H. Oswald Short 1883-1969

Oswald Short

Sir Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith 1888-1989

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

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-

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

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

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

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.