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Aviation History
1931
1931 - 0412.PDF
FLIGHT, MAY 1, 1931 A DINNER TO SOME PIONEERS 'HE Aviation Section of the Forum Club, under the chairmanship of the Hon. Mrs. Forbes Sempill, gave a dinner at the club to some of the pioneers of aviation on Tuesday, April 28. MRS. SEMPILL, as Chairman, made an exceptionally able and well-chosen speech of introduction, and paid tribute to the very earliest pioneers in a manner which showed that she was thoroughly conversant with all her facts. The first to say a lew words was MR. GRIFFITH BREWER, who explained that his experience dated back to 40 years ago, when, at the Naval Exhibition at Chelsea in 1891, he made his lirst bv.lloon ascent, together with Pat Alexander. In a graphic description he explained how gusty the day Was and how they shot up well above the clouds, and after a series of vicissitudes finally came down on Leith Hill, somewhere near his own home. An amusing sequel was his father's description to him that evening of how he had seen some young fools go up in a balloon and be terribly knocked about, and how he felt sure that they must now all be dead. The silence, Mr. Brewer said, when he ex- plained to his family that he was one of those " young fools " was one of the worst moments of his life. His first aeroplane flight was, as everyone knows at Le Mans, with Wilbur Wright, when Rolls, Baden Powell and Hedges-Butler were also hoping to go. He, however, was the fortunate one asked to make the ascent, and was in consequence the first Englishman to do so. SIR ALLIOTT VERDON ROE told us how he started out as a marine engineer, and, after seeing albatrosses soaring about, made models to imitate them, and wrote to The Times about these. They, much to his surprise, published his letter, and also an article which showed that flying was quite impossible and dangerous to attempt. Eventually, however, he built a machine at Brooklands in which he managed to hop a few yards, and subsequently took it to Lea Marshes. In conclusion, he gave a few details of how the Avro machines, which were evolved from this one, were used as training machines, and how the first Zeppelin was brought down by means of one. LT.-COL. J. T. C. MOORE-BRABAZON, in his usual polished style, started in a humorous way with a story which is told of Wilbur Wright, who, when asked to speak, said " there is only one bird which can speak well, and that is a parrot, which, as everybody knows, is a notoriously bad flyer." Sir Alliott Roe, he said, must therefore be an exceptionally good pilot. (Sir Alliott is a very diffident and modest speaker.—ED.) Few people realised, he said, how much we owed to Mr. Griffith Brewer, who, by virtue of being a very good friend of Wilbur Wright, had done a very great deal for this country, not the least of which was the fact that it was entirely due to him that Wilbur Wright's machine was now housed in the Science Museum instead of being in another country. He then told us how he had worked alongside A. V. Roe, as he knew him, at Brooklands, building a machine, and he told us how, when wishing to fly, he had had to go up without his coat or boots in order to get the machine light enough to get off the ground at all. This he seldom did, however, and he said they certainly were not heroes, because they could never really get damaged, since the machines practically never got up. Aviation, he said, was very greatly handi- capped by the war, and by the fact that the military value of aircraft was realised at such an early date. They all hoped now, he said, that aircraft would become an inter- nationalising factor, and this would greatly be helped when women flew as a general rule. SIR FRANCIS MCCLEAN said that Mr. Griffith Brewer first taught him to fly, and introduced him to Wilbur Wright in December, 1908. He described how, at Eastchurch, they used to look for the bumps on the aerodrome and then taxy hard at these bumps in the hope of being thrown up into the air and thus fly for a few yards. He recalled how, later on, they were always told that they could not turn to the right with a Gnome engine, but one day he nearly ran into a tree and had to turn to the right," and, after that everyone else followed suit, finding it was not so dangerous as they had been told. He was very lucky to be able to have a photograph of himself in the air in those days, and this was done by getting a photographer to lay on the ground in front of him and, by the Grace of God, he just missed the photographer, who thus got a beautiful photograph. The Short Bros., he said, were also at Eastchurch in those days, and on one occasion Horace Short wished him to fly into a large net in order to tast out a method by which landings might be made on bo; rd ships, but he declined gracefully. It was also Horace Short, he said, who put another Gnome engine in front of his machine, and it flew very well indeed, but, unfortu- nately, he could never make it fly level ; you either had to climb and subsequently slide back into the ground with your tail or dive straight away with your nose into the ground. It was with this machine that on one occasion, when the Kent Automobile Club came to the aerodrome, that he took up two old ladies for a joy ride. They looked round when he had got them firmly fastened in, and said, after due inspection, " We think, sir, that, should it be necessary, we just have room to be sick without incon- veniencing you." CAPT. DE HAVILLAND, under pressure, said that he had built his first machine with the help of one small boy, and that eventually they had made it fly for about 5 sec, after which it broke up. He also used to get his brother, he said, to lay on the ground in order to see whether they were actually in the air or not. With great modesty, Capt. De Havilland then skipped the large range of machines, which bear his name, until he came to the Moth, which he said was built solely for selfish motives, as he wanted a cheaply-built machine, which was easy to fly, for himself. In conclusion, he said he would like to associate himself with Lt.-Col. Moore-Brabazon in the remarks he made about the value of women in aviation. MR. GORDON ENGLAND said that he started flying with Jose Weiss, whose merits had never really been sufficiently recognised. The machines they used to build, with the help of bamboo, string and tyre cement, were very much more elementary than the Rolls-Royce type of thing which Mr. Brewer and Frank McClean used to fly. The first real flight he ever made, he said, was from the top of Amberley Mount, in Sussex, and he had complete faith in the machine since Jose Weiss said it would fly. They pushed him off from the top of the hill and he promptly went up to 100 ft. above his starting point, which was, of course, actually making a soaring flight as we know it nowadays. Then he eventually made a prolonged glide right down into the valley. The machine really flew exceptionally well, and he had complete faith in it, he said, but unfortunately it had no controls at all. When they put a motor in it, however—a 40-h.p. N.V.—they were not so successful, and on the sands of Littlehampton he did nothing more than scrape the skin off his face when he overturned. He was fortunate, he said, in being an early test pilot, and he remembered how on one occasion they eventually got a machine to fly well, but it unfortu- nately broke to pieces when over the sewage farm at Brooklands. Luckily, however, it laid him down in a soft spot and he was not hurt! He was particularly interesting when he described the Secret Circle Plane built by Cedric Lee, at Shoreham. They had complete faith in this, and everyone believed that it would solve all the problems of flight and was, therefore, a dead secret, and, conse- quently, was built by a staff, all of whom were armed with Webley-Scott revolvers. Finally, one November morning, he took off in this machine, and found that everything was absolutely all right, and instead of just doing one circuit he felt so satisfied with the machine that he went off across country. He came back success- fully, but, unfortunately, just as he was coming in over the hangars, the engine cut out and the machine promptly looped the loop and crashed into the telephone wires on the railway embankment. Mr. Gordon England finished with an impassioned plea for greater interest to be taken in gliding, which he said was the secret of making the youth of the country airminded. CAPT. BARNWELL said that he really ought to speak for his elder brother, as he was the real pioneer, and he started in 1906 to build aircraft, together with one mechanic and a joiner. They also built their own engines and several machines, he said. The first one, however, was rather a disgrace, for although they never got more than one wheel off the ground they did not even smash it, and finally dismantled it. The next machine, he said, was a large Biplane, in which they used a Humber 4-in. T.T. engine, driving two geared propellers. LT.-COL. MOORE-BRABAZON closed the Dinner with a vote of thanks to Mrs. Sempill, and expressed the hope that she would shortly take her pilot's ticket. 380
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