 1943 Miles was shown a prototype ballpoint pen made by László Bíró and offered to produce them for the Royal Air Force. The ministry were concerned that it would distract from aircraft production but Miles eventually persuaded government officials to let him use 17 unskilled girls to produce the pen which was called the biro after the inventor. When the war finished the Reading biro factory which would employ 700 people became the Miles Martin Pen Company and the biro was sold to the general public.
With his brother now Chief Designer for the aircraft Miles concentrated on a design for a supersonic aircraft (the M.52) powered by the then secret Whittle jet engine. The government contract and the programme was cancelled in 1946 but not before all Miles's work was passed on to the United States government and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA - later to become NASA). Reminiscent of the M.52 the Bell X-1 was the first manned aircraft to break the sound barrier in 1947. Problems with the return to civil production led to the collapse of Miles Aircraft in 1948
Undeterred Miles started a new company F.G. Miles Engineering and moved back to Shoreham in 1949. In 1961 the company became part of the new Beagle Group and Miles became the deputy chairman and his brother was chief designer. The Beagle group collapsed in 1969 so Miles went on to form other engineering companies involved with flight simulators, aircraft structures and other aviation projects.

Sir Frederick William Page CBE FREng 1917-2005

2010-02-23T13:23:00.000-08:00

After a starred First at Cambridge and an apprenticeship at the Hawker Aircraft Co during the Second World War, Freddie Page joined the aircraft division of English Electric at Preston in 1945 as "chief stressman". There, under the chief engineer WEW Petter, he was a member of the team which created the first British jet bomber, the Canberra. Though the overall concept was Petter's, much of the radical thinking underlying it was Page's, driven by painstaking scientific analysis.

The prototype flew in May 1949; Page became assistant chief designer in that year and succeeded Petter as chief engineer in 1950. The Canberra - of which 1,352 were eventually built - saw service with 15 air forces around the world over the next 50 years.

Page's next project was the P1 prototype, the first British aircraft to achieve supersonic speeds in level flight. This led to the development of the Lightning fighter, which went into service with the RAF in 1960. In its advanced form, to the envy of American engineers of the era, the Lightning achieved supersonic climbing speeds and exceeded Mach 2 in level flight. It was another export success - notably to Saudi Arabia, where Page forged relationships which were the foundation of a substantial flow of contracts for BAC and British Aerospace in later years.

Page had been appointed chief executive of the aircraft division of English Electric Aviation in 1959. In 1960, at the instigation of the air minister, Duncan Sandys, the company became part of a tripartite merger with Vickers-Armstrong and Bristol Aeroplane to form the British Aircraft Corporation, which had the contract to build a new supersonic strike-reconnaissance aircraft, the ill-fated TSR2.

It was Page's old mentor at Hawker, Sir Sidney Camm, who said: "All modern aircraft have four dimensions: span, length, height and politics. TSR2 simply got the first three right." Despite Page's best efforts as the project's chief engineer, and his willingness when necessary to face down ministers and officials with irrefutable logic, the TSR2 was mired in problems. By 1965 its estimated cost had tripled to £750 million, and its first delivery date had slipped by at least two years; under pressure to find budget cuts, the Labour defence minister, Denis Healey, announced TSR2's cancellation.

At the same time, however, an agreement was signed with the French government to produce an advanced naval attack aircraft, the Jaguar, in a joint venture between BAC and Breguet Aviation. Page was co-chairman of the Jaguar joint venture company, Sepecat, and was also later chairman of Panavia, a company formed with Fiat and Messerschmitt to develop the Tornado fighter.

From 1967 he was chairman of the military aircraft division of BAC, and from 1972 he was also chairman of the commercial aircraft side - in which capacity he performed the official handover of the last Concorde built for British Airways. When BAC became part of the nationalised British Aerospace in 1977, Page joined the board and was chairman of the aircraft group until 1982.

A recipient of both the British Gold Medal for Aeronautics (1962) and the Gold Medal of the Royal Aeronautical Society (1974), he commanded universal respect in his industry and was particularly revered by the younger engineers whose careers he encouraged. His final involvement in the military field was to oversee early project studies for what emerged as the Eurofighter joint venture.

Frederick William Page was born at Wimbledon on February 20 1917, the son of a chauffeur who was killed while serving in the First World War. Freddie was brought up by his mother in very modest circumstances but won scholarships first to Rutlish School, Merton, and then to St Catherine's College, Cambridge, where he achieved the rare distinction of a double starred First in the Mechanical Science tripos.

Having known since his teens that he wanted to design aircraft, he began his career in 1938 in the Hawker works at Kingston-upon-Thames, where he trained under Sidney Camm, the designer of the Hurricane fighter bomber. Page worked on the Hurricane Mk II and the Typhoon and Tempest before moving to English Electric at the end of the war.

He was appointed CBE in 1961 and knighted in 1979. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

After retiring from the board of British Aeropsace in 1983, Page devoted himself to gardening, latterly at Christchurch in Dorset, where he also enjoyed listening to classical music and taking long walks on the seafront.

Marcel Dassault (Bloch) 1892-1986

2009-09-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

Marcel Bloch, the youngest of a doctor's four children, was born on January 22, 1892, in Paris, France. His precocious interest in technological innovation in general - and electricity in particular - became rapidly apparent. "One sunny day in the school playground", he once recalled, "I looked up at the sky and saw the Count of Lambert's Wilbur Wright passing the Eiffel tower for the first time. I had never seen a plane before. There and then, I knew that aviation had become a part of my heart and thoughts". After high school and a spell at Breguet School of Electricity, Bloch joined Ecole Supérieure d'Aéronautique, a school of aviation, whence he graduated in 1913.
He first contributed to France's aviation industry during World War I. He used the engineering skills he had acquired at Chalais Meudon Aeronautical Laboratory to design a propeller, called the Éclair (1916), and a twin-seater fighter, the SEA 4 (1918), working alongside Henry Potez and Louis Coroller.

Bloch married in 1919, and had two sons, Claude and Serge. After dabbling in real-estate and, to a lesser extent, cars, throughout the 1920s, 1930 saw him gather a new team together and return to aviation. He remembered that occasion, in his own terms, as "One day - or indeed I should say one evening - I was at Le Bourget airport and saw Lindbergh land the Spirit of Saint Louis after flying over the Atlantic. I understood something had changed in aviation, and that civil aviation would be born. Wilbur Wright's plane first drew me to aviation. The Spirit of Saint Louis brought me back."

The Front Populaire, the political party in power at the time, nationalized Bloch's firm in 1936. He founded another one, Société Anonyme des Avions Marcel Bloch (SAAMB) on December 12 that same year. From a legal standpoint, that was Dassault Aviation's foundation date. He was concurrently managing director of another firm, Société Nationale des Constructions Aéronautiques du Sud-Ouest (SNCASO), in charge of serially manufacturing his aircraft.
World War II broke out and those planes were used to defend France's skies in 1939 and 1940. Bloch's refusal to collaborate with the invading army after the Armistice led to his incarceration in Montluc Fort in Lyons, along with his wife and children, at the hands of the Vichy Government. He was then sent to Drancy concentration camp before spending eight months in Buchenwald. Post-diphtheria paralysis from 1945 to 1953 did not stop Bloch resuming his aeronautical endeavors after the war.

In order to shed the somber souvenirs of war, Marcel Bloch and his family decided to change names. Dassault was the alias his brother, General Paul Bloch, had used in the Resistance, and the name Marcel adopted in 1949. He diversified into newspapers (at the head of Semaine de France then Jours de France) and, in politics, was to become senator for the Alpes Maritimes department and representative for the Oise department. And Dassault was the name that came to be known around the world for outstanding jet-powered aircraft.

Besides being the French Air Force's first jet aircraft, the MD-450 Ouragan (1949) pioneered the French postwar aeronautical industry's steps into the export market (selling in India and Israel). The Mystère IV (1954) earned endorsement for the company's expertise when the United States ordered 225 planes as part of an agreement with NATO. The 1967 Six Day War between Israel and its neighboring Arab nations provided conclusive evidence of the quality of Dassault aircraft. Other initiatives, like taking part in France's efforts to develop strategic nuclear power after the 1956 Suez expedition through the Mirage IV program (1959), were later to further cement Marcel Dassault's prominence.

Superior civil aircraft also held much of Dassault's interest. And here, again, it was the United States that provided consecration for the company's planes. In this case, Pan Am was the first airline to place a large-scale order and thereby open the doors to the American market.

Besides his work in aviation, newspapers and politics, Dassault was keen on architecture, cinema, banking and the stock market. His services to his country earned him France's highest honor, the Legion of Honor's Grand Cross.

Marcel Dassault died on 17 April 1986. France's government, top-ranking officials, and local and international media paid him an extraordinary tribute. His was the first funeral celebrated at Invalides for a French industrial businessperson.

Ralph Marcus Hare 1914-2009

2009-06-28T10:53:00.000-07:00

Ralph was born in Radlett, 18th August 1914.He was the oldest of eight children. At the age of 14, Ralph started work at the De Havilland factory at Stag Lane,working in most of the various assembly shops, with a variety of activities from metal bashing to working with wood which was his favourite occupation. Not only did he have a seven-mile bike ride twice a day but he also stayed on at Night-school from which he earned a scholarship.

In 1939, Ralph was one of the original 9 strong design team who under R.E. Bishop started work in secret, at Salisbury Hall, South Mymms, on the versatile aircraft bomber and fighter, the Mosquito,where he was in charge of overall loads and wing strength caluclations,often working 12 hour days, for seven days a week.The Mosquito was known affectionately as the “Mossie” to its crews and was also known as “The Wooden Wonder” because the bulk of the aircraft was made of laminated plywood and balsa wood.He had to move from Baldock to London Colney to be closer to the Hall and it was near his digs that four goats lived in a field. They were nicknamed, Hitler, Himmler, Goering and Hess. Unfortunately, in a German bombing raid, three goats were killed outright but the fourth, Hitler survived for just a few days more until he succumbed to his injuries: this was thought by local folk to be a good omen for the future. Over the years Ralph worked on many different types of aircraft, initially with De Havilland, then with Hawker Siddeley and lastly with British Aerospace. These included the Vampire which was de Havilland’s first jet aircraft, the Hornet, the Comet, the Trident and the Airbus. However, his love of working with wood made the Mosquito his favourite plane of all.He was appointed Chief Structural Engineer in 1971 and took control of the four structural departments in Hatfield. Ralph also lectured in the De Havilland Technical School from 1936 until 1952, so many younger aircraft designers were able to benefit from his knowledge and experience. He retired in 1979 after 51 years service in the aircraft industry.

H. Oswald Short 1883-1969

2009-04-09T03:34:00.000-07:00

Oswald Short

Sir Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith 1888-1989

2009-04-09T03:31:00.000-07:00

T.o.m. Sopwith

Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith was born in Kensington, London. He was the eighth child and only son of Thomas Sopwith, a civil engineer. He was educated at Cottesmore School in Hove and at Seafield Park engineering college in Hill Head.

When he was ten years old, whilst on a family holiday on the Isle of Lismore, near Oban in Scotland, a gun lying across young Thomas's knee went off, killing his father. This accident haunted Sopwith for the rest of his life.

In his youth, he was an expert ice skater and played in goal during Princes Ice Hockey Club's 1908 match with C. P. P. Paris and during the 1909–10 season.He also played on the Great Britain national ice hockey team which won the gold medal at the first ever European Championships in 1910.
Sopwith became interested in flying after seeing John Moisant flying the first cross-Channel passenger flight. His first flight was with Gustave Blondeau in a Farman at Brooklands. He soon taught himself to fly on a British Avis monoplane and took to the air on his own for the first time on 22 October 1910. Unfortunately he crashed after travelling about 300 yards (275 m). He soon improved and on 22 November was awarded Royal Aero Club Aviation Certificate No. 31.

On 18 December 1910, Sopwith won a £4,000 prize for the longest flight from England to the Continent in a British built aeroplane. He flew 169 miles (272 km) in 3 hours 40 minutes. He used the winnings to set up the Sopwith School of Flying at Brooklands.

In June 1912 Sopwith with Fred Sigrist and others set up The Sopwith Aviation Company. The company produced more than 18,000 British World War I aircraft for the allied forces, including 5,747 of the famous Sopwith Camel single-seat fighter. Sopwith was awarded the CBE in 1918.

Bankrupted after the war by the punitive anti-profiteering taxes, he re-entered the business a few years later with a new firm named after his chief engineer and test pilot, Harry Hawker. Sopwith was chairman of the new firm, Hawker Aircraft.

After the nationalization of what was by then Hawker Siddeley, he continued to work as a consultant as late as 1980.He became a Knight Bachelor in 1953.

His 100th birthday was marked by a flypast of military aircraft over his home. He died in Hampshire on 27 January 1989, aged 101.

Ronald Eric Bishop 1903-1989

2009-02-20T07:20:00.000-08:00

Ronald Bishop designed the D.H.98 Mosquito and the D.H. Comet jetliner. Bishop joined the De Havilland company when he was 18 and worked his way through the metal, fitting and engine workshops before entering the drawing office in 1923.

The Air Ministry rejected his idea for a fast bomber built of wood a year before the war began. But Mr. Bishop and the company built it anyway and the DH-98 Mosquito, the ''Wooden Wonder,'' became one of the most versatile military planes ever built for day and night fighting, bombing and photographic reconnaissance.

René Mouille 1925-

2008-11-10T13:28:00.000-08:00

René Mouille was born in 1925. He joined SNCASE in 1946 , where very quickly his talents as a designer were realised.He became responsible for the study of helicopter design under Pierre Renoux. After designing and perfecting the SE 3120 Alouette I, with which several records are established,he is put it in charge of drawing the SE 3130 Alouette II, on which he worked with Charles Marcchetti. This became a very succesful design, with more than 1300 aircraft constructed. His next projects were the Alouette III, the Puma, and the Gazelle. He has filed over 100 patents, incluing many of which became important on French helicopters eg the rotor anti-couple of the SE 3200 Frelon.

Emile Dewoitine 1892-1979

2008-10-03T00:55:00.001-07:00

Emiel Dewoitine
Born in Crépy-en-Valois, Émile Dewoitine entered the aviation industry by working at Latécoère during Word War I. In 1920, he founded his own company, but facing little success at home, went to Switzerland where his Dewoitine D.27 fighter was accepted for operational service.

In 1931, Dewoitine went back to France and founded Société Aéronautique Française - Avions Dewoitine. During the 1930s several noteworthy aircraft rolled out of the Toulouse-based Dewoitine factories including the Dewoitine D.500, the French Air Force's first fully metallic, monoplane fighter, as well as the Dewoitine D.338 airliner.

In 1936 part of the French aviation industry was nationalized and Dewoitine's factories were absorbed by the SNCAM. During the Battle of France in 1940, the Dewoitine D.520 turned out to be France's best fighter aircraft.
After the armistice with Germany, Dewoitine briefly tried to start a business in the USA, which caused him to be tried for treason under the Vichy government. Dewoitine went back to work with SIPA which, after an agreement between the Vichy Government and German authorities, was manufacturing trainer aircraft intended for the Luftwaffe, including a derivative of the Arado Ar 96 that would later be known as the SIPA S.10.
Facing charges of collaborationism after the Liberation of France, Dewoitine moved to Spain, where he developed a derivative of the D.520 with Hispano Aviación. He later went to Argentina where he worked for the Industria Aeronáutica Militar, developing the Pulqui I, the first South American jet plane. In France, Dewoitine was condemned in absentia to a 20 year forced labour term in 1948.[1] At the end of this career, he resided in Switzerland, and once his crimes were prescribed, returned to France and finished his life in Toulouse.

Reimar 1915-1994 and Walter Horten 1913-1998

2008-09-18T01:46:00.000-07:00

Reimar and Walter Horten

Walter (13 November 1913 - 9 December 1998 Baden-Baden) and Reimar Horten (12 March 1915 - 14 March 1994 Villa General Belgrano, Argentina), sometimes credited as the Horten Brothers, were German aircraft pilots and enthusiasts. Though they had little, if any, formal training in aeronautics or a related field, the Hortens designed some of the most advanced aircraft of the 1940s.
Between the World Wars, the Treaty of Versailles limited the construction of German military airplanes. In response, German military flying became semi-clandestine, taking the form of civil 'clubs' where students trained on gliders under the supervision of decommissioned World War I veterans. As teenagers, the Horten brothers became involved in such flying clubs.

This back-to-the-basics education, and an admiration of German avant-aircraft designer Dr. Alexander Lippisch, led the Hortens away from the dominant design trends of the 1920s and '30s, and toward experimenting with alternative airframes -- building models and then filling their parents' house with full-sized wooden sailplanes. The first Horten glider flew in 1933, when both brothers were still in their teens.

The Hortens' glider designs were extremely simple and aerodynamic, generally consisting of a huge, tailless albatross-wing with a tiny cocoon of a fuselage, in which the pilot lay prone. But the great advantage of the Horten designs was the extremely low parasitic drag of their airframes. They were 'slick' and scalable to high speeds.
By 1939, with Adolf Hitler in power and the Treaty of Versailles no longer in effect, Walter and Reimar had entered the Luftwaffe as pilots. (A third brother, Wolfram, was killed flying a bomber over Dunkirk.) They were also called upon as design consultants, though Germany's aeronautical community tended to regard the Hortens not as part of the cultural elite.

In 1937, the Hortens began using motorized airplanes, with the debut of the twin-engined pusher-prop airplane H.VII (an earlier glider had a mule engine). The Luftwaffe, however, did not actually use many of the Hortens' designs until 1942, when grudging (and partly under-the-table) support was given to a twin-turbojet-powered fighter/bomber design, designated under wartime protocols as the Horten H.IX.

The Horten Ho 229, the world's first jet-powered flying wingSecuring the allocation of turbojets was difficult in wartime Germany, as other projects carried higher priority due to their rank in the overall war effort. Although the turbojet-equipped Ho IX V2 nearly reached a then-astonishing 500 mph in trials, the project was soon given over to the theretofore low-tech aircraft company, Gothaer Waggonfabrik, as the Horten Ho 229 (subsequently often erroneously called Gotha Go 229).

The Ho 229 was a fighter jet with great potential, but arrived too late to see service. Among other advanced Horten designs of the 1940s was the supersonic delta-wing H.X, designed as a hybrid turbojet/rocket fighter with a top speed of Mach 1.4, but tested only in glider form (as the Horten H.XIII). Its revolutionary stealth design included a special carbon layer that was able to reduce the radar range detection. The Horten brothers also worked on the Horten H.XVIII, an intercontinental bomber that was part of the Amerika Bomber project.
As the war ended, Reimar Horten emigrated to Argentina, where he continued designing and building gliders and one twin-engined flying wing transport, which was unsuccessful commercially. Walter remained in Germany after the war and became an officer in the post-war German Air Force Luftwaffe. Reimar died on his ranch in Argentina in 1994, while Walter died in Germany in 1998.

In the late 1940s, the personnel of Project Sign, the U.S. Air Force's flying saucer investigation, seriously considered the possibility that UFOs might have been secret aircraft manufactured by the U.S.S.R. based on the Hortens' designs

Alexander Martin Lippisch 1894 -1976

2008-09-18T01:45:00.000-07:00

Alexander Martin Lippisch was born in 1894 in Munich, Germany, to Franz and Clara (Commichau) Lippisch. Alexander was educated at schools in Berlin and Jena; and enlisted in Germany's armed forces in 1915. He served as an aerial photographer and mapper. In 1943, he was awarded a doctoral degree from the University of Heidelberg. From 1918-1945, Lippisch held various positions in aviation in Germany: as a designer, aerodynamicist, and director of research. In 1946, he emigrated with his family to the U.S., where he worked for the Dept. of Defense. From 1950-1964, Alexander worked for the Collins Radio Company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and after his retirement, was employed as a design consultant. Lippisch worked on a variety of research projects throughout his career, including smoke tunnel visualization, remote powered vehicles, delta shaped wings, and aerofoil boats.

Kurt Tank 1898-1983

2008-09-18T01:44:00.000-07:00

Kurt Tank (right) in conversation with Specht and Sommer

Kurt Tank was a resourceful aeronautical engineer and test pilot, heading the design department at Focke-Wulf from 1931-45. He designed several important aircraft of World War II, including the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter aircraft.

Before Focke Wulf, Tank was employed by Albatros Flugzeugwerke, but after their bankruptcy in 1929, the company was broken up with most of the designers going to Focke-Wulf and a few others going to Arado in 1931. Tank then started work on the design of the Fw 44, Focke Wulf's first commercially successful design, launched in 1934. This led to burgeoning growth for the company as the country prepared for war.

The Fw 190 Würger (butcher-bird), produced from 1939 to 1945, was a mainstay Luftwaffe single-seat fighter during World War II. During the war, Tank was honoured for his work. In January 1943, he was named honorary Professor with a chair at the technical school in Braunschweig, in recognition of his services to the development of flight.

At the end of the war, like many other German technicians, he continued his professional life in Latin America. The Argentine Government offered him a job at its aerotechnical institute, the Instituto Aerotécnico in Córdoba. He moved there, with many of his Focke-Wulf co-workers, in 1947. The Instituto Aerotécnico later became Argentina's military aeroplane factory, the Fábrica Militar de Aviones. There, he designed the IAe Pulqui II based on the Focke-Wulf Ta 183 design that had reached mock-up stage at the end of the war. It was a state-of-the-art design for its day, but the project was axed in 1953 due to Argentina's financial crisis. When President Juan Peron fell from power in 1955 the ex Focke-Wulf team dispersed, many to the United States.

Tank instead moved to India. There he designed, for Hindustan Aeronautics, the Hindustan Marut fighter-bomber, the first military aircraft constructed in India. The first prototype flew in 1961; the Marut was retired from active service in 1985.

Tank returned to live in Berlin during the seventies, basing himself in Germany for the rest of his life.

Hugo Junkers 1859-1935

2008-09-18T01:43:00.002-07:00

Hugo Junkers was an innovative German engineer, as his many patents in varied areas (gas engines, aeroplanes) show. He pioneered the first great change in aviation materials and design technology, away from wood and fabric materials braced by wire rigging, towards all-metal, cantilever-winged monoplane aircraft that had little to no external bracing.

The name Junkers is mainly known in connection with aircraft, which were produced under this name first for the German Empire later in World War I, mostly in league with Anthony Fokker as requested by IdFlieg for the Luftstreitkräfte, and later for the Third Reich's Luftwaffe before and during World War II. By then, however, the Nazi government was running his businesses, and Hugo Junkers himself was deceased.

Born in Rheydt, Rhine Province, Junkers studied in Charlottenburg and Aachen. He was a professor of mechanical engineering at Aachen between 1897 and 1912. Working as an engineer, Junkers devised, patented, and exploited gas engines, heaters, a calorie meter and other inventions. His aeronautical work began in earnest only at the age of fifty. He had far-seeing ideas of metal aeroplanes and flying wings, but always realities of war dragged him back. During World War I the government forced him to focus on aircraft production. In 1915, he developed the world's first practical all metal aircraft design, the Junkers J 1 "Blechesel"[1] (Sheetmetal Donkey), which survived on museum display in Berlin until World War II, and later in 1918 his firm created the world's first low-winged single seat fighter aircraft, the Junkers D.I. However, the D.I. did not enter production until 1918. He also produced a two seat fighter (pilot and rear gunner), the Junkers CL.I. and an armored-fuselage two seat all metal sesquiplane, the Junkers J.I, considered the best German ground attack aircraft of the war. The J.I's pattern of an armored fuselage that protected the nose mounted engine, pilot and observer in a unitized metal "bathtub", was the possible inspiration for Sergei Ilyushin's later IL-2 Shturmovik (conceivably appropriate as Junkers did have a manufacturing plant in Fili, a suburb of Moscow, in the Soviet Union in the 1920s) with a similar armored fuselage design, and Andrei Tupolev and William Stout each owed much to Hugo Junkers in the designs of their earlier aircraft, which benefitted from Junkers' corrugated light metal construction philosophy.

After the war, several business ventures failed from wider economic or political problems that scuppered sound engineering plans. But Junkers always had more ideas: the massive four engined G38, nicknamed "Der Grosse Dessauer", delivered to Lufthansa made no commercial trips for many months as he repeatedly recalled it to the factory for improvements.

During the 1920s Junkers' employees represented a wide spectrum of views. There were left wing cultural revolutionaries and National Socialists. There were pacifists and World War I veterans who were convinced Germany would remilitarise following the ideas of such as Ernst Jünger. Some preferred pure scientific research, others focused on mass production. About every aspect of the business, and of its environment, there were differing opinions.

For members of all the many groups represented in Junkers, aviation offered hope for national renewal. Their varied views led to lively internal corporate politics until the Nazi government interfered. Junkers claimed affinity with Hitler's nationalist commitment, but ultimately had little sympathy with the requirements of mobilization for total war.

Junkers was a socialist and a pacifist; perhaps for these reasons, he had several occasions to cross swords with German leadership. In 1917 the government forced him into partnership with Anthony Fokker to ensure wartime production targets would be met. In 1926, unable to make government loan repayments after a failed venture to build planes for the USSR, he lost control of most of his businesses. In 1933, the Nazi government, on taking power, immediately demanded ownership of Junkers' patents and control of his remaining companies. Under threat of imprisonment he eventually acquiesced, to little avail; a year later he was under house arrest; a year after that he was dead.
nning his businesses, and Hugo Junkers himself was deceased.

Wilhelm 'Willy' Emil Messerschmitt 1898-1978

2008-09-18T01:43:00.001-07:00

Wilhelm Emil "Willy" Messerschmitt was a German aircraft designer and manufacturer. He was born in Frankfurt am Main, the son of a wine merchant. His stepfather was the American painter and Munich Academy Professor Carl von Marr.

Probably Messerschmitt's single most important design was the Messerschmitt Bf 109, designed in 1934 with the collaboration of Walter Rethel. The Bf 109 became the most important fighter in the Luftwaffe as Germany re-armed prior to World War II. To this day, it remains the most-produced fighter in history, with some 35,000 built. Another Messerschmitt aircraft, first called "Bf 109R", purpose-built for record setting, but later re-designated Messerschmitt Me 209, broke the absolute world air-speed record and held the world speed record for propeller-driven aircraft until 1969. His firm also produced the first jet-powered fighter to enter service — the Messerschmitt Me 262, although Messerschmitt himself did not design it.

As a young man, Messerschmitt befriended German sailplane pioneer Friedrich Harth. Harth joined the German army in 1914 and while he was away at war, Messerschmitt continued work on one of Harth's designs, the S5 glider. In 1917, Messerschmitt himself signed up for military service. Following the war, the two were re-united and continued to work together while Messerschmitt commenced study at the Munich Technical College and Harth built aircraft at the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke (BFW - Bavarian Aircraft Works). The S8 glider they designed and built together in 1921 broke a world duration record (albeit unofficially) and they went into partnership for a while running a flying school. The same year, the first plane entirely designed by Messerschmitt flew — the S9 glider.

During 1923 Harth and Messerschmitt had a falling out and went their separate ways, with Messerschmitt founding his own aircraft company at Augsburg. At first, Messerschmitt built sailplanes, but within two years had progressed via motor gliders to small powered aircraft - sports and touring types. These culminated in the Messerschmitt M17 and Messerschmitt M 18 designs, which Messerschmitt sold to BFW in 1927, when the Bavarian state government encouraged a merger between the two companies. These were followed by the Messerschmitt M20 light transport in 1928, which proved a disaster for BFW and Messerschmitt himself. Two Lufthansa M20s were involved in serious crashes very soon after purchase, and this led the airline to cancel their order for the type. This caused a serious cash-flow problem for the company and led to its bankruptcy in 1931. The M20 crashes also created a powerful enemy for Messerschmitt in the person of Erhard Milch, the head of Lufthansa who had lost a close friend in one of the crashes.

The establishment of the Reichsluftfahrtministerium ("Reich Aviation Ministry" - RLM) by the Nazi government in 1933, headed by Milch, led to a resurgence in the German aircraft industry and the resurrection of BFW. Collaborating with Robert Lusser, Messerschmitt designed the flagship product of the relaunched company, a low-wing sports monoplane called the Messerschmitt M37, but better known by its later RLM designation of Bf 108 Taifun. The following year, Messerschmitt would incorporate many design features of this aircraft into the Bf 109 fighter.

Nevertheless, only the ties that Messerschmitt had formed with leading Nazis Rudolf Hess and Hermann Göring (through Theo Croneiss) saved him from sharing the fate of Milch's other great enemy, Hugo Junkers. To stay in business in the face of Milch ensuring that he would get no government contracts, Messerschmitt had signed agreements with Romania for sales of the M37 and a transport plane, the Messerschmitt M 36. When Milch learned of this, he publicly denounced Messerschmitt as a traitor, and the Gestapo was sent to question him and other BFW officials. Probably due to Croneiss' intervention, no further action was taken.

When in 1936, the Messerschmitt Bf 109 won the RLM's single-seat fighter contest to become one of the main Luftwaffe aircraft types, Messerschmitt and his factory took an important role in the RLM's armament plans, increasing in significance even further when Messerschmitt's Bf 110 also won the multi-purpose fighter contest.

On July 11, 1938, Messerschmitt was appointed chairman and managing director of Bayerische Flugzeugwerke and the company was renamed after him to Messerschmitt AG. This same year, the company began work on what would eventually become the Me 262, and of the Messerschmitt Me 210, planned as successor for the Bf 110. The Me 210 turned out to be plagued by massive development problems that were only solved by evolving the type into the Messerschmitt Me 410, and the resulting problems and delays again put the reputation of both Messerschmitt and his namesake company in jeopardy.
Following World War II, Messerschmitt was tried by a denazification court for using slave labor, and in 1948 was convicted of being a "fellow traveller". After two years in prison, he was released and resumed his position as head of his company. Since Germany was forbidden to manufacture aircraft until 1955, he turned his company to manufacturing prefabricated buildings, sewing machines, and small cars - most notably the Messerschmitt Kabinenroller. Exporting his talents, he designed the Hispano HA-200 jet trainer for Hispano Aviacion in Spain in 1952 before eventually being allowed to return to aircraft manufacturing in Germany to licence-produce the Fiat G91 and then Lockheed F-104 Starfighter for the West German Luftwaffe. He designed the later Helwan HA-300 supersonic interceptor.

Messerschmitt saw his company through mergers first with Bölkow in 1968 and then Hamburger Flugzeugbau in 1969, at which point it became MBB (Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm, now part of EADS) with Messerschmitt as chairman until 1970 when he retired. He died eight years later in hospital in Munich.

Ernst Heinrich Heinkel 1888-1958

2008-09-18T01:41:00.002-07:00

Ernst Heinkel was born in Grunbach and as a young man became an apprentice machinist at a foundry. He initially became interested in aviation through a fascination with zeppelins, and in 1909 attended an international airshow in Frankfurt am Main. The following year, he built his first aircraft, working from a set of plans by Henri Farman.Soon afterwards, he gained employment at Luft Verkehrs Gesellschaft (LVG) who were building Farman aircraft. From there, he went to Albatros, where Heinkel designed the Albatros B-II, a reconnaissance aircraft used during the early stages of the First World War. After leaving the Albatros, Heinkel designed several land- and seaplanes for the Hansa-Brandenburg company starting in 1914.

In 1921, Heinkel was appointed head designer of the recently re-established Caspar-Werke, but soon left after a dispute over ownership of a design. In 1922 he established the Heinkel-Flugzeugwerke company at Warnemünde. Due to the restrictions placed on German aircraft manufacturing by the Treaty of Versailles, Heinkel looked overseas for contracts, with some seaplane designs being licence-built in Sweden and working on catapult-launched seaplanes for the Imperial Japanese Navy which Heinkel had business links with Japan since 1922. Back in Germany, he installed a similar catapult on the ocean liner Bremen for launching mail planes.

After Adolf Hitler came to power, designs by Heinkel's firm formed a vital part of the Luftwaffe's growing strength in the years leading up to the Second World War. This included the Heinkel He 59, the Heinkel He 115 and the Heinkel He 111.

Heinkel was passionate about high-speed flight, and was keen on exploring alternative forms of aircraft propulsion. He donated aircraft to Wernher von Braun who was investigating rocket propulsion for aircraft, as well as sponsoring the research of Hans von Ohain into turbojet engines, leading to the flight of the Heinkel He 178, the first aircraft to fly solely under turbojet power by Erich Warsitz on August 27, 1939.

Heinkel had been a critic of Hitler's regime from the time that he had been forced to sack Jewish designers and staff in 1933. In 1942 the government "nationalised" the Heinkel works. In practice, this meant that Heinkel was detained until he sold his controlling interest in his factories to Hermann Göring. Heinkel moved to Vienna and started a new design bureau there, working on the Heinkel He 274 design until the war ended.

At the end of the war Heinkel was arrested by the Allies but evidence of anti-Hitler activities and his treatment by the regime led to his acquittal.

With Germany forbidden from manufacturing aircraft by the Allies, Heinkel used his company's facilities to build private transportation. In 1953 Heinkel began production of the Tourist scooter, followed by the Perle moped in 1954. In 1956 he introduced the Heinkel Kabine bubble car. Bubble car and moped production ceased shortly after the restriction on aircraft manufacture was lifted, but scooter production continued until 1965.

Claudius Dornier 1884 - 1969

2008-09-18T01:41:00.001-07:00

Claude (Claudius) Honoré Desiré Dornier born in Kempten im Allgäu May 14 1884 was a German airplane builder and founder of Dornier GmbH. His legacy remains in the few aircraft named after him, including the Dornier Do 18 and the 12-engine Dornier Do X flying boat, for decades the world's largest and most powerful airplane.

The son of a French wine importer and his German wife, Claude Dornier was born in Bavaria where he grew up and attended school, with science being his chief interest. Dornier then moved to Munich, where he graduated in 1907 from the Technical University.

As a young engineer Dornier first worked on strength calculations at Nagel Engineering Works in Karlsruhe. In 1910, he joined Luftschiffbau Zeppelin in Friedrichshafen on the Bodensee, where his advanced abilities quickly attracted Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's attention. Soon appointed as the Count's personal scientific advisor, Dornier began fundamental research and design on improving the strength of light metal sections and later on aircraft engineering and giant metal flying boats.

Dornier is also recognised in the history of German aviation for his unique propeller design. His planes often featured double ended props on the front and the back of the planes in a push-pull configuration.

Robert Morane 1886-1968

2008-09-18T01:29:00.000-07:00

Robert Morane

Maurice Alain Farman 1877-1964

2008-09-18T01:21:00.003-07:00

Maurice Alain Farman was a French Grand Prix motor racing champion, an aviator, and an aircraft manufacturer and designer. Born in Paris to English parents, he and his brothers Richard and Henri Farman were important pioneers developers of aviation in Europe.

A champion tandem cyclist with brother Henri, Maurice Farman began racing Panhard automobiles and won the 1901 Pau Grand Prix, the first race ever to be called a Grand Prix. In May 1902 he won the "Circuit du Nord" race from Paris to Arras and back. He also competed in that year's Paris to Vienna race won by Marcel Renault. However, Farman's interest quickly turned to powered flight and in 1909 he set world's endurance and speed records. He soon began to manufacture airplanes and in 1912 merged his business with his brother's aircraft company to give the Farman Aviation Works

Maurice Farman died in Paris in 1964. To the end of his life Maurice never obtained a pilot's license.

Yves Gardan 1925-2009

2008-09-18T01:21:00.001-07:00

Yves Gardan, born in 1925, was with the Military Academy of Autun from 1945 - 1947 and after having passed out began his aeronautical career as an engineer responsible for checking the calculations for aircraft design. It took only a year for him to show his worth to Société Industrielle For Aeronautics (SIPA) and to then conceive the Sipa 90, whose first flight took place on June 15 1947 in Villacoublay, piloted by Roger Launay. This aircraft won a contest organised by the Air Ministry in 1946 for a simple two-seater of 75 hp. 130 specimens of the SIPA 90 were delivered. An engineer of many bright ideas who worked enthusiastically he had fixed ideas of his own but was not given a free hand to create. He therefore left SIPA to find his independence.

Yves Gardan decided to set up on his own and with a friend Max Laporté created the "Construction Aeronautical of Béarn" (CAB). It produced 30 specimens of the "Minicab" a cutdown version of the earlier SIPA 90 and on 1st February 1949 had its maiden flight piloted by Max . In addition to the 30 factory made examples, there were more than 130 Minicabs made by amateurs. Gaining a high reputation very quickly and still today, the two-seater beat several world records for speed and distance. In 1952, the Minicab achieved a flight of 1080 Nm with one 65hp engine and an average of 99 kts, an enormous performance achievement at that time.

A neighbouring aviation company Turboméca, wanted to install a turbojet on one of his aircraft and this interested Yves Gardan. After studying the concept of a two-seater equipped with a jet turbine developing 160 kg of thrust that the project for the 200 Minijet was born. The French Army were very interested in this and asked him to turn over all development to SIPA and lead the team. So it was thatYves Gardan returned to SIPA with a clean sheet of paper to assemble an autonomous engineering and design department. This saw the S.200 "Minijet", the smallest two-seater in the world, produced to a very high specification powered by the Turbomeca turbine engines. Gardan very quickly realised, the two-seater Mini Jet showed surprising qualities in stunt-flying. Another two-seater version the SIPA 300 would follow but it remained a prototype.

On his return to CAB from SIPA, Yves continued to develop his projects relating to the development of civil light planes. Persuaded that this market would develop towards the general public, he developed a version of a design derived from the Minicab GY20 - called the Supercab GY30. Equipped with a Continental 90hp, and retractable undercarriage, it was possible to reach a cruising speed of 142 kts. Definitely much in demand, Yves turned the design over to SIPA where it developed the SIPA 1000 ladybird. Although an economic two-seater out of metal tube and cloth - due to an economic downturn the manufacture was to reach an abrupt end after 3 were made. It was the same for the twin-engine Sipa 1100 which also remained in a prototype state.

After this Yves Gardan went to work in Pau-Idron and developed a four-seater metal Aircraft with retractable undercarriage and combined flaps. With 3 engine types available, Lycoming 150, 160 or 180hp, a version with fixed pitch Sensenich Propeller, or with variable pitch Hartzell propeller and with full IFR equipment an option, the manufacturer did not know which of the GY 80 HORIZON's would be the most successful.

Piloted by Pierre Simon, the F-WJDU prototype manufactured on the aerodrome of Courbevoie left the ground for the first time on July 21, 1960 and quickly aroused a keen interest of the most significant French Aeronautical manufacturers. This prototype still flies and is now in Castellet. SUD AVIATION won the licence for production on July 10th 1962 and in the months which followed 260 examples left the factory. SUD AVIATION will become Aerospatiale, and quickly the internal competition with the Socata Rally prevents the Horizon from being produced en-mass for the market.

Because of the multiplicity of different versions of the Rallye and also the lack of will from SOCATA to evolve the GY80, Yves GARDAN decided to once again "fly the coup" and do more design work. Certified in 1971, the GY100 Bagheera was the first evolution of the Horizon. Equipped with fixed gear at a cheaper cost, the design arrived on the market at the moment of the oil crisis, and Yves Gardan gave up continuing any manufacture and it is left to SIPA under subcontract to make a few examples.

Yves Gardans wide knowledge and experience of aeronautics enabled him to conceive ideas for SEDAM and BERTIN the whole of the cockpit, the propeller as well as the engine cowlings of a hovercraft of 250 tons. Yves Gardan was brought in to study and manufacture tools for the Airbus, Mirage III and Mirage2000. This activity continues even now and his conception of tooling has widened to the automotive industry. In his head about thirty projects have never been further than the drawing board. His ideas and experiments in the field of hovercraft, could not compete with the rigour of aeronautical certifications. The publication of regulations for Ultra Lights in 1982 gives hope to him again for a two-seater ULM but will probably never be marketed, for lack of time since his activities of a subcontractor quickly become the single and principal activity of his workshop.

Raymond Saulnier 1881-1964

2008-09-18T01:20:00.002-07:00

Raymond Saulnier

Henry Potez 1891-1981

2008-09-18T01:20:00.001-07:00

Henry Potez was a French aircraft industrialist.

He studied in the french aeronautics school Supaéro. With Marcel Dassault, he was the inventor of the Potez-Bloch propeller which after 1917, have been set on most of all Allied planes of World War I.

In 1919, he founded his own company Aviations Potez that between the wars built many planes and seaplanes in factories at that time considered the most modern in the world. He bought the Alessandro Anzani company in 1923. Many Potez planes such as the Potez 25, 39, 54, ,62, 63 were an international success, with world records.

During twenty years, 7.000 planes left the production lines and with 40 prototypes designed, more than twenty passed to production, which was remarquable at that time.

In 1936, his factories, considered as strategic, were nationalised by the French Front populaire government.

After the second world war, the Potez engineering department designed the Magister, a two seat two engine trainer aircraft, which was a big success. Launched in 1952 and better known as Fouga Magister this aircraft was used by many air forces.

Louis Charles Breguet 1880-1955

2008-09-18T01:19:00.000-07:00

Louis Charles Breguet was a French aircraft designer and builder, one of the early aviation pioneers.

In 1902, Louis married the daughter of painter Girardet, Nelly Henriette Julia Girardet, who owned a villa in Houlgate. Together they had five children and the couple later bought the villa Le Clos de Royan which Louis renamed Villa Bréguet. There he entertained people of the world of aviation.

In 1905, with his brother Jacques, and under the guidance of Charles Richet, he began work on a gyroplane (the forerunner of the helicopter) with flexible wings. It achieved the first ascent of a vertical-flight aircraft with a pilot in 1907. His first aircraft, which he built in 1909, set a speed record in 1911 for its 10 kilometre (6.2 mile) flight. Also that year, he founded the Société Anonyme des Ateliers d'Aviation Louis Breguet. In 1912, Breguet constructed his first hydroplane.

He is especially known for his development of reconnaissance aircraft used by the French in World War I and through the 1920s. One of the pioneers in the construction of metal aircraft, the Breguet 14 day bomber, perhaps the most famous French warplane of all time, was made almost entirely of aluminium. As well as the French, sixteen squadrons of the American Expeditionary Force also used it. A plane of this type has a major role in the plot of the 1927 thriller So Disdained by Neville Shute.

In 1919, he founded the Compagnie des Messageries Aeriennes, which evolved into Air France.

Over the years, his aircraft set several records. A Breguet plane made the first nonstop crossing of the South Atlantic in 1927. Another made a 4,500 mile (7,250 km) flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1933, the longest nonstop Atlantic flight up to that time.

He returned to his work on the gyroplane in 1935. Created with co-designer René Dorand, the craft, called the Gyroplane Laboratoire, flew by a combination of blade flapping and feathering. On December 22, 1935, it established a speed record of 67 mph (108 km/h). It was the first to demonstrate speed as well as good control characteristics. The next year, it set an altitude record of 517 feet (158 m).

Breguet remained an important manufacturer of aircraft during World War II and afterwards developed commercial transports. Breguet’s range equation, for determining aircraft range, is also named after him. He died of a heart attack in 1955 at Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

René Leduc 1898-1968

2008-09-18T01:18:00.001-07:00

René Leduc was a French engineer who is much acclaimed for his work on ramjets. In 1949 he created the first aircraft to fly under the power of ramjets alone, the Leduc 0.10.

Nikolay Ilyich Kamov 1902-1973

2008-09-03T07:11:00.002-07:00

Nikolay Ilyich Kamov was the leading constructor of the Soviet/Russian Kamov helicopter design bureau. He was born in 1902 in Irkutsk and died on November 24, 1973.

Georgy Mikhailovich Beriev 1903-1979

2008-09-03T07:11:00.001-07:00

Georgy Mikhailovich Beriev was born on February 13, 1903 in Tiflis (Tbilisi).

In 1923 after graduating from Tiflis railway system college he entered Polytechnic Institute. In 1925 he transferred to Leningrad polytechnic institute, college of shipbuilding, aircraft department.In 1930 upon graduation from the Institute, he began working as designer in Design Bureau headed by French designer P.A. Richard.

In the end of 1930 he became the Deputy of Marine Team Chief of Menzhinsky Plant Central Design Bureau.In 1934 he was appointed as Chief Designer and Head of Central Design Bureau of Seaplanes Manufacturing (TsKBMS), and worked in this position till 1968.

The following seaplanes were designed under his guidance: MBR-2, MR-1, MR-1T, ship-based catapulted airplane KOR-1 and KOR-2, Be-6, jet flying boat Be-10, amphibious aircraft Be-12 (with modifications) and Be-12PS - serial; MDR-5, MBR-7, LL-143, Be-8, R-1, Be-14, Be-30 (Be-32) experimental passenger aircraft, experimental flying bomb P-10.

Georgy M. Beriev was a member of scientific-and-technical panels of the State Committee of Council of Ministers of aircraft engineering and State Committee of shipbuilding and scientific-and-technical panels of Navy aviation. Major-general of engineer-technical service (1951), Doctor of Science (1961), twice the laureate of State award (1947 - for designing Be-6; 1968 - for designing Be-12), was awarded with two Lenin Orders and two orders of Red Banner, and medals. The last years of his life he spent in Moscow and was engaged in scientific activities. He died on 12 July, 1979.

Sergey Vladimirovich Ilyushin 1894-1977

2008-09-03T07:07:00.001-07:00

Sergey Vladimirovich Ilyushin was a Russian aircraft designer who founded the Ilyushin aircraft design bureau.

Born in Dilialevo, Russia, he became interested in aviation in 1910 and was qualified as a pilot in World War I. After obtaining a degree in engineering from the Air Force Academy in 1926, he started designing aircraft. His Ilyushin Il-2 strike aircraft and Ilyushin Il-4 bomber were used extensively in World War II. After the war, his commercial airliners, such as the Ilyushin Il-18 and Ilyushin Il-62, saw extensive use.

On his passing in 1977, he was interred in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow

Mikhail Leontyevich Mil 1909-1970

2008-09-03T07:06:00.000-07:00

Mikhail Leontyevich Mil was a founder of the Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant, which is responsible for many of the well-known Russian helicopter models, notably the Mil Mi-24 'Hind'.

He was born to a middle-class Jewish family, his grandfather was a cantonist drafted from Libava (today Liepaja), Latvia who settled in Siberia after 25 years of military service.

At the age 12, Mikhail got a first prize for a model glider competition. In 1926 he entered the Siberian Technological Institute in Tomsk. Since there was no training for aircraft engineers there, in 1928 he transferred to the Aerodynamic department, at the Mechanical Faculty of the Don Polytechnical Institute in Novocherkassk. He married a fellow student, P.G. Rudenko, in 1932 and 4 daughters and a son followed.

His successful career at TsAGI began in 1931. He fought in the Great Patriotic War in 1941 near Yelnya, but in 1943, he was called back to continue research and development of military aviation. He completed his dissertations ("Candidate", 1943, Ph.D., 1945) and in 1947 headed the Helicopter Lab at TsAGI, which was later turned into the Moscow Helicopter Plant.

Mikhail Mil's creations won many domestic and international awards and set 69 world records. Most notably, the Mil Mi-4 won a Gold Medal in the Brussels International Exhibition in 1958. In 1971, after his death, his Mil Mi-12 won the Sikorsky Prize as the most powerful helicopter in the world.

Sergei Konstantinovich Tumansky 1901-1973

2008-09-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

Sergei Konstantinovich Tumansky was a designer of Soviet aircraft engines and the chief designer in the Tumansky Design Bureau, OKB-300. He worked in TSIAM (1931-38 and in 1940), at the aircraft-engine plant N 29, in Leah.

He also worked as a substitute main designer in OKB A.A. of mil'kumova beginning in 1943.Sergei Tumansky was born in Minsk, then a part of the Russian Empire, on May 21, 1901 and died, at age 73, in Moscow, Russia, then a part of the Soviet Union, on September 9, 1973.

Tumansky was a specialist in the field of mechanics and machine building. He was a corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences for the department of mechanics and control processes from 26 June, 1964, and then academician for the department of mechanics and control processes (machine building) from 26 November, 1968.

Pavel Osipovich Sukhoi 1895-1975

2008-09-03T07:03:00.000-07:00

Pavel Osipovich Sukhoi was a Belarusian Soviet aircraft constructor and designer.

Sukhoi was born in Glubokoye near Vitebsk, a small village in Belarus. He went to school from 1905 to 1914 at the Gomel Gymnasium. In 1915 he went to the Imperial Moscow Technical School (today known as BMSTU). After World War I broke out, he was drafted by the army; in 1920 he was demobilized because of health related problems and he went back to the BMSTU, graduating in 1925.

In 1925 he wrote his thesis named Chasseur Single-engined aircraft of 300 cv under the direction of Andrei Tupolev. In March 1925 he started working as an engineer/designer with TsAGI (The Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute). During the following years, Sukhoi designed and constructed aircraft of world renown. Examples include the heavy bombers TB-1 and TB-3. In 1932 he was assigned head of engineering and design department in TsAGI and in 1938 he was promoted to head of the department of design.

In September 1939 Sukhoi founded an independent engineering and design department named Sukhoi Design Bureau (OKB Sukhoi). Located in Kharkov, Sukhoi was not satisfied with the geographical location of the OKB. The OKB was isolated from the scientific pole of Moscow and insisted that the OKB would relocate to the aerodome of Podmoskovye. The relocation was completed in the first half of 1940. In the winter of 1942 Sukhoi encountered another problem — since he had no production line of its own he had nothing to do. He had developed a new ground-attack plane, the Su-6, but Stalin decided that this plane should not be taken in production, in a favour of Ilyushin Il-2. The reasons for this were that, first: the production of the other planes would slow down and in time of war this was not good, and second, Stalin didn't seem to particularly like Sukhoi.

The aircraft-bombers developed under Sukhoi are the Su-17 and the Su-24. The last fighter Sukhoi designed was the T-10 (Su-27) but he did not live to see it fly. On December 25, 1975 the President of the Academy of Science of the Soviet Union posthumously decorated Sukhoi with the golden medal, in recognition of his deep scientific scholarship.

Alexander Sergeyevich Yakovlev 1906-1989

2008-09-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

Alexander Sergeyevich Yakovlev was a Russian aeronautical engineer and airplane designer. He designed the Yakovlev military aircraft and founded the Yakovlev Design Bureau.

Yakovlev was a founder of Soviet aviation modeling, air gliding, and aviation sport. He built the AVF-10 glider in 1924 and ultralight aircraft AIR-1 in 1927. These were his very first aircraft used for sport and training.

He worked as a motor technician beginning in 1924, and then became a student of the Air Force Academy of RKKA (Red Army), named after Prof. N. E. Zhukovski (1927-1931). He was an engineer at an aviation plant in 1931, where his first design bureau of lightweight aviation was established in 1932. He became the main designer in 1935, then the chief designer (1956-1984) of aircraft for the Yakovlev Design Bureau.

He was a Vice-Minister of Aviation Industry between 1940-1946.

He was a correspondent-member of the USSR Academy of Science in 1943, and was awarded the Hero of Socialist Labor in both 1940 and 1957. In 1946 he was awarded the title "General-Colonel of Aviation". In 1976 he became academician of the USSR Academy of Science. Yakovlev retired August 21, 1984.

Mikhail Iosifovich Gurevich 1893-1976

2008-09-03T06:59:00.002-07:00

Mikhail Iosifovich Gurevich was a Soviet aircraft designer, a partner (with Artem Mikoyan) of the famous MiG military aviation bureau.

Born to a family of a winery mechanic in a small township of Rubanshchina (Kursk region), in 1910 he graduated from gymnasium in Akhtyrka (Kharkov region) with the silver medal and entered the Mathematics department at Kharkov University. After a year, for participation in revolutionary activities, he was expelled from the University and from the region and continued his education in Montpellier University, and then specialized in aeronautical engineering in École Nationale Supérieure de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace, France.

In the summer 1914 Gurevich was visiting his home when World War I broke out. This and later the Russian Civil War interrupted his education. In 1925 he graduated from the Aviation faculty of Kharkov Technological Institute and worked as an engineer of the state company "Heat and Power".

In 1929 Gurevich moved to Moscow to pursue the career of aviation designer. In 1937 he headed a designer team in Polikarpov design bureau, and after 1939 was Vice Chief designer, after 1957 the Chief designer in Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau.

For his winning designs, Mikhail Gurevich won the State Stalin Prize (1941, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1953), the Lenin award (1962), and the title of Hero of Socialist Labor (1957).

Artem Ivanovich Mikoyan 1905-1970

2008-09-03T06:59:00.001-07:00

Artem Ivanovich Mikoyan was a Soviet aircraft designer of Armenian descent. In partnership with Mikhail Iosifovich Gurevich he designed many of the famous MiG military aircraft.Born in Sanahin, then in the Russian Armenia portion of the Russian Empire, now Lori, Armenia.[1] He completed his basic education and took a job as a machine-tool operator in Rostov, then worked in the "Dynamo" factory in Moscow before being conscripted into the military. After military service he joined the Zukovsky Air Force Academy, where he created his first plane, graduating in 1937. He worked with Polikarpov before being named head of a new aircraft design bureau in Moscow in December 1939. Together with Gurevich, Mikoyan formed the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau, producing a series of fighter aircraft. In March, 1942, the bureau was renamed OKB MiG (Osoboye Konstruktorskoye Büro), ANPK MiG (Aviatsionnyy nauchno-proizvodstvennyy kompleks) and OKO MiG. The MiG-1 proved to be a poor start, the MiG-3 was misused[clarification needed] and the MiG-5, MiG-7 and MiG-8 Utka were effectively research prototypes.Early post-war designs were based on domestic works as well as captured German jet fighters and information provided by Britain or the US. By 1946, Soviet designers were still having trouble in perfecting the German-designed, axial-flow jet engine, and new airframe designs and near-sonic wing designs were threatening to outstrip development of the jet engines needed to power them. Soviet aviation minister Mikhail Khrunichev and aircraft designer Alexander Sergeyevich Yakovlev suggested to Joseph Stalin that the USSR buy advanced jet engines from the British. Stalin is said to have replied: "What fool will sell us his secrets?" However, he gave his assent to the proposal, and Artem Mikoyan, engine designer Vladimir Klimov, and other officials traveled to the United Kingdom to request the engines. To Stalin's amazement, the British Labour government and its pro-Soviet Minister of Trade (Sir Stafford Cripps) were perfectly willing to provide technical information and even a licence to manufacture the Rolls-Royce Nene centrifugal-flow jet engine. This engine was reverse-engineered and produced in modified form as the Soviet Klimov VK-1 jet engine , later incorporated into the MiG-15 (Rolls-Royce later attempted to claim £207m in license fees, without success).

In the interim, on April 15 of 1947, Council of Ministers issued a decree #493-192, ordering the Mikoyan OKB to build two prototypes for a new jet fighter. As the decree called for first flights as soon as December of that same year, the designers at OKB-155 fell back on an earlier troublesome design, the MiG-9 of 1946. The MiG-9 suffered from an unreliable engine and control problems.

The I-270, a prototype based on German concepts, developed into the I-310 in the USSR and into F-86 Sabre in the States. With the Klimov version of the British Nene jet engine, this design became the MiG-15, which first flew on 31 December 1948. Despite its mixed origins this aircraft had excellent performance and formed the basis for a number of future fighters. The MiG-15 was originally intended to intercept American bombers like the B-29 Superfortress, and was even evaluated in mock air-to-air combat trials with interned ex-U.S. B-29 bombers as well as the later Soviet B-29 copy, the Tupolev Tu-4. A variety of MiG-15 variants were built, but the most common was the MiG-15UTI (NATO 'Midget') two-seat trainer. Over 18,000 MiG-15s were eventually manufactured.
From 1952 Mikoyan also designed missile systems to particularly suit his aircraft, such as the famous MiG-21. He continued to produce high performance fighters through the 1950s and 1960s.

He was twice awarded the highest civilian honour, the Hero of Socialist Labor and was a deputy in six Supreme Soviets. His elder brother Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was a senior Soviet politician.

After Mikoyan's death, the name of the design bureau was changed from Mikoyan-Gurevich to simply Mikoyan. However, the designator remained MiG.

He was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow

Vladimir Mikhailovich Myasischev 1902-1978

2008-09-03T06:56:00.002-07:00

Vladimir Mikhailovich Myasishchev was a Soviet aircraft designer, Major General of Engineering (1944), Hero of Socialist Labor (1957), Doctor of Technical Sciences(1959), Honored Science Worker of the RSFSR (1972).

After his graduation from Moscow State Technical University in 1926, Myasishchev worked at the Tupolev Design Bureau and took part in constructing airplanes, such as TB-1, TB-3, and Tupolev ANT-20 Maxim Gorky. In 1938, Myasishchev became a victim of a repression campaign. While in confinement, he worked at NKVD's Central Design Bureau No. 29 (ЦКБ-29 НКВД) in Moscow under the guidance of Vladimir Petlyakov, designing the Pe-2 bomber. In 1940, after his release, Myasishchev headed a design bureau (in the same building), working on the long-range high-altitude bomber DVB-102 (ДВБ-102). In 1946–1951, Myasishchev was the head of the faculty and later dean of the Department of Aircraft Design at Moscow Aviation Institute. In 1956, he became chief aircraft designer. In 1960–1967, Myasishchev was appointed Head of the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI). In 1967–1978, Myasishchev held a post of the chief aircraft designer of the Experimental Machine Building Factory, which would bear his name starting 1981.

Myasishchev designed different kinds of military aircraft, including Pe-2B, Pe-2I, Pe-2M, DIS, DB-108, M-4, 3M, M-50). He also worked on a cargo aircraft VM-T Atlant and high‐altitude airplane M-17 Stratosfera. Myasishchev's aeroplanes, the 3M and M-4, set nineteen world records, and the M-17 "Stratosfera" twenty.

In 1957, Myasishchev received the Lenin Prize.

Oleg Konstantinovich Antonov 1906-1984

2008-09-03T06:56:00.001-07:00

Antonov AN-12 signed by Oleg Konstantinovich Antonov

Oleg Konstantinovich Antonov was a Soviet aircraft designer, the founder of Antonov ASTC, a world-famous aircraft company in Ukraine, later named in his honour.Antonov was born on 7 February 1906 in a village near Moscow. His father was civil engineer Kostantyn Kostantynonych Antonov and his mother Hanna Yukhymivna Bykoryukina died when he was nine years old. The family first lived on the grounds of a psychiatric hospital that his father had helped build. In 1912, the Antonovs moved to Saratov, where he attended the local technical school. From an early age, Antonov was fascinated with aviation and spent much of his spare time at the local airport. He was there most of his life until he died in a car crash.At the age of 17, Antonov founded the "Amateur Aviation Club" and the "Organization of Friends of the Air Force." In the same year, he designed the OKA-1 "Pigeon", a glider that was entered in a competition in Moscow where he won the first prize, a flight on a Junkers 12 aircraft.[1]

In 1930, Antonov graduated from the Kalinin Polytechnical Institute in Leningrad. He continued to design gliders and in 1931, Antonov became the chief designer of the Moscow Glider Factory. During the next eight years, he designed 30 different gliders including the Standard-1, Standard-2, OKA-6 and the large "City of Lenin" glider. Due to a requirement that all pilots in the Soviet Union had to begin their flight training on gliders, Antonov was able to produce up to 8,000 gliders per year.

In 1938, due to an incident when an instructor defected to the West using a glider, the Soviet government reversed its decision regarding glider training, banned the sport of gliding and shut down the Moscow Glider Factory. Following the close of the glider factory, Antonov was hired as the Chief Designer for Yakovlev Aircraft. In 1940, a new company in his own name was created in Lenningrad.
During the war, Antonov designed the A-7 troop and supply glider used to supply partisans and the KT "Kryl'ja Tanka" or "Tank Wings" biplane glider that used used to ship tanks to the front line. In 1943 Antonov returned to Yakovlev’s design bureau to fill a vacancy as Yakovlev’s deputy. A great deal of his time and energy was devoted to the improvement of the Yak series, one of the most mass-produced fighter aircraft types of World War. After the war Antonov requested Yakovlev to let him work independently, heading Yakovlev’s subsidiary design office at the aircraft manufacturing factory at Novosibirsk. On 31 May 1946, Antonov was appointed head of the newly redesignated facility known as the Antonov Aircraft design bureau, later moved to Kiev, Ukraine. In September 1946, Antonov, in addition to his management of the design bureau, became the Director of the Siberian R and D Institute for Aeronautics.[1]

The first of the bureau's designs was the SH-1 agricultural aircraft, later redesignated An-2 designed to meet a 1947 Soviet requirement for a replacement for the Polikarpov Po-2 which was used in large numbers as both an agricultural aircraft and a utility aircraft. Antonov designed a large single bay biplane of all-metal construction, with an enclosed cockpit and a cabin with room for seats accommodating 12 passengers.

A series of significant transports followed including the world's largest production aircraft.

Antonov's aircraft (design office prefix An) ranged from the rugged An-2 biplane (which itself is comparatively large for a biplane) through the An-28 reconnaissance aircraft to the massive An-124 Ruslan and An-225 Mriya strategic airlifters (the latter being the world's heaviest aircraft with only one currently in service). The quad turboprop An-12 was primary Soviet military transport aircraft since 1959 (similar to the C-130 Hercules). While less famous, the An-24, An-26, An-30 and An-32 family of twin turboprop, high winged, passenger/cargo/troop transport aircraft are important for domestic/short-haul air services particularly in parts of the world once led by Communist or former Communist governments. The An-72/An-74 series of small jetliners is slowly replacing that fleet and a larger An-70 freighter is under certification.

Andrei Nikolayevich Tupolev 1888-1972

2008-09-03T06:54:00.000-07:00

Andrei Nikolayevich Tupolev was born in the village of Pustomazovo, Russia. In 1909, he enrolled in the Moscow Higher Technical College and studied under Nikolai Egorovich Zhukovskii. He helped Zhukovskii organize the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI) in 1918 and became the head of its design bureau in 1922. In 1934, his ANT-20 "Maxim Gorky" 8-engine aircraft took flight over Moscow; it was world's largest aircraft of the 1930s. In 1936, he visited the United States and Germany to learn American and German aircraft manufacturing techniques. In 1937, he was accused of selling state secrets to Germany and was given a 10-year sentence in 1940, but continued to design aircraft in Gulag labor camps. In 1944, he was released from prison, though not yet shedding the status as a criminal, in order to head up Russia's efforts to develop heavy bombers; to aid his efforts, he was given the rank of lieutenant general in the Russian Army. In this role, he successfully reverse engineered the American B-29 bomber design using three captured examples and developing the design into Russia's own nuclear weapon delivery vehicles (Tu-4). In 1955, he was finally declared rehabilitated. In 1956, his Tu-104 commercial jet airliners became the only passenger jets in service in the world, and would hold this title until late 1958. In 1968, the first Tu-144 aircraft became the first supersonic transport to take flight. Although Tupolev was undoubtedly a talented aircraft engineer, part of his success was attributed to his close rapport with Nikita Khruschev. This observation was reinforced by the loss of Tupolev influence after Khruschev left office in late 1964. He passed away in 1972 and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, Russia.

Juan de la Cierva 1895-1936

2008-07-02T05:56:00.000-07:00

Juan de la Cierva, born on September 21, 1895, in Murcia, Spain, was an aeronautical engineer who invented the autogiro, an aircraft that combined the capabilities of a conventional airplane and the helicopter.

He was interested in flight as a teenager and experimented with gliders with his friends. After receiving his engineering degree, in 1918 he built the first trimotor airplane. Its crash in 1919 after a stall convinced him that aviation safety called for stall-proof aircraft that could make steep takeoffs and landings at slow speeds. He decided that only the wing and not the body should be used to maintain lift. He began experimenting with rotating-wing aircraft in 1920 and developed the autogiro as a more stable form of aircraft. His first attempts with rigid rotors were unsuccessful. He then applied the idea of mounting the blades to the hub of the rotor on hinges so they could flap. This would equalize lift on advancing and retreating sides of the rotor while in forward flight.

His first successful flight with the autogiro took place on January 9 1923. The craft was equipped with a conventional propeller for forward flight and an articulated, or hinged, air-powered rotor blade that could be adjusted to balance lift. This technical breakthrough was necessary for the successful development of the helicopter, which ironically, replaced the autogiro around the time of World War II.

Cierva moved to England in 1925. His aircraft were further developed by the Cierva Autogiro Company of Great Britain, as well as by U.S. and various continental companies. They were used widely in France, Germany, Japan, and the United States until World War II, when the helicopter replaced them. Cierva died in an airplane crash on December 19, 1936, near London.

Robert McIntyre 1900-1987

2008-06-22T04:01:00.000-07:00

Born in Port Glasgow in 1900, the family moved to Port Chalmers, in New Zealand a few years later where he attended Otago Boys High School along with his brothers. Towards the end of the First World War, the family returned to Scotland and took up residence in Prestwick. Bob, and his younger brother, Alan, were indentured as Marine Draughtsman at the Irvine Shipyard. It was during the time in Prestwick that Bob became interested in Aircraft - the Royal Flying Corps were using the old Ayr Race Course as a flying field and a Sopwith Camel force landed on the gold course near their Prestwick home. Later Bob moved with the family to Larne in Northern Ireland were he worked at the Olderfleet Shipyard.
In the 1920's Short Brothers of Rochester, Kent, had moved into the building a series of military and civil flying boats and bob moved to Rochester and worked on the design of the Singapore Flying Boat. A few years later Bob moved to Hawker Aircraft at Kingston and contributed to such famous names as the Fury and the Hind. In the early 1930's he was the Chief Draughtsman of the Project Design Office and working on the prototype Hurricane fighter. When Sydney Camm, later Sir Sydney, the Chief Designer was taken seriously ill, Bob found himself in charge of the project. Whiles working on the developments of the Hurricane, he was also involved with the prototypes of the Typhoon and Tempest fighters.

In 1942 Bob was suddenly 'invited' to become Chief Designer at Scottish Aviation. An empty house was commandeered under the emergency powers for him and his family and he was amazed to find it was only two hundred yards from the old family house on Monkton Road where he had lived as a teenager. In 1943 Bob found himself flying to America as part of the British
Commission negotiating for the supply of bombers and fighters for the RAF. Scottish Aviation was to play a vital role in ensuring that the American aircraft would be modified to the requirements of the RAF.

At the end of the war, Scottish Aviation seized upon the opportunity to convert ex-military aircraft for civil use. The contacts Bob had made in America proved vital in quickly securing the necessary drawings and approval of the American manufacturers to the proposed modification and changes. Under his guidance the design staff at Prestwick modified aircraft such as the Dakota.

Bob always made it clear that the success of the Prestwick Pioneer and the Twin Pioneer was the result of team work by the entire design team and everyone else at Scottish Aviation. He always played down his own part as the leader of the team.

In 1956 the Royal Aeronautical Society honoured Bob's contribution to aeronautics and made him an Honorary Fellow.

Proffesor R.V Jones CH CB CBE FRS 1911-1997

2008-06-11T01:25:00.001-07:00

Reginald Victor Jones, CH CB CBE FRS was an English physicist and scientific military intelligence expert who played an important role in the defence of Britain in World War II.
Born in Herne Hill, Jones was educated at Alleyn's School, Dulwich and Wadham College, Oxford where he studied Natural Sciences. In 1932 he graduated with First Class honours in physics and then, working in the Clarendon Laboratory, completed his DPhil in 1934. Subsequently he took up a Senior Studentship in Astronomy at Balliol College, Oxford.

In 1936 Jones took up the post at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, a part of the Air Ministry. Here he worked on the problems associated with defending Britain from an air attack.
In September 1939, the British decided to assign a scientist to the Intelligence section of the Air Ministry. No scientist had previously worked for an intelligence service so this was unusual at the time. Jones was chosen and quickly rose to become Assistant Director of Intelligence (Science) there. During the course of the Second World War he was closely involved with the scientific assessment of enemy technology, and the development of offensive and counter-measures technology. He solved a number of tough Scientific and Technical Intelligence problems during World War II and is generally known today as the "father of S&T Intelligence".

He was briefly based at Bletchley Park in September 1939, but returned to London in November. He decided that the Oslo report received in 1939 was genuine, though the three Service Ministries regarded it as a "plant" and discarded their copies: "... in the few dull moments of the War, I used to look up the Oslo report to see what should be coming along next
Jones's first job was to study "new German weapons" which were believed to be under development. The first of these was a blind bombing system which the Germans called Knickebein. Knickebein, as Jones soon determined, used a pair of radio beams which were about one mile (1.6 km) wide at their point of intersection. German bombers flew along one beam, and when their radio receivers indicated that they were at the intersection with the second beam, they released their bombs.

At Jones's urging, Winston Churchill ordered up an RAF search aircraft on the night of 21 June 1940, and the aircraft found the Knickebein radio signals in the frequency range which Jones had predicted. With this knowledge, the British were able to build jammers whose effect was to "bend" the Knickebein beams so that German bombers for months to come scattered their bomb loads over the British countryside. Thus began the famous "Battle of the Beams" which lasted throughout much of World War II, with the Germans developing new radio navigation systems and the British developing countermeasures to them.
As far back as 1937, R. V. Jones had suggested that a piece of metal foil falling through the air might create radar echoes. He, and Joan Curran, were later instrumental in the deployment of "Window"; strips of metal foil dropped in bundles from aircraft which then appeared on enemy radar screens as "false bombers". This technology is now known as chaff and contrary to the popular belief, was also known to the Germans at the time. Both parties were reluctant to use it out of fear that their enemy would do the same: this delayed its deployment for almost two years.

Jones also served as a V-2 rocket expert on the Cabinet Defence Committee (Operations) and headed a German long range weapons targeting deception under the Double Cross System.
n 1946 Jones was appointed to the Chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, which he held until his retirement in 1981. He did not want to stay in Intelligence under the proposed postwar reorganisation. During his time at Aberdeen, much of his attention was devoted to improving the sensitivity of scientific instruments such as seismometers, capacitance micrometers, microbarographs, and optical levers.

Jones was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1942, for the planning of a raid on Bruneval to capture German radar equipment (Churchill had proposed that Jones should be appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) but the head of the Civil Service Sir Horace Wilson threatened to resign as Jones was only a lowly Scientific Officer, and the CBE was a compromise[2])[3][4]; he was subsequently appointed CB in 1946;[5] and Companion of Honour (CH) in the 1994 Queen's Birthday Honours.[6] He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1965, and received an honorary DSc from the University of Aberdeen in 1996.

His autobiography, Most Secret War: British Scientific Intellige nce 1939-1945, formed the basis, pre-publication, of the BBC One TV documentary series "The Secret War", first aired on 5 January 1977, in which Jones was the principal interviewee.In 1993 he was the first recipient of the R. V. Jones Intelligence Award, which the CIA created in his honour

Walter Herschel Beech 1891-1950

2008-05-28T01:51:00.000-07:00

Walter Herschel Beech began an illustrious career in aviation with a solo flight on July 11, 1914, in a Curtiss pusher. A rated Army aviator and flight instructor in 1917, he barnstormed after his enlistment ended in 1920, finally joining the Swallow Company in 1923, where he quickly rose from designer, salesman, and test pilot to general manager. In 1924 he co-founded Travel Air with Clyde Cessna , which would become the world's largest producer of both monoplane and biplane commercial aircraft, internationally acclaimed for establishing more than 200 performance records. With the merger of Travel Air and Curtiss-Wright, Beech became president of the new corporation.

However, he desired a more personal participation in aircraft design and manufacture and so co-founded Beech Aircraft Company with his wife, Olive Ann, on April 1, 1932. His early Beechcrafts set many distance and speed records, and won the Bendix and McFadden races. Most novel among these, with design and performance features years ahead of its time, was the Model 17 "Staggerwing" cabin biplane.

During World War II, Beech turned the entire production of his company to defense, producing more than 7,400 military aircraft. His AT-71/C-45 trained more than 90 percent of the USAAF navigator and bombardiers and 50 percent of its multi-engine pilots.
In the postwar years Beech again applied his efforts to producing a new line of light aircraft, the most famous of which was the V-tailed Bonanza

Lawrence 'Larry' Dale Bell 1895-1956

2008-05-28T01:50:00.001-07:00

Lawrence Dale Bell was first involved in aviation in 1913 when he worked as a mechanic for two exhibition pilots: his brother, Grover Bell, and Lincoln Beachey. Employed by Glenn Martin in late 1913 as a factory worker, and in mid-1914 he had produced his first aircraft during his off-hours, a Martin tractor converted into a bomber for sale to Mexican rebel Panco Villa. This so impressed Martin that Bell was made superintendent of the new factory.

Bell left Martin in the late '20s to join Consolidated, becoming their Vice-President and General Manager in 1929. When the company was moved to San Diego, he elected to remain in Buffalo and, with several others from Consolidated, to form the Bell Aircraft Co in 1935. Initial work came as subcontracts from other manufacturers, but as Bell's ideas focused more on research and development, the company came into its own. His concept of the Airacuda as a multiplace, cannon-bearing, long-range fighter was quite novel for the time, and was followed by the P-39 Airacobra as a full production plane, for which the company expanded to meet wartime contracts in the US and abroad.

For years Bell had been interested in rotary-wing aircraft, and in 1944 met Arthur M Young, who had devoted many years to helicopter research. Bell set him up in a shop and spent many hours with him developing plans, from which the successful line of Bell helicopters came. And when Bell Company was invited to submit a proposal for a plane to attack the sound barrier, he told his engineers to "throw away the book" and start fresh—in such an experiment he insisted that no prior aircraft design ideas or practices should be allowed to hamper creative imagination. The resulting X-1, the USAF's first rocket-propelled flight research vehicle for NASA, was first to exceed the speed of sound.

Clyde Cessna 1879-1954

2008-05-28T01:49:00.001-07:00

At age 31, after witnessing an aerial exhibition in Kansas that sparked his interest in aircraft, Clyde Vernon Cessna began his lifelong dedication to aviation. He designed and built his own aircraft and taught himself to fly. Those qualities of courage and self-reliance not only made him successful in aviation, but also served to inspire his associates throughout the industry.

Following World War I, the widespread interest in private flying induced him, in 1925 to found, with Walter Beech, the Travel Air Manufacturing Company in Wichita KS. With Cessna as its president, the company became one of the leading U S aircraft manufacturers, and his advanced design concepts produced a line of internationally famous aircraft that established many speed and distance records.

In 1927, he formed the Cessna Aircraft Company, and in the decade of the 1930s produced racing and sports aircraft that set traditions of safety, performance, and economy which are still the standards of safety for aviation. His aircraft introduced the pleasures of private flying to many thousands of pilots throughout the world. Cessna returned to his farm to spend his later years in Rago KS.

Paul F Cullerne 1918-2005 (Aviation Photographer)

2008-03-15T14:41:00.001-07:00

Paul Cullerne left the Air Force in 1946 as a Sergeant Photographer and spent part of his War service at RAF Nassau. On leaving the Air Force, he took up photographic work for Messrs A V Roe and Company Ltd then HSA and BAe, retiring in the early '80s.

Charles Sims (Aviation Photographer) 1901-1983

2008-03-04T05:42:00.000-08:00

Charles Sims was photographer of the 'Aeroplane' magazine. Having been everywhere in the British industry throughout the 1930s, Sims knew it wasn't luck that when war came, all those Hurricanes and Spitfires and Merlins and radar and everything behind them were in place. He knew the people who strove for all that, in industry and in government, while Hitler saw Britain as Oxford Union pacifists,Mosleyites, and wet politicians with monocles.Sims saw the RAF having to fight its own wets too,including the air marshal whom he heard say, at a Hurricane press presentation at Brooklands in about 1936: "Monoplanes will never be able to dogfight."

Charles E. Brown (Aviation Photographer) 1896-1982

2008-03-04T05:37:00.000-08:00

It was in 1911 that an enterprising fifteen year-old camera enthusiast in Southfields, South London, saw an Edwardian gentleman balloonist in trouble.Instead of gaping open mouthed, he primed his simple camera, chose his moment, made an exposure and rushed with his glass plate to the offices of the Daily Mirror, one of the few newspapers of the day that use photographs on a regular basis.

For his trouble, he received the princely sum of half a guinea (55p). The young lad who was, by 1914, to embrace press photography with panache and good taste, was Charles E. Brown. He was destined to become one of the century’s finest air-to-air photographers. In his time, he set standards to which every other aerial photographer aspired and was held in awe by RAF photographers whose training, thorough as it was, did not include aesthetic ideas and artistic flair.

The route to fame
Photography for the press was, from its earliest days, often a proving ground for a wider creative canvas. So it proved for Charles Brown, because in 1921 he became a freelance. In 1924, he was commissioned by the newly created Southern Railway to produce a picture series that covered every aspect of the company’s operations. In the same year, he took one of the most enduring poster pictures of the century.

Until that time, railway holiday posters were the domain of the poster artist. Brown changed all that with his endearing image of a little boy clutching a suitcase looking up at the driver of a massive steam engine. The caption read, “I’m taking an early holiday ‘cos I know summer comes soonest in the south”.It was used unchanged from 1924 until the outbreak of the WWII. Later, he found a new challenge amongst the clouds.

Air-to-air artistry
Photography from the open cockpit of string and canvas biplanes had been practised by RFC photo-reconnaissance photographers like the late, great Haywood Magee during the first world-war.

Magee became an illustrious photographic journalist whilst Brown, a successful freelance, had turned his back on Fleet Street. Accepting commissions from aircraft manufacturers like Supermarine, De Havilland and Fairey Aviation to help market their new models, there was only one place for him to be - airborne. Soon, the Royal Air Force public relations department gave him many commissions, realised the potential of dramatic air-to-air photography for recruitment and other publicity purposes. It was an association that was to continue until his death at the age of eighty-six.

Throughout the 1930’s his reputation as an air-to-air photographer grew and with the outbreak of WWII, his workload increased. He was hired, not only by the Air Ministry, but the Admiralty and War Office as well.
It was then that he started using colour. In 1942, the US magazine, ‘Flying’, commissioned a picture series on the RAF. Colour film was in such short supply in the UK, that the editor sent 100 sheets of 5”x4” Kodachrome sheet film to enable him to complete the job.

Post-war, his association with the RAF continued, gathering professional accolades on the way. Still fiercely independent, he worked, with three assistants from a converted house in Worcester Park, South London.
An Honorary Fellow of the RPS, he retired in 1965 when, in an unprecedented gesture, the Air Ministry allocated him an RAF retirement home at Storrington, Sussex. The RAF Museum at Hendon had bought his entire collection of negatives and prints. The museum, in association with Airlife Publications Limited has published three volumes of his incomparable pictures, appropriately named, ‘Camera Above the Clouds’. They make a magnificent epitaph to a 20th Century Great.

John Yoxall (Aviation Photographer) 1897-1969

2008-03-04T05:33:00.001-08:00

John Yoxall was Chief photographer of 'Flight' magazine from 1918-1939

Leslie Sansom (Aviation Photographer) 1913-1972

2008-03-04T05:32:00.000-08:00

Aviation has been fortunate that its photographers have been artists first and
shutter-clickers a long way second. Charles Brown, John Yoxall, Charles Sims, Cyril Peckham and Leslie Sansom come immediately to mind-men of character and resource who, in pioneering their art, also founded a tradition.
His work on Vickers aircraft was memorable and was often done in the discomfort of an open cockpit or from a crouching position at the door sill of a chase plane which had no door. Leslie was essentially a mild and patient man, but blessed with an iron
determination to get, on every photo sortie, just the wing-angle, the sunglint
and the cloud formation he had visualised before taking off. He was,as he had to be, a master at coaxing 'just another' run from test pilots not yet attuned to the need for publicity and promotional photography. The successful results of that coaxing
have adorned the pages of Flight and its sister magazines world-wide over many years.

Russell Adams (Aviation Photographer) 1912-2000

2008-03-04T05:29:00.000-08:00

Russell Adams FRPS was probably the pioneer photographer of the jet age. His dramatic air-to-air photographs of Britain's early jet fighters like the Gloster Meteor and Javelin regularly graced the pages of magazines and newspapers at home and overseas in the 1950s and early 60s. In fact, his photographs remain so popular that they are still used today with regularity by the aviation press.

Russell Adams' photographs so impressed his employers, the Gloster Aircraft Company, that in 1950 they made him their photographer. Unusually for the time, much of his work was air-to-air photography of the aircraft themselves, mainly Meteors and Javelins on test flights. In fact, Russell's photographic work was of such a high standard that he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. Adams actually flew aerobatic routines himself as a passenger in a camera aircraft, enabling him to get close to the display aircraft. The adrenaline kick of such high performance flying is vividly captured in his photographs.

Cyril Peckham (Aviation Photographer) 1905-1984

2008-03-04T05:28:00.001-08:00

Cyril Peckham was a successful and well-known commercial artist and poster designer specialising in aviation subjects during the 1920s and 1930s. He had an active interest in photography and achieved the Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society. During the second world war he moved from illustrator to photographer and joined the General Aircraft Company and later the Hawker company. He was active in aerial photography and was the Chief Photographer to the Hawker Siddeley group of aircraft companies.

Leslie George Frise BSc FRAeS 1897-1979

2007-11-28T02:32:00.001-08:00

Leslie Frise a Brisol graduate joined the Bristol Aircraft Company Staff at Filton in 1916,becoming Chief Designer in 1938 on the death of Captain Barnwell in an aircraft accident. Frise was responsible for three classic fighters – Bristol Fighter (1916), Bristol Bulldodg (1927) and Bristol Beaufighter (1941).

Frise left Bristol Aircraft in 1946 to become Chief engineer of Hunting Percival Aircraft. He designed the Hunting Percival Jet Provost.

2007-10-09T13:52:00.000-07:00

Alexander de Seversky 1894-1974

2007-10-09T13:50:00.000-07:00

After acquiring an aeronautical engineering degree, Alexander Prokofieff de Seversky was commissioned a lieutenant in the Imperial Navy of Russia in 1915. On his first combat mission he lost his right leg. Less than a year later he was back in the air, flying 57 missions, and downing 13 German aircraft to become

Russia

's top Naval Ace.
In 1917 de Seversky came to the

USA

, offering his services to the War Dept, making outstanding contributions to our production of the British-designed SE-5 fighter and serving as a test pilot. In 1921 he and General Billy Mitchell worked together staging the bombing tests that graphically demonstrated the vulnerability of battleships to airplanes. Then, following his invention of the in-flight refueling method, he worked with the Sperry Gyroscope Co, to produce a gyro-stabilized bombsight in 1923 that was acclaimed the world's best. He was commissioned a major in the USAAC, and founded Seversky Aircraft Corp in 1928.
In 1930 de Seversky again made a most important contribution to his new country's air efforts in the all-metal P-43 fighter, predecessor of the historic P-47 Thunderbolt. Many of its new concepts are universally accepted construction principles for today's aircraft. Capable of speeds over 300 mph, the P-43 gave long-range and high-altitude protection to US bombers. He also developed an advanced design amphibian in which he set world speed records 1933-35, and an all-metal monoplane that set speed records at the 1933-39 Nationals, as well as a transcontinental speed record in 1938.
The outbreak of WW2 found our air arsenal pitifully neglected. To bring the magnitude of this problem to public attention, de Seversky wrote his best-seller book, "Victory Through Airpower." Also made into a movie, it awoke people to the need for better airpower. For that, and for his counsel on the strategic use of air power, he was awarded the Medal of Merit by President Truman.
By then he had become world renown as an expert in the areas of airpower and defense. His Seversky Electroatom Corp of 1952 directed its efforts to defending the USA against nuclear attack, and to extraction of radioactive particles from the air. Research in that area led to the discovery of the Ionacraft, an aircraft that derived lift and propulsion from ionic emissions. For serving as a special consultant to the Chiefs of Staff of the USAF, he received the Exceptional Service Medal in 1969

William (Bill) Powell Lear 1902 – 1978

2007-10-09T13:49:00.001-07:00

William Powell Lear was born June 26, 1902, in Hannibal, Mo. He was an only child; his parents separated when he was 6. Lear came up with his own bluprint for success by the time he was 12.

"I resolved first to make enough money so I'd never be stopped from finishing anything," Lear said later. "Second, that to accumulate money in a hurry - and I was in a hurry - I'd have to invent something that people wanted, and third that if I ever was going to stand on my own feet, I'd have to leave home."

He ran away from home after graduating from the eighth grade. He lied about his age and joined the Navy but didn't like regimentation and got an early discharge.

In 1919, Lear quit a $40-a-week job to be a mechanic at Grant Park Airport in Chicago, servicing many of the first air-mail planes. He was rewarded with flying lessons in place of a paycheck. Lear then formed the first of a string of companies. He was president of Quincy Radio Laboratory in Quincy, Ill., from 1922 to 1924; president of Lear Radio Laboratory in Tulsa from 1924 to 1928; and part-owner of Radio Coil and Wire Co. and Galvin Manufacturing Co., both of Chicago, from 1926 to 1930. About this time, Lear developed the first car radio at Galvin, which was to become the Motorola Corp. Motorola successfully mass-produced the car radio.

In 1930, Lear took his profits and founded Lear Developments, which became Lear Inc. and later Lear Siegler Inc. The companies specialized in aerospace instruments and electronics.

Some have called Lear's 32 years as president and later chairman of the board his most creative time. In 1935, Lear invented the Lear-O-Scope, one of the first commercial radio compasses. He received the Frank M. Hawks Award for designing the Learmatic Navigator in 1940.

In 1950, President Harry Truman gave Lear the Collier Trophy for development of the F-5 autopilot, the first ever for jets. The city of Paris presented Lear its Great Silver Medal for his aid in developing the autopilot for the Caravelle jetliner in 1962. By 1962, his company, headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif., had 5,000 employees and plants in California, Germany, Michigan and Ohio. But Lear and company officials had a falling-out and that year Lear sold his interests for $14.3 million.

Lear had come up with the idea of building a small, fast and cheap business jet in 1959. Now, with 30 years of experience and cash in the bank, he had the money and freedom to go ahead with his newest dream. "When I designed the Learjet, I didn't design it because I wanted to make a jet aircraft but because I needed an airplane that would compete with the airlines and would be economical enough that I could afford to operate it."- Bill Lear, 1972.

Lear formed a company in Switzerland and began working on the design of the Learjet there. Then he surprised nearly everyone by deciding in 1962 to build the new Learjet in Wichita.

The city agreed to help finance Learjet Corp. and issued its first-ever industrial revenue bonds. Lear set up shop next to Wichita Mid-Continent Airport and began working on the first Learjet Model 23, a simple, sturdy seven-place business jet that would fly 500 mph.

On June 4, 1964, during a routine certification flight, the first Learjet crashed and burned in a cornfield after takeoff. The Federal Aviation Agency test pilot at the controls and the Learjet test pilot riding along weren't injured in the crash, believed to have been caused by human error.

The good news was that the $500,000 insurance policy on the plane enabled the company to make its payroll and gave it financial breathing room. Another Learjet was completed and certified by the FAA just nine months after the crash.

Lear had an odd sense of humor and willingness to try the extraordinary; he once imported a team of midgets from Californa to work inside the slender fuselages of the first Learjets built in Wichita. But by late 1966, hard work and devoted employees weren't enough. Learjet was on the verge of bankruptcy, partly because Lear had branched out too fast into avionics and stereo sets and plastic products.

The company had built 146 Learjets before Lear sold it to the Denver- based Gates Rubber Co. on April 10, 1967. Although Learjet was about $13 million in debt at the time of the sale, Lear eventually made about $18 million from the sale.

In 1968, Lear bought the old Stead Air Force Base at Reno, Nev., for $1.3 million and established Lear Motors Corp. and LearAvia Corp. There Lear worked on a low-pollution engine that could run on steam, hoping to make the internal combustion engine obsolete. The project fizzled.

Returning to aviation, he designed the Learstar 600, a 12-place business jet. Canadair bought the manufacturing rights and renamed it the Challenger. Lear was working on the Model 2100 Learfan, a radical seven-passenger plane with two turboprop engines powering a propeller on the tail, when he died of leukemia May 14, 1978.

Lear was posthumously inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio, on July 22, 1978.

James H. "Dutch" Kindelberger 1895-1962

2007-05-17T10:39:00.000-07:00

James Howard "Dutch" Kindelberger was born in Wheeling, W.Va., on May 8, 1895, the son of steelworker Charles Frederick Kindelberger. Kindelberger started working in the steel industry with his father but, in 1916, when he was 21 years old, went to study at the Carnegie Institute of Technology.

The United States entered World War I in 1917, and Dutch Kindelberger joined the Army to serve in the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps. He was a pilot instructor based at Park Field in Memphis, Tenn. After the war, Kindelberger looked for work in aviation. In 1919, he married Thelma Knarr and, in 1920, became chief draftsman and assistant chief engineer with the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company in Cleveland, Ohio. Five years later, he joined Douglas Aircraft in California as chief engineer. Kindelberger remained with Douglas for nine years, leading development of the DC-1 and the DC-2.

In 1934, Kindelberger became president and general manager of General Aviation, later renamed North American Aviation Inc., and served as general manager until 1948, when he became chairman and chief executive officer. Under his guidance, North American Aviation broke technological barriers; produced propeller- and jet-powered fighters and bombers, military trainers, rocket engines, and rocket-powered aircraft; and began its role as the prime contractor for the country's space program.

Kindelberger retired in 1960 as chief executive officer at the age of 65 and was succeeded by Lee Atwood. Kindelberger remained chairman of the board until his death two years later.

James S.McDonnell 1899-1980

2007-05-17T10:36:00.000-07:00

James Smith McDonnell was an aviation pioneer and founder of McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, later McDonnell Douglas.

McDonnell (or "Mac" as he was often referred) was a graduate of Princeton University and earned a Master's of Science in Aeronautical Engineering from MIT. While attending MIT he joined the Delta Upsilon Fraternity. After graduating from MIT, he worked for the Huff Daland Airplane Company and Glenn L. Martin Company. He resigned from Martin in 1938 and founded McDonnell Aircraft Corporation in 1939.

Headquartered in St. Louis, the company quickly grew into the principal supplier of fighter aircraft to the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. In 1950, he founded the James S. McDonnell Foundation to "improve the quality of life," and does so by contributing to the generation of new knowledge through its support of research and scholarship.

McDonnell was, by some accounts, a believer in the occult, and many of his aircraft were given names of supernatural beings or practices (such as phantom, demon, goblin, banshee, and voodoo).
McDonnell Aircraft merged with the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1967. The McDonnell corporate heritage now rests with Boeing which merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997, including the St. Louis plant that produces the F-15 Eagle and F/A-18 Hornet / F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters.

Donald Wills Douglas 1892–1981

2007-05-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

Graduated by Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1914, Donald Wills Douglas became chief engineer of the Glenn L Martin Co in 1915. He was appointed chief civilian aeronautical engineer of the Army's aviation section in 1916, then rejoined Martin in 1917, where designed the famous Martin Bomber.
Forming his own company in 1920, Douglas embarked on a career of manufacturing private, commercial, and military aircraft. His Cloudster was the first airplane to lift a payload equal to its own weight and, based on its design, in 1924 he built the DWC World Cruisers that made the first global flight. This brought him fame as an aircraft designer. In the mid-1920s he produced a remarkable series of observation, cargo, transport, mail, and amphibian airplanes. In 1932 came the development of his historic DC series of commercial transports—the DC-2 was an immediate success, and earned Douglas Co the 1935 Collier trophy. Its successor, DC-3, became the world's most widely-used airliner and helped make commercial aviation practical.

With the approach of WW2, his company mass-produced troop and cargo transports, as well as bombers, dive bombers, and attack planes for the Allied forces. After the war, Douglas Co developed new types of military aircraft and missiles, as well as important new multi-engine commercial transports that helped make possible the expansion of domestic and international passenger and cargo air service.

Glenn Hammond Curtiss 1878-1930

2007-05-17T10:31:00.000-07:00

Glenn Hammond Curtiss was raised by his mother after the father died when he was four, moving to Rochester in 1890. In school there, his interest in mathematics and machinery was apparent and, after graduation, he went to work at Eastman Kodak company as a camera assembler.
His interest in 1906 in motorcycles and racing prompted a switch in careers when he was offered a job at a local cycle shop, and later opened his own store to help finance his racing. His thirst for speed led to experiments in gas engines, and he was soon designing and producing his own brand of one- and two-cylinder motorcycle engines. He tried unsuccessfully to interest the Wright brothers in his engine designs for use in their airplanes, but one design caught the attention of Thomas Scott Baldwin, who ordered a motor to use on his airship, California Arrow.

On January 23, 1907, he set a motorcycle speed record of 136.3mph with a 40hp air-cooled V-8 design that would lead directly to the popular OX aircraft motor of WW1. Later that same year, Alexander Graham Bell purchased a Curtiss motor and was so impressed with it that he invited its designer to join him in his Aerial Experimental Association (AEA), where, with Frank W Baldwin, he designed and built the first airplanes to feature movable wing-tip ailerons. These, however, brought on bitter patent-infringement lawsuits that ran on for years in courts until finally ending with a Wright-Curtiss Co merger in 1929.
Curtiss began flying and became Director of Experiments for AEA in 1908. There he designed aircraft and was successful in building the June Bug, a Curtiss-powered aircraft that won the Scientific American Trophy for a first flight in the USA traveling one kilometer.
1909 was A key year for Curtiss, who, after leaving AEA, built aircraft independently for himself and others, notably the Aeronautical Society of New York. One of these was the Golden Flierin which he won the Gordon Bennett Cup in Reims, France, awarded for the fastest flight speed, which was his then-breathtaking 46.5mph. Following this, Curtiss founded his own company and flight school in Hammondsport, America's first such commercial operations.
In 1909 Curtiss joined with Augustus M Herring to form the Herring-Curtiss Co to manufacture powered vehicles. Despite numerous lawsuits, Curtiss continued to advance the cause and technology of aviation, founding the first public flying school (1910) and later a chain of schools across the US, inventing the aileron (1909), the dual-control trainer (1911), and the hydroaeroplane (1911).
At the 1910 Dominguez Hills Air Meet he picked up $6,500 in prize moneys in the categories of fastest speed, endurance, and quick starting. That year the Navy contracted for several flying boats, as well as for training Navy fliers, and this led to experiments with airplanes in operations with ships at sea, in which Eugene Ely's first flights to and from USS Pennsylvaniawere harbingers of things to come. In 1914 a large, multi-engine flying boat, America, was built for an Atlantic crossing, but this was cancelled by the outbreak of WW1. However, America's war preparation saw the development of his famous JN-4 "Jenny" and OX-5 motor, and his NC-4 flying boat finally made the first transatlantic flight in 1919.
Because of patent lawsuits and legal battles, by 1918 Curtiss, then 40, had retired from active participation in his company to develop real estate in Florida, but remained on the company roster as a design consultant. He died at 52 from complications after an appendicitis operation, but the Curtiss marque continued with a line of historic aircraft until its doors closed shortly after WW2.
Some major awards were: Scientific American Trophy, 1908, 1909, 1910; Gordon Bennett Trophy, 1910; Collier Trophy, 1912; Langley Medal, 1914.

Glenn L. Martin 1886-1955

2007-05-17T10:26:00.000-07:00

At the time he taught himself to fly in 1909 and 1910, Glenn Luther Martin was a youthful businessman, the owner (at age 22) of Ford and Maxwell dealerships in Santa Ana, California. Although he had taken courses at Kansas Wesleyan Business College before his family moved west in 1905, Martin lacked a technical background. His first planes were built in collaboration with mechanics from his auto shop, working in a disused church building that Martin rented. In 1909 Martin made his first successful flight; by 1911 he numbered among the most famous of the "pioneer birdmen." Never forgetting his original business training, Martin was not content with simply performing. In 1912, he set up as a manufacturer, incorporating his operation as the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company. Unlike the companies launched by the Wright Brothers and Glenn Curtiss, which soon came to be managed by people other than their namesakes, the Martin Company remained for forty years under the direct control of its founder. During these four critical decades Glenn Martin was the senior aircraft manufacturer in the United States.

From the early years of the company, Martin hired trained engineers to design his planes and talented managers to run his factories. The Martin Company provided training and experience to a remarkable number of other aviation manufacturers who later struck out on their own. William Boeing, Donald Douglas, Lawrence Bell, and James S. McDonnell founded companies that bear their names. Charles Day, chief designer for Standard Aircraft in World War I, and Charles Willard, co-founder of L.W.F. Engineering in 1917, were both former Martin employees as were J.H. Kindleberger and C.A. Van Dusen, who ran North American and Brewster, respectively, during World War II.

Glenn Martin had a taste for large planes, and his company came to depend on military orders. As these pages will testify, this meant bombers. The vast majority of the more than 11,000 planes built by the company before it ceased producing aircraft in 1960, "Martin Bombers" pioneered the doctrine of airpower in the 1920's and '30's and served in all theaters in World War II. Martin Marietta, corporate successor to the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company, continued to be a major defense contractor, producing missiles, space hardware, guidance systems, sonar, and avionics. Through its merger with Lockheed in 1995, it rejoined the ranks of aircraft builders.

Clarence Leonard "Kelly" Johnson 1910-1990

2007-05-17T10:22:00.000-07:00

Clarence Leonard "Kelly" Johnson (February 27, 1910 – December 21, 1990) was an aircraft engineer and aeronautical innovator. As a member and first team leader of the Lockheed Skunk Works, Johnson worked for more than four decades and is said to have been an 'organizing genius.'[1] He played a leading role in the design of over forty aircraft including several that were honored with the prestigious Collier Trophy. Johnson acquired a reputation as one of the most talented and prolific aircraft design engineers in the history of aviation.
Born to immigrant Swedish parents from the city of Malmö, county of Scania, in the remote mining town of Ishpeming, Michigan, Johnson was 13 years old when he won a prize for his first aircraft design. He worked his way through school, first at Flint Junior College, and then at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

At Michigan, he conducted a wind tunnel test of Lockheed's proposed twin-engined Lockheed Model 10 Electra airliner. He found that the aircraft did not have adequate directional stability, and proposed adding a "H" tail to address the problem. Lockheed accepted his suggestion and the Model 10 went on to be a success. This brought Johnson to the attention of Lockheed management. Upon completing his master's degree in 1933, Johnson joined the Lockheed Company as a tool designer at a salary of $83 a month. After assignments as flight test engineer, stress analyst, aerodynamicist, and weight engineer, he became chief research engineer in 1938. In 1952, he was appointed chief engineer of Lockheed's Burbank, California plant, which later became the Lockheed-California Company. In 1956 he became Vice President of Research and Development.

Johnson became Vice President of Advanced Development Projects (ADP) in 1958. The first ADP offices were nearly uninhabitable; the stench from a nearby plastic factory was so vile one of the engineers began answering the intra-Lockheed "house" phone "Skonk Works!" Big Barnsmell's Skonk Works– spelled with an "o"– was where Kickapoo Joy Juice was brewed in the comic strip L'il Abner by Al Capp. When the name "leaked" out, Lockheed ordered it changed to "Skunk Works" to avoid potential legal trouble over use of a copyrighted term. The term rapidly circulated throughout the aerospace community, and became a common nickname for research and development offices– however, reference to "The Skunk Works" means the Lockheed ADP shop. Here the F-104 Starfighter, and the secret reconnaissance planes, the U-2 and the SR-71 Blackbird, were developed.

On December 16, 1953, Johnson personally witnessed a UFO, and would later reflect on this experience by saying that "for at least five years I have definitely believed in the possibility that flying saucers exist - this in spite of a good deal of kidding from my technical associates. Having seen this particular object on December 16th, I am now more firmly convinced than ever that such devices exist, and I have some highly technical converts in this belief as of that date.

In 1955, at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency, Johnson initiated construction of the airbase at Groom Lake, Nevada, later known as Area 51. This project provided a secret location for flight testing the U-2.

He served on Lockheed's board of directors from 1964 to 1980, becoming a senior vice president in 1969. He officially retired from Lockheed in 1975 and was succeeded by Ben Rich, but continued as a consultant at the Skunk Works. In June 1983, the Lockheed Rye Canyon Research facility was renamed Kelly Johnson Research and Development Center, Lockheed-California Company, in honor of Johnson's 50 years of service to the company.

Chauncey (Chance) Milton Vought 1890-1930

2007-05-17T10:20:00.000-07:00

A young Chance (neé Chauncey) Milton Vought first applied his basic mechanical engineering skills to the 1910 McCormick-Romme Umbrellaplane and the 1911 Blaney Monoplane at Cicero (IL) flying field, neither of which, unfortunately, failed to fly.

However, his craft improved after he learned to fly, earning pilot license #156 in 1912, and gained first-hand experience both in advanced schooling in aeronautical engineering and as an instructor pilot for the Max Lillie School of Aviation, where he was involved in the design of an aircraft of Lillie's concept. He then went on to work for several other aircraft manufacturers for the next five years as a designer, including the Mayo, Curtiss, Wright and Wright-Martin companies, until opportunity suddenly knocked on his door.
When the USA entered WW1 in April 1917, Vought decided to take advantage of the need for trainer aircraft by our fledgling Air Service and, with Birdseye Lewis, formed the Lewis & Vought Corp in June that year. It turned out to be a wise and profitable decision as the company, under various names, would remain in continuous operation ever since then—it was the second oldest airframe manufacturer in the nation, close behind Boeing Co.
Sadly, his participation ended abruptly in 1930 when he died of blood poisoning after a tooth operation at age 42, but the name of Vought stayed on as his monument.

William 'Bill' Edward Boeing 1881-1956

2007-05-17T10:18:00.000-07:00

William Edward Boeing was the son of a German immigrant who had built a successful timber business in the Northwest. After graduation from Yale's Sheffield Scientific School, Boeing followed this father in the lumber business, as well as buying a small Seattle boatyard. In 1914 he had his first airplane ride and became interested in the science of aeronautics, took flying lessons from Glenn Martin and bought a seaplane from him. Teaming that year with then-USN Lt Conrad Westervelt, they designed and built the B&W, based partly on the Martin. When Westervelt was recalled by the Navy in 1916, Boeing formed Pacific Aero Products Co, and changed its name to the Boeing Airplane Co in 1917. As well as producing a few of is own designs, the new company profited by producing Thomas-Morse Scouts under contract for the Army and rebuilding De Havilland DH-4s with welded steel-tube fuselages—the first American company to use welded tubes.Boeing Co prospered and dwelt heavily on research, producing a series of innovative civil and military aircraft through the '20s and '30s. In addition, he established his Boeing Air Transport for the San Francisco-Chicago passenger and mail route in 1927—the first airline to offer stewardesses—which served as a basis for United Air Lines in 1930. The United Aircraft & Transport Corp resulted from Boeing's formation in 1929 of his operations with the Pratt & Whitney, Hamilton, Stearman, and Vought companies, all of which continued to make products under their own names. However, in 1934 the government considered UATC a monoply and ordered it broken up, at which time Boeing announced his retirement. In 1934 he was also awarded the Guggenheim medal for his part in pioneering and for achievements in aviation and air transportation. Despite official retirement, he remained active in his company's development, contributing to aircraft designs, even returning during WW2 to help reorganize the workforce to build B-17 and B-29 bombers.

Jack Northrop 1895-1981

2007-05-17T10:17:00.000-07:00

John Knudsen Northrop's family moved to Santa Barbara CA in 1914, where he developed an deep interest in aeronautics in high school. In 1916 he had went to work for the Loughead Brothers as an engineering draftsman, contributing to the design of their twin-engine F-1 flying boat.

Moving in 1916 to Douglas Co in Santa Monica, he went from draftsman to designer to project engineer on several early Douglas aircraft. The next major move came in 1927, when he went with Lockheed, there designing the original Vega. However, needing to develop his own ideas about all-metal airplanes, he struck off on his own in 1929 to form Northrop Aircraft Co, there producing the Alpha, an airplane that was regarded as well ahead of its time. Following the success of Alpha, he developed the all-metal design into Beta, Delta, and Gamma.

Northrop Corporation was formed in 1932, and became a subsidiary of Douglas, to produce his designs of the USAC A-17 attack planes for and USN BT-1 dive bombers, as well as export models for foreign countries. In 1938 he sold his interests in the corporation to Douglas and formed Northrop Aircraft Inc, becoming its president and chief engineer until his retirement in 1952. There, in addition to many successful military aircraft, he developed his pet flying-wing project, the visionary concept of which, stalled by bureaucracy at the time, finally proved its value in our present stealth aircraft designs.

Jack Northrop was a widely-known and well-respected name in aviation by that time, and he was awarded the Presidential Certificate of Merit for his "extraordinary contributions to the nation's defense in World War 2." He presided over the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences in 1946, and became an honorary fellow in its successor organization, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a fellow of the Royal Aeronautics Society. In 1947 he received the St Louis Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers for "meretorious service in the advancement of aeronautics."
Investiture in the International Aerospace Hall of Fame came in 1972 and in the Aviation Hall of Fame in 1974

Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky 1889-1972

2007-05-17T04:31:00.000-07:00

Learning of the works of the Wright brothers and Count Zeppelin, Igor Sikorsky's interest in aviation was kindled as a boy. Graduated from Petrograd Naval College, studied engineering in Paris, returned to Kiev in 1907 to enter Polytechnical Institute. In 1909, he went back to Paris—then the aeronautical center of Europe—to learn more about the fascinating science of flight. Having learned what he could of aviation as it was then known in Europe, he bought an Anzani engine and went home to begin construction a rotary-wing aircraft.

His first attempts failed due to a lack of power and an understanding of the complex rotary-wing art. Undaunted, he turned his efforts to conventional aircraft and found success with the S-2, the second airplane of his design and construction. His fifth airplane, the S-5, brought him national recognition as well as FAI pilot license Number 64. In 1912 his S-6-A received the highest award at Moscow's Aviation Exhibition, and that year his aircraft won first prize in military competitions at Petrograd. This led to a position as head of the aviation subsidiary of the Russian Baltic Railroad Car Works, where, as a result of clogged carburetor and subsequent engine failure, he conceived the idea of an aircraft having more than one engine—a radical idea at the time. The result of this was an engineering project that gave the world its first multi-engine airplane, the four-engined "Grand." This revolutionary aircraft also offered an enclosed cabin, upholstered chairs, lavatory, even an exterior catwalk on the fuselage where passengers could walk while in flight.

There followed an even bigger aircraft, Ilia Mourometz, named for a legendary tenth-century folk hero. More than 70 military versions of the Ilia Mourometz were built for use as bombers during The World War. The Revolution ended Mr. Sikorsky's career in Russian aviation, and he emigrated to France, then to the USA in 1919. Unable to find a position in aviation he resorted to teaching and lecturing in New York, mostly to fellow emigrants. Then some students and friends who knew of his reputation in Russia pooled their resources in 1923 to fund the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation.

The first product from the young and financially shaky concern was the S-29-A ("A" for America), a twin-engine, all-metal transport which proved a forerunner of the modern airliner. Other aircraft designs followed, but the company achieved its most notable success with the twin-engine S-38 amphibian, which Pan American Airways used to open air routes to Central and South America. Later, as a subsidiary of United Aircraft Corporation, the company produced luxurious Flying Clippers which pioneered commercial air transportation across both oceans. The last Sikorsky flying boat, S-44, would for years hold the record for fastest transatlantic flight.

The dormant concept of the helicopter resurfaced, and Sikorsky turned once again to notes and sketches he had jotted down ideas for possible designs, some of which were patented. On Sep 14, 1939, he took his VS-300 a few feet off the ground to give the western hemisphere its first practical helicopter, the child from which today's helicopter industry grew. Military contracts followed and, in 1943, large-scale manufacture made the R-4 the world's first production helicopter.

Awards and honors accorded to Igor Sikorsky would fill many pages, and include the National Medal of Science, the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy, the Collier Trophy, the USAF Academy's Thomas D White National Defense Award, the Guggenheim Medal, and the Royal Aeronautical Society's Silver Medal. He was inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame in 1968.Even after his retirement in 1957 at age 68, Sikorsky continued to work as an engineering consultant for his company, and was at his desk the day before he died.

Leroy Randle Grumman 1895-1982

2007-05-17T04:21:00.000-07:00

Lord Brabazon of Tara 1884-1964

2007-04-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

Lord Brabazon of Tara (1884-1964) Pioneer Aviator and holder of British Aviation Licence No 1

Lord Brabazon of Tara was born in England, February 8, 1884 and died in London, May 17, 1964. He first soloed in a French Voisin biplane at Issy-les-Montineaux, Paris, France, in November, 1908. French F.A.I. brevet #40 was issued to him under the name of Brabazon Moore, on March 8, 1910, before he became a member of the House of Lords in England. British F.A.I. Airplane Pilot's Certificate Number 1 was issued to him by the Royal Aero Club, making him the first person to be licensed in Great Britain as an Airplane Pilot. In 1909 he made the first live cargo flight by airplane, by tying a waste-paper basket to a wing-strut of his Voisin airplane. Then, using it as a "cargo hold", he airlifted one small pig. In October of that year Mr. Moore Brabazon won the first all-British competition of L1000 offered by the Daily Mail for the first machine to fly a circular mile course. His aeroplane was fitted with a 60-horse-power Green aero engine. In the same year M. Michelin offered L1000 for a long-distance flight in all-British aviation; this prize was also won by Mr. Brabazon, who made a flight of 17 miles. Charles Rolls and Lord Brabazon of Tara made an ascension in the first spherical balloon made in England, which was built by the Short Brothers. In the First World War, he took a leading roll in the developement of aerial photography.

Henry Phillip Folland 1889–1954

2007-04-21T08:18:00.000-07:00

Henry Philip Folland was an English aviation engineer and aircraft designer.

He worked at the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough from 1912,where he was the lead designer on the S.E.5 during the First World War. He also designed the Ruston Proctor Aerial Target, an anti-Zeppelin pilotless aircraft to use A M Lows control systems.

He left the Royal Aircraft Factory in 1917, joining the Nieuport & General Aircraft company as chief designer designing the Nieuport Nighthawk, which was adopted as a standard fighter by the Royal Air Force but did not enter service owing to the failure of its engine.Nieuport & General ceased operations in 1920 and his services were taken up by the Gloster Aircraft Company, who had built Nighthawks under license during the First World War, joining them in 1921.He was the chief designer for Glosters for many years,and numbered among his successes the Bamel racer—winner of the aerial Derby in 1921, '22 and '23—and the Gloster I I I , IV and V Schneider Trophy racing seaplanes. Fighters bearing the Folland stamp were the Grebe, Gamecock, Gambet, Goldfinch, Gauntlet and Gladiator biplanes, and the F.5/34.
He leftthe company in 1937, following the takeover of Gloster by Hawker, feeling that Hawker designs would be favoured over his own. He brought the British Marine Aircraft Company at Hample, near Southampton, renaming it Folland Aircraft Limited.

Frederick Handley Page 1885-1962

2007-04-21T08:13:00.000-07:00

Frederick Handley Page, born in 1885, grew up in a modest-size town in Gloucestershire, England. In 1902 he entered college in London and enrolled in a program in electrical engineering. Graduating in 1906, he swiftly secured a position as chief engineer with a small electrical manufacturer. He proved so capable that only a year later, he was offered a position with Westinghouse, a manufacturer of electrical equipment, in the United States.
By then, however, he had begun to learn about aviation. Seized with enthusiasm, he took to carrying out experiments at his place of employment that had nothing to do with the task at hand—which soon got him fired. He started working on his own in a shed, carving wooden propellers for aircraft and building an airplane that a fellow aviation enthusiast had designed. In June 1909, he turned his shed into the firm of Handley Page, Ltd. This was Great Britain's first publicly traded aircraft manufacturing corporation.
Handley-Page built a succession of biplanes and monoplanes. Then in August 1914, Britain entered World War I. He approached the Admiralty and offered to provide planes for the Navy. A senior official took him up on his offer and asked him to create "a bloody paralyzer of an airplane" to hurl back the Germans. This led to the development of the twin-engine 0/100 bomber, which first flew late in 1915.
The 0/100 started the company on its way. Built as a biplane, it led to two larger successors: the 0/400 and the V/1500. The 0/400 was selected for production in the United States. The V/1500 was one of the first four-engine aircraft. Weighing 15 tons when fully loaded, it was built to bomb Berlin. The first of them entered service late in 1918, but the war ended just before they began to carry out their raids.
There was little further demand for bombers after the war, but Handley Page found new opportunities in carrying passengers. London and Paris were two of Europe's largest cities and were only about 200 miles (322 kilometers) apart. But the journey required the inconvenience of a transfer from a train to a boat for the trip across the English Channel and then a transfer back to a train to get from the coast to London. Moreover, the war had severely damaged the railroads in northern France. However, the distance between these cities was well within the range of the aircraft of the day.
The 0/400 had a fuselage that was large enough for passengers. Several of them became airliners with minimal modification, while the new firm of Handley Page Transport, which opened in 1919, became one of the world's first airlines. The V/1500 was too large for commercial use, but it had attractive design elements. These went into a modified 0/400, the W.8, which became the company's standard. In 1924, Handley Page Transport merged with three other carriers and formed Imperial Airways, Britain's first national airline.
Handley Page also had a strong commitment to research. His company may well have been the first to install its own wind tunnel for in-house experiments. He was keenly interested in air safety, more so because he had lost close friends in crashes. A serious problem of the day lay in the tendency of airplanes to go into a spin and often crash, and he looked for ways to counter this.
He decided that a solution lay in running a slot down the length of the wing from the fuselage to the wing tip. This in effect divided it into two wings set closely together. Airflow through the slot would flow evenly over the rear wing to produce more lift for better control. A German inventor, Gustav Lachmann, had developed similar ideas on his own, and Handley Page brought him into the company. Handley-Page received a patent for the invention on October 24, 1919, and slotted wings became a key to the firm's fortunes, as sales of patent rights earned £750,000 (about $3.6 million at the time) in payments from other planebuilders. In turn, slotted wings led to the development of flaps for wings. These extended to give extra lift and also greater drag, permitting takeoff and landing at relatively low speed. The flaps then folded into the rear of the wing, for the reduced lift that was appropriate at high speed during cruising flight.

Handley-Page remained involved with airliners during the next decade. In 1931, Imperial Airways began flying the Handley Page Hannibal, a four-engine biplane. It was built for comfort, with wall-to-wall carpeting and a bar. Stewards served four-course hot lunches and seven-course dinners, while soundproofing diminished the roar of the motors. The Hannibal carried up to 40 passengers and remained in service through the 1930s.
Like the 1920s, the first years of the 1930s were lean years for the company, when few orders came in. That situation changed in 1935, for with the threat of war in Europe now looming again, the British government launched a military buildup. Handley Page contributed a twin-engine monoplane bomber, the Hampden. The fortunes of war soon would give this plane a key role in saving Britain from Nazi invasion.
This happened in 1940, during the Battle of Britain. Nazi air fleets hammered hard at airfields of the Royal Air Force, slowly weakening it. Had they continued, they might well have won air superiority, opening the way for a German conquest of England. However, on August 24 the RAF sent a force of medium bombers, including Hampdens, to attack Berlin.
The bombers did little damage, but this raid prompted the Nazis to seek revenge. German leaders ordered their own bombers to strike the city of London. They killed and injured a great many people—but they did not continue their attacks on the RAF itself. This gave the RAF time to recover. It went on to defeat the Germans in the air, forcing them to abandon their plans for invasion. That British raid on Berlin was small in its destruction but very large in its consequences. The Handley Page Hampden played a central role.
By then, the company was already producing the Halifax, a large four-engine bomber. It was one of three such aircraft designed and built by Britain, the others being the Avro Lancaster and the Short Stirling. More than 6,000 Halifaxes came off the assembly lines, with other planebuilding companies sharing in the production. At the height of Britain's bomber offensive, the Halifax comprised 40 percent of the strength of the RAF Bomber Command.
Frederick Handley Page was knighted in 1942, becoming Sir Frederick. After the war, he again had to seek new opportunities. For a time he continued to find them in military orders, for the Cold War with the Soviets soon began, and Britain upheld its centuries-old policy of maintaining its own offensive force. Sir Frederick contributed the Victor, a four-engine jet bomber.
Full of years and honors, he died in 1962.

Sir Geoffrey de Havilland 1882-1965

2007-04-21T08:11:00.000-07:00

Although never having seen an airplane in flight, Geoffrey de Havilland in 1909 constructed his first machine and through trial and error taught himself to fly. Since his early trials on the meadows at Seven Barrows, the name of de Havilland has been carried aloft by more than fifty aircraft. Notable among these were the classic DH-2 fighter of World War I, and the DH-4 light bomber which saw worldwide service and played a major role in the establishment of the U.S. Air Mail.
He established the new De Havilland Company at Stag Lane near London in 1920, beginning the long line of DH commercial and sport aircraft. The DH-18 was the first of his designs intended from conception to carry passengers. Then came the racers that established so many world records. Perhaps most significant were the beautiful Moths, born in 1925, which can rightfully claim to be the genesis for all light sport aircraft, and today after 47 years may still be found flying worldwide.
Flying was always the primary interest of Geoffrey de Havilland, even to his use of the private airplane as the normal mode of travel where others might use surface means. In his 70th year, he was still flying for sport. From the very first, he was the test pilot, always making the first flight of a new model. His was the ultimate relationship between design and test flying. He was the presiding genius and innovator who typically gave credit to the team.
The great De Havilland triumph in World War II was the magnificent Mosquito light bomber of novel design and the fastest aircraft of its time. In 1943, De Havilland entered the jet age with the Vampire fighter powered by a DH Goblin jet engine. De Havilland led the world in entering the era of jet passenger flight with its first turbine powered aircraft, the Comet in 1949. Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, the grand figure of British aviation, spent his life looking forward with a view toward service to mankind.

Sir Robert Mclean 1884-1964

2007-04-21T08:07:00.000-07:00

Sir Robert McLean, who with designer R. J. Mitchell was mainly responsible for the Spitfire fighter, and who vigorously fought Air Ministry opposition to the singleseat monoplane fighter during the 1930s. He was the man who named the aircraft.

He joined the board of Vickers-Armstrongs in 1929, on returning to Britain from the general managership of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway, and he became the first chairman and managing director of Vickers Aviation Limited. In this post he was responsible for the acquisition of the Supermarine Company wherein, of course, the Spitfire evolved. In 1938 he left Vickers-Armstrongs' board, though staying for a short period as an advisor, and it was later revealed that he had been dismissed —probably at Ministerial insistence.
Sir Robert described his tussles with the Air Ministry as a "bitter, brutal and hostile battle that was to become more hostile as time went on." Fortunately, it was one that Sir Robert McLean, despite his dismissal, was later seen to have won.

Wilfred George Carter 1890-1969

2007-04-21T08:05:00.000-07:00

George Carter was the chief designer at Glosters from 1937, was awarded the C.B.E. in 1947 and was appointed Technical Director of Gloster Aircraft in 1948 remaining on the board of directors until 1954. He continued to serve Glosters for a number of years after his retirement in a consultancy role until 1958.

Carter joined the Gloucestershire (later Gloster) Aircraft Company in 1925 previously having worked for Sopwith, Shorts and for Hawker where he was responsible for the Heron and Hornbill fighter aircraft. At Gloster Aircraft, he was instrumental in the design of two of the most significant biplane fighters for the RAF, the Gauntlet and Galdiator. Carter also designed the Gloster F.9/37 a promising twin-engine fighter design that never entered production, before he turned to work on jet aircraft.

It was during a visit by Frank Whittle to Gloster that Carter became involved in the development of jet aircraft. At the time Gloster were working on a twin-boom fighter to be powered by a Napier Sabre piston engine which attracted the attention of Whittle who thought that the layout would be suitable for his new engine. Although the design Whittle saw would not progress beyond the project stage, within a few weeks, Carter was asked by the Air Ministry to submit plans for a brand new aircraft to use Whittle's engine. He agreed to the project before seeing the engine for himself. While not impressed with the engine itself, when he saw it running he was convinced that it could develop into a suitable powerplant given what they had managed to achieve in the somewhat primitive conditions at Lutterworth.
The Gloster E28/39 was designed primarily to prove the concept of turbojet powered flight, the Air Ministry however insisted that the design include provision for four guns and 2,000 rounds of ammunition even if these were not be be fitted in the prototype. The contract to build the E28/39 also known as the Pioneer was placed with Glosters on the 3 February 1940. The aircraft was built in secret at the Regents garage, Cheltenham and first flew on 8 April 1941 at Hucclecote, becoming the first British and Allied jet aircraft.
Even before the Pioneer flew, the Air Ministry encouraged Carter to design a practical jet fighter since the Pioneer was not suitable because it was unlikely that an engine of at least 2,000 lbs thrust would be available in the near future. Carter therefore decided that the design would require two engines. The result was designated the F/9-40 which first flew on 5 March 1943 and would find worldwide fame as the Gloster Meteor. His later designs included the E.1/44 and Gloster Javelin.

Sir Archibald Russell 1904-1995

2007-04-21T08:01:00.000-07:00

Archibald Russell was born in 1904 and raised in the Forest of Dean. His family moved to Bristol when he was 15 and was awarded a BSc degree in Engineering at the University of Bristol. He joined the Bristol Aeroplane Company in 1925 as an assistant stress calculator when they were still making Bristol Fighter biplanes. He became the company’s expert in wing design and was involved in the design of the Second World War Blenheim and Beaufort bombers and the Beaufighter.
As Chief Engineer, he was responsible for the Freighter (1944), Brabazon (1949) and Britannia (1951). In 1959 he designed the Bristol Type 223 supersonic airliner. This aircraft was built by a consortium of French and British companies and named Concorde. Shortly after the maiden flight of Concorde in 1969, Russell retired as Chairman, Filton Division, British Aircraft Corporation. He was knighted in 1971 and died in 1995.

Sir Sydney Camm 1893–1966

2007-04-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

Royal Aero Club signed Dinner Menu 1954

One of the most famous of British designers, Sir Sydney Camm began with model aircraft before World War 1, and then joined the Martinsyde Company, with which he gained aircraft engineering experience. He joined the H.G. Hawker Company in 1923 and it was his work with the company for which he is best remembered. The first aircraft he designed was the Cygnet light plane that was entered in the Lympne Light Aeroplane Competition of 1924.Camm was given the post of Chief Design in 1925. His first products were mostly adaptations of the Woodcock fighter with his first production success being the Hawker Horsley bomber. A prolific series of aircraft designs flowed from his office, but his first real winners came in 1929 when he produced the Hornet single-seat bomber, powered by the Kestrel engine. The Hornet was faster than any RAF fighter sent up to intercept it in exercises. It remained in production for nearly a decade spawning a whole family of two-seat biplanes. The Hornet, renamed Fury, achieved equal fame as an RAF fighter in the thirties. Although preoccupied with many variants of the Hart, Sydney Camm turned his attention to one of the most significant aircraft of its time, the Hurricane. This was a monoplane fighter with retractable undercarriage and the new Merlin engine. Fitted with eight machine-guns, it entered service with the RAF in 1937 and bore the major part of the German onslaught in the Battle of Britain. The Hurricane was a war-winner, but Camm did not rest on his laurels. Taking the new and more powerful Sabre and Vulture engines, he drew up fighter designs around them. The Sabre-engined Typhoon was the scourge of German armor during the 1944 invasion of France. It was with jet aircraft that Sydney Camm's eye for beauty of line blossomed, with the Sea Hawk naval fighter and then the Hunter, one of the most successful jet fighters ever produced. But his most imaginative design was the P.1127 VTOL fighter which, as the Harrier, pioneers a new fighter concept and is now in squadron service with the RAF as the first operational VTOL fighter in the world, and a worthy epitaph to the late Sir Sydney Camm.

Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle 1907-1996

2007-04-21T07:59:00.000-07:00

Frank Whittle was born on 1 June 1907 in Coventry, the son of a mechanic. His first attempts to join the RAF failed as a result of his lack of height, but on his third attempt he was accepted as an apprentice in 1923. He qualified as a pilot officer in 1928.
As a cadet Whittle had written a thesis arguing that planes would need to fly at high altitudes, where air resistance is much lower, in order to achieve long ranges and high speeds. Piston engines and propellers were unsuitable for this purpose, so he concluded that rocket propulsion or gas turbines driving propellers would be required: jet propulsion was not in his thinking at this stage. However, by October 1929, Whittle had considered using a fan enclosed in the fuselage to generate a fast flow of air to propel a plane at high altitude. A piston engine would use too much fuel, so he thought of using a gas turbine. After the Air Ministry turned him down, he patented his idea himself.
In 1935 Whittle secured financial backing and, with RAF approval, Power Jets Ltd was formed. They began constructing a test engine in July 1936, but it proved inconclusive. Whittle concluded that a complete rebuild was required, but lacked the necessary finances. Protracted negotiations with the Air Ministry followed and the project was secured in 1940. By April 1941 the engine was ready for tests. The first flight was made on 15 May 1941. By October the Americans had heard of the project and asked for the details and an engine. A Power Jets team and the engine were flown to Washington to enable General Electric to examine it and begin construction. The Americans worked quickly and their XP-59A Aircomet was airborne in October 1942, some time before the British Meteor, which became operational in 1944.
The jet engine proved to be a winner, particularly in America where the technology was enthusiastically embraced. Whittle retired from the RAF in 1948 with the rank of air commodore. He was knighted in 1976 and went to work in the USA shortly afterwards, becoming a research professor at the US Naval Academy at Annapolis. Whittle died on 9 August 1996.

Roy Chadwick CBE 1893–1947

2007-04-21T07:57:00.002-07:00

Roy Chadwick C.B.E. (1893-1947) Considered by many to be Britain's greatest aircraft designer, he designed many of his aircraft in premises in what is now the offices of British Aerospace on Greengate in Chadderton, Oldham, including the Avro Lancaster.
Roy Chadwick was born on 30th April 1893 at Marsh Hall Farm, Farnworth, when man’s desire to fly was still a dream. By the time of the Wright Brothers’ epic flight in 1903, Roy was already building and flying models of his own design and it was a dream come true when he joined A.V. Roe & Company in 1911. Alliott Verdon Roe himself interviewed the youngster, and was so impressed that he employed him immediately at a salary of One Pound per week. Roy quickly became Personal Assistant to ‘A.V.’ before eventually being made Chief Designer in 1919 at the age of 26. He was considered by many to be one of the world’s great aircraft designers with a stable of aircraft types to his name: Avro 504, Baby. Avian, Tutor, Anson, Lancaster, Lincoln, Tudor, York, Shackleton and even the original design for the Avro 698 which became the Vulcan.
Roy Chadwick was always one step ahead with his thinking and planning of new designs, and early in the development of the jet engine he spoke of a turbo-prop version, then still a long way off. Chadwick’s early sketches of a delta wing design are now well known, and formed the basis of a shape which eventually became the Avro Vulcan.
Sadly, Roy Chadwick died on Saturday 23rd August 1947 in the Avro Tudor 2 in what should have been a normal flight over the Lake District. The aileron controls had been assembled incorrectly, causing the aircraft to bank sharply right. The aviation world had lost a wealth of irreplaceable experience with this crash, and Chadwick’s death at the age of 54 cut short a career, which could have produced even greater designs. He had been awarded the CBE in 1943 for his special modification to the Lancaster design for the famous Dams Raid, and many feel that had he lived, he would have been knighted

Albert G Elliot CBE 1889-1978

2007-04-21T07:57:00.001-07:00

Albert G Elliot was born on November 3rd, 1889, and was educated at Northampton College and London University. He joined Napiers in 1909 and Rolls-Royce in 1912, and in his first year was attached to Mr. F. H. Royce's personal design staff. He was senior designer on the Rolls-Royce Eagle,Hawk, Falcon, Condor and Kestrel aero engines and in 1929 was appointed chief designer, being responsible for both aero and car engines. Under Sir Henry Royce he was personally responsible for the design of the Rolls-Royce R engine, which in a Vickers-Supermarine seaplane, was the means of winning the Schneider Trophy outright. Mr. Elliot was also in charge of the design of the Merlin.
In 1937 he was made chief engineer of the aero division, later becoming chief engineer of the company. He was made a director of Rolls-Royce, Ltd., in 1945 and became joint managing director in 1951.
His awards include the C.B.E. (1941) in recognition of his work on aero engines and the British Gold Medal for aeronautics (1954). Mr. Elliot was appointed executive vice-chairman in 1954.
He is a member of the Air Registration Board, a Governor of Loughborough College, a council member of the Royal Aeronautical Society and a member of technical board and technical
department for S.B.A.C.

David Keith-Lucas CBE 1911-1997

2007-04-21T07:55:00.000-07:00

David Keith-Lucas was one of the sons of Keith Lucas, who invented the first aeronautical compass.
He was an apprentice and engineer with C.A. Parsons and Co. from 1933 to 1940, then moved to the aerodynamics office of Short Brothers, Rochester, famous for their flying boats, becoming their chief aerodynamist in 1944.
From 1845 to 1965 he was with Short Brothers and Harland Ltd in Belfast, holding the posts of chief designer, technical director and research director. His work included research on swept-wings which culminated in the Short SB-5 research aircraft. Other projects included the Short Belfast heavy freighter, the Short Skyvan and the SD-330 and SD-360 freight-commuter series.
The Short SB-4 Sherpa (a shoulder-wing cantilever monoplane powered by two Blackburn Turbomeca Palas turbojet engines) was a single-seater twin-jet aircraft built in the early 1950s to prove the possibilities of Keith-Lucas's aero-isoclinic wing. In 1951, he designed the Short SB-6 Seamew as a lightweight anti-submarine platform.

Sir George Robert Edwards 1908-2003

2007-04-21T07:54:00.000-07:00

George Edwards wag born on July 9, 1908 at Highams Park, England. On graduation from London University in Engineering, he joined the design section of Vickers-Armstrongs, Limited at Weybridge. In 1939, he was appointed Experimental Works Manager and in 1941 was seconded to the government to advise on expedited aircraft production. In September 1945, he was appointed Chief Designer of the team that produced the Viking, Valetta, Varsity, Viscount and Valiant.
While serving as Managing Director of Vickers-Armstrongs Aircraft, he was knighted in 1957. In this period, he was associated with development of the Vanguard, VC 10 and TSR 2. In May 1961, Sir George as Executive Director - Aircraft, British Aircraft Corporation, initiated the BAC One Eleven jet airliner. Then came a series of major international ventures for the British aircraft industry. These would include Concorde, Jaguar and the Panavia Tornado, Multi Role Combat Aircraft.
Sir George retired as Chairman, British Aircraft Corporation, Limited, in December 1975.
In large measure, the survival and ultimate successes of the British aviation industry in the post-World War II era are directly attributable to the technical skills, managerial acumen and foresight of Sir George Edwards. His initiative in advocating design innovation and pioneering multi-national projects such as Concorde, Jaguar and Tornado were responsible for the introduction of a multitude of advances in the aerospace sciences.

Sir Barnes Neville Wallis 1887-1979

2007-04-21T07:52:00.000-07:00

Barnes Neville Wallis was born the son of a doctor on 26 September 1887 in Ripley, Derbyshire. Wallis worked first at a marine engineering firm and in 1913 he moved to Vickers, where he designed airships, including the R100. In 1930 Wallis transferred to working on aircraft. His achievements included the first use of geodesic design in engineering, which was used in his development of the Wellesley and Wellington bombers. When World War Two began in 1939, Wallis was Assistant Chief Designer at Vickers Aviation section.
In February 1943, Wallis revealed his idea for air attacks on dams in Germany. He had developed a drum-shaped, rotating bomb that would bounce over the water, roll down the dam's wall and explode at its base. The bomb was codenamed 'Upkeep'. Impressed with the concept, the Chief of the Air Staff, ordered Wallis to prepare the bombs for an attack on the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams in the important German industrial region of the Ruhr.
Operation Chastise, the 'Dambusters Raid', was carried out on the night of 16/17 May 1943 by the specially created 617 Squadron of the RAF, led by Guy Gibson. Two of the dams - the Mohne and Eder - were breached, leading to serious flooding in the surrounding area, although industrial production was hardly affected, and 8 of the 19 bombers which took part were lost. The most significant result was the hugely positive effect on Allied morale.
When the decision was taken to concentrate on area bombing, Wallis began looking at the design of aircraft that could drop heavy bombs. The adapted Avro Lancaster was able to drop two bombs developed by Wallis, the 'Tallboy' designed in 1944 and the 'Grand Slam' from the following year. Both were used against heavily fortified German targets.
After the war, Wallis led aeronautical research and development at the British Aircraft Corporation until 1971. He became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1954 and was knighted in 1968. He died on 20 October 1979.

Reginald Joseph Mitchell CBE 1895-1937

2007-04-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

Reginald Joseph Mitchell, known as R. J. Mitchell, was born 20th May 1895 and grew up in Longton in Stoke-on-Trent. His father was a headmaster before he resigned to set up a printing firm. At an early age R.J. was making things with his hands and showing an interest in flying machines. At school his intelligence and talent for maths was noted. He left school at 16 in 1911 and began work for Kerr-Stewart (a locomotive engineering company in Stoke-on-Trent) where he quickly became a skilled mechanic. Although he didn’t like the company, he progressed from the shop floor to the drawing office whilst also attended evening classes in advanced mathematics and engineering drawing. In 1917 he applied for and got the post of personal assistant to Hubert Scott-Paine at Supermarine and moved to Southampton.His rise in the company was swift, moving from Assistant to the Works Manager to Chief Designer in 1919 and then Chief Engineer in 1920. It was then that he began to design innovative seaplanes and flying boats including the Walrus, a rescue plane that was of enormous importance during the Second World War in rescuing downed RAF pilots. His designs for the Schneider Trophy contest were to win the trophy outright for Britain and lead to the crucial design for the fighter aircraft the Spitfire. Sadly R.J. Mitchell died from cancer before he could see the tremendous sucess of the Spitfire during the War.

Joseph 'Joe' Smith CBE 1897-1956

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Joseph Smith was educated at Yardley secondary school and Birmingham Municipal Technical School, he served an apprenticeship with the Austin Motor Company and was then given a position of junior draughtsman in the aircraft department. In 1921 he moved to Vickers-Armstrongs as a senior draughtsman, becoming chief draughtsman five years later. Working under Mitchell, Smith was heavily involved with the early design of the Spitfire and was appointed Chief Designer after Mitchell's death in 1937. Smith continued development of the Spitfire and was later involved with designing the Supermarine Spiteful, Supermarine Seafang, Supermarine Attacker, and other Supermarine aircraft. Smith was appointed as a special director of Vickers-Armstrongs Ltd in 1948 and served as chairman of the board of the Society of British Aircraft Constructors from 1948 to 1951. In 1950 he was awarded the silver medal of the Royal Aeronautical Society. He died at Chandler's Ford on 20 February 1956.

'Teddy' William Edward Willoughby Petter 1908-1968

2007-04-21T07:49:00.000-07:00

Teddy Petter was a descendant of the family that founded Westland, the company being a separation of the aircraft business from Petter engines.

He designed the Lysander,Whirlwind and Welin for Westland. He left Westland after the war when they chose to concentrate on helicopters through a linkup with Sikorsky and went to English Electric who were then moving into aircraft design having been involved in building aircraft under contract during the war. While at EE he designed the Canberra and started the work on what would become the Lightning. He split with EE over the direction of aircraft design, he favouring the small over the large.

He joined Folland Aircraft Limited in Hamble as managing director in 1950. At Folland, he designed the Midge, which first flew 11th August 1954 and the Gnat which first flew 18th July 1955.