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Aviation History
1956
1956 - 0364.PDF
362 FLIGHT, 30 March 1956 ROY CHADWICK His Life and Work Discussed in a First Memorial Lecture INTRODUCING the First Chadwick Memorial Lecture, TheLife and Work of Roy Chadwick, Mr. H. Rcgerson, M.B.E.,A.M.I.Mech-E., F.R.Ae.S., who retired from the Hawker Siddeley Group last year, said that he was well aware that therewere others still active who were better able to recount Mr. Chadwick's early activities with Avros. Particularly he thoughtof Sir Alliott Verdon Roe, Sir Roy Dobson and Harry Broadsmith. Other early colleagues and mentors—John Lord, H. V. Roe andR. J. Parrott—were no longer with us. Mr. Rogerson was speaking before the Manchester Branch ofthe Royal Aeronautical Society on March 21st at The Reynolds Hall, College of Technology, Manchester. He referred to anintimate friendship of forty years working for and with Mr. Chadwick, who, he recalled, was born on April 30th, 1893. As a schoolboy [said Mr. RogersonJ Chadwick had one interestonly and that was fixed-wing flying machines. His heroes were the two Wrights, S. F. Cody and A. V. Roe. As boys he and Isat side by side in the local church choir, and while most of us appeared to give rapt attention to the half-hour sermon, Roy wasusually sketching the argosies of the skies of his boyish dreams. In the middle 1920s he tried to work up an enthusiasm forrotating-wing aircraft, but failed to convince himself. Before he devoted the whole of his working life and almostall his leisure hours to aeroplane design, Chadwick was quite a fair artist and violinist, and I have no doubt this was evidencedin a secondary way in many of his designs. After leaving school he took a post in the drawing office at British Westinghouse, wherehis father was a departmental chief, and came under the very encouraging influence of his chief draughtsman G. E. Bailey (nowSir George Bailey). Later, in the machine shops, he worked with Tom Fraser, who during the 1939-45 war controlled themanufacture of hundreds of Lancasters at Metropolitan Vickers. During the period before the First World War Chadwickeagerly followed the fortunes of the local pioneer, A. V. Roe, and eventually persuaded A. V. to take him on as a daughtsman underR. J. Parrott—at Brownfield Mills in 1911. His unbounded enthusiasm and unsparing energy soon won A. V.'s approval andA. V. "fathered" him, rather than employed him, in those early days, when orders were few and money scarce. At the time when Roy Chadwick entered the design office thegeneral lines of the Avro tractor biplane were in process of being stabilized, although A. V. still had a great regard for the mono-plane layout, as evidenced by his enclosed cabin monoplane design in 1912. But I look upon the first few years as covering thedevelopment of the Avro 500, which was built in 1912. The result of this was that Chadwick's first few years were formative ones,during which he began to appreciate the necessity for pleasing the user—at this period the flying instructor—and he would spend alarge amount of design time on the cockpit layout and the har- monizing of the three flying controls. Considering the Avro 500 of 1912 as the prototype of the 504series, this development period continued almost unbroken until 1924, when the 504N with the Armstrong Siddeley Lynx enginewas put into production for the R.A.F.—an amazing life of a "Flight" photograph The never-to-be-forgotten Avro 504K, with the design and development of which Roy Chadwick was intimately associated. basic design which was anaccepted trainer from 1914 until about 1930. In the early days of the1914-18 war the 504K per- formed many roles other thanflying training — particularly I call to mind the bombing of theFriedrichshafen airship sheds on November 21st, 1914, and successful Zeppelin straffing in early1915. But in 1916-17 the 504J had made such a name for itself as a trainer that, when the Gosport system of training was evolvedby the late Col. Smith Barry in 1917, the 504K was standardized as the trainer for the Allied Air Forces. The demand was so greatthat in 1918 the programme was for 500 aircraft a month, of which the parent firm had to produce almost half. While the 504 design was being finalized in 1916, A. V. madeschemes for a twin-engined bomber with the front gunner and bomb-aimer in the nose and a gunner just aft of the mainplanes.The detail design was left to Chadwick while A. V. concentrated on the difficult task of evolving a horizontal tier stowage of thebombs. This design passed through many phases with different engines and armament. On the first three the power eggs werefitted approximately mid-way between the upper and lower wing, although Chadwick was not himself convinced that this was theoptimum position, and on later developments built in 1917 (Type 529A) two 210 h.p. B.H.P. engines were fitted on cradles on theupper surface of the lower planes. Still further developments in 1918 were fitted with 300 h.p.Siddeley Pumas and A.B.C. Dragonfly engines. The optimum positioning of power units received a great dealof Chadwick's attention as evinced in his most outstanding suc- cess, the Lancaster, where he disregarded advice regarding thebest vertical position of the engines for minimum drag at top speed, and adopted a position more favourable at a higher liftcoefficient, which turned out to be good policy as the loaded weight and operational altitude went up. A two-seater fighter, Type 530, was produced in 1917, andincorporated drooping trailing edges—forerunners of the landing flaps of two decades later. It must be admitted, however, that inthe opinion of many this aircraft was not as good as Barnwell's famous "Brisfit" and it did not go into production. As an indication of his versatility, Chadwick had consideredthe importance of rapid manoeuvrability for the single-seat fighter, which had become standardized towards the end of the 1914-18war, and he did not subscribe to the generally adopted theory that this must be obtained by reducing the distance between thee.g. and the neutral point, i.e. bringing the e.g. back. Rather did he favour a fairly stable aeroplane with very rigid structurecoupled with powerful and well harmonized controls. To test his ideas he designed a little "l|-plane" fighter, with welded-steel Warren-girder interplane bracing, which was built as a private venture and fitted with a "borrowed" 110 h.p. Le Rhoneengine. This turned out to be a delightful aeroplane to handle, extremely manoeuvrable and without tricks or vices; but ourmethods of trying to obtain official approval were rather unortho- dox and were frowned upon. Various well-known fighter pilotswere invited to fly it on their off-duty days and were asked for opinions, with the result that the aeroplane became a topic ofgeneral conversation in the messes and came to the notice of the heads at. the Air Ministry. I need not add that this aeroplanedid not go into production. With the cessation of hostilities in 1918 there was a seriousglut of aircraft for training and few pilots to be trained. In fact there were some thousands of 504Ks thrown on the market,including of course, many that had not been made by Avros. Hopes were high of receiving orders from Canada and othercountries, but firm orders were not forthcoming although many specifications were accepted and tendered for. It appeared thatother countries besides ourselves found themselves short of cash, but still wished to keep up to date with our design trends. Theresult of this was that, while our business chiefs maintained a small but steady income from joyriding, A. V. and Chadwicklonged for the re-introduction of what for want of a better name, I called low-powered flying. A. V. favoured a return to wingloadings of the order of 3 lb/sq ft and powers of about 20-30 h.p. on aeroplanes of about 600 lb all-up weight, which could beflown at 40 m.pJi.—within the boundaries of a large field, if desired, purely for the sheer joy of flying. Chadwick wished to
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