Serge Dassault 1925-2018

Serge Dassault is a French senator as well as chairman and CEO of Groupe Dassault, an aerospace, software, and media company. He inherited the conglomerate from his father, Marcel Dassault, who founded Dassault Aviation, which manufactures aircraft primarily for military and business use and is publicly traded.

Rolf Dudley-Williams 1908-1987

 

Williams was born in Plymouth and educated at Plymouth College.He joined the RAF cadet scheme in 1926 and studied at the RAF college at Cranwell. He was gazetted in 1928 and appointed a Flying Officer in 1930. From 1933 he was stationed at the Central Flying School, but the next year an injury saw him invalided out of the service.
Deciding to go into business, Williams joined with fellow Cranwell pupil Frank Whittle and fellow ex-RAF officer James Collingwood Tinling to set up Power Jets Ltd in 1936 to develop Whittle's idea of jet engines for aircraft. In 1941 he was appointed Managing Director, and in 1944 he joined the Council of the SBAC and was made a Companion of the Royal Aeronautical Scoiety.

George Hislop CBE 1914-2013

 

 

 

George Steedman Hislop was born on February 11 1914 in Edinburgh and educated at Clydebank High School. After serving an apprenticeship as a fitter and completing a Higher National Certificate in mechanical engineering, he attended the Royal Technical College, Glasgow, and took a First-class external degree from London University. He was awarded a James Caird scholarship in Aeronautics to pursue research at Cambridge, where he gained his doctorate and joined the University Air Squadron, training as a pilot.

In November 1939 Hislop joined the A&AEE, where he worked on the development of fighters and bombers operating at high altitude and the associated meteorological and physiological problems; he also joined many test flights as an observer. Hislop was first introduced to the helicopter during his wartime work at the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment (A&AEE) at Boscombe Down. In late 1944 the helicopter arrived there for trials, and he had his first flight in the basic Sikorsky R4.

Hislop transferred to Farnborough in April 1945 as a senior scientific officer, looking at the behaviour of aircraft flying at high speed, but was soon asked to carry out exploratory research work on helicopters.He flew regularly on test flights of the R4 . It was the beginning of his long association with rotary wing aircraftTwo years later he joined British European Airways’ research and long-term development department, which resulted in the formation of British Airways Helicopters.

Hislop was the senior assistant involved in the monitoring, programming and financial control of the unit. Initially, the main activity was a night postal service in East Anglia, but the long-term goal was carrying passengers between cities.

When in 1952 the Ministry of Civil Aviation asked for a large intercity passenger-carrying helicopter, Fairey Aviation’s proposal was accepted. A year later Hislop joined Fairey as chief designer (helicopters) responsible for building and testing the 40-seat Fairey Rotodyne. This complex aircraft was well ahead of its time, drawing a letter of intent from BEA; there was also interest from some American airlines. But when BEA pulled out of the project the Rotodyne was cancelled in 1962.
Hislop developed the ultralight helicopter, which was later developed into the highly successful Scout and Wasp military helicopters.
In 1960 Westland Aircraft took over Fairey, and Hislop joined the parent company. Two years later he was appointed technical director, later becoming managing director and, in 1973, executive vice-chairman. During this period he led the development and introduction into service of six types of military helicopter, including the Wessex and Sea King. He also played a major role in launching the production of the giant Anglo-French helicopter programme which led to the Gazelle and the Lynx, both built in large numbers — an advanced Lynx is still in operational service.
Hislop served as chairman of the council of the Helicopter Association of Great Britain and as its vice-president. He was president, in 1973, of the Royal Aeronautical Society, which in 1961 had awarded him the Simms Gold Medal . He also received the British Gold Medal for Aeronautics (1972) and the Royal Aero Club’s Louis Breguet Memorial Trophy.
He served as chairman of the Aircraft Research Association and of the Airworthiness Requirements Board.
He was appointed CBE in 1976.

Ronald Ashford CBE 1932-2008

Ronald Ashford was born in Wokingham, Berkshire, in 1932 and attended St Edward’s School, Oxford, from where he went to the De Havilland Aeronautical Technical School in 1949. As he served his apprenticeship, Ashford took flying lessons. Possession of a private pilot’s licence was professionally useful but flying was, for Ashford, also a leisure pursuit. He was an active private pilot from 1950 until 1997.
Ashford joined De Havilland in 1953. For his National Service he took an RAF short-service commission, returning to Hatfield in 1958. Over the next ten years he flew alongside test pilots with De Havilland and then with Hawker Siddeley when the two companies merged in 1959. Besides the Comet, he worked on test flights for the Trident and the DH125 corporate jet. He also worked on the Royal Navy’s DH110 Sea Vixen, an earlier model of which had crashed at the 1952 Farnborough air show, killing both crew and 29 spectators.
By the mid 1960s, Hatfield began to lose its lustre as an aerospace development centre. Ashford moved in 1968 to the Air Registration Board, the organisation responsible for setting and overseeing technical safety standards for British aircraft. He saw it rolled into the Civil Aviation Authority in 1972, becoming director general of the airworthiness division in 1983, and head of the operational safety division in 1987.
Ashford was involved in the investigation into the Manchester air disaster of 1985, in which 54 people died when a British Airtours Boeing 737 caught fire. Many of the deaths were caused by smoke inhalation and the accident prompted calls for aircraft to carry protective fire hoods for passengers. Ashford commissioned research into that idea and into cabin sprinkler systems together with the improvement of access to passenger exits. After research and testing it was concluded that the difficulties created by smoke hoods and sprinklers outweighed their potential benefits. However, much improvement in the access to and usability of exits was achieved and is now required as a standard.
At the ARB and the CAA Ashford worked with Concorde teams in the radical rethinking of standards that hitherto had applied to subsonic airliners. From the Anglo-French project there emerged close co-operation between European airworthiness authorities, eventually leqading to the Joint Aviation Authorities, based near Amsterdam. Ashford was the senior CAA member with the JAA from 1989, and on leaving the CAA in 1992 he was its secretary general, a full time office, until 1994.

Frank Piasecki 1919-2008

Piasecki, whose family came from Poland, became only the second American to design and fly a prototype helicopter in 1943, two years after the Russian-born Igor Sikorsky had flown the first. Unlike Sikorsky, however, Piasecki concentrated on helicopters with tandem rotors that could provide the capacity for troop transports and land and sea rescue missions. He never retired; even on the day he died his chief test pilot was flying his latest development, the Speed Hawk, which has a ducted fan replacing the helicopter's familiar vertical tail rotor to increase its speed and manoeuvrability.

The son of a Polish immigrant tailor, Piasecki was born in Philadelphia in 1919, he studied mechanical engineering at Pennsylvania University and by the age of 20 had gained an engineering degree from the Guggenheim school of aeronautics at New York University. With help from a few friends he then started a small company, the PV Engineering Forum, in the Philadelphia suburbs, which enabled him to build and, in April 1943, test-fly a single-person, single-rotor helicopter, designated the PV-2. At that stage, he had it in mind to satisfy what he thought would become a growing market of rich, individual customers.

Soon, however, he was exploring the twin-rotor concept, most successfully in 1945 with the PV-3 Dogship, which had 10 seats. The US navy, under wartime pressure from Congress to develop this new technology, gave Piasecki a contract, and within 13 months he had built and flown the navy's first helicopter, designated the HRP-1. These aircraft were nicknamed "flying bananas" because of the upward angle of the aft fuselage, designed to ensure that the forward and rear rotors did not collide.

When the second world war ended, Piasecki formed the Piasecki Helicopter Corporation, designating himself chief executive, chief engineer and chief test pilot. In addition to building helicopters for the US navy, air force and marine corps, he exported the models to the Royal Canadian air force, the French navy and the West German defence force. In 1953 he designed the world's first twin-turbine helicopter, the YH-16, capable of carrying a payload of 40 passengers. His tandem rotor technology led to the development of the CH-46 Sea Knight and the CH-40 Chinook, which played a critical role in Vietnam and all major conflicts after it.

In 1955, preferring to continue research and development, Piasecki left his own company, which was renamed the Vertol Aircraft Corporation - taking its title from the acronym for Vertical Take-Off and Landing. In its turn, this company was bought by Boeing in 1960 and became the Boeing helicopter division in 1987. Meanwhile, Piasecki reformed his company as the Piasecki Aircraft Corporation, "pioneers in vertical flight", which has continued to work on advanced helicopter technology, improved survivability and reduced operational costs. One of its most ambitious projects was what Piasecki called the "world's largest aircraft", which aimed to use four modified helicopters and a helium airship to carry exceptionally heavy loads.

In 1986 President Ronald Reagan awarded Piasecki the US's highest technical honour, the National Medal of Technology, and when the Berlin wall fell in 1989, President George Bush Sr asked him to return to his country of origin to help Poland re-establish its aircraft industry. In 2005, he received the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum lifetime achievement award. Some of his early helicopter designs are displayed in the museum.

Known as Pi to his friends and staff, Piasecki was a demanding and occasionally table-thumping boss, but knew all his staff personally, and admired those who stood up to him. He had continued as chief executive, his mental abilities undiminished despite several disabling strokes.

Ernest G. Stout 1913-1995

Ernest Stout, design engineer of the Convair Company. His firm produced one of the American Navy's two V.T.O. turboprop prototypes; in addition he has pioneered the Sea Dart hydro-ski fighter which is land-based, but which uses water (or snow or ice) for take-off and landing.

Anne Burns 1915-2001

Champion glider pilot who risked her life investigating air disasters

Anne Burns was an eminent aeronautical scientist and a champion glider pilot; she also played a key role in investigating the causes of some of Britain's most serious aircraft disasters.

In 1954, two BOAC Comets broke up over the Mediterranean, one over Elba and the other above the island of Stromboli. Both planes had been flying at more than 25,000 ft. Coupled with an earlier disintegration over Calcutta, these disasters jeopardised the future of British civil aviation. Anne Burns had been appointed principal scientific officer at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) in 1953, and the following year she took part in months of tests which eventually led to the detection of metal fatigue in the Comet jet airliner.

The only woman in a team of 20, she would spend hours at a time in an unpressurised cabin, often at an altitude of 40,000 ft, probing for solutions which had to be found speedily if BOAC was to restore passenger confidence. "We just flew about," she later recalled, "waiting for the windows to fall out."

The conditions were, in fact, extremely hazardous and when an inquiry was later conducted into the Elba crash, Sir Lionel Heald, who was representing the Crown, praised Anne Burns's bravery, describing how on each of her experimental flights, designed to produce the actual conditions of the crash, "no one knew what had really happened or what danger there was". In 1955 she received a Queen's Commendation for Valuable Services in the Air in recognition of her considerable contribution to aircraft safety.

She was born Anne Pellew on November 23 1915, the daughter of Major Fleetwood Pellew whose forebear Sir Edward Pellew was a naval hero of the Napoleonic Wars. Anne was educated at Abbey School in Reading and aged 12 made her first flight in a Gipsy Moth from Woodley aerodrome. She later went up to St Hugh's, Oxford where she took a First in Engineering Science. As an undergraduate, she owned a noisy sports car in which she would career around the city until, fearing the worst, the proctors impounded the vehicle. However, she directed some of her enthusiasm and prodigious energy to sport, winning a hockey Blue and squash Half Blue.

Following research work under Professor Richard Southwell at the university's engineering laboratory, she joined the RAE in 1940. There she qualified for a pilot's licence in a de Havilland Tiger Moth biplane trainer, and was involved in flight test programmes for RAF and Fleet Air Arm aircraft of many types. At the RAE she also met her future husband, Denis Burns.

As a member of the RAE's structures department Anne Burns was mainly concerned with the measurement of structural loads in flight and the effect of such loads on the fatigue life of aircraft. For some years she also conducted an investigation into atmospheric turbulence in relation to aircraft structure, pilot performance and flying procedures. She played a leading role in the testing of the English Electric Canberra - Britain's first jet bomber - flying at low levels in Britain and North Africa and at high altitude in Australia and the United States.

Her contributions to reports on turbulence were of great significance. She became an expert on CAT - clear air turbulence - the rare natural phenomenon sometimes encountered by airline captains of flying into a "brick wall" in the sky. Her interest in this area led her to buy an ultra-light French-built RF-4, which was, in effect, a glider with an outboard engine capable of being switched on and off. In this rather fragile plane she would fly over the Pennines and the Welsh mountains looking for "brick walls". "Luckily," she explained, "my husband is both a scientist and a glider pilot and we have no children. He doesn't worry. In a way it's rather exciting - like skiing in the sky - quite apart from the thrill of scientific discovery."

Burns's enthusiasm for gliding had begun during the war when she took part in launch tests for wartime troop carrying gliders. She later went on to gain a formidable reputation in recreational and competition gliding. In 1955, after only a year's experience flying glider planes, she established a women's gliding record of 134 miles when she flew from Lasham in Hampshire to Market Drayton in Shropshire. With typical modesty, she ascribed her win to "beginner's luck".

In 1957 she became the first woman to cross the Channel in a glider. She consistently bettered her own record times and in South Africa in 1961 she and her husband broke five world and 12 British records. At the age of 50, as the holder of multiple gliding records, she was awarded the Lilienthal Medal of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, and in 1967 she received the Founder's Medal of the Air League.

Other gliding awards include the Jean Lennox Bird Trophy in 1959, the Brabazon Cup in 1961 and 1963, and the O P Jones Cup in 1966, which recognised her as the national gliding champion of Great Britain. In 1962, Denis and Anne Burns were jointly awarded awarded the Royal Aero Club's Britannia trophy for their gliding achievements, which were described at the time as the most "dazzling display in any field of aviation since the beginning of flying history".

Anne Burns's distinctions as an aeronautical scientist were no less impressive. She won another Queen's Commendation for Valuable Services in the Air in 1961, the Royal Aeronautical Society's R P Alston Medal (1958) and the Whitney Straight award in 1968. In 1977 a glider she had been piloting near Andover hit a bird and went into freefall. As she bailed out, Anne Burns became entangled in her parachute and ended up landing in the branches of a tree.

Although this automatically entitled her to membership of the Caterpillar club - whose members are pilots who have jumped for their lives - she decided that her flying days were over. Her husband, Denis Owen Burns, whom she married in 1947, died in 1990.

Francis Melvin Rogallo 1912–2009

Francis Rogallo was an aeronautical engineer who, beginning with a model made from a kitchen curtain, designed the wing that led to hang gliding, paragliding, sport parachuting and stunt kite flying.He was born Jan. 27, 1912, in Sanger, California and graduated from Sanger High School in 1928.He went on to graduate with an advanced degree in Mechanical Engineering and Aeronautics in 1935, one of the first to do so, from Stanford University.After completing his college studies, Rogallo joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), later to become the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), in 1936 in Hampton, Va., and embarked on what would be a long and distinguished career in aeronautics. In 1939 he married the love of his life Gertrude Sugden Rogallo, a young educator from the Hampton Roads area. The couple raised four children, Marie, Robert, Carol, and Frances, and celebrated 68 years of marriage together. While Roger was working as an aeronautical engineer in the NACA wind tunnels and Gertrude was busy as a homemaker, they actively pursued at home their passion and dream of creating a vehicle to make flight affordable and available to everyone. While pursuing their dream, the couple met the legendary inventor Orville Wright who fueled their spirit of invention. Francis held several patents from his work at NACA and NASA, but was proudest of the one he and Gertrude filed in 1948 as co-inventors of a "flexible kite" based on their joint efforts at home in their leisure time. The device is one of the simplest airfoils ever created, a wing totally without stiffeners creating lift and carrying payloads. This Rogallo Wing has made possible many sports including hang gliding, paragliding, sport parachuting, stunt kite flying, and kite boarding enjoyed by millions of people. The Rogallos are recognized worldwide for their contributions to sport aviation and have been honored in Japan, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, and France. Honors in this country for Francis include recognition by the National Air and Space Museum "for outstanding achievement in aerospace technology", presentation of the Order of the Long Leaf Pine from the State of North Carolina as one of the 100 aviation heroes by Senator Elizabeth Dole at the Century of Flight ceremonies in 2003, and induction of both into the Paul Garber Shrine at the Wright Brothers National Memorial. The couple's portrait hangs today in the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, N.C. Rog also was an inductee of the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame and of the Public Education Hall of Fame of the California School Boards Association, in the inaugural class in 1984, and both are honored with a pylon at the Century of Flight Monument in Kitty Hawk, N.C.

E A 'Chris' Wren 1909-1982 (Cartoonist)

 

The Aeroplane artist E. A. Chris Wren was the envy of Flight magazine. His column Wroundabout and the
aerodynamic animation of his aircraft caricatures, which somehow looked more real than the originals, and his wartime "Oddentifications" won him an enormous international aviation fan club. In fact it was because of Wren that Flight started Straight and Level. The Empire Test Pilots School mess is filled with his drawings, of the countless international pilots who have attended it over the years. He died at the 1982 ETPS annual
dinner—an occasion he would never miss—at a youthful 73 and at the height of his powers.

Dr Eric S Moult Ph.D., B.Sc, M.I.Mech.E., F.R.Ae.S 1903-

Dr E. S. Moult, Ph.D., B.Sc, M.I.Mech.E., F.R.Ae.S.,chief engineer of the de Havilland Engine Co., Ltd.was concerned with aero-engine design from a time soon after the First World War, and in the inter-war years was associated with the late Major F. B. Halford in the design and development of such famous engines as the D.H.Gipsy and the Napier Rapier, Dagger and Sabre. He became chief engineer of the engineering departments of the de Hayilland engine and propeller divisions in 1941 and on the formation of the D.H. engine company in 1944 was appointed its chief engineer. He was a member of the Council of the R.Ae.S. in 1951-53. He became a director in 1955, and was technical director during 1957-62. In the latter year he was appointed technical director of Bristol Siddeley Engines Ltd, and became technical director of the Small Engine Division in 1962.

August Stepan

Sir Robert L.Lickley CBE 1912–1998

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Designer of Caravelle and Concorde amongst many other types