Search results for ""Author Malcolm Hall""

It was in 1911, on a beach by the North Sea, that Robert Blackburn's Second Monoplane made its first successful flight. By 1914, the Blackburn Aeroplane and Motor Co Ltd had been formed, based in Leeds, and had taken its place in the ranks of the British aircraft industry. By the time the First World War ended, Blackburns had become a major supplier of aircraft for the armed forces, particularly those associated with the sea. In the inter-war years, the company's activities were gradually transformed to its erstwhile seaplane base at Brough, on the Humber, where its great three-engined flying boats mingled with Fleet Air Arm Darts, Baffins and Sharks on the shop floor and in the air. After 1945, Blackburns meant first the giant Beverley troop carrier and then, in complete contrast, the Buccaneer naval strike aircraft. Today, although Brough remains, the name of Blackburn, like those of all the other pioneers, has disappeared into the general title of British Aerospace.

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From trams and trains and buses to ... Concorde. This is a story in photographs of the erstwhile Victorian farming villages of Filton and Patchway in Gloucestershire, through their metamorphosis into the urban communities of the supersonic era. It reflects the changes which have taken place as the century advances, paramount along which was the arrival of aviation in 1910, when Bristol businessman Sir George White chose Filton as the home for his new enterprise, the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company. Included is the sad history of Charlton, elbowed out of existence by the Brabazon, which subsequently became a victim itself. Although also gone, another prominent player on the Filton aviation scene was the Royal Air Force. For nearly three decades, this meant 501 Squadron, formed in 1929 as a Reserve Squadron and manned largely by part-time volunteers. As one of the RAF's leading fighter squadrons, it played a distinguished part in the way, returned to a 'weekend' basis in 1946 and was finally disbanded in 1957.

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In the autumn of 1910, when he was twenty-two years old, Tommy Sopwith bought himself an aeroplane, took it to Brooklands aerodrome and taught himself to fly. In those early days he soon achieved prominence, capturing Britain's endurance and distance records - and the attention of King George V - within weeks of his first flight. He could hardly have imagined then, however, that just two years later he would be head of the Sopwith Aviation Company, nor that during the coming conflict that were to emerge from its workshops - and those of its many sub-contractors - thousands of Britain's best warplanes: the Triplane, the Snipe, the Dolphin, the Cuckoo and - most famously of all - the Sopwith Camel, credited with destroying more enemy planes than any other fighter of the First World War. He would have been even more surprised to learn that, though this first company would not long survive the end of hostilities, in its place would arise a new one which, under his guidance, was in the course of time to grow into the giant Hawker-Siddeley Group. But that is beyong the scope of this book, which focuses on those early days when a young man took up flying as a sport, only to find that he had evolved into an aviation entrepreneur.

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Below High Hunsley.

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