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Aviation History
1951
1951 - 2380.PDF
FLIGHT, 30 November 1951 677 The Tabloid makes its bow at Hendon November 29th, 1913). Forty Years of Sopwith and Hawker Aircraft By H. F. KING, M.B.E. FIGHTING IT is the chilly afternoon of Saturday, November 29th,1913. Fifty thousand people have passed through theturnstiles at the London Aerodrome, Hendon, and shortly after 2 o'clock the flying begins. There is a fine selection of types to watch—a Farman, a Morane, a pair of Grahame-Whites, a Caudron and a Breguet—and all the pilots are on their mettle. A Grahame-White has just landed from an exhibition flight with a passenger when suddenly a strange biplane is seen approaching over West Hendon at a phenomenal rate. Buzzing across the boundary, the tiny machine makes two circuits of the aerodrome at a speed estimated by timekeeper George Reynolds to be well-nigh 90 m.p.h. The cognoscenti correctly identify it as the new 80 h.p. Gnome-Sopwith, piloted by the young Australian Harry Hawker, but few are aware that, on this very morning, it has been timed over the measured mile at Farnborough at the record speed of 92 m.p.h. The minimum speed has been established as 36.9 m.p.h. and in one minute a height of 1,200ft has been achieved—all this while carrying a passenger and fuel for z\ hours ! The crowds are quick to sense the drama of the occasion. Britain is setting the pace ... Thirty-eight years, blighted by two great wars, pass by. It is the 1951 Display and Exhibition of the Society of British Aircraft Constructors at Farnborough—the same eld Farnborough where, on that winter's day in 1913, the Sopwith Tabloid (as the tiny biplane was to become known) left a trail of shattered air records behind it. The flying programme is well advanced and it is now the turn of the fighters to show their paces before the world's technicians. There is a brief pause in the proceedings; then, swift as lightning, something blue-green—it is almost impossible to identify it—flashes along the enclosures at perhaps 50ft, leaving behind it a stunning blast of shock and sound. The crowd is stupefied, and, as heads turn for a glimpse of the projectile, it is seen far distant, rocketing skywards, rolling, rolling, and again rolling, until lost from sight. The commentator (who has "muffed" the microphone in his confusion and uttered some mild profanity) relieves the tension. "You have just seen," he announces, "the Hawker P. 1067, flying at a speed probably in excess of the world's record—a speed approaching 700 miles an hour." Once again, it seems, Britain is setting the pace ... BREED T. 0. M. Sopwith in the Howard Wright biplane which, by Royal com- mand, he landed on the Cost Terrace of Windsor Cast/eon Feb. 1st. 1911. Between these^gpo incidents, in time so far removed, yet in circumstance and significance so strikingly similar, is a relationshid of the most real and intimate kind—the kinship of a great line of fighting aircraft which, for inbred excellence and continuity of achievement, admits no peer; aircraft like the Pup, i£-Strutter, Camel, Fury, Hart, Hurricane, Typhoon, Tempest and P. 1067, backed by men like T. O. M. Sopwith, Harry Hawker, Fred Sigrist, Sydney Camm, "George" Bulman and the brothers Spriggs. And of these names we are first concerned with that of Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith. It was October 22nd, 1910, when 22-year-old Tom Sopwith put in his first appearance at Brooklands in proud possession of a Howard Wright Avis monoplane with 40 h.p. E.N.V. engine. That he had never flown a heavier-than-air machine seemed to him the best possible reason for mounting to the cockpit and opening the throttle. The four-abreast wheels rose from the grass and all went well for, perhaps, 300 yards, when, in his exuberance, the daring young man pulled abruptly on the control column. The gawky monoplane reared up, stalled, and flopped back to earth with a resentful rending and snapping. Sopwith walked off to seek instruction. He was a diligent pupil and on November 22nd, 1910, Royal Aero Club Aviator's Certificate No. 31 was issued to him. Four days later, in a newly acquired Howard Wright biplane (60 h.p. E.N.V.), he established a British duration record by remaining airborne for 3 hr 12 min. The last weeks of 1910 saw him engaged in a ding-dong battle with the veteran Cody and the resolute Alec Ogilvie for the Michelin Cup (which Cody finally wrested from him by a 35-mile margin), and from this narrow defeat he went on to vie with other seasoned pilots—Grahame-White and Frank McClean among them—for the £4,000 Baron de Forest prize, offered for the longest flight from England to the Continent. Setting out from East- church on Sunday morning, December 18th, 1910, he headed the Howard Wright for Dover, and 22 minutes later crossed the French coast near Cap Gris Nez on course for Chalons. Over France an erratic compass obliged him to navigate by the sun, but even this elementary "navaid" was soon denied him by an inter- posed cloud. Unknown to him, his machine began to veer to the left, over the Belgian border and across hilly country, where the air was so turbulent that he was once unseated and deposited on the wing. Seeing no way through the hills, he alighted at Beau- mont after being 3A hr in the air; he was 169 miles from Eastchurch. Disgust that half his fuel remained changed to elation when he realized that continuance on his course would have actually decreased the distance from his point of start; as it was the £4,000 was his. Never was he to experience a prouder moment, however, than on February 1st, 1911, when, by Royal Command, he set the Howard Wright down on the East Terrace of Windsor Castle. Though he had been delayed by a forced-landing at Datchet, His Majesty King George V was waiting to receive him and question him about his machine. Fame was already achieved and fortune smiled. Having found a new joy in the beautifully constructed Martin and Handasyde monoplane, young Sopwith went over to Paris with Gustav Hamel to try out one of the new 70 h.p. Gnome- Bleriots. This he felt he had to own, and soon he was crating it up, together with his faithful Howard Wright, and setting out to "show America." His sister May went along as business manager and the redoubtable Fred Sigrist (formerly responsible for keeping Mr. Sopwith's cars and motor boats in trim; was appointed chief engineer. Thus equipped and supported he could hardly fail.
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